FAQ

Welcome to the FAQ for the Busy Follower Framework. I hope this article can answer the majority of your questions. If not, please feel free to leave a comment on the mod and I'll get to you when I can.

Q1: Why do you not have X,Y, or Z features from <insert follower mod>?
A1: Although BFF certainly attempts to bring together many of the best features of other follower frameworks, it remains my own vision for how I wanted my follower framework to be built. The key focus was to keep this as immersive as possible and to avoid feature creep.

Q2: Does this mod work with other follower frameworks?
A2: Very likely not as it directly makes big changes to the follower and animal systems from the base game. The one exception is my A Dog's Life follower mod to further enhance the abilities of your K9 pets.

Q3: Will this mod interfere with standalone follower mods with their own voices and systems?
A3: No, BFF was built specifically to not interfere with custom-voiced follower mods. One of the frustrations I found with some frameworks was that they would latch onto any "teammate" of the player it could, resulting in major issues.

Q4: How many followers can I have at any given time in Busy Follower Framework and why not increase it to 100+?
A4: You can have a maximum of 25 followers, 10 animal companions, 3 hirelings, 3 guards and 5 children. I will not be increasing the amount as there comes a point that due to all the scripted checks, it would probably cause the game to struggle due to how the systems combine and work together. All of these companions are considered "followers" even when waiting at home and are only discounted once dismissed from service or killed.

Q5: Can you make X, Y and Z patches please?
A5: Unfortunately no, I'm unlikely to provide patches for additional mods, however, I have no problem with people creating patches and either firing them my way to be shared here or uploading them on their own mod page. It's just not realistic for me to try and patch tons of mods with my limited time due to work and family responsibilities.


A Statement on Outfits

I felt it important to have a section in this FAQ that covers the unique outfit system built for the Busy Follower Framework, loosely based on my player outfit system in my mod Simple Outfit Manager. This was one of if not the hardest features to get working in this mod and I feel it's important that those wanting to use it fully grasp and appreciate the difficulty of battling the in-game systems. My hope here is to set some fair expectations when using the outfits system.

The outfit system is incredibly complex as it has to account for multiple variables including last outfit, current outfit. pending outfit items, temporary outfit tweaks and engine-based triggers.

When followers are unloaded from the game, most often when entering and exiting world spaces (cities especially), the mod has to battle the in-game systems to prevent outfits from being changed or items being randomly equipped by followers.

For the most part, the system manages this, however, you may prefer to disregard outfits or use a combination of Manual and Automated.

The attempt here was to achieve an outfit system that didn’t use setOutfit functions as these would not use the actual items handed to NPCs and it means the items are always visible to the player, keeping things more intuitive and immersive where possible.