wip Chaurus Life

[Reesewow]

6 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

Will look into everything you mentioned.

 

Regarding the effects not turning off... I really don't know how that would happen since the update loop is explicitly looking for the character to exit the Sexlab animations, and then runs a cleanup pass.

 

It sounds like parts of the script just aren't running.

 

EDIT: Added a couple of "safeties" into the update script to turn off things that should already be off...

 

EDIT2: Changed the integer tracking for some of the MCM toggles.  Try these scripts out when you get a chance and see if these fix the problems.

 

ChaurusLifeMCMQuestScript.pex 12.04 kB · 1 download ChaurusVictimQuestScript.pex 11.89 kB · 1 download

Did a quick test on these edits - note that this was simply hot-loading them onto my current save, so possibly some issues below are due to that.

 

The safety appeared to work - I manually added a squirt effect to my character in console, and it was cleared after a Sexlab animation.  No luck on the effects being added yet - I did notice the overfull notification seemed to be displaying less often despite "always" being selected.

 

The MCM options aren't getting stuck anymore.  There are a few issues still with the threshold section : if "always" was selected, reloading the MCM menu would display "threshold" again with the numerical slider greyed out.  I think this is a purely visual glitch however, as I could changed the method and the slider unlocked when I got back to "threshold" again.

 

 

Thanks!

[Seijin8]

2 hours ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

I was also using Frenzy to cause the Chaurus to kill each other off

"Duels" aren't normal combat.  Those participating in a duel receive a spell effect that limits how bad the spit/poison effects are (mainly because the losers would typically die shortly afterward).  Regarding the paralysis, while they do get stunned by it, they should recover quickly.

 

Regarding dead reapers duelling, I will add a condition check to prevent that.  Haven't observed it myself, but its an easy remedy.

 

Newly spawned (not "newly molted") Reapers have a random challenge rating.  If you are consoling them in, they can spawn with a rank anywhere between 0 and 4 (I think).

[Seijin8]

1 hour ago, Reesewow said:

There are a few issues still with the threshold section : if "always" was selected, reloading the MCM menu would display "threshold" again with the numerical slider greyed out.

That is intentional.  The threshold value has no effect on "none" or "always" settings, so I made it non-selectable.

 

For the spell effects, I'm thinking that simultaneously adding a bunch of art objects isn't reliable.  In the next set, I'm making a composite effect to try and force it for overfull conditions, but I don't know if it will be any more reliable.  We'll see.

 

EDIT: I should say, it graying out and not unlocking isn't intentional, I just don't know how to make it reliably update.  Since backing out and coming back in fixed the issue, I didn't spend too much time on it.

[Reesewow]

2 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

For the spell effects, I'm thinking that simultaneously adding a bunch of art objects isn't reliable.  In the next set, I'm making a composite effect to try and force it for overfull conditions, but I don't know if it will be any more reliable.  We'll see.

 

EDIT: I should say, it graying out and not unlocking isn't intentional, I just don't know how to make it reliably update.  Since backing out and coming back in fixed the issue, I didn't spend too much time on it.

Just from playing around with it I do get the impression that it is just the script not fully functioning as intended during the detection of sexlab stages - the fact the overfull debugs show up and the effects were cleaned after tells me the start/end detection parts are working fine. 

 

Personally I would be more than happy with a very simplified sequence of Animation Start -> Overfull detection -> if yes - check tags for anal/vaginal -> play appropriate squirt and breast squirts, default to vaginal if tags not found -> remove any existing squirt spell effects on animation end.  I think if you just watch for animation start and animation end, you'd avoid all the complications that may come from what people do mid-scene (advance/reverse stages, swap animation sets entirely, spam through the stages too fast ect).

 

With additional squirt animations you could have some extra versions based on the tags (gangbang - both squirts/no vaginal-anal tag gives dripping effect instead?), but IMO your work adding tags to specific animations definitely gives the best effects overall. 

 

If someone didn't like that the "generic" effects don't always line up with exactly what the animation is doing, you've already added the MCM menu to give that control to the player.

 

 

Great addition still IMO - overall effects like this and the chaurus voices are things that will keep this mod in my load order permanently, even if I decide I'd like to move on from the main content of the mod down the road.  That content IMO is still what I'm most excited about, so please don't feel the need to get bogged down on minutia about these semi-related sex effects.  

[Organ_Co]

The MCM join faction option is not working for me. Is there something else I need to do in order for it to take place?

[drgnbzfan84]

thank you i got ur mod but not sure how to begin 

 

 

[wren888]

Hi, Seijin8, et al.

 

You mentioned that most chaurus eggs were not viable, but, unless I missed the explanation, you didn't explain why. As you are interested in the logic behind the chaurus life cycle, I thought I would offer a rationale. According to my theory, chaurus eggs were at one time 100% viable, but a natural catastrophe spread a weak contaminant across Tamriel that over the centuries progressively weakened chauruses' eggshells to the point where many would break before hatching. As time passed, fewer and fewer eggs hatched, and chauruses lay more and more eggs to achieve the same number of offspring. Eventually the situation became so severe that they came to copulate with mammals in order to incubate their eggs away from the contaminant in the parent chaurus's system. That brings us to the current state of affairs. The natural catastrophe that spread the contaminant and caused these changes was the eruption of red mountain in Morrowind.

 

What brought this theory to mind is something that happened in the USA decades ago. Researchers found that bald eagles were nearing extinction because polution in the environment weakened their eggshells. As eagles are at the top of the food chain, they were more affected. However, according to your present theory, chauruses are not at the top of the food chain. They are lithovores. Nonetheless, the contaminant might bind to mineral deposits more readily than plant life. That would explain why only chauruses are affected by the contaminant.

[Seijin8]

10 hours ago, Organ_Co said:

The MCM join faction option is not working for me. Is there something else I need to do in order for it to take place?

Found a misalignment of the variables.  Will push an update shortly.

 

4 hours ago, wren888 said:

Hi, Seijin8, et al.

 

You mentioned that most chaurus eggs were not viable, but, unless I missed the explanation, you didn't explain why. As you are interested in the logic behind the chaurus life cycle, I thought I would offer a rationale. According to my theory, chaurus eggs were at one time 100% viable, but a natural catastrophe spread a weak contaminant across Tamriel that over the centuries progressively weakened chauruses' eggshells to the point where many would break before hatching. As time passed, fewer and fewer eggs hatched, and chauruses lay more and more eggs to achieve the same number of offspring. Eventually the situation became so severe that they came to copulate with mammals in order to incubate their eggs away from the contaminant in the parent chaurus's system. That brings us to the current state of affairs. The natural catastrophe that spread the contaminant and caused these changes was the eruption of red mountain in Morrowind.

 

What brought this theory to mind is something that happened in the USA decades ago. Researchers found that bald eagles were nearing extinction because polution in the environment weakened their eggshells. As eagles are at the top of the food chain, they were more affected. However, according to your present theory, chauruses are not at the top of the food chain. They are lithovores. Nonetheless, the contaminant might bind to mineral deposits more readily than plant life. That would explain why only chauruses are affected by the contaminant.

That is an interesting thought, and ties their situation to something tangible.

 

My thought on them not being generally fertile was just that if even a small fraction of the eggs we see actually hatched, the caves under Skyrim would be overrun with chaurus.

 

I do like your idea, and it ties into something I'd been considering.  We don't need to go too in-depth about the nature of the contaminant at all, as it could just as easily be biological, or something that the eruption shook loose, but isn't directly from Red Mountain.  There really isn't a need to over-explain it.

 

Thanks for sharing.  It was helpful and educational.

[Reesewow]

I do like that explanation - a different way of presenting basically the same idea could be that the falmer are the cause of the chaurus' general infertility. 

 

Despite their general lack of technology, they are proficient in the use of poisons and may have poisoned the chaurus they keep intentionally.  So essentially exactly what happened to birds exposed to DDT, but done in a controlled manner.  As the chaurus seem to prefer/require a moist environment with standing meltwater - the falmer could simply contaminate the water with the poison to affect the whole population and kill any egg clutches laid within that water. 

 

Glowing mushrooms could also be a primary ingredient in the poison, as they seem to have importance to falmer culture (they are seen being collected in falmer nests, and are used as a key for that one falmer nest that requires you burn them to proceed).  It could also be another explanation of why Frostflow Abyss has such a developed chaurus hive - if the falmer ran short of poison and/or the chaurus found a pure source of water in the deep glacial cave, they could be breeding at a higher rate resulting in a more mature hive with a naturally matured Tyrant.

 

 

They may have done this for a few reasons, such as:

- part of the domestication of the chaurus to cause them to produce an excess of non-viable eggs for the falmer's personal use (like domestic chickens)

- as a means of population control, by restricting the chaurus breeding cycle to the use of viable breeding hosts and controlling the supply of those breeders.  

 

 

 

I do think for this version of the explanation to make sense in the long term, it would have to be a toxin that lingers in the environment for an extremely long time and/or only requires a small amount of exposure to cause the infertility.  That + selective breeding may help explain why second/third generation Chaurus in your hive wouldn't start just plopping down piles of eggs that hatch into hundreds of nymphs.

[Seijin8]

30 minutes ago, Reesewow said:

That + selective breeding may help explain why second/third generation Chaurus in your hive wouldn't start just plopping down piles of eggs that hatch into hundreds of nymphs.

I'm fine with this as long as the new hatchlings commit enough fratricide to end up with reasonable numbers.

 

There are a lot of changes I want to make to the way the hatchlings move/behave/interact.  Having too many of them in a location is just obnoxious.  It would be fine if they stayed in a particular area, or didn't shove the player around, or... any number of things.  They need some fixin'.

[Reesewow]

Saw new update, had a few minutes to try it out.    This was actually on a clean save that hadn't seen Chaurus Life before, so it should be clean of older version leftovers.  It is also however on my full overloaded game save, so probably more of a stress-test environment for an alpha mod version.

 

Quote

• MCM: corrected faction settings not working correctly

Worked perfectly, coc'ed into Frostflow Abyss and the chaurus and falmer there had no issues with my PC with both options turned on.

 

Quote

• Added a composite spell effect for overfull conditions to play everything as a single effect.  This is mainly to test if the issue is display-related rather than spell-related.  Fingers crossed that this works as intended, else I may have to rethink the whole effect system.

Unfortunately, still similar functionality for me.  A Billy chaurus animation with the worker at Frostflow Abyss triggered the effects just fine on the last stage (I assume this was via explicit tags).  However, the nearby falmer did not cause effects despite having Overfull set to "always" and triggering in the top left with a consensual animation.

 

I then teleported out of Frostflow abyss and set overfull to threshold and "2" as the value (essentially always).  Ran to the nearest pack of hostile creatures - in this case a bunch of Horkers - and surrendered to them with Defeat.  The first 5 or so animations had no effects triggered despite overfull status notifications. 

 

After the 5th or so animation however, something broke.  The effects randomly started playing directly *after* an animation had completed, while my PC was in the Defeat sitting animation.  The script also seemed to have hung up - the next animations did not trigger an overfull dialogue at all, and the effects were not cleaned up after the animation.  Unfortunately I didn't think to save/reload - that might have restarted the quest/script and allowed the mod to clear the effects after the next animation.

 

 

So for me at least I don't think the issue was the multiple effects.  I did see this behavior once or twice in the last version - my PC had a rough run of it through a bunch of mods being particularly mean to her, so the sample size was fairly large and those were the only times the effects played outside of chaurus animations. 

 

The only thing I can parse out of my papyrus log that may be relevant is the below snippets showing up - however I believe these are just the mod running the cleanup phase and attempting to clear effects after an animation as intended.  This section does *not* show up at the end of the animations after the function bugged out, so it probably had ceased running.

 

Spoiler

[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] Error: Cannot call RemoveSpell() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] warning: Assigning None to a non-object variable named "::temp38"
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] Error: Cannot call RemoveSpell() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] warning: Assigning None to a non-object variable named "::temp41"
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] Error: Cannot call RemoveSpell() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] warning: Assigning None to a non-object variable named "::temp42"
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] Error: Cannot call RemoveSpell() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] warning: Assigning None to a non-object variable named "::temp43"
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] Error: Cannot call RemoveSpell() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] warning: Assigning None to a non-object variable named "::temp37"
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] Error: Cannot call RemoveSpell() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] warning: Assigning None to a non-object variable named "::temp38"
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?
[06/17/2019 - 12:27:00AM] Error: Cannot call ClearExpressionOverride() on a None object, aborting function call
stack:
    [Active effect 3 on  (00000014)].ChaurusVictimQuestScript.OnChVicOrg() - "ChaurusVictimQuestScript.psc" Line ?

 

 

That being said - IMO wait for more feedback from different users on this function.  My save is hundreds of hours old with a 240+ mod load order - it may well be working for others and the problems I'm having aren't universal. 

 

I may also be misunderstanding how the function is supposed to work - I had assumed that effects should just play for any current animation if "overfull" status was achieved and ignore all other variables (other than some built in randomness).  Apologies if that isn't the case and it is supposed to function in a more narrow set of circumstances.

 

 

 

I'm going to have to try to build a Tyrant for the first time now that I don't have the excuse of not having Manipulator/One With Nature in my game to fall back on.  So thanks for that. 

[wren888]

2 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

My thought on them not being generally fertile was just that if even a small fraction of the eggs we see actually hatched, the caves under Skyrim would be overrun with chaurus.

 

I do like your idea, and it ties into something I'd been considering.  We don't need to go too in-depth about the nature of the contaminant at all, as it could just as easily be biological, or something that the eruption shook loose, but isn't directly from Red Mountain.  There really isn't a need to over-explain it.

You're right, of course.

[Seijin8]

38 minutes ago, Reesewow said:

The only thing I can parse out of my papyrus log that may be relevant is the below snippets showing up - however I believe these are just the mod running the cleanup phase and attempting to clear effects after an animation as intended.

Yup, those are the cleanup phase being thorough.

 

I will have to do more testing, there may just be a logical fault somewhere in the victim script.

[Seijin8]

41 minutes ago, Reesewow said:

Unfortunately, still similar functionality for me.

Can you check in console to see if the effects are being applied at all (would be under spells if using the enhanced console on your character).

 

It would help to know if it is a display issue or that the spells aren't being attached.

[Seijin8]

3 minutes ago, wren888 said:

You're right, of course.

Thanks, haha.  I didn't mean to sound dismissive of your thoughts, and I hope you didn't take it that way.  It's a great idea, and adds a potential layer to the lithovore interactions, maybe needing the minerals/ores to be "decontaminated" prior to feeding to get best benefit, (or benefit absent equal problems).  This (combined with Reesewow's thoughts on intentional falmer contamination) could also open the door to several alchemy-based side quests to discover how to fix this (or amplify it if the player so desired).

[AlmaContaminada]

Its an interesting mod idea and i really want to see it fully finished. 

Im interested of the idea of creating your own hive looking on the way of a Mage wanting to breed Chaurus, Mix possible variations and using, why not, human slave host. Kind of things what Weiland Yutuani does with Xenomorphs.

 

Taking risk, sending NPCS, carrying posible specimenes, filling a cave or a home with an undergound (using maybe the Heathfire DLC) to suit your new "toys". Causing an outbreak or even creating new spells, potions/drugs/Aphrodisiacs, an hybrid menace/follower or enchantments related to them.

 

Good job with this mod idea and hope you can gather all the posible help to make it complete.

 

 

[wren888]

7 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

Thanks, haha.  I didn't mean to sound dismissive of your thoughts, and I hope you didn't take it that way.  It's a great idea, and adds a potential layer to the lithovore interactions, maybe needing the minerals/ores to be "decontaminated" prior to feeding to get best benefit, (or benefit absent equal problems).  This (combined with Reesewow's thoughts on intentional falmer contamination) could also open the door to several alchemy-based side quests to discover how to fix this (or amplify it if the player so desired).

I took your comments as they were intended. From early in my playing Skyrim, I thought, "This is a ridiculous amount of chaurus eggs. If they all hatched, and they continued breeding, the whole continent would be overrun with the things in a few months." I saw you recognized that and that's why I offered my theory. And you're right that you don't need to tell the player every detail of chaurus history and etymology. Most people just want to play the game.

 

Reesewow has some interesting ideas. Of course, if the falmer are contaminating their "pet" chauruses on the sly, say, via the drinking water, they'd want to keep their own water supply clean. I expect that could be managed. However, it does leave the problem of why chauruses away from the falmer aren't reproducing like crazy. A solution for that doesn't come to mind yet.

[Seijin8]

6 minutes ago, wren888 said:

I took your comments as they were intended. From early in my playing Skyrim, I thought, "This is a ridiculous amount of chaurus eggs. If they all hatched, and they continued breeding, the whole continent would be overrun with the things in a few months." I saw you recognized that and that's why I offered my theory. And you're right that you don't need to tell the player every detail of chaurus history and etymology. Most people just want to play the game.

 

Reesewow has some interesting ideas. Of course, if the falmer are contaminating their "pet" chauruses on the sly, say, via the drinking water, they'd want to keep their own water supply clean. I expect that could be managed. However, it does leave the problem of why chauruses away from the falmer aren't reproducing like crazy. A solution for that doesn't come to mind yet.

If we are going with the falmer contamination theory, it may also be that whatever contaminants the falmer are using don't affect the falmer at all (may be related to the fungus that corrupted them in the first place).

 

I'm not aware of any standalone chaurus hives in the game.  Frostflow is the only example of a major hive, and there are a couple of falmer there, just not very many.  (I could be wrong.)

[wren888]

1 hour ago, Seijin8 said:

If we are going with the falmer contamination theory, it may also be that whatever contaminants the falmer are using don't affect the falmer at all (may be related to the fungus that corrupted them in the first place).

 

I'm not aware of any standalone chaurus hives in the game.  Frostflow is the only example of a major hive, and there are a couple of falmer there, just not very many.  (I could be wrong.)

I run across independent groups of chauruses from time to time. Perhaps it's due to mods I have installed, such as Random Encounters, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32394, and 

 

[Seijin8]

4 hours ago, wren888 said:

I run across independent groups of chauruses from time to time. Perhaps it's due to mods I have installed, such as Random Encounters, https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32394, and 

 

As far as I know, the only place chaurus can spawn in the vanilla game without falmer nearby is the salt marshes between Morthal and Solitude.  I haven't used either of those mods, so I don't know if they change that spawn setting.

[kilroywasalwayshere]

   It has occurred to me, that in my previous post I hinted at a problem that I didn't give nearly enough attention too, how to make the hives develop while the PC is away so that they feel more alive.  The problem I encountered when testing if the current implementation would work is that Skyrim's cells reset after a certain amount of time, thus rendering the effort fruitless.  So, I was wondering if a cell could be made "safe" or so it would not reset after the PC enters and leaves the area until a certain condition is met.  For example, if I explore Lost Echo Caves and leave with some creatures still alive, the cell would not reset and thus the hive would be persistent.  But, if I were to kill every creature, the cell would be put on a cool down to reset.  I also wonder if all Chaurus/Falmer cells could be initiated without the PC visiting them so they can develop behind the scenes thus creating a unique experience when the player does explore the lair.  As far as "easily" or "safely" implementing a way for Chaurus to evolve/populate would be for the mod to get mod start time, or work off of Skyrims' game start date, and measure the difference between then and when the PC enters a lair, the time value could be added/multiplied to a value related to the already implemented evolve timer.  A time delay for birth/molt could also be added to make loading the cell a little more stable.  Apologies for not being a little more diligent or clear.    

[wren888]

19 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

As far as I know, the only place chaurus can spawn in the vanilla game without falmer nearby is the salt marshes between Morthal and Solitude.  I haven't used either of those mods, so I don't know if they change that spawn setting.

I'd forgotten about those. Yes, they're still there with my random spawn mods. In fact, the Kyne's Blessing parasite mod on his website puts a chaurus quest in that area. Specifically, on an island just south of the Dark Brotherhood abandoned shack. As the chauruses associated with that mod have different names from what Bethesda named theirs, they should be unaffected by your mod. https://www.loverslab.com/topic/68035-sexlab-parasites-kynes-blessing-april-2019/

[Seijin8]

1 hour ago, kilroywasalwayshere said:

   It has occurred to me, that in my previous post I hinted at a problem that I didn't give nearly enough attention too, how to make the hives develop while the PC is away so that they feel more alive.  The problem I encountered when testing if the current implementation would work is that Skyrim's cells reset after a certain amount of time, thus rendering the effort fruitless.  So, I was wondering if a cell could be made "safe" or so it would not reset after the PC enters and leaves the area until a certain condition is met.  For example, if I explore Lost Echo Caves and leave with some creatures still alive, the cell would not reset and thus the hive would be persistent.  But, if I were to kill every creature, the cell would be put on a cool down to reset.  I also wonder if all Chaurus/Falmer cells could be initiated without the PC visiting them so they can develop behind the scenes thus creating a unique experience when the player does explore the lair.  As far as "easily" or "safely" implementing a way for Chaurus to evolve/populate would be for the mod to get mod start time, or work off of Skyrims' game start date, and measure the difference between then and when the PC enters a lair, the time value could be added/multiplied to a value related to the already implemented evolve timer.  A time delay for birth/molt could also be added to make loading the cell a little more stable.  Apologies for not being a little more diligent or clear.    

Areas can be made persistent, but that isn't always a good idea since that means they never unload from memory, either.  Given that a non-trivial number of Skyrim's typical crashes are memory related, that would generally mean instability, and I'd rather not intentionally make my mod contribute to that.

 

There may be an alternate solution where a quest checks up on certain individuals once in a while to get them working, but they'd still have to be in memory for it to check them.

 

One way to do this while minimizing it would be for the last three visited hives to have at least a few individuals stay in memory so there is some progression.

 

So yeah, can be done, but I haven't yet thought of/run across a good way to do it.

[Seijin8]

9 minutes ago, wren888 said:

I'd forgotten about those. Yes, they're still there with my random spawn mods. In fact, the Kyne's Blessing parasite mod on his website puts a chaurus quest in that area. Specifically, on an island just south of the Dark Brotherhood abandoned shack. As the chauruses associated with that mod have different names from what Bethesda named theirs, they should be unaffected by your mod.

Fairly certain those chaurus are still affected by the mod.  The name is a quest alias (Chaurus Breeder IIRC).  As an aside, it always bothered me that the area there had no proper entry point, and that the cave was just a copy of Brood Mother Cavern.  Can't criticize too much as I hate landscaping in the CK myself.

[kilroywasalwayshere]

3 hours ago, Seijin8 said:

Areas can be made persistent, but that isn't always a good idea since that means they never unload from memory, either.  Given that a non-trivial number of Skyrim's typical crashes are memory related, that would generally mean instability, and I'd rather not intentionally make my mod contribute to that.

 

There may be an alternate solution where a quest checks up on certain individuals once in a while to get them working, but they'd still have to be in memory for it to check them.

 

One way to do this while minimizing it would be for the last three visited hives to have at least a few individuals stay in memory so there is some progression.

 

So yeah, can be done, but I haven't yet thought of/run across a good way to do it.

   Does a world update contribute to memory strain?  For example, when you save the tree in Whiterun it grows leaves in the vanilla game.  Does that make the game less stable my putting that update into memory, or is it possible to have a background quest that updates that tree from stage 1 to stage 2 circumventing the memory problem.  If so we could do the same thing here and make a background quest that updates hives from stage 1 and so on.