wip Chaurus Life

[Seijin8]

1 hour ago, Reesewow said:

Exciting news there - looking forward to seeing what the "real" version of the mod looks like.

Wetter.  Much, much wetter.

[Seijin8]

Okay, I'm hoping this covers a broad enough range of the previous half-day's comments to be satisfying.

 

Much as I would love to engage each of your points directly, I wouldn't ever get the mod done.  If there is a specific point you think I missed, please don't hesitate to bring it up.

 

At some stage, I do have to draw hard lines on what I will/won't integrate into the mod, and what chaurus behaviors/life states/themes I will stick with and which I will discard.

 

Your comments and discussions help me solidify the mod through argumentation of the themes and gameplay, and I deeply appreciate all of you for contributing!

 

Some notes I jotted down while reading all of the last several posts, presented in no particular order.

 

Hives:

• Existing vs new/generated - existing will be connected, tunnels may also connect to generated caverns.  I am planning on the tunnels having somewhat randomized destinations, so every playthrough is different.  Some of the newly opened channels will not allow constant passage and are one-way only, or are too dangerous for regular use (avalanches/cave-ins for instance).
• Falmer interaction: "domesticated" is the word being used, but I'd say it is more a matter of resource usage (less like dogs, more like cows).  In hives where the management has been poor, the falmer are under-equipped, chaurus are few and there are few if any eggs (alternatively, there may be a huge number of eggs, but few chaurus - mismanagement in both cases).
• There may be a trade network between the falmer.  Frostflow is the big breeding ground and occasionally trades a chaurus with another location.  It stands to reason that Blackreach would be the center of any such trade route.

Ideal Hives:

• Universally these would be cool or cold, with some melt water present.  Frozen doesn't work for them, but neither does temperate.  Morthal swamps, inside glacial areas, etc.  Probably the most temperate region we find chaurus breeding zones in is Gloomreach, which is in a fairly temperate area and we can assume the little egg chambers there are warmer than normal.  I would place this as an upper-limit on temperature for them, and probably wouldn't work without the falmer doing something to keep it cooler in there.  (Maybe the nearby waterfalls create a convective system that makes the whole area cooler inside?  Just spit balling there.)
• Accordingly, this would rule out any need to connect to places like Halted Steam camp, Embershard Mines, or similar bandit-infested small caves.  These just don't seem like good candidate locations (though I may still have tunnels going to them for transportation purposes).
• This would make the best regions in/around/under Winterhold, Windhelm, Dawnstar, Morthal and Solitude, with Markarth and Whiterun marking territorial limits (excluding the far-western push to the Forgotten Vale).  There shouldn't be much purpose to being under Lake Ilinata, for instance.
• Oddly, this area doesn't entirely overlap Blackreach and exceeds that locations boundaries by a fair margin.  Maybe expanding Blackreach would fix this?  (I already created a Blackreach mega-merged mod and fixed most of the navmeshing in it, but there are a host of permissions issues there, so I don't know that I can include that.)
• At minimum, I would like to create a hybrid "underdark" region that mixes elements of the Darkfall cavern depths with Blackreach.  I'd also like it to have a lot of verticality and underground waterfalls, etc.  Haven't started this, so its a long way away.

Hive Wars:

• Hive wars should be fairly uncommon and should be happening with or without the player's intervention.  Because of the way the mod works, you can plop 15 nymphs in an area, set "FruitFly" mode and walk off for an hour.  Come back and the place will be less populated, there will be no nymphs at all, probably no workers, and you may have a tyrant and a few hunters, or just a stagnant bunch of reapers, or (highly unlikely) a bunch of dead reapers and nothing living.  That isn't ideal.
• Hives should be self-managing.  There should be some internal system that says "hey, we are short on nymphs and need to start the breeding cycle", triggering the hive to get a move on.  Likewise, if there are just reapers, they shouldn't be as aggressive as a matter of survival.  Challenges should be much more rare in the absence of lower forms to prevent the hive from collapsing.
• If we assume that Chaurus are r-selected species (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory), then constant hive collapse is reasonable: some x number of hives will reach equilibrium and potential hives are a dime a dozen.  Failure is the most common result and hive burn-out is common and normal.  On the other hand most of our discussions have revolved around the notion of nurturing the hive (K-selection), and I think for gameplay this would be more satisfying by far.  This would be why there is no location in the game with "just chaurus".  Event Frostflow has a few falmer to guide it along.  (Within natural selection this doesn't make sense, but nothing about evolution on Nirn is natural.  It is all heavily influenced by the Divines and daedric princes.)
• The falmer likely manage the normal escalation through alchemical means, keeping it suppressed.  If it is "normal" for a hive to burn itself out like a wildfire, then it is hard to imagine how the chaurus would have survived in Tamriel at all.
• I need to find a mechanic that naturally modulates a hive's growth rate so that they become stable and functional without player input.  If the player runs to a dark tunnel to give birth to thirty fertile eggs and then doesn't come back for a long while, upon return there should be a hive there, complete with castes and functional organization.

On Falmer breeders:

• No, we don't see those, but that is mainly because modders haven't created any (as far as I know).  Maybe that is why we do see living human populations in Blackreach.  Maybe they are only there to pick mushrooms.  The man/mer "slaves' do seem abnormally loyal to the falmer, and we have no clear reason why.  Mind control is an obvious answer, and maybe the one that best fits the evidence.
• (Living on only mushrooms may impose a mycelial connectivity between the falmer and slaves?  I dunno, seems odd.)
• If the falmer cannot (or will not) use their own for breeding stock, there needs to be a reason for that.  Does it not work?  Maybe the changes created by the dwemer made the interaction impossible?  That wouldn't make sense unless the snow elves and chaurus has been a symbiotic whole prior to the de-evolution.  We have no reason to think this is the case (of course, absence of evidence...)
• We do see small breeding areas with no human or falmer presence.  Their purpose is ill-defined.  It is clear that the falmer wants the chaurus eggs to be located in one area and not too spread out, so we have to assume there is a rationale for this choice.  I'm using it to mean that the eggs play as an environment for additional ecological layers (insect ecology) to develop, which the falmer then make use of.  This ecology is presumably helpful to the chaurus as well, though it may also be the source of parasitic infestations.

What about all the damn egg piles everywhere?

• I hold that the production of eggs has -- by itself -- little to do with breeding.  The eggs are produced whether breeders are around or not.  The eggs are almost always unfertilized.  There has to be a purpose for the egg production, else why do they do it?
• My thought is that the chaurus are inherently not singular organisms and in fact have a internal symbiotic structure.  The eggs are one reproduction medium, but the grey goop they are in is another, and they are meant to be together.  This makes the idea of functional cross-species ovipositional breeding a bit easier to wrap my head around.  A single species using another is very strange but ten species adding an eleventh somehow seems much more straightforward.
• In this case, the breeder is just a warm, moist (hopefully parasite-free) environment for growth; Nothing but an incubator.  This makes it hard to picture why the chaurus would give a damn about the player character though.  They may care for a breeder as an asset to the hive, but not as an individual.
• Accordingly, the idea that more sex = deeper connection rings very untrue to me.  More sex = more of a tool, and a tool whose usefulness is possibly being diminished with every use.  A long-time breeder isn't a close friend, it is an object that is useful only until it is replaced.  (And for me, that side of the narrative is more interesting, since it could lead the player character to consider murdering another breeder as a means of self-preservation.)
• Along with the above, I do track the specific acts the chaurus engage in with the player.  The PC being locked in a cage and bred that way does not make a strong argument for the player forming a connection with the chaurus.

On overworld takeovers:

• The main (and severe) problem with this is that the other factions would not sit idly by as this happened.  They may not work together to stop you, but they might stage a force to wait for x army to die fighting you and then attack in the wake of that battle.  Even dipping a toe into this creates cascading interaction issues.  If I take over Dawnstar, both the Empire and the Stormcloaks -- to say nothing of the Thalmor or Companions or any number of other possibly interested groups -- should be ready to kick the hive's ass.  If the player is using small town mods, how does the Dawnstar takeover effect that little smithy village on the hill above the town?  Do I have to code responses for every possible arrangement of towns?  What about town expansions?  Do I make essential characters die?  Make them flee to areas that will never trigger the reasons they are essential?
• Sadly, I think I will have to limit the takeovers to small towns with minimal long-term cascade effects.  I just can't see spending the ridiculous time it would take to do this concept justice without creating a clusterfuck of incompatibility and broken quests.
• Also, as far as the chaurus are concerned, why would they want to take the surface?  They don't appear to be particularly territorial and let all sorts of things live beside them.  While the player character might want this, I don't see it driving the hive meaningfully.
• Underworld takeovers are less problematic by far.  There are few events that really need the underworld to be in any specific state.  I can break that ecosystem severely and it will have no ripple effect detectable by other quests (or at least very few).
• Accordingly, this means the biggest confrontations besides the falmer might be with draugr/dragon priests, necromancers and vampires.  Alternately, maybe there are dwemer systems in place that detect overgrowing hives and deploy forces to deal with this.
• I also intend the underground areas to spread south, and east, so interactions/raids with rieklings and goblins are also on the table.

What do Chaurus Eat?

• I'm thinking chaurus are lithovores.  There isn't enough food available in any of the locations to have anything else make sense.  The number of dead (not eaten) bodies to be found in most places would seem to indicate that chaurus aren't typically carnivores.
• Add to this the specific statement in "Chaurus Pie" that the spit from chaurus does a number on iron armor.  This makes sense if the spit's purpose is to break down materials for consumption.
• Note that Chillwind Depths is an exception to this and may be an unnatural use of the chaurus.  Despite a large breeding area and journal entries indicating prisoners being fed to the chaurus, the base game has a lot more spiders there than chaurus.  Only two chaurus in standard play, and those explicitly cannot be hunters.  There are empty cocoons present, and either the hunters in them were unable to mature, or they did mature and left the area for some reason.  Long story short, the falmer here are strange and their behavior -- and how it affects the chaurus -- should be seen as aberrant.
• With Chillwind in mind though, the bone-strewn pit with all the eggs always had me wonder at the order of events.  It would appear the bones are cast into the pit, but maybe those were breeders, and the egg piles we see there started inside someone, with the bones being all that remains of them.  Given the unhatched eggs, something else killed them.  The lack of hunters may be because the hunters all got their fill of parasites and left to die.  Thus, Chillwind would be a festering pit of nasty chaurus diseases.
• It is an anomalous area in any event.

Chaurus Intelligence:

• I'm thinking individual smarts aren't their strong-suit, but layered instinct-driven behaviors that are mutually reinforcing work best.  As a colony organism, they are very capable once a stable hive is generated, but on an individual level, they aren't as smart.  On the other hand, integration to other organisms comes second-nature to them as it is an implicit part of their life-cycle.

Dawnguard/Forgotten Vale: 

• I definitely plan on having the Forgotten Vale and Blackreach be big parts of the mod.
• Specific to the Vale, I don't play Dawnguard's quest line much.  That quest is a junk pile of lazy writing and makes no damn sense at all:  I can never become a vampire lord without joining the vampire hunters?  The story can't progress if you -- as a vampire hunter -- don't agree to help the ancient vampire princess... what the fuck?  Is there a version of the story where my character isn't Chaotic Neutral?  No.  No there isn't.  If the character is loyal to any viewpoint they hold, there is literally no way to progress.
• Anyway, it is a shame that such a large and cool area is effectively isolated behind insane character choices.  I don't think there is any harm in letting the player go to the Vale before the Dawnguard quests start: if it is reached through a tunneling event, the player won't have the ewer, and thus will have no way to access the quest content of the area.  If there is a way to get to the ewer's start location, I can just seal it off with an immovable rock slide that disappears when the proper quest to go there begins.
• Having said all that, it is definitely the single largest falmer presence in the game.  There are chaurus present, but relatively few for the population of falmer.  It is the only place where falmer structures can be found in abundance without being built onto other ruins or just being dilapidated huts inside a cave (subsistence living at its finest).

Population:

• Chaurus spawn in two ways in the game: first is explicit chaurus spawning, seen mainly in Frostflow Abyss.  Second is a falmer "pet", which can be spiders, skeevers or chaurus.
• I have made it so that slightly more chaurus spawn in each designated chaurus "spawn point", but only very slightly more.  Problem with random is sometimes you'll end up with a horde of nymphs and workers, and other times it'll be a reaper sausage-fest that kills itself off before the player encounters them.  So, instead of a single worker, you might get two nymphs.  Instead of a single reaper, you might get three workers, etc.
• Note that in the base game, the Reaper in Frostflow is unique and has a scale of 1.5.  It was always intended to be the biggest reaper you could run into in the vanilla game, and that is why it is the only Tyrant I have explicitly placed.

On Mind-Control Themes:

• Oh hells yes, most definitely, already have animations, effects and planned events for it. Pheremonal control? Sure.  Direct implantation of a symbiote/parasite? Yup.  Stay tuned, the first of those parts are in the short-term road map after the interaction layer is built.

Guiding Intelligence/Instinct:

• Sadly, this is where the Elder Scrolls design threatens to limit or force my options.
• Ultimately, any high-powered controller must be daedric in nature.  Maybe not one of the princes per se, but something fairly powerful nonetheless.  Sadly, this feels like a dead-end to me.  I'm tapping into Warhammer 40K here, but I think it would be cooler if the intelligence was itself gestating and waiting to be birthed.  As yet unborn, it influences things to try to set the conditions for its own creation.
• That allows me to work outside the envelope and include whatever themes and concepts I want along with profound dread at what might happen if/when it does "become".

On the Lovecraftian Themes:

• This theme presents a big challenge for storytelling.  I want there to be a cohesive and engaging narrative here, as deep as the player wants to explore.  However: the themes of hive vs humanity are possibly a non-starter.  The player character may not be human, may not be "humane", and could be any number of things that have zero issue with releasing a matured, homicidal mega-hive unto the world; there is no moral or ethical dilemma to consider.
• For me, that falls a bit flat, but so does forcing the player character to be a certain way.  The player character with the Ebony Blade on their hip isn't going to fret over the loss of a small town.
• My plan right now is to tell the deeper story through archaeological exploration of newly discovered caverns, some of which are the remains of a prior hive and have clues and maybe journals explaining what happened and the feelings/concerns of those individuals, who are on the same path as the player character.  If those journals are emotive enough, even an inhumane player character will draw parallels to their own situation, and will likely consider what is there.  This also would give straightforward examples of the various playthrough styles: a book written by a "kingmaker" will read differently than someone looking to form a massive hive for their own benefit, and different from someone trying to put a stop to all this, or punish the falmer, or whatever other purpose they may have.
• I also want this content to be largely randomized.  Breaching the north wall of x hive doesn't always lead to y hive, or z tunnel system.  It is somewhat randomly generated.  Finding this site doesn't automatically mean "event one" happened here.  Maybe it did, maybe not.  With each discovered element the player is armed with options they may not have realized they had before, and every new event has additional possible outcomes.  This is critical because the player who is tightly bound to the hive, perhaps semi mind-controlled, may be seeking a way to end this all, and finds that jumping down the rabbit hole and actively fostering the events they fear may be the only way to find the solutions.

On the overall "quest" nature of the planned events:

• The quests will themselves be short and will share a connective meta-layer of conditions and options.  You could view it as a single story, but it really will be a large number of small events that reveals pieces of a whole until enough of them are in place to push into another "tier" of content.  These tiers eventually involve moving the whole hive elsewhere (not Elsweyr).

11 hours ago, sshar22 said:

To me the chaurus look like a male harem structure,

• The chaurus structure appears to be entirely male-driven -- mainly because the Sexlab animators have made it so.  Near as we can tell chaurus are either asexual or entirely male and breed only through cross-species oviposition.  We actually have no indications of queens of any type, and I think it is the female-centric nature of the chaurus/Sexlab play that makes the concept pop up at all (gameplay-wise).
• That said, I think the idea that only dominant males are allowed to breed makes sense, but is very limiting gameplay-wise.  That should mean that if reapers are present, all non-reaper animations should be shut out from happening.  Probably for the sake of not turning off animation events/gameplay, the chaurus hives don't care which part of them breeds since it has use for the results no matter how they turn out.
• (If the number of available animations more heavily favored reapers, I would be quicker to run with this, but right now only about 20% of chaurus animations are for use with reapers, with the remainder split about evenly between hunters and workers.)

8 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

I explored the majority of the Falmer infested areas of Skyrim and produced this list:

• Some of the population demographics you provided are taking the randomly generated "falmer pets" into account.  Some areas that you say have no chaurus typically do, but just didn't turn out that way in your visit.  Since these are random, they shouldn't really be considered hives at any rate, but just wanted you to be aware of that.
• Otherwise, bravo on the exploration and cataloging.

 

[Reesewow]

Heh, damn that was quite a read.  My basic take for the mod direction outlined is - hell yes, sounds like a lot of fun.

 

 

While it is fun to have a modder respond to each and every idea sent their way - please don't feel obligated to do so.  

[Elvorana]

I have spent the last five minutes trying to figure out how to put my words down (not helped by the fact that im a huge lovecraft fan and i can never seem to find all that much good lovecraftian content) XD Frankly, i'm in awe of the ambition and i can't wait to see everything in-game ^_^

 

When you get around to the tunnels and stuff, there are two mods i know of that you might be able to negotiate to make use of, or at least get ideas from.

- Random Dungeon Generator (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61962)

- Sunken City of R'lyeh (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/83123)

 

I hope they help and keep up the awesome work!

[Seijin8]

1 hour ago, Elvorana said:

I have spent the last five minutes trying to figure out how to put my words down (not helped by the fact that im a huge lovecraft fan and i can never seem to find all that much good lovecraftian content) XD Frankly, i'm in awe of the ambition and i can't wait to see everything in-game ^_^

 

When you get around to the tunnels and stuff, there are two mods i know of that you might be able to negotiate to make use of, or at least get ideas from.

- Random Dungeon Generator (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61962)

- Sunken City of R'lyeh (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/83123)

 

I hope they help and keep up the awesome work!

Thanks.  Its a project for the long haul, something I will chip away at over time.  The biggest hurdle right now is creating the foundation for the interaction layer, and that's part of why I need to think this through as I don't want to create it, spend a hundred hours on it and then find it is not built the way I need it to be.

 

Based on your avatar, it wasn't tough to figure you for a Lovecraft fan

 

The parts of this I am least looking forward to are the level designs as I absolutely hate that part of the CK with a passion, but there is no alternative tool to do it with.

 

The areas I want to create will be unique -- hopefully the sort of things that stick in your mind -- and not something I can easily borrow from another mod.  I wish there were another way, but I don't think there is.  I'll just have to strap in and make the CK do what I want.

[kilroywasalwayshere]

Thought's for Identifying the "Intelligence"

 

   It is true that many events in the Elder Scrolls universe are driven by Aedra/Daedra, there are a few Daedra that loosely fit the themes behind a Chaurus hive mind which I will explore, I will exclude Aedra from this sense Aedra typically can't manifest on Nirn.

 

   -Mephala: associated with secrecy, plots, murder, spiders, assassination and stealth.

   -Molag Bal: associated with domination and enslavement, Chaurus assets are often used in modded depictions of Molag Bal. 

   -Namira: associated with the repulsive, spiders and slugs, domain is the Ancient Darkness.

   -Peryite: associated with pestilence and disease as well as order. 

 

   Any one of these CAN be woven in to be behind the plot of the Chaurus hive mind, Peryite being a personnel favorite due to his connection with order and the idea that Chaurus could be considered a pestilence to Nirn itself.  However, sticking with the idea that the mastermind should manifest in a way similar to 40k there are a couple different ways this can be done, and saying the Daedra did it is kinda boring, on the same level as The Chosen One, really.  The first way the mastermind could manifest is that the Daedra DID do it, but can no longer control it for some reason.  In this school of thought a powerful Daedra, similar to a Bloodletter or Great Unclean One from 40k, was lost deep inside Nirn sense it's inception.  Over that time the Daedra "forgot" or betrays his original Prince and attempts to create his own plane of Oblivion inside Nirn, using the Chaurus as his Daedra.  However, perhaps by interference by the Dwemer, the Daedra lost control of his minions, and the Chaurus were reduced to a more tribal state without there mastermind.  Increasing the size and power of the Chaurus strengthens the connection between the Daedra and his minions, similar to how excess emotions or sensations in Warhammer draw Daemons.  The second way, a little more lore breaking, would be to go the inception of Slaanesh route.  In this case there is no greater Daemon or Daedra of the Chaurus, but one can be made once enough Chaurus are hived together.  Similar to how Eldar or Elven pleasure cults brought about Slaanesh.  This case is a little harder to make work with the argument that the Falmer know not to over breed the Chaurus, or that these event happened in the past at all removing a lot of the Lovecraftian candy trail elements.  However, these two approaches could by hybridized.  Say the Falmer did create a Chaurus Daedric Prince, who I will just call Slaanesh for convenience, and the Daedra failed to takeover the underworld before either the Falmer or Dwemer killed all of it's minions, thus weakening its control over its realm. 

 

   Also, how should the Lovecraftian cookie trail work?  Let's say, my workers uncover a hidden cave I've never seen before and I find a journal from a Kingmaker.  Is the Kingmaker Falmer? Dwemer? Neither?  What language should the book be written in?  Do I need to go through a translator before I can read the book.  In the Dragonborn DLC there is a quest chain in which a Nordic ruin is slowly uncovered with the PC funding the project, and a Dunmer overseeing the project with a courier going between the two.  As the quests progress we can see the courier growing more and more disturbed by what's happening at the crypt, and towards the end we can read how the Dunmer descended into madness and re awoke a Dragon Priest.   If our journals are written in a foreign language to the PC, we could go a similar route, either capturing or outsourcing an in game translator to read these new books, and as the journals are translated the translator grows ever more disturbed by what he's discovered, this allows for many interesting plot lines to emerge.  

 

    As for why the Chaurus should respect the captured PC.  There are two things a captured PC bring to the table that the Chaurus may not have and would want in their hive.  A breeder, obviously as it's part of their life cycle, and an intelligent symbiote to help guide the hive towards more of what it wants, such as homes, food, safety.  Let's say the PC becomes queen based on merit, the sex route.  Her influence and usefulness to the hive is limited and diminishing, but if the PC were to resourcefully utilize fallen Chaurus remains, or molted Chitain, to create traps and homes, similar to what the Falmer already do, in order to protect the hive from invaders the Chaurus might respect her as more than a tool.  Continuing this, the PC could pick weaker surface world bandit camps to attack to acquire food and slaves for the hive, the ratio of Chaurus losses to what the hive gains in the expedition could influence how they feel towards the PC.  If the PC is going to replace the Falmer, she needs to fulfill the roles that the Falmer already fill in order to maintain the respect and/or control of the hive.  Providing Chaurus with breeding grounds, stock, food, shelter, and safety fulfilling a pre-mastermind intelligence role that the Chaurus lack. 

 

Edit:  I believe I encountered another bug where the Chaurus Nymph looks like an ordinary Chaurus, not sure if they're supposed to look like the mini Chaurus like in EC+ just yet or not.  I spawned multiple references of Chaurus Nymph and got the same results as well.

[Seijin8]

40 minutes ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

Edit:  I believe I encountered another bug where the Chaurus Nymph looks like an ordinary Chaurus, not sure if they're supposed to look like the mini Chaurus like in EC+ just yet or not.  I spawned multiple references of Chaurus Nymph and got the same results as well.

Quick reply, as I'm getting ready to deliver the next update.  Right now the Nymphs do look like normal workers, just a bit smaller.  I asked permissions on a skeletal replacer and those didn't come through (author read message and did not respond, leads me to think that's a "no").  Resetting the skeleton to be similar to the non-permitted use file will be fairly simple, but it isn't a priority at the moment.  It is intended that they be visually distinct though.  Probably larger heads and legs, but a smaller body overall and much smaller pincers (maybe even just buds).

 

EDIT: Will tackle the rest of your message once the update is out, maybe in an hour.  Just testing the effects for Anub's Egg and related "EarlyOrg2" events, so shouldn't be long.

[Seijin8]

Okay, updates posted for both Chaurus Life and Underground Survival.

 

1 hour ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

Peryite: associated with pestilence and disease as well as order.

That was where I wanted to go with it, though Mephala is a good option, too.  (I was disappointed though with The Pit.  Such a missed opportunity for what could've been a cool plane of Oblivion.)  I admit a fair portion of this is cross-contamination with 40K's Nurgle though, and the differences between Nurgle and Peryite are crucial in this case.

1 hour ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

saying the Daedra did it is kinda boring, on the same level as The Chosen One, really.

Fully agreed.

1 hour ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

The second way, a little more lore breaking, would be to go the inception of Slaanesh route

That's where I was tempted to go.  Not decided yet...

1 hour ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

Is the Kingmaker Falmer? Dwemer? Neither?  What language should the book be written in?  Do I need to go through a translator before I can read the book.

Soft integration with Spell Research (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/81214) and its "ancient text" translations would be my preference.  Otherwise adopting a similar system that requires translation.  To add a little more, I thought it would be cool for a nymph or worker who is close-ish to the player to plant itself somewhere and dig away, occasionally headtracking to the player to imply "hey dumbass, over here".  The player character eventually brings a shovel and unearths the journal and some bones.

1 hour ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

As for why the Chaurus should respect the captured PC.  There are two things a captured PC bring to the table that the Chaurus may not have and would want in their hive.  A breeder, obviously as it's part of their life cycle, and an intelligent symbiote to help guide the hive towards more of what it wants, such as homes, food, safety.  Let's say the PC becomes queen based on merit, the sex route.  Her influence and usefulness to the hive is limited and diminishing, but if the PC were to resourcefully utilize fallen Chaurus remains, or molted Chitain, to create traps and homes, similar to what the Falmer already do, in order to protect the hive from invaders the Chaurus might respect her as more than a tool.  Continuing this, the PC could pick weaker surface world bandit camps to attack to acquire food and slaves for the hive, the ratio of Chaurus losses to what the hive gains in the expedition could influence how they feel towards the PC.  If the PC is going to replace the Falmer, she needs to fulfill the roles that the Falmer already fill in order to maintain the respect and/or control of the hive.  Providing Chaurus with breeding grounds, stock, food, shelter, and safety fulfilling a pre-mastermind intelligence role that the Chaurus lack. 

Definitely one route toward "merit", and being a powerful warrior could be another.  I don't want to arbitrarily force the player to have to play a certain way, but also do need something to justify why the chaurus are willing to be led.  Ideally, many potential somethings.  This is honestly more of a mental stumbling block than any real impediment on further development, but whatever system of "merits" is used has to be accounted for in the foundation of the interaction layer, so I want to make sure there isn't a curve ball waiting that results in "That's a great idea! Perfect! But that totally won't work with the system I have.  Dammit!"

 

If the system for this is abstract enough it should be simple to adjust based on additional ideas that come by.

 

If I can make it so that there are many possible "hooks" to get into a more controlling position (maybe some of them provided by other mods), and once installed as a leader of some sort, we can somewhat ignore how it happened and move forward into what command actually does.

 

Good stuff as always, thanks!

[Reesewow]

The new squirt animations are great - and thanks to @Erstam for the permissions for use of the assets.  IMO this effect could work well as an additional module or sister mod to the actual Cumshot mod (Femcumshot?).

 

I'll look to take a run through the various chaurus/reaper/hunter animations later and see if I can compile a list of suggestions for use of these tags.  As I note you've mentioned the milk sprays could easily be separated, I'll mention if there is an animation where just a specific side would be ideal due to clipping.

 

I'll probably also have to take a crack at slightly adjusting the position of the milk spray for my character - it works well, but the sprays start just a few inches in front of my character's nipples.  Which is just the nature of the beast with character's various boob sizes, and is why some animators just flat out refuse to deal with them.

 

I suppose a "nice to have" suggestion would be for the milk squirt meshes to have a range of a few presets for boob size (small/medium/big/WTF) or even a Bodyslide conversion if that is even possible, but IMO that is some pretty minor fiddly window dressing to the meat of the mod you are working on.   I think the actual mod interactions are way more important than time spent on customizing milk squirt placements - and if someone finds them to be too far out to be enjoyable, they could delete the mesh itself and they simply wouldn't show up.

[kilroywasalwayshere]

   I spent a few hours trying out the latest build in Frostflow with fruitfly mode on.  It took awhile for Reaper duels to start happening, and when they did no fight actually occured in some cases, ones hp was at 0 before the fight began for some reason.  Some duels did happen however, and one even challanged the Tyrant.  I then went to Lost Echo Cave to see if the nest had developed any.  They didn't grow into Reapers while the PC was away but did after I got there, one failed to molt into a Reaper, shedding it's old skin and then spawning exactly the same, but that was the only scenario of that happening.

 

   I also noticed that the Hatchlings that spawn from EC+ are still under EC+.  I was wondering if you had anythoughts about if Chaurus Nymphs should work as Hatchling in EC+ or use a different model such as the Shellbug or a larva 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Finally I spawned multiple Tyrant models I found in the command prompt, only one of them had a unique skin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   that was my first attempt at this "screen archery" so it won't be great, lol.  I was also wondering if you were open to ideas on how to build up the foundation for player interaction still, I know I've sent a lot of ideas your way at this point and don't want to make it feel like I'm pushing them over yours.

[Elvorana]

Hey @kilroywasalwayshere, completely off topic but what mods are you using for your UI? It's awesome looking ^_^

[Seijin8]

7 hours ago, Reesewow said:

I suppose a "nice to have" suggestion would be for the milk squirt meshes to have a range of a few presets for boob size (small/medium/big/WTF) or even a Bodyslide conversion if that is even possible, but IMO that is some pretty minor fiddly window dressing to the meat of the mod you are working on.   I think the actual mod interactions are way more important than time spent on customizing milk squirt placements - and if someone finds them to be too far out to be enjoyable, they could delete the mesh itself and they simply wouldn't show up.

That isn't hard to do.  Putting together a few extra folders to drop in based on sizes would be simple enough.

 

7 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

 that was my first attempt at this "screen archery" so it won't be great, lol.  I was also wondering if you were open to ideas on how to build up the foundation for player interaction still, I know I've sent a lot of ideas your way at this point and don't want to make it feel like I'm pushing them over yours.

Definitely open to ideas before I embark on that.

 

To your other comments, hatchlings are still entirely controlled by EC+ and for now won't "join" a proper hive until they've fully grown (which to be honest, I've never seen happen).  If I make a change, it will be a simple model/skeleton change, and maybe a tweak to their movement speed (which is way too fast for their size and doesn't scale right).

 

EDIT: If I were going to make a change, it would be for them to start as grubs/pupa of some type, instead of miniature chaurus.

 

Depending on how you are spawning the creatures, you may not get the expected diversity.  If you spawn them based on an "FFxxxxxx" reference, you may not get any variations.

 

As far as a hive growing while you are away, I can make a quest that attempts to do that, or make an update loop that is based on game time, but there really isn't a good way to make action happen when an area is unloaded.  Not sure how to best combat that right now.

 

7 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

ones hp was at 0 before the fight began for some reason

I've seen that happen a few times and it is usually a false positive and no fight actually took place.  Not sure what triggers it.  Unfortunately, I can tell them to be in combat, but in the event they just don't, any check on them still shows them as in combat, so there isn't a good way to see if they're actually fighting.

[Seijin8]

7 hours ago, Reesewow said:

I suppose a "nice to have" suggestion would be for the milk squirt meshes to have a range of a few presets for boob size

Thinking on that more, instead of a separate folder, I could just include all the meshes in the main file and use a global variable to trigger which one gets used (conditions in the spell picking which Magic Effect to use, each one grabbing a different option).

 

When you are making the tweak on it, use "Transform -> Edit" on the Particle Emitter (bottom right), and just make the changes, don't "Apply"

 

 

Also, these connect to the Breast 01 nodes, which are only active on "TBBP" meshes, so that may also need a change for it to align right.

 

To change that, go to NiStringsExtraData (should be third listed entry under the fade node) and remove the "01" from the NamedNode&NPC L Breast01 (or R Breast).

[Reesewow]

50 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

Thinking on that more, instead of a separate folder, I could just include all the meshes in the main file and use a global variable to trigger which one gets used (conditions in the spell picking which Magic Effect to use, each one grabbing a different option).

 

When you are making the tweak on it, use "Transform -> Edit" on the Particle Emitter (bottom right), and just make the changes, don't "Apply"

 

 

Also, these connect to the Breast 01 nodes, which are only active on "TBBP" meshes, so that may also need a change for it to align right.

 

To change that, go to NiStringsExtraData (should be third listed entry under the fade node) and remove the "01" from the NamedNode&NPC L Breast01 (or R Breast).

Thanks for the tips - I'll probably wait and see how well the preset options fit and adjust whichever of those is closest.  At regular breast size the current ones probably line up fairly well, but the *ahem* nature of the animations involved mean a character isn't likely sporting "regular" sized breasts after any significant amount of time, which magnifies the difference.

 

Quote

As far as a hive growing while you are away, I can make a quest that attempts to do that, or make an update loop that is based on game time, but there really isn't a good way to make action happen when an area is unloaded.  Not sure how to best combat that right now.

 

Did do a little thinking on the hive being active while the player is away from it.  I think one option could be to simply not have the hive do anything while the player is away (natural state for unloaded cells), and have a script detect when the player returns to the hive.  At that point, if the time difference was significant enough, you could simulate what the hive should look like based on the amount of game time that has passed, and spawn in a mix of chaurus types based on the results of that simulation.

 

So if you leave a clutch of eggs and come back in a few days, you could have a handful of nymphs running about.  Say a week, workers and nymphs.  Say a month, and the hive could be at whatever you decide the makeup of an established healthy hive should be.  The exact compositions, numbers and individual stats could be subject to a certain amount of RNG, and seeded by how many individuals/fertile eggs were in the cell when you left.

 

I think to support that (and not have such a script try to run the calculation on every cell you enter that ever had a chaurus in it) you'd probably want a way to mark a cell as an active hive before you leave.  It also may not be super immersive in a tiny cave if it is small enough that all the chaurus are spawned in front of you.

[wren888]

Seijin, I admire the depth to which you've thought through the details of the chaurus hive structure, its development, and their life cycle.

 

You appropriately question why the player would be respected beyond a host for breeding purposes. A reason that comes to mind is that she, being Dragonborn, produces superior offspring, from a survival of the fittest point of view. We see in real life that when a slight evolutionary advantage of one species of a genus over another results in the diminution or extinction of the less fit. In our own genetic ancestry as well, i.e., Homo sapiens vs Neanderthals. As you've already established chaurus wars, slightly superior offspring produced by the Dragonborn, due to her unique genetic makeup, would be highly valued.

 

Personally, I'm uninterested in being queen of a chaurus hive. I'm interested in being taken by a chaurus hive, being forced to produce more chauruses (chauri?), and fighting/sneaking out. Then I'd come back and wreak vengeance, if I can. Nevertheless, I wanted to offer my meager suggestion to help you on your path.

[Seijin8]

31 minutes ago, wren888 said:

Seijin, I admire the depth to which you've thought through the details of the chaurus hive structure, its development, and their life cycle.

 

You appropriately question why the player would be respected beyond a host for breeding purposes. A reason that comes to mind is that she, being Dragonborn, produces superior offspring, from a survival of the fittest point of view. We see in real life that when a slight evolutionary advantage of one species of a genus over another results in the diminution or extinction of the less fit. In our own genetic ancestry as well, i.e., Homo sapiens vs Neanderthals. As you've already established chaurus wars, slightly superior offspring produced by the Dragonborn, due to her unique genetic makeup, would be highly valued.

 

Personally, I'm uninterested in being queen of a chaurus hive. I'm interested in being taken by a chaurus hive, being forced to produce more chauruses (chauri?), and fighting/sneaking out. Then I'd come back and wreak vengeance, if I can. Nevertheless, I wanted to offer my meager suggestion to help you on your path.

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated.

 

The style of playthrough you are discussing is completely viable and I'd even go so far as to make sure that all offspring produced by the Dragonborn be specially marked for termination, becoming quest targets themselves.  Maybe part of that Dragonborn lineage could make them want to spread out and form their own hives.  I like this idea for the ethical dilemmas that may arise as well.  Does the path of vengeance mean killing a pregnant breeder that is -- in effect -- carrying the second generation of the PC's offspring?  How blurry can we make the hard lines there?

 

Those are the kind of stories I want to engage in.  In gaming, I feel those are the things that stick with people.  Those moments where the player sits back from the keyboard and really has to think through the options, weighing what each of them means.  Best moments in gaming, IMO.  If I can create situations where players experience that, it is worth all the effort.

 

And these are the ideas I need to hear to build that interaction layer correctly, thanks for sharing your perspective.

[Elvorana]

3 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

Thanks for the kind words, much appreciated.

 

The style of playthrough you are discussing is completely viable and I'd even go so far as to make sure that all offspring produced by the Dragonborn be specially marked for termination, becoming quest targets themselves.  Maybe part of that Dragonborn lineage could make them want to spread out and form their own hives.  I like this idea for the ethical dilemmas that may arise as well.  Does the path of vengeance mean killing a pregnant breeder that is -- in effect -- carrying the second generation of the PC's offspring?  How blurry can we make the hard lines there?

 

Those are the kind of stories I want to engage in.  In gaming, I feel those are the things that stick with people.  Those moments where the player sits back from the keyboard and really has to think through the options, weighing what each of them means.  Best moments in gaming, IMO.  If I can create situations where players experience that, it is worth all the effort.

 

And these are the ideas I need to hear to build that interaction layer correctly, thanks for sharing your perspective.

Catching up on some of the posts here and a thought occurred to me. Some of these story arcs might be difficult to detect players shooting for, even requiring systems that may not actually be seen in many playthroughs. I've been making a mage thats a bit too involved in her experimenting (leading her down a more eldritch path of magic use and even mutating her own body) and was thinking that could be a cool arc as well where a mage is trying to experiment on the Chaurus but gets a little too involved with the project. To support that, there would have to be some way to observe or monitor the chaurus, maybe even run magical experiments on them. It could be done through dialogue trees, but from what I've seen, i'm not sure you would settle for that My point is, how deep of an interaction are you wanting for each possible arc?

 

That is ultimately up to you though and I shouldn't assume anything. I'll outline my idea below (Mind you im running on very little sleep so i apologize if im not entirely coherent)

 

The core of my idea focuses on researching the chaurus. Maybe have two possible paths: Safe Research and Unsafe Research

 

The start of the Safe Research branch could be setting up a field laboratory by sneaking in and creating an illusion wall so they don't try to murder you while you observe them. This illusion would have to be maintained each day and if it failed, the hive would attack and possibly rape the PC. While the wall is maintained, the PC can charm one member of the hive to extract samples from. The charmed hive member would walk to the player so that they can interact without attracting the hive. Once enough samples have been gathered, a potion can be made with other ingredients plus the samples to mutate a charmed Chaurus. The effect could depend on the ingredients used such as nightshade adding extra damage and frost salts providing a frost attack or something. If the charm effect wears off without the PC doing anything, the chaurus may attack and inform the rest of the hive. Over time, this safe research path could lead to domesticated chaurus and chaurus hives. Playing things safe rarely result in adversity so the mutations and experimentation should have a high chance of killing the charmed chaurus outright. Not being careful would result in a failure of the project as the hive dies out completely. Another possible result is that the potion removes the charm effect or makes that chaurus entirely infertile and unable to pass on whatever other mutations might have been developed. Or the potions could create a sort of super tyrant, a boss type chaurus that wipes out the have before escaping into the wilderness. The super tyrant would likely be an unleveled creature that is a challenge even for high level characters. To give a bit more to the ethics department, this Super Tyrant may prefer to hunt near populated towns. The dragon spawn script could be modified for this where the Super Tyrant spawns in every so often near a populated area and attacks everything before running off or burrowing into the ground.

 

The start of the Unsafe Research branch would start the same way, however the player character would choose to engage in sexual experimentation. This would allow more time to experiment on the developing eggs growing within them (this could technically still work for males so long as the player is alright with male pregnancy stuff). The player would have to drink certain potions or cast certain self-spells to try to mutate the eggs before they hatched. The number that survive would work out similarly to the potion application in the safe route. So long as the wall is maintained, this can continue undetected. If they are all made subservient through magic or alchemy, the player may lower the wall and take a queen position in the hive itself. However this branch is an unsafe option. the PC's body is playing host to these eggs while they are experimented on and some of the effects will also affect the player. Every potion that is drunk and every spell that is cast will have a secondary effect on the player. Maybe it's damage over time, or its paralysis for some time; this is dangerous to do. Some combinations may even severely hinder the player or outright kill them. Beyond the physical, this can also affect the mind. As the number of pregnancies the player has gone through increase, they may start experiencing increased arousal whenever they charm a chaurus for the breeding. As it progresses, they can start taking debuffs the longer they go without becoming pregnant. If it goes long enough, the player may black out and wake up back at their field lab with a charmed chaurus ready to go.

 

Starting any of this would likely involve the mages guild in some way.

 

On a more serious note, I can see Phinis Gestor, Nirya, Mirabelle, Faralda, or Brelyna being a source for this. Phinis because hes the Conjuration teacher and would no doubt leap at a chance to investigate the Chaurus, Nirya because of her ambition and desire for leadership (IE she wants to make herself look better by producing a massive change in how the Chaurus are viewed), Mirabelle as a task for an upcoming student to contribute in a meaningful way, Faralda because she's too uptight and may have some more repressed fascinations, and Brelyna because she already tries to experiment rather dangerously on the player in the base game and i doubt she would be too averse to other experiments. Not sure how it would work as a quest as it's pretty open ended. Maybe have some conclusion checks for each possible end outcome with the potential to try again, provided the player can escape the results of their failed (or successful) experiment long enough to report back.

 

I'm sure other results or branch-offs could be made here but i can't think of any at the moment so I'm gonna leave this here. ^_^

[Seijin8]

49 minutes ago, Elvorana said:

Some of these story arcs might be difficult to detect players shooting for, even requiring systems that may not actually be seen in many playthroughs.

For each of these, all that is needed is a single quest that keeps watch on outlier events, such as the PC killing one of their hatchlings.

 

Once an outlier event occurs, some element of the mod queries the player to ask what drove them to do that (the hamfisted way would be to pop-up a message box going "DaFuq?  Why!?!", but there are definitely more subtle ways to do it).  And from those answers triggers a set of variables and then triggers a quest related to that style of playthrough.

 

The tough part isn't detecting the events, or even necessarily interpreting them correctly, but rather making multiple arc quests work together.  The "Vengeance" arc shouldn't necessarily stop the "Kingmaker" arc since one may be a means to enact the other.  So making the quests play cooperatively in situations where they would seem to be at odds is -- I think -- the difficult part of generating them.

 

49 minutes ago, Elvorana said:

It could be done through dialogue trees, but from what I've seen, i'm not sure you would settle for that My point is, how deep of an interaction are you wanting for each possible arc?

I'm fine with dialogue trees so long as they come off naturally and seem like something the character would say.  And since everyone's character is different, that could require a lot of dialogue.

 

The mod I worked on before this one had a similar issue: lots of dialogue-driven interactions with people that may have differing motives, and all driven by a character who themselves has differing motives in every playthrough.  The key to that was to straight-up ask the player what they wanted and how various events made them feel.  It was... shitty.  I wouldn't want to do it that way again, but the underlying structure worked well; A series of hidden stats that are provided to the player character and reflect their self-image and how the world might view them, and then a series of aliases that run on people who get closer to the PC to see what they think and how they react to each of these things.

 

Something like that could be used here.  Dialogue-driven where the player character is talking to the chaurus and sometimes receiving a behavioral reply.  Some chaurus will be expressive, others not so much.  As time goes on the PC gets to know the individuals in the hive, the PC is able to make assessments about them and gets better at interpreting behaviors (via a hidden skill tree), until the chaurus' reactions basically do "talk back" to the PC.  It isn't so much that the PC learns their language, or that the chaurus learn to understand the PC, rather connections created through pheremones, alchemy, careful observations of the lights, etc lead the player character to understand what is going on.

 

To tie into your scientist idea, there could be explicit options to "study" the chaurus and animations playing for taking notes and such on their behaviors. If the PC is doing this, then the "Safe/Unsafe scientist" quest knows to wake up and start taking notes of its own.

49 minutes ago, Elvorana said:

this could technically still work for males so long as the player is alright with male pregnancy stuff

Right now I don't think EC+ recognizes the possibility of anal pregnancy, though I don't personally have an issue with it.  Once that is activated as an option, males should also be viable carriers.  I would think the main preference for female breeders would be that the bodies are made to do so, and if anal pregnancy is possible, then that's a two for one deal.

 

Only real issue with that (and it is minor) would be working around mods like Private Needs, which I have very little experience with.

 

(Hell, for that matter I have no issue with docking/penile ovipositioning either, I just don't have any experience with making that work and the wide variety of schlong meshes might make this very difficult to look right.  That could conceivably make a Futa a triple-carrier.  Of course there aren't any such animations, either.)

 

I like your idea for the spells btw, though some of them would be a bit difficult to implement, such as the illusion wall, as it would actually need to find a place where a mesh would fit right without looking out of place or especially odd, and could carry a texture on one side that looked like the surroundings.  Do-able, but I suspect it would be a challenge to make the detection work right with it.

 

49 minutes ago, Elvorana said:

the player may black out and wake up back at their field lab with a charmed chaurus ready to go.

Something like this is planned.

 

Regarding the College of Winterhold, I could definitely see Brelyna being involved (though she frankly doesn't seem that imaginative), but not Mirabelle or Faralda.  They both seem a bit too rule-bound for that, and events involving them in Amorous Adventures always rang untrue to me.  Personal taste, I guess.  I would think the better tie-ins would be people like Nelacar:  Isolated and easy to connect with, even absent College entry.  He is clearly willing to exceed any limits the College might hold.

 

Falion in Morthal would also be a candidate for this, and perhaps Sybille Stentor in Solitude as well*.  When in doubt, there is always the crazy fucker up north.  He's on board for anything, and Hermaeus Mora might well approve of such research.

 

*Plus side, I have a fair amount of extracted and re-edited dialogue for the FemaleSultry voice type, so creating new dialogue with her would be fairly easy.

[sshar22]

3 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

 

Those are the kind of stories I want to engage in.  In gaming, I feel those are the things that stick with people.  Those moments where the player sits back from the keyboard and really has to think through the options, weighing what each of them means.  Best moments in gaming, IMO.  If I can create situations where players experience that, it is worth all the effort.

 

And these are the ideas I need to hear to build that interaction layer correctly, thanks for sharing your perspective.

Far from me to dissuade or tell you how to create and build your mod.

Also not interested in triggering others or starting flame wars (it's the internet, though LL is pretty chill, better warn)

I just want to point out a few factors.

Yes those choices are what sticks to people in series like the witcher, dragon age, baldurs gate, neverwinter nights, and the whole bunch of JRPG's

In Skyrim? 244 main quest has this game and not one has a meaningful choice. 

Now, look at which mods are in the last year favourite on this site and on the nexus, most of those mods are on some game-play change but the majority are on appearance (followers, armors, retex, enb).  There are very few good (some very good) quest and story driven mods.

And they all suffer from one problem that is inherent to skyrim modding, the replayability fatigue

Most of the people nowadays that play skyrim are modding it to their tastes, so they are adding, removing, balancing, changing, tweaking, the game.

It means hundreds of starts and very few of those advance enough to even qualify as a partial run.

So, the moment one manages to run through the content of a story/quest driven mod it ends up most of the time uninstalled in the next run. Because the get tired of playing the start of it for the nth time.

So if you plan your mod as a framework on the chaurus life cycle and player wide interaction/integration I believe it will become a staple in a lot of players mod order who like this sort of content.

On the other hand, If you plan your mod as a call of cthulhu (I adored that p&p rpg) story driven quest, it might be most often than not a one time presence in a mod order. 

Out of the question that obviously there will be players who will have it installed always, because if the mod is well written and created stable and clean you will have a core group of fans.

Personally I don't have preferences, I have a very heavily modded survival skyrim and i my load order are some story mods that I adore.

My suggestion would be, since you already are creating more than one mod, to go for the framework and then as an optional addon a story mod

 

I hope I did not ruffle too many feathers

 

Cheers

[Elvorana]

13 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

For each of these, all that is needed is a single quest that keeps watch on outlier events, such as the PC killing one of their hatchlings.

 

Once an outlier event occurs, some element of the mod queries the player to ask what drove them to do that (the hamfisted way would be to pop-up a message box going "DaFuq?  Why!?!", but there are definitely more subtle ways to do it).  And from those answers triggers a set of variables and then triggers a quest related to that style of playthrough.

 

The tough part isn't detecting the events, or even necessarily interpreting them correctly, but rather making multiple arc quests work together.  The "Vengeance" arc shouldn't necessarily stop the "Kingmaker" arc since one may be a means to enact the other.  So making the quests play cooperatively in situations where they would seem to be at odds is -- I think -- the difficult part of generating them.

 

I'm fine with dialogue trees so long as they come off naturally and seem like something the character would say.  And since everyone's character is different, that could require a lot of dialogue.

 

The mod I worked on before this one had a similar issue: lots of dialogue-driven interactions with people that may have differing motives, and all driven by a character who themselves has differing motives in every playthrough.  The key to that was to straight-up ask the player what they wanted and how various events made them feel.  It was... shitty.  I wouldn't want to do it that way again, but the underlying structure worked well; A series of hidden stats that are provided to the player character and reflect their self-image and how the world might view them, and then a series of aliases that run on people who get closer to the PC to see what they think and how they react to each of these things.

 

Something like that could be used here.  Dialogue-driven where the player character is talking to the chaurus and sometimes receiving a behavioral reply.  Some chaurus will be expressive, others not so much.  As time goes on the PC gets to know the individuals in the hive, the PC is able to make assessments about them and gets better at interpreting behaviors (via a hidden skill tree), until the chaurus' reactions basically do "talk back" to the PC.  It isn't so much that the PC learns their language, or that the chaurus learn to understand the PC, rather connections created through pheremones, alchemy, careful observations of the lights, etc lead the player character to understand what is going on.

 

To tie into your scientist idea, there could be explicit options to "study" the chaurus and animations playing for taking notes and such on their behaviors. If the PC is doing this, then the "Safe/Unsafe scientist" quest knows to wake up and start taking notes of its own.

Right now I don't think EC+ recognizes the possibility of anal pregnancy, though I don't personally have an issue with it.  Once that is activated as an option, males should also be viable carriers.  I would think the main preference for female breeders would be that the bodies are made to do so, and if anal pregnancy is possible, then that's a two for one deal.

 

Only real issue with that (and it is minor) would be working around mods like Private Needs, which I have very little experience with.

 

(Hell, for that matter I have no issue with docking/penile ovipositioning either, I just don't have any experience with making that work and the wide variety of schlong meshes might make this very difficult to look right.  That could conceivably make a Futa a triple-carrier.  Of course there aren't any such animations, either.)

 

I like your idea for the spells btw, though some of them would be a bit difficult to implement, such as the illusion wall, as it would actually need to find a place where a mesh would fit right without looking out of place or especially odd, and could carry a texture on one side that looked like the surroundings.  Do-able, but I suspect it would be a challenge to make the detection work right with it.

 

Something like this is planned.

 

Regarding the College of Winterhold, I could definitely see Brelyna being involved (though she frankly doesn't seem that imaginative), but not Mirabelle or Faralda.  They both seem a bit too rule-bound for that, and events involving them in Amorous Adventures always rang untrue to me.  Personal taste, I guess.  I would think the better tie-ins would be people like Nelacar:  Isolated and easy to connect with, even absent College entry.  He is clearly willing to exceed any limits the College might hold.

 

Falion in Morthal would also be a candidate for this, and perhaps Sybille Stentor in Solitude as well*.  When in doubt, there is always the crazy fucker up north.  He's on board for anything, and Hermaeus Mora might well approve of such research.

 

*Plus side, I have a fair amount of extracted and re-edited dialogue for the FemaleSultry voice type, so creating new dialogue with her would be fairly easy.

Oh! I forgot about Sybille! She would be pretty good actually considering her age and interest in magic. Also the fact that I never once thought of "Old Hermie Mora" just shows why one should never try to write when they went to sleep at 5am the night before. As a huge hermaeus mora and lovecraft fan, I am dissapointed in myself XD

 

More to the point though, I am glad you know of ways to make the idea work cause frankly, i thought it was a shot in the dark. I don't have much experience with CK or scripting beyond modifying the ESP for the Mora Oghma companion so i could use her eyes on my own character. As for the docking and stuff, maybe reach out to an animator for help on that? I would frankly love to have a 3x pregnancy on a futa character ^_^ Though I usually hide the balls away (i know it makes no sense from a biological standpoint unless the char is an argonian but its a personal preference XD) so im not sure how well that might work in terms of pregnancy scaling. Maybe have an mcm option that adds extra scalling to the belly for players that prefer the no-balls futa? Or maybe the penis itself gets larger?

 

Anyway, i should actually get to bed XD See you all in the morning!

[Seijin8]

5 minutes ago, sshar22 said:

So if you plan your mod as a framework on the chaurus life cycle and player wide interaction/integration I believe it will become a staple in a lot of players mod order who like this sort of content.

On the other hand, If you plan your mod as a call of cthulhu (I adored that p&p rpg) story driven quest, it might be most often than not a one time presence in a mod order. 

That is an astute observation and completely reasonable.  All such quest elements in the mod will be options the player can pursue, but nothing will be forced (beyond things that are... well, forced, usually by player choice).  I will not make it so that any part of this mod has to lead to a quest.  It can just be a bug hive sim if that's what the user wants.  The rest would require the player to do some things to get there, and even then, no need to go farther if the player didn't want to.

 

The goal of this (and in my opinion most quest mods) should be to fit naturally into the game.  If the player plays in such a way that these quests should show up, they do.  If the player chooses to pursue those, great, otherwise, no issue.  And these quests generally won't show up in the journal/quest log, they'll be tracked internally.  No quest arrows here.

[sshar22]

6 minutes ago, Seijin8 said:

And these quests generally won't show up in the journal/quest log, they'll be tracked internally.  No quest arrows here.

May I advise caution here too? ?

The base game spoonfeed you everything, so subverting the expectation with an untracked quest might lead the player so wonder if there is any progress obtained. Check a few mods that have the no arrow featured and you will see that 75% of the comments are players asking if they did something wrong, or if they were making any progress or where things or npc to interact are. 

Personally I like to remove the hud but I belive I am in the minority

 

Cheers

[Seijin8]

41 minutes ago, sshar22 said:

May I advise caution here too? ?

The base game spoonfeed you everything, so subverting the expectation with an untracked quest might lead the player so wonder if there is any progress obtained. Check a few mods that have the no arrow featured and you will see that 75% of the comments are players asking if they did something wrong, or if they were making any progress or where things or npc to interact are. 

Personally I like to remove the hud but I belive I am in the minority

 

Cheers

On this point, I simply don't care.  These quests will be fairly well-hidden, and players needing spoonfeeding and bibs should not be playing with adult-oriented mods.

 

(EDIT:  Which is not to say you are wrong about it, just that I won't waste my efforts pandering to the lowest common denominators of the world.)

 

(And I also play without the HUD active, toggling only when I need to check temperature and things that aren't communicated well otherwise.  No crosshair, no health/magicka/stamina bars, compass transparent enough to be hard to see, and no stealth meter.  Its one of the reasons I'm so picky about the visuals in this mod: I want them to communicate things without need for pop-ups or notifications.)

[kilroywasalwayshere]

   Thank you Elvorana, I use A Matter of Time, Floating Damage, Quick Loot, Immersive HUD, Customizable UI Replacer, SkyUI, UIExtensions, Widget Mod, Skyhud and iNeed all contribute in some way to the way my UI looks.  Also, you had a really cool idea for another approach to a Chaurus hive, and I'm going to use that to test the flexibility of the foundation for the mod.

 

   One of the challenges that arises from trying to make a system that is flexible enough to adapt to future ideas is that you don't know what those ideas are, what form they will take, or how they will change the mod as a whole.  So, let's say the "research approach" hasn't been brought up yet, and focus on the ideas we had before that, build a system for those ideas, and then implement the research approach and see if we can make it work with what we had before, this way we can see how the system will flex when a new idea is brought to the table.  

 

    In the original system, we wanted the end results to be:

       -A dynamic Chaurus hive with its own life cycle

       -A layer of player interaction to influence the Chaurus life cycle

       -A Lovecraftian cookie trail that will pull the player into an engaging story with profound ethical dilemmas. 

 

   Adding to these basic points we were considering:

      -The ability to tunnel between hives and incite hive wars

      -Becoming the queen of a hive, but struggling to maintain legitimacy

         -Perhaps becoming queen through merit, but maintaining it through strategy, as the Chaurus lack higher intelligence.  

      -Raiding the surface world for food/slaves

      -Tomes from a time when somebody attempted to do what the PC is doing now, either translated by the player or a mediator

 

   We already have a mostly developed Chaurus life cycle, the weakest link being the very beginning, or hatching phase.  Currently hatching is handled by EC+ and hatchlings don't appear to grow into Nymphs or workers, although I have had one isolated incident of loading up a save and 15 Reapers molting into existence behind me, hostile.  Terrifying times if I'm being honest.  With the hatching phase completed we would have: the birth, nymph, worker, reaper, and Tyrant.  Intermixed in these phases, particularly Reaper onwards, we have "hive politics" or duels deciding which Reaper is stronger, the winner gaining a level.  Reapers may then challenge a Tyrant, roughly 10 levels stronger then a basic Reaper, with a chance of winning and becoming Tyrant, potentially exiling or killing the old Tyrant.  Reapers also have a chance of molting into a Hunter if they cannot prove themselves to be a superior Reaper, Hunters act kind of like defense for the hive as a whole, removing parasitic invaders, and spawning at around level 32 they are formidable fighters for invaders.  How all of this works is based off of 2 numbers, that I know of.  The timer until 400 in which a Chaurus is ready to molt, this is the time a Chaurus spends in a stage of its life and is based on a few randomly generated base numbers and rates so that each Chaurus will dynamically molt at different times.  The second number being how aroused a Chaurus is, dictating when a Reaper will engage in a dual.  

 

   A few things we wanted to add to the Chaurus life cycle are tunneling, hive wars, and a reason to raid the over world.  Tunneling opens up opportunities to uncover never before seen areas under Skyrim with profound secrets and opens the door for our lovecraftian cookie trail without editing the base game itself, making it feel much more hidden and mysterious.  I imagine tunneling will be a door that opens up in a hive that leads from point A, B, F, L, and then Z (our destination into the neighboring hive) and then simplify itself, point A to point Z as the Chaurus find a more efficient route.  However, the question remains if point L should remain a destination for the player.  Point L being where we've hidden or Lovecraftian cookies.  I think making point L an asset to the hive in some way would best justify it being there at all, rather then just being filler for the player to trudge through on their way to point Z.  Point L's can be our uniquely designed maps, and the chaotic points in between can function as either dead ends, dangerous underground threats (such as flooding or new monsters), or maybe tunneling into the wrong cave.  To do all of this, we would have to place a door in our hive, direct the workers to burrow in some direction, and let a random number generator decide whether the workers got turned left or right. 

 

   Hive wars go hand in hand with tunneling but have potential for a unique twist.  The twist being how do the hives actually relate to one another.  For example, all of the hives connected to Blackreach might be fairly close knit, as they presumably all come from Blackreach and thus the Dwemer ruins before Blackreach are likely outposts for them, this would turn 4 potential hives into one massive hive, a massive hive with a very very low Chaurus population relative to it's Falmer population, another potential cookie for the trail.  Another interesting hive I found, Chillwind, had feral Falmer with vampiric attributes.  This is most likely from either the Immersive Creatures or Monster Reborn mod, I'm unsure.  However, I believe feral Falmer were added in a hidden location in Dawnguard, you jumped down a big waterfall and found yourself in a very dark cave populated by Falmer with particularly pointy teeth, Falmer with vampire lord like wings were also featured in Dawnguard.  These things make Chillwind a potentially unique hive with vampiric Falmer who probably treat their Chaurus and slaves very differently from the other hives.  Frostflow has an abundance of Chaurus relative to any other hive, again making the dynamic there unique.  So how do we tie all of these unique possibilities into one system?  I think, each hive or category of hives should be its own Falmer/Chaurus faction.  These factions could have unique relations with other tribes.  Such as Chillwind being hostile towards all other tribes, or Blackreach being friendly towards hives run by Falmer, like Sightless Pit, but hostile towards hives with large Chaurus populations, like Frostflow.  With this system we can make it so that when the player is captured by a hive, they join the hives faction as a slave, but still have the potential to be attacked by another hive that doesn't like the PC's new host.  Hives also have a reason to either merge or go to war with one another as some tribal Falmer allow their Chaurus population to grow out of control, and others heavily control them.  A clear difference in beliefs on how the Chaurus should be treated, either from racial supremacy or something else.  

 

   There needs to be a mechanical reason why the Chaurus or Falmer would want to attack the over world, which they do in the vanilla game as evident by the corpses in their lairs as well as signs of Falmer attack on the roads.  This reason can be two things, food and slaves, although I believe spite was referenced somewhere in the base game as well.  Both of these uses for captives are seen in the base game, picked bones and mind controlled servants in Blackreach.  But how do we make it a mechanical thing?  Sticking to the basics, let's say, I'm the queen of the hive in Lost Echo Cave.  As a new queen I've just been given a small degree of control over the hives workers and fighters.  But they respected me because I nurtured their next generation, particularly their recently appointed Tyrant, and am consequentially under his direct protection.  As queen I want my hive to flourish, have lots of offspring, be well fed, protected and so on.  So, I decide to attack the neighboring fort occupied by Bandits.  How to launch this attack I'm still unsure, perhaps talking to the Tyrant or maybe there could be a new caste of Hunter leaders, a sort of strike force leader to direct in a certain direction.  Another method would be good ole' do it yourself and either attack the fort with your Queen's Guard Reapers (Tyrant's bodyguard but he won't miss them much, if anything this would open up the opportunity for new bodyguards to prove themselves as they wouldn't need to go through the already established bodyguards to duel the Tyrant, or perhaps a simplification of this system would be required?), or the queen could use special spawning powers to simulate the hive's presence in the area summoning Chaurus temporarily to help attack the fort.  These powers could be executed using either a spell animation similar to the Firestorm ability from Dark Souls, brought to the game by Arcanium, a newer spell mod, or a Pheromone soaked arrow that would do the same thing, but from a distance and on a smaller scale.  In the aftermath of the battle the area would be scanned, counting for the number of male and female models slain.  The males would add to the hives food supply, slowing the decline in population, and the females would be added to its breeding power, increasing the population growth.  I would suggest creating a cocoon model to represent the captured females to avoid over complication of moving and using models.  These resources would only last for a limited time, but would allow the hive to grow dynamically, as well as justify a reason to attack the over world, giving the player additional interactions with their hive, and further justifying why the hive respects her as one of their own, a symbiotic attachment with a higher intelligence that strengthens the hive.  On the more advanced side, increasing Chaurus population could lead to an increase in disease in the hive, increasing the demand for Hunters, but that's a problem for latter I think.

 

   Now, for the hard part, building the player interaction with the hive.  Let's begin with how we capture the PC.  There are a number of mods that can be used to enslave the PC but non of them really implement the PC as part of their faction, the closest mod that does this is SD+.  The problem with SD+ is when the "master" dies, say he molts or is overthrown in an uprising or killed in an attack, the player is removed from the faction and is hostile towards the hive again.  I think either an integration with SD+ or building our own system of capture may be required here.  Say the entire hive is "master" and until the hive is dead or the player escapes or does something hostile towards the hive like trying to escape or assault, this way we can better bind the PC to the hive and have less problems over who "master" is.  Another interesting twist to this is how the Falmer should act.  A question that was brought up is: should the Falmer trade with one another?  Let's take the region of Blackreach for example.  Sense there are three regions connected to Blackreach it stems to reason that these 4 "hives" are interconnected and would move their resources where needed.  Frostflow could be an example of where Falmer are selling Chaurus to other tribes as well.  I'm going to attempt to simplify this problem by just looking at the vanilla game.  At game start only Blackreach is interconnected, and thus the areas connected to Blackreach are the only areas where trade is viable without surface travel.  Therefore, it is unlikely that there is inter hive trade at game start.  Consequentially, how the Falmer treat a captured PC may vary from tribe to tribe.  In Blackreach, the PC would be sent to the Castle in Blackreach, consequentially if the PC is captured in an area before Blackreach the same result would arise.  Once in the castle the PC would likely be mostly in servitude toward the Falmer, with very little Chaurus interaction.  In this scenario the PC should encounter some hint as to why the Falmer are avoiding overuse of Chaurus and perhaps the player seeks to bring about whatever they are afraid of.  Another scenario, Sightless Pit, would see the PC captured by a hive of Falmer with few Chaurus, but these Falmer aren't afraid of the Chaurus, rather they only care about protecting the Snow Elf Temple within.  In this scenario the player might eventually incite a Chaurus insurection, but it would be one of the hardest starts to becoming queen and the bloodiest insurection by far.  Finally, the tribal Falmer scenario.  Most Falmer dens are nearly split population with their Chaurus and thus this would be the vanilla experience towards becoming queen.  A potential exception to this being Chillwind as the Falmer here are vampiric, what implications this would have I'm unsure.  Frostflow could also be a unique experience as there is already a Tyrant in place, so instead of breeding the first Tyrant in a hive, the PC would need to breed a Tyrant stronger then the one already there.  Each of these "unique" starts could rely more heavily on quest scripts rather than dynamic events, as they have a special story to tell.  

 

   Now that we've finally captured the PC, what can the PC do with the hive and how should the hive treat the PC?  Let's assume the standard tribal hive scenario in which the PC is simply given to the Chaurus as a breeding slave, and the Falmer play a minor role.  Firstly, the PC should be scanned for pregnancy true or false.  As the PC is being used as a breeding slave it doesn't make sense for the Falmer to allow her to live in their cave without gaining something in return.  If we combine this rule with detrimental effects related to breeding, such as encumberment, debuffs, or maybe even infection (assuming the Falmer don't fully understand the role of a Hunter in the hive) we can use this to put pressure on the PC to do something about their situation until they are too weak to breed, and thus no longer of use to the Falmer, a time limit of sorts.  To be generous, let's make this time limit one in game month, for testing and balancing purposes.  Now that we have the PC under pressure to change her situation, what are her options?  Breeding with a normal Chaurus will impregnate the PC and maybe leave them with a slightly euphoric feeling as the cum normal Chaurus secret is beneficial to the PC, but encumbering to the point where it won't help her without a lengthy break not provided in the given situation.  Breeding with a Hunter should leave a painful, infectious feeling afterwords, hurting the PC more, reducing her time limit, but also preventing the eggs from any normal Chaurus from hatching.  Breeding with any Chaurus should add to it's overall strength, and slightly to its relation with the PC, an important number for latter on.  Adding to a Chaurus's strength will improve its odds in a dual and thus fulfill the Kingmaker role more truly, however, this should have an upper limit to avoid level 99 mega Reapers (perhaps something that should be reserved for late game Tyrants).  Breeding with a Chaurus early in its life cycle (worker) will improve its disposition towards the player more, but strengthen it less, but breeding with a Chaurus Reaper will increase its strength more, and disposition less.  This way breeding a Chaurus from beginning to end is more beneficial in the late game then just taking the nearest Reaper and turning it into a Tyrant, perhaps there should be a disposition requirement for the new Tyrant to make the PC its queen, this number can be reused in assessing the PC's usefulness in the hive latter on as well.  Whilst all of this is happening, the hive should be under constant threat from adventurers and/or bandits.  We see several cases in game of bandits and Falmer fighting, as well as prisoners being taken.  This would make hive life more interesting for the player, as well as opening up opportunities to escape or land the killing blow on a hive.  A thought I had in regards to Chaurus molted skin.  Falmer are seen using Chaurus Chitan for homes, armaments as well as traps.  Letting the player use these molts as resources to build her own traps and homes underground could be an interesting addition in the system.  At what point should the Chaurus rebel against their Falmer masters?  Falmer are consistently seen corralling the Chaurus in an attempt to control their population and use them as a resource, like cows.  So, with the rise of a Tyrant, something most tribal Falmer would have never seen before, not that they can see... would be the most justifiable point for an insurrection as at this point the Chaurus would see the Falmer's poking and prodding as a nuisance to the now fully matured species.  

 

   I won't go into the late game play much just yet as I wanted to focus on the early parts as this is what we are developing and where I wanted to focus on for now.  I rehashed a lot of my old ideas and some other peoples here so there is a lot of repeat information, just more consolidated.  However, let's say that the above is what our original build was going to be, and Elvorana suggested his idea for a mage/research driven start.  Would it work in our current build?  It would be tricky, I think, but not impossible.  This would be a largely script driven start and thus starting an actual quest would be desirable.  How do we start this quest? maybe a book in Winterhold or by watching Chaurus Reapers fight.  The quest would see the mage observing the Chaurus life cycle and perhaps their studies take them to Blackreach where they uncover the reason why the Falmer are suppressing the Chaurus more heavily there.  Hell, a vanilla queen route could probably make use of this as well.  Elvorana suggests using magic and potions to mutate the eggs before they are re birthed, this opens up opportunities for Chaurus hybreedes.  Overall, this would mesh very well with what we have and I take this as a sign that what we have is flexible enough for most ideas.  We can't possible anticipate every idea that could possibly occur for this projects, I just wanted to take this as an exercise to see where we're at.  

 

   Edit: It is very hard to make something that is adaptable to future changes and ideas like what we want to do.  My method for testing the flexibility of any system is to consolidate what we have, and then throw shit at it and see if it breaks.  This works for anything really, but in this case, I would challenge the reader to take any one of these points, throw something at it that works within the confines of what we're trying to make, and see if it breaks, or if it is really really cool.  Try introducing an entirely new play style into anyone of these areas and see how it would work, for example.  

[Seijin8]

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

although I have had one isolated incident of loading up a save and 15 Reapers molting into existence behind me, hostile.  Terrifying times if I'm being honest. 

?!?!?! How the fuck did that happen? lol

 

The hatchlings are their own race - they shouldn't even have the spell effect needed to molt.  I honestly have no clue how that took place.

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

I imagine tunneling will be a door that opens up in a hive that leads to a point A, B, F, L, and then Z (our destination into the neighboring hive) and then simplify itself, point A to point Z as the Chaurus find a more efficient route.

Potentially, though I do plan on some routes never being safe to navigate.  This is needed as sometimes a defense will fail or the player character is being hunted, or some similar situation occurs where the dangerous route becomes a chance to lose pursuers (and yes, as much as possible, hostiles will follow you through the tunnels).

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

However, the question remains if point L should remain a destination for the player.  Point L being where we've hidden or Lovecraftian cookies.

Most potential hive caverns will need to be "cleaned up" first.  There will be debris, maybe the shattered corpses of the prior hive, hostiles, etc, that need to be dealt with.  This is almost like Hearthfire in reverse, as clearing everything out is the task at hand.  With each "excavation", there is a chance that something is found.  This will be almost fully randomized (I say almost because it would be sad if someone sought this out and the random number generator ultimately denied them ever finding it).

 

Many tunnels will be just that: a long, fairly straightforward tube connecting somewhere else.  These will be edited out of the traversal in future travels between the locations.  Most locations will be potentially ideal hives, but are usually missing something that would make them better.  Say a location has the right temperature, enough space, adequate defenses, but there isn't any standing water.  An adjoining area might have a waterfall that could be diverted to solve this issue, or maybe there is an above-ground spot that could be worked on (secretly, at night) to allow rainwater in, etc.

 

Maybe a location is perfect except the water is toxic, and cannot have a good ecosystem in it.  Alchemical means may fix this if the source of the problem can be found.

 

These are the general ideas.  Also, what constitutes a perfect hive location will rely at least partly on the player and the mods they have installed.  For instance, I might want a perfect hive to have a large open area in the center, sunken enough to gather water, but with a dry patch in the middle.  Surrounding this is a spiral of traversible boulders forming a strairway.  Atop this are several small openings leading to other parts of the hive, but also serving as places for the chaurus to watch as the sex scenes happen (scripted that any scene with the Tyrant and PC in this central mound gathers spectators).  There is a small waterfall nearby because my PC doesn't like being drenched in cum all the time, and bathing is important.  The areas up top have enough variety to be made into proper areas for alchemy, forging, growing food, and sleeping in a warm spot.

 

That might not be another person's ideal at all.  Maybe instead they want an oubliette design with tendrils of moving glowworm tentacles reaching for them in the center of this horrific place.  Everything the hive needs is there, including a prison for the breeder.

 

I will develop multiple such locations, and am very open to suggestions about what people think a great hive would be.  We won't all share the same opinion about it, and so I want to be able to accommodate different ideas.

 

One variable that will be there is whether the hive should have an outlet to the surface, usually via one of the game's many smaller caves.  Once that is opened, it may make the previously ideal hive into a dangerous place to stay, so the player may not want to do that.

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

and let a random number generator decide whether the workers got turned left or right. 

Or up or down, or opening a tunnel back into the previous location, or knocking out a wall into Castle Dour's dungeon...

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

A clear difference in beliefs on how the Chaurus should be treated, either from racial supremacy or something else.

While this is interesting, and the PC should definitely have an opinion on it, I can't see the falmer caring overmuch.  Even in the most developed falmer regions, they are surviving, not thriving, and I think a certain level of regular comfort would be needed to take time out to ponder such things.  That doesn't rule out differing views on how to do things, but with only a few exceptions, the falmer seem fairly cohesive.  (This is of course due to Bethesda not pouring a ton of development resources into making them more diverse, but this same lack of diversity appears in every mention of the falmer, even in Elder Scrolls Legends.  Frankly, hagravens and rieklings have better developed interactivity, despite being less common overall.)

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

There needs to be a mechanical reason why the Chaurus or Falmer would want to attack the over world, which they do in the vanilla game as evident by corpses in their lairs as well as signs of Falmer attack on the roads.

The majority of corpses are bandits, who presumably wandered in there or attempted to attack.  There are civilians in some places, but relatively few in number.  The main location for the road attack and the largest group of prisoners is near Dragon Bridge, and that was the Chillwind Depths bunch, who remain an outlier.  I don't think falmer attack the surface all that much as a matter of course.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

So, I decide to attack the neighboring fort occupied by Bandits. 

Trimming out the paragraph for space.  This will definitely be possible, and isn't that hard to do.  The raid could be organized in a variety of ways.  Plopping pheremone trails in/near the target location and just letting the reaper's nature take its course (They will independently organize raiding groups if their numbers grow large enough.  It is one of the ways for a reaper to compensate for losses and recover some of its challenge rating.) If the PC is a warrior, they can lead the group directly once their relation to the hive is good enough.  As far as the capturing/feeding aspect, I'm not convinced at this stage that chaurus actually need meat.  In fact one of the only places we see a connection between meat and chaurus feeding is Chillwind.  I would say that chaurus can certainly be carnivorous, but that is a phase of their development, or is maybe only present before molting, or some other rationale that doesn't require it regularly.

 

For capturing breeders, I would want to make sure they weren't going after dead bodies.  Simple enough to say that the "I yield" declaration makes them targets for subdual, and so a more measured takeover approach would be better.  Development of special poisons that weaken, but don't kill would be useful for this.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

I think either an integration with SD+ or building our own system of capture may be required here.

Neither.  The player character can gain "faction levels" through a variety of interactions with falmer, chaurus or whatever else may have captured them (such as, oh lets say another individual who is looking to grow her hive at your expense).  This will allow for bypassing any other mod's mechanisms without directly tampering with them.  This unfortunately may not always lead to fully immersive situations, but I don't think perfect integration is possible.

 

Hive master can be a quest alias that resets on the death of its prior occupant, and in the event that there isn't a valid one available, triggers a sudden brawl for control, or checks to see which chaurus has the strongest claim of "ownership" by measuring "CL-FSub" faction levels, or maybe leaves an adequately developed PC as the only source of leadership.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

At game start only Blackreach is interconnected, and thus the areas connected to Blackreach are the only areas where trade is viable without surface travel.  Therefore, it is unlikely that there is inter hive trade at game start. 

For me, that falls into the "Bethesda didn't think this through" category.  I think the falmer are very capable of moving between areas without need of overland travel.  They may even have some of the cubes to open the passages between these areas.  Further, in the event that a player opens one of the staircases, or uses one of the lifts, I fully intend to track whether they closed it again afterward, or left a path for others to get into Blackreach.  As the dragon & vampire attacks intensify, desperate people will want to find sanctuary.  They could turn out to be allies, resources, or threats.

 

Just as a note, while the topic of "taking breeding slaves" keeps coming up (and rightly so), I never want to have a situation where only one (unethical) path exists to use.  It might be a monumental effort to create, but allowing refugees to settle in a nearby hive location, to develop a small town there, and then to willingly allow a few of their people (volunteers or drew the shortest straw, or they are slavers and simply pick someone) to assist the hive.

 

There will be multiple ways to address every situation.  Fact is (as far as this mod is concerned) without breeders, the chaurus will die out.  A conscientious player character may accept it as their duty to make sure this species doesn't just die out.  The chaurus aren't evil (evil requires a measure of intelligence), and are perfectly capable of being domesticated (as shown by the falmer).

 

Of course, the "light side" route would be substantially more difficult.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

In Blackreach, the PC would be sent to the Castle in Blackreach, consequentially if the PC is captured in an area before Blackreach the same result would arise.

DAYMOYL Captured is one way for that to happen, and I think there is an alternative start that does this as well.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

In this scenario the PC should encounter some hint as to why the Falmer are avoiding overuse of Chaurus and perhaps the player seeks to bring about whatever they are afraid of.

In that situation, there are very few female slaves there.  Likely there were even numbers at one point.  Maybe there is something wrong with the breeding going on there.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

To be generous, let's make this time limit one in game month, for testing and balancing purposes

Unfortunately any time limit will be an automatic problem.  At vanilla game speed, this means 20x actual time and no need to sleep or wait.  In my standard setup it is 8x actual and 7 hours of sleep every 20 hours or so.  Further, if using mods where crafting or reading or hunting/skinning/cooking or spell research take time, days can tick by rapidly with relatively little being accomplished.  I don't think any time-limited system will be effective; it will either be far too aggressively paced for most players, or so long as to be inconsequential.

 

Trying to dial this in even based on what mods may be present still ignores how often those mods are used or how the player typically plays.  I'd say any hard timing has to be avoided entirely.

 

Along the same line of thinking, I've dabbled with DD mods plenty but ultimately always uninstall or suppress them.  I don't find that type of play enjoyable, though others do.  It should be up to the player when they've "suffered enough".  I want to avoid enforcing any particular vision of that.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

Breeding with a normal Chaurus ...

There will definitely be differences to the effects of breeding with each type, and those will be subject to infection/health variables of their own.  Right now EC+ doesn't allow for multiple impregnation (except potentially by spiders & chaurus at once if EC Spider is present).  I am undecided about how I want to do this.  In the event that a Hunter is heavily infected, I don't know that it would want to mess up a breeder that wasn't infected (though how "rabid" a hunter can get is itself a question of hive function).  For simplicity, I would just say that "egglaying" animations/events would be out during a pregnancy, though sex events (topping off the fertilizing agent) might be viable and even encouraged.

 

I really haven't worked out the specifics there, and I may not as it would enforce a particular vision on what players should decide for themselves.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

This way breeding a Chaurus from beginning to end is more beneficial in the late game then just taking the nearest Reaper and turning it into a Tyrant, perhaps there should be a disposition requirement for the new Tyrant to make the PC its queen, this number can be reused in assessing the PC's usefulness in the hive latter on as well.

If using effectiveness as breeder as the measuring stick for merit, I'd say the PC surviving birth is a big step, as is those eggs hatching.  If the PC is available to breed again, and maybe seems eager to do so, that would be a big step.  We have no way of knowing average survival rates for this stuff.  It may be quite low (and a big reason why the falmer don't use their own for this), and chaurus may be a little confused at eggsacs that come back for more, or the simple fact that one did might be a massive elevation of status in and of itself.

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

would be the most justifiable point for an insurrection as at this point the Chaurus would see the Falmer's poking and prodding as a nuisance to the now fully matured species

Entirely possible, probable even.  The chaurus may not be "smart", but a Tyrant recognizing itself as special, seeing the falmer accosting the hive's breeder -- the one that is responsible (willingly or not) for the hive's strength -- might very well shed any loyalty to the falmer as a matter of survival.

 

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

Would it work in our current build?

As it stands, my intention is for various activities to build faction ranks in the background.  Once those ranks reach specific trigger levels, elements of the broader quest open up, as do interactions.  Those faction levels will grow through perfectly normal gameplay -- there needn't be an intent to drive them up.  For the researcher variant, being in the presence of chaurus for hours on end is building a faction rank in the background.  How surprised would the researcher be to wake up one day to find a deer had been dragged into her "safe illusion" area and dropped off?  Fucking strange, but okay.  Two days later it happens again.  Turns out the hive is well aware of her presence, and are getting her fattened up.  They didn't react in a hostile fashion because she had been there long enough that her scent and subtle hints of presence made her being there normal to them.

 

Or maybe one day the main reaper of the hive just struts on in and bids the PC to follow.  Without a word, she does, because they've been hitting her hiding place with mind-control gasses for a week now, and yesterday, she "forgot" to renew the spell.

 

Or maybe they announce their presence in a less friendly way.

 

(Sleep events will be a thing.)

 

Anyway, with the exception of possibly adding a hook (or three) for Simple Slavery, how the player gets to be around the hive will be up to them and their play style and whatever mods they want to use to force the issue.  I don't intend to have anything intrusively create that connection.  I maintain that this will be a mod that can be activated in the load order and forgotten about until a chaurus event takes place.  I aim for it to be active even in games that people play that have no chaurus interactions at all.  The mod is just silently waiting in its cocoon until something gets nearby.

 

Great ongoing discussion, thanks!

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

Chaurus hybreedes

We don't talk about this yet.   Sshhhhhh.  Very secret stuff.