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Following are comments I made about working on the next version of OBIS v.2.4
Lots of info in here or ramblings of a mod author depending on perspective!
Not going to edit very much ... Ask for clarification if needed.
Okay, so after figuring out more and more about this mod and leveled characters and squashing the bugs and reading the bug reports again and again then applying my own observations and testing some more etc. etc. and so on and so on..
I have found one type of change that OBIS makes that may correct 80 to 90% of these bug reports.Thing is that correcting it will change some things and testing will be needed. This is not a bad mod idea change or whatnot. It may actually be good as this will correct future issues too.
............. anyway I will post reply to this and explain more details in a moment.......
If you go to the Bugs tab and look at the following reports...
Anska has no voice
Naked Blackblood Marauder
and Bandit Trained Troll is a naked bandit woman
These all have in common that their templates point ultimately to LCharBanditOBIS [LVLN:xx0009F6] which is the main list that includes all OBIS and regular bandits.
LCharBanditOBIS list then replaces the templates in the following Leveled npc records...
LvlBanditMeleeAny [NPC_:0001E79C]
LvlBanditMeleeTank [NPC_:00015BE5]
LvlBanditMissile [NPC_:0001E79E]
LvlBanditWizard [NPC_:0001E79F]
There are 20 others but these are the main ones.
How it is supposed to work is that the majority of the bandit spawns in skyrim use these LvlBandit npcs to put bandits in skyrim. In the CKit they appear as just a large 'M' marker when placed. In game the Encounter Zone, fLevelActorMult, difficulty on the Marker itself and the final list that is picked from all determine what level the Bandit is that you see in game.
Having the change in template from what you'd expect (tank for tanks, missile for missiles etc.) to the all inclusive OBIS list means that you will get the incredible variety that obis provides at each of those spawn points. This all works great and for the most part no one notices when something unexpected happens. This isn't the bug I'm talking about - I mean getting a Vokman mage instead of a tank or a bandit trained animal instead of a archer. You really don't notice these.
What happens in the case of these bug reports is that the specific NPC uses one of these changed templates but in a way that is not able to support the variety of OBIS.....
The bug report for Troll that is Naked woman is good example ....
[ACHR:00035381] (places dunVolskyggeBanditScene01a [NPC_:0004192A] in GRUP Cell Persistent Children of Volskygge01 "Volskygge" [CELL:000151FC])
That is the placed Bandit inside Volskygge...
dunVolskyggeBanditScene01a [NPC_:0004192A]
She is supposed to be an Imperial Female with a template of ...
LvlBanditMeleeAny [NPC_:0001E79C]
The template flags set to use data from the template include 11 out of the 12 - the one not checked is Use Traits.
The Traits of dunVolskyggeBanditScene01a include being Female and Imperial and FemaleCommoner voice.
The 11 other template flags pulled from the lists and found the Bandit Trained Troll to get its name and stats from. Even the troll's inventory which as you expect would be empty leading to her naked state.
Since she is a bandit it wouldn't be out of bounds for OBIS to edit her and make her point to a different template or simply check that last flag making a full troll.
But what would really be better is to change the edits to the LvlBandit from pointing to the OBIS list back to the vanilla lists.
Then we can edit those lists and add the OBIS variety in at that point.
Actually if you take the example above and follow the templates you get to OBIS edited NPCs already...
In xEdit use Control-Click on the templates....
dunVolskyggeBanditScene01a [NPC_:0004192A] vanilla template is...
LvlBanditMeleeAny [NPC_:0001E79C] template is...
LCharBanditMeleeAny [LVLN:0003DECD] which OBIS adds to. Pick the first in the list....
LCharBanditMelee1H [LVLN:00039CFC] again OBIS edits this list to spread the tiers to every 10 levels. Pick the first in that list...
SubCharBandit01Melee1H [LVLN:00039D26] another list oBIS adds to going from 5 races to all 10. This time go down to 6th in list the Imperial Female....
EncBandit01Melee1HImperialF [NPC_:00039CF7] - yet another OBIS edited bandit with new level and new weapon.
There are a couple more levels of templates both of which are also edited by OBIS.
So - if you go back to the LvlBanditMeleeAny NPC and follow instead the LCharBanditOBIS template you can find how the Bandit Trained Troll was picked from the LCharBanditAnimal [LVLN:xx000B0E] list.
Next post will be the question of what change to make.....
Something to keep in mind is that the scripts for the Extra Bandit spawning system uses .....
OBIS_LvlBandit [NPC_:xx0A85B4] npc
Which points to the ....LCharBanditOBIS [LVLN:xx0009F6] list which includes all bandits obis and regular vanilla included.
OBIS changes the template in......
LvlBanditMeleeAny [NPC_:0001E79C]
From...
LCharBanditMeleeAny [LVLN:0003DECD]
To...
LCharBanditOBIS [LVLN:xx0009F6]
That is the edit I want to change back to vanilla as the issues above come from it.
After that change what will happen is that those vanilla spawn points in Skyrim will not be able to spawn the OBIS gang type bandits. Those were coming from the OBIS list (and of course the scripted spawns if enabled)
These are still OBIS edited vanilla bandits and these only cover some of the spawns in Skyrim.
The next change would be to add OBIS type bandits back into the lists at a different point and not all in one.
In other words like the example above ... MeleeAny vanilla contains 1 handed and 2 Handed bandits. OBIS adds the other two vanilla varieties to this .. 1HTank and 2HBerserk
Each of those lists then contain Sub lists that then contain the individual bandits. What I can do is add to the Melee Any list - more lists that contain the various OBIS bandit types. But only the 1 and 2 Handed types.
For MIssile list add in the OBIS archer types and Mage types for the Wizard list.
Does that make sense?
We'd still get the variety at vanilla spawn points but without the issues we are currently seeing.
This will take me some time and I might make some judgement calls on some of the gangs that have crossover skills.
I invite anyone of course to share their opinions and test out the effects on the game.
I'll get to work on this - Let me know your thoughts - Please!
So... I'm working on the above stuff and I run into a Bandit Boss at level 25 again. Rigel in Pinewatch this time. I decide to try to figure out more why they spawn so high at low player level.
I knew that vanilla does not have a tier one Boss NPC. Bosses start at tier 2. With OBIS leveling everybody to player level and distributing bandits in the level lists to every 10 levels. This meant that a Boss will start high anyway but it still seems too high...........
Tier 2 for OBIS is level 10 to 20 (tier 1 is level 1 to 10)
So at player 1 or 2 you'd think okay I should get a level 10 boss ? Nope level 25!
The boss in Halted Stream Camp was easy to get to and looking at his levels they were set by obis to 10 to 25 and the placement marker is Very Hard. So I was thinking this meant he spawned at the high end of his range. But nope - he was actually the low end of tier 3 boss 25 to 35!! What the heck?
I looked and looked and asked around and got really good info. Tonight though is when I realized what was happening.
This page on CKit wiki explains how the Very Hard difficulty setting works ....
Very Hard: Selects the actor that is closest to 125% of the resolved level of the zone without exceeding that level. If this would produce the same result as the Hard difficulty creature, select the enemy one step higher, if any, regardless of its level.
Looking at a Boss list LCharBanditBossOrcM [LVLN:0001B0EA] ....
Level 1 = EncBandit02Boss2HOrcM "Bandit Lieutenant" [NPC_:0003DEE5] = level 10 - 25
we repeated the 02 bandit here
Level 20 = EncBandit03Boss2HOrcM "Bandit Raid Lieutenant" [NPC_:0003DEEE] = level 25 - 35
Level 30 = EncBandit04Boss2HOrcM "Bandit Lieutenant Overseer" [NPC_:0003DEF9] = level 35 - 45
etc...
We repeated the tier 2 guy because Vanilla had it that way and because of no tier 1. This made it so at level 20 you get the 20 -30 range of other tier 3 bandits.
So why get level 25 boss of the tier 3 ??
All of these guys are player level multiplied by 1.2 (by OBIS) and the fLeveledActorMultVeryHard is 1.25 for vanilla.
Now in that list the level 1 NEVER gets used it isn't possible.
Player level 1 entering that dungeon a Hard difficulty would be 1 x 1.2 x 1.0 (player level x npc mult 1.2 and x fLevelActorMultHard =1.0) = 1.2
That would spawn level 2 NPC but minimum for that list would be 10
Very Hard = 1 x 1.2 x 1.25 = 1.5
That would also spawn level 2 but minimum level 10 - This is same as Hard difficulty so it picks the next one higher which is minimum tier 3 level 25 !
For leveling all the bosses the way we did results in that first entry in the leveled list (level 1) will never be used. The Very Hard difficulty means that it will always pick the next tier up. You can't just skip to the level 10 slot something has to be in level 1.
Being that there is no Boss tier 1's vanilla and then we followed, put the tier 2 in there. Vanilla is not leveled to player for those guys they are level 6 I think.
So - there may have been other way to do this but I decided to make a Boss Tier 1 Placeholder NPC. And I named him that
Placing him in that level 1 spot (that will never be used) and putting the tier 2 bosses in at level 10 then the rest can be the same.
This wasn't enough though. Because until level 7 you are still calculating hard and very hard as below that level 10 minimum. At level 7 very hard you get 10.5 which will spawn level 11 which is different than hard level 10 min. so it won't go up to tier 3.
So what to do with 1 to 7 player levels.??
What I did was make all the Bosses minimum levels to be 6 and then plus 10 for each tier going up. It will calculate for the level in the lists 1, 10, 20... But what spawns can be the minimum for that list which would be 6 now for the 10 in list. We want that calculation to be different when it reaches that 10.
Very confusing but it seems to work. I saw level 6 bosses in several different dungeons. It just didn't make sense to fight level 1 bandits all the way into a dungeon only to be put down by a 25 boss at the end.
Oh and the big difference in tier 2 and tier 3 bandits is that they also get much better perks going from 10 to 25 minimums. This will be much more fair.
Okay - That placeholder tier 1 boss didn't work. I didn't factor in that some places would not have Very Hard placed bosses. Valtheim Towers' boss is set to Hard.
Rethinking the changes I tried to just put back in the tier 2 bosses in at level 1 - like it was before. The change to the boss level range 6 to 25 instead of 10 to 25 makes more of the difference.Results were as expected this time. Level 6 bosses to begin with. The Valtheim Towers boss was also level 6. The progression going up in levels will be more logical going forward.
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