[size=7]Universal Horse Armor[/size]

Previously known as My Big Ass Stallion: String Maps are WIZARDRY!!!

Welcome to Universal Horse Armor, the mod that allows you to actually put armor on your horse without using fake copies with the armor models pasted on.
What does this mean? In the official Bethesda Horse Armor DLC, when you armored a horse you didn't actually put armor on it, it got replaced by another horse creature with the armor models. Kind of a scam if you ask me...
Not to mention that only the select few horses you could buy in stables + Shadowmere were eligible for armor, so no armored unicorns for you :(
This mod aims to improve that... to the best of my skills, which are quite limited, but hey, I work for free after all.

REQUIREMENTS
I PITY THE FOO WHO DOESN'T FOLLOW THIS TO THE LETTER AND THEN TELLS ME ABOUT HAVING 'PROBLEMS' WITH THE MOD
(nah, actually I pity myself)

- You need OBSE, don't ask for a non-OBSE version because it simply is not possible.
- You would do good to get Ely's Universal Silent Voice
- Unless you can procure your own horse armor models and know how to name them so that they fit into this mod (see CUSTOMIZATION section below), these are also semi-mandatory for the models they contain:

• You need the official Horse Armor DLC. Sorry about that, there are simply not enough custom horse armor models out there that I like, and it is a requirement for the next item.
• You need harlanrm's Horse Armor Revamped mod. This mod used to be a PES exclusive, but fileplanet suffered a long and painful death and I have to wonder what will happen with anything uploaded just there.
• The above I only offer in .omod format, so you'll likely need OBMM to install it. After installation you should find a HRMHorseArmor.bsa file in your Data folder. RENAME IT to MigHorseArmor.bsa
• Deactivate all esps from harlanrm's and Bethesda's horse armor mods, you don't need them.
  

Hopefully one day I'll make my own omod (with blackjack and mistresses, in fact forget the omod!) and the HRA requirement will be integrated. Because no one's learning to make custom horse armor models anytime soon.

I really hope you got all that set up right, because you're in for one hell of a ride (A ride, get it? As in, riding horses! I'm sooo (not) funny...)

Let's roll this piece of [buy some @pples!]
So, you plug this mod in and... nothing happens. That's right, you have to get the armor first, but how to do it?
I have put up a simple quest to favor inmersion (well actually harlanrm put up most of it), so you'll have to do a bit of legwork before being able to procure the armor.
First you can ask at the Imperial City's stables for Horse Armor, and they will direct you to speak to any other stable owner from the other cities, or you can ask another stable owner directly. If they like you enough (*cough*disposition*cough*), they will hand you a Horse Armor voucher you can use back at Chestnut Handy stables.
With the voucher in hand, you will find a door leading to a basement behind the Chestnut Handy main building, where Snip gra-Bura, Snak's sister, has set up shop. Hand her your voucher to receive a free set of cheap armor. Success!

Now how the armoring process actually works: you can only armor a horse if:
- It is alive.
- It is your last ridden horse, or a follower's horse. It doesn't matter if it is stolen.
- It's model path contains the word 'horse'. This is generally true for most mounts, it is just a way to try and prevent you from armoring battlecats or something like that, but don't let me stop you from trying...
Chances are your current mount satisfies both, so you want to put the armor on it. With the mount in your crosshair popup, press the block and jump keys, and a menu will pop with the available armors you have in your inventory.
Select one and voila! The horse will be armored with that armor, which will be removed from your inventory. And the best part is, it will remain armored between different game sessions! Isn't that sensible?
To remove the armor, proceed in the same manner, block + jump with the horse in view. If the horse were to die, the armor it had can be found in its corpse.

Now it's time to explore what else Snip offers. Selecting the topic 'Horse Armor' will embark you on a quest to procure her people's armor pieces to craft new horse armor models. Each new model requires a cuirass and greaves of the relevant material, plus a five day wait before the new model is ready and the next one can be ordered.
After five days from handing over the armor pieces, enter conversation with any NPC and you should receive a notice indicating the availability of new horse armor models. Snip gra-Bura will sell them to you during the day, and replenish her stock every three days in case you want to armor several horses.
She can identify the armor pieces in your inventory by name and model path, so you can give her enchanted armor pieces, or mod-added ones like the ones from Armamentarium. The least expensive cuirass and greaves in your inventory will be removed to manufacture the armor, so be sure those are the ones you want to offer.
In total there are three initial models for sale (cloth, chainmail and steel) plus up to four new ones after each quest stage (elven, glass, ebony and daedric) plus an exclusive Imperial Dragon horse armor model available in the IC armory after beating the game's main quest, and which will make any horse essential. Just like in harlanrm's original mod.

To examine an armor in-game before buying it, talk to Snip and select the topic 'Examine Armor', Snip will armor the Old Nag outside with the selected model, and you can activate it to learn the defense bonus and speed penalty it applies. You'll have to activate it before asking to examine another armor model.

CUSTOMIZATION: each of the eight armor types can be customized in the file under 'Data\Ini\MigHorseArmor.ini', where you can alter their base gold value for buy/sell purposes, their weight when being carried around in your inventory, and most important, the damage reduction and speed penalties they will apply to your horse.
You can also change the name by which each armor will be referred to in menus, but if you do so, you will have to ensure that there are two suitable models for it, named as:
"armor" + name you choose + ".nif" and "bridle" + name you choose + ".nif"
And that these models are in the same folder that your horse uses for its skeleton (default is meshes\creatures\horse\)
Therefore, this is only intended if you want to use your own custom horse armor models in substitution for the ones provided in the DLC and harlanrm's mod. If you can procure those, you wouldn't need the DLC at all.

Installation
The mod is in BAIN-ready format, if you don't use BAIN, drop the contents from the '00 Core' folder in your Data folder and activate MighorseArmor.esp. Look under Data\Ini\MigHorseArmor.ini to customize things like each armor's values and stats.
The other two folders contain optional replacers for the daedric and ebony horse armors, which I found a bit lackluster in the Horse Armor revamped mod (but harlanrm did what he could).
The 01 folder changes the daedric armor with the AWESOME horse armor from the Lost paladins of the Divines mod and is very recommended.
The 02 folder changes the textures of the ebony horse armor to those by Joshua Lowe, which are a bit more decorative.

The armors can alter the DefendBonus and Speed values of your horses through script commands, therefore if you want to uninstall the mod while having armored horses and don't want to fix their stats by hand, before uninstalling type in the console:
set OHARhorseArmorQ.uninstall to 1
which will stop the mod and revert any changes from the armors to your horses. You can then save, exit and remove the mod.

Issues
This mod has been a beast for me to code, string maps may be wizardry but I'm definitely no wizard, so I guess it could have been coded much better by someone who knows their arrays.
There are some stability problems when toggling models on and off, especially large and detailed models like the paladin armor, so occasionally the game may crash when armoring a horse. Try to be somewhere with decent FPS before changing armors on your horse.
The armored horses are stored in an array so that their armor models can be reapplied after a reload, but they are removed from the array when removing the armor on them. This means that if you armor a horse, and from in game reload a save previous to that moment,that horse will still be armored.
You should NOT reload from inside the game in any case, whether you use this mod or not, a complete Oblivion restart is always better.
To avoid clipping with existing models on the horse, any models on it with the words mane, saddle, bridle, cloth or armor are toggled off before toggling the armor models on, and they are stored to be reenabled after unarmoring the horse. If the horse uses oddly named models, they may not be catched and thus may remain and clip with the armor.
So this mod is focused on horse or horse-like mounts, there is no support whatsoever for other creature mounts, but you might experiment with trying to armor them and see what happens.

kuertee's Horse Commands mod is compatible and there should be no issues as long as you use version 4.994, which was fixed by me so that the Horse Speed Equals Player Speed module doesn't mess with the horse's speed at all times.

Future Plans (nope)
Oh yeah, lets just imagine I got actually good at scripting, and good at modelling so I could create my own horse armor models. No dependency on the DLC? Unlimited horse armor types added by the user? Enchantments on the horse armor? Armor for mounts that aren't horses? A man can dream... until he is awake.

Credits
Thanks to harlanrm for the Horse Armor Revamped mod, onto which this mod was built.
Thanks to EuGenius, Jerros, Joshua Lowe and all the people involved in the new horse armor models.
Thanks to Bethesda for the Horse Armor DLC.
Thanks to the OBSE team for OBSE.