I.OVERVIEW

Dragon Combat Overhaul will completely change your dragons.  You can download the best dragon mods out there to add cool dragons with cool effects, but at the end of the day, the brain that is driving that wonderful work of art around is the same as any other dragon.  And that brain is stupid.  It is predictable.

Enter DCO.

DCO's main feature is a massive upgrade to dragon artificial intelligence.  It's complicated to explain, but basically I've hacked their brains.  Dragons will behave more ferociously.  They will certainly be more deadly.  But they will also be more...idiosyncratic.  They will make smart tactical decisions that will have your jaw drop.  They will coordinate attacks as a team.  You will know fear as you will feel them *want* to hurt you.  But they will also make stupid decisions.  Sometimes they will just fly in circles.  They're living beings, they do what they want now.

DCO's secondary feature is to outfit dragons with new abilities to hurt you with.  Dragons will knock you down when they fly at you and land on you, if you aren't blocking, holding a ward, or are ethereal.  Dragons gain special abilities based on their archetype - Fire, Frost, Shock, Nature, and Undead.  Dragons may fire off incredibly powerful one time spells at low health.  Dragons may call for reinforcements from their friends.  Alduin has been...upgraded.  I won't spoil it for you.  Alduin(IN SOVNGARDE, NOT AT THE THROAT OF THE WORLD) will be the hardest fight in the game.  When you come for the king, you best not miss. 

DCO also has a number of bonus features that are just plain great quality of life upgrades for anything to do with dragons.

Dragons Stalking you?  Fixed.
Annoyed you have to walk up to a dragon to take its soul?  Now it works from far away.
Sad that dragon assaults only take place when you fast travel?  Now they won't be so predictable.
Hate how dragons get predictably injured and land at the 35% mark?  Now they don't.
Hate that you can't shoot a dragon out of midair?  Now you can.
Hate that dragons always follow the same death script - Injury Animation Injured Landing Death Animation?  Now they don't.
Hate it when dragons prioritize your horse over you?  Now you will have their full attention.
Hate how easy it is to stagger a dragon?  Now you just have to BEAT THE EVERLOVING CRAP OUT OF IT to do that.
Hate that Uncle Sheo doesn't show you the slightest gratitude for killing a dragon with Wabbajack?  Now the God of Madness shall truly reward you with his Happy Day(tm).
Want to command a friendly dragon to snatch an enemy into the sky?  Say hello to the Cloud District, Nazeem.

Best of all, this is all modifiable to your liking in the MCM.

THIS MOD IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH KS DRAGON OVERHAUL AND ULTIMATE DRAGONS.  UD YOU'LL GET TO WORK BUT IT'LL PROBABLY GET WACKY, KS DOES SIMILAR STUFF SO IT'LL PROBABLY WHACK OUT ON YOU.  EVERYTHING ELSE SHOULD BE FINE.

II.  UPGRADES




I went back in and brought the code into the 21st century. 

Script weight outside of dragon combat has been massively reduced. 
Script weight during dragon combat has been massively reduced.
The old Cloak ability which applied the DCO effect is now gone - SPID has replaced it. 
All current popular dragon mods should be accounted for and compatible - in english.  For foreign language dragon mods that have foreign language names, a translated SPID ini will be required. 
Mortal Kombat should now be more common beyond fire and undefined types(if you have modded dragons).
The notorious Miraak bug has been "fixed"(now he just kills the dragons in midair)

III.I HEARD YOU WERE CRAZY

i am

IV.I HEARD YOU WERE CRAZY

I sTill am

V.DOCUMENTATION

For real documentation that goes into all the detail and even has a lot of old bad modding advice from 2015, please check out the original description to this mod at https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32597.

VI.KNOWN ISSUES

[Bug Severity = Vexing]

1. Dragons may fly into and out of walls or the ground, or do crazy backflips, etc. etc. This is usually just a little bit immersion-breaking, and is certainly harmless. And there is nothing I can do about it. That is the cost of DCO.

2. DCO will conflict with Requiem.  Load it after.


VII.FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

"Does this make dragon fights harder?"
Yes.

"You sound pretty confident there."
Just try it.

"Did you do it in a cheesy way, by increasing health to make them bullet sponges, or by giving them one shot fire breath all the time, or something cheap like that?"
No.  The goal of DCO is to make dragon fights harder and more dynamic without resorting to such common plebian pedestrian methods.

"You're a witch."
That's not a question.

"Is this compatible with X?"

"Seriously i need to know if this is compatible with my stupid mod."
Thank you, your mod is stupid.  Look, I have no idea.  Probably.  DCO has been built from day one with ease of compatibility in mind.  Most dragon mods don't touch the same stuff I do, and if they do, DCO often will override them.  Even if a mod overrides a change from DCO, DCO will very often override that setting ingame via script.  When I tell you I take total control of your dragons I mean it.  Mods which edit the Dragon or Alduin or UndeadDragon Races may be incompatible, such as Requiem, but such mods are generally few and far between.  If you use LOOT it will tell you if there's an incompatibility there, and there will almost always be a user-made patch.  Mods which edit dragon animations may be incompatible as well.  Mods which add new dragons are almost always, if not always, compatible.  Mods that edit dragon abilities, or change their colors or levels or health, etc., are almost always compatible.  The only mods which are per se incompatible with DCO are KS Dragon Overhaul 2, Dovahsil - Alduin's Faction, and Ultimate Dragons.  Serio's Enhanced Dragons does a lot of similar stuff but I think you'll be fine.  Don't ask me if a mod is incompatible beyond this.  I don't know, you play with DCO and your super special mod and you tell me whether it's incompatible or not.  Deal?

"Ok but is it compatible with Deadly Dragons?"

Yes.  DCO specifically accounts for very popular dragon mods that are not explicitly incompatible.  Deadly Dragons is fantastic with it.  The SPID ini specifically searches for dragons from Deadly Dragons to make them even cooler.  Diverse Dragons too.  AND EVERYTHING ELSE.  IF I DON'T EXPLICITLY SAY IT'S INCOMPATIBLE, IT'S COMPATIBLE.  NOW. SHUT. UP. ABOUT. COMPATIBILITY.

"Ok but is this compatible with Schlongs of Skyrim"
No.  The penises somehow override dragons.  The girth is too much for them, and the game in general.  Their overpowering masculine presence and *scent* cause the code to invert in on itself and make Jarl Balgruuf ride dragons to AC/DC's "Thunderstruck".



"Seriously, how does it work?"
Look man, it's friggin complicated.  Basically I force the game to execute animations in weird ways the game is not prepared for, which I guess does weird things to the behavior graph?  Simultaneously I take full control of dragons via Papyrus at times to simulate specific tactics.  Simultaneously I'm constantly modifying their actual in game AI variables on the fly based on the situation they're in.  And I do all of this relatively randomly, though situational, which creates a kind of mock intelligence.  I'll put it to you this way - I wrote the thing - I know exactly what these dragons do and why they do it and I can see the code execute - even I cannot predict them with enough accuracy to reliably survive any fight.  No matter what level you are, a dragon will always be a threat(unless you can one shot it).

"Everybody told me this mod is super buggy."
Look, there were and are certainly issues.  Yet none of the people who are the most vocal critics have any idea what they're talking about.  The truth is, the mod had a much higher script weight than I had understood - as back then NOBODY understood how script weight works - and I have since upgraded the mod to remove the worse offenders.  At this stage, it will no longer be one of the heaviest script mods in your load order.  Probably not.  It will certainly not be the lightest.  There is a price to pay for this house of cards I've built, and a relatively medium amount of script weight during dragon combat is it.

"I hate the knockdowns"
Use another mod.

"SERIOUSLY?!"
I could explain how essential knockbacks are to dragons.  I could explain how it makes sense that a mass of bone and muscle the size of a large pickup truck landing on you at terminal velocity would at least knock you down.  I could explain that it is fair, that I play with it all the time and never think to myself, 'man this is so cheap.'  I could explain DCO assumes knockbacks in the tactics the dragons take, and how, without it, my dragons become a pale shade of what they could be.  I could explain just how easy it would be to make your own patch of this mod to remove it.  You could upload it to the Nexus so all the other people that hate fun can enjoy the lack of knockbacks too.  But you won't care.  You'll complain and moan because you want it your way.  and I am already bored.  Download something else and leave me alone.

"WTF IS SOUL CURSE"
teeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehooeeeheeheeeheeheeeheeheeeheeheeheeheeeheeheh
It sucks is what it is.  Go to the old page if you really wanna spoil it for yourself.  It can be cured.

"Why are you so cringe"
You hate read this entire description I don't think you have room to criticize.  Also you are a fetus.


VIII.IS THIS COMPATIBLE WITH "IMMERSIVE ZENDAYA BLOW UP DOLL"


I hate you so much.





TTFN