The cloak spell is used by various mods to distribute effects around the player, it has some impact on performance, mostly negligible but since SPID manages to distribute effects to every NPC you want with no performance impact (it's done when the game is launched) it might be preferable. Probably Enai will not adopt this as a definitive solution because that would mean SPID as a requirement, also consoles dont have SPID.
Cloak distributes spells only to NPCs around the player who need the spell. SPID distributes spells to all NPCs that meet the conditions at the start of the game. This may negatively affect performance as spells are distributed to NPCs in situations where they are not needed. It should be carefully investigated whether the use of SPID will improve performance.
I've seen a lot of mods of this type, but I've never seen one that quantitatively shows how much of an improvement in performance it provides.
It is not a matter of SPID or cloak. They both make sense depending on the use-case. The issue is before SPID existed you had to still use a cloak for a mod meant to affect all NPCs.
The Valravn combat effects should be on all actors, not just actors close to the PC.
If the thing you are applying to the NPCs is expensive, then yes giving it to all NPCs will be more expensive. But many mods have a cloak that applies its effect to NPCs permanently, so once they move away they still have the effect anyway. An effect which should only be on nearby NPCs should still use a cloak, you just no longer need to hack a cloak to try to get your effects on everyone.
There is a small impact on performance, but Valravn does not use scripts, so the cloak is not a potential threat to your save file like in some older combat overhauls. In general, anything non-scripted will be blazing fast.
The main reason to use this mod is because it is cleaner than applying the stats to all nearby enemies. The cloak is a highly functional workaround, but a workaround nonetheless. This eliminates the workaround entirely.
Additionally, if you use Valravn alongside another combat overhaul that does use a scripted cloak and goes as far as to have a scripted OnHit() event, you want to remove the cloak from Valravn (and in general avoid any other cloaks in your game) because it will set off said OnHit() event six times per second on every NPC within range. This is a flaw with scripted cloaks with OnHit() events and not Valravn, but this solves the issue without having to remove one or the other mod.
I'm not sure yet but I suspect this mod breaks valravn. Enemy NPCs seem to focus on animals over the player. After starting new game with just valravn (so no SPID), they focus player (even tried to spawn army of deers, bandits still ignore them).
As I said, I'm not 100% sure because modded Skyrim behaves wildly, but just leaving it here in case someone has the same problem.
Thank you very much for creating the mod. But the same issue appears for me, it seems enemy AI is completely broken with this mod, maybe you can check it again?
Does SPID not overwrite the records it messes with? That's the thing that confuses me most about it, I don't get how it interacts with things like bashed patches
It doesn't. That's part of the beauty of it. It doesn't touch NPC records, it doesn't touch leveled lists and it doesn't interact with your Bashed Patch. Spells, Perks and Items are Distributed to NPCs at game runtime.
Can you make up a tutorial on how to do this? I would like to uncloak another mod I've been using for a long time which is quite heavy, namely Creature Size Variants
What if after installing this mod, another mod added new NPCs? Would they be given the effects anyway? I'm asking because I *think* this distribution only happens once?
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Probably Enai will not adopt this as a definitive solution because that would mean SPID as a requirement, also consoles dont have SPID.
SPID distributes spells to all NPCs that meet the conditions at the start of the game.
This may negatively affect performance as spells are distributed to NPCs in situations where they are not needed.
It should be carefully investigated whether the use of SPID will improve performance.
I've seen a lot of mods of this type, but I've never seen one that quantitatively shows how much of an improvement in performance it provides.
The Valravn combat effects should be on all actors, not just actors close to the PC.
If the thing you are applying to the NPCs is expensive, then yes giving it to all NPCs will be more expensive. But many mods have a cloak that applies its effect to NPCs permanently, so once they move away they still have the effect anyway. An effect which should only be on nearby NPCs should still use a cloak, you just no longer need to hack a cloak to try to get your effects on everyone.
The main reason to use this mod is because it is cleaner than applying the stats to all nearby enemies. The cloak is a highly functional workaround, but a workaround nonetheless. This eliminates the workaround entirely.
Additionally, if you use Valravn alongside another combat overhaul that does use a scripted cloak and goes as far as to have a scripted OnHit() event, you want to remove the cloak from Valravn (and in general avoid any other cloaks in your game) because it will set off said OnHit() event six times per second on every NPC within range. This is a flaw with scripted cloaks with OnHit() events and not Valravn, but this solves the issue without having to remove one or the other mod.
As I said, I'm not 100% sure because modded Skyrim behaves wildly, but just leaving it here in case someone has the same problem.
Edit: Seems to work in combination with this mod:
Valvalis Combat - Visceral Tactics at Skyrim Special Edition Nexus - Mods and Community (nexusmods.com)
I'll try Valravn as it is and see if the problem persists.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/76374
I'm not a coding expert so I have no means of verifying but what is the meaning of this?
Its latest release is more recent than this one.
I would like to uncloak another mod I've been using for a long time which is quite heavy, namely Creature Size Variants