Devious Followers - Continued

[SacredDatura]

1 hour ago, Darkwing241 said:

Pretty much everything the DF does runs counter to the obvious desires of a normal follower, so there must be a tipping point where the DF stops seeing the PC as respectable person and starts seeing her as a potential slave. 

For me in my head I always imagine the DF is either already intrinsically interested in enslaving the player from the start, or they see very early on the player is kind of a pushover and realize they can push boundaries. Because really, there are a lot of things the DF does that a reasonably strong-willed person should be able to say "now hold on a second there, I don't agree to this" - things like increasing the daily debt based on boredom or lives lost.

 

I do really like the idea of "tipping points" though. Even if it's not an epiphany on the DF's part it could still (using a DF's twisted gaslighter logic) represent "permission" for them to start acting more domineering towards the player.

 

 

[Reesewow]

4 hours ago, Darkwing241 said:

In the past I have used Defeat + follower lives to try to manufacture this scenario.  Where a crisis moment that tips the gold balance and suddenly you are accumulating debt interest that you can't catch up on, leading to deal, leading to bondage preventing gold income, leading to slavery.

I've definitely found the parts I enjoy most of DF is when it interacts with other mods to create this type of "crisis" event that trickles down into the long-term consequences of high debt/low willpower and lots of deals.  The "kickoff" for me in the past has been spending more money than I had on keys to get out of cursed loot or other bondage events, or through Defeat causing me to lose all my gold and take deals (works better on a high-level character with high debt/day requirements).

 

I feel like the mod kinda already reflects a follower's changing view of the player through dialogue and attitude changes at low willpower, or the level 3 deals.  The dialogue changes make more sense with slower willpower gain/loss, since they aren't permanent and go away if the PC get their willpower back and clears out the deals.

 

I do think it could be interesting if DFs had the option of a more permanent personality/difficulty shift over time, so the mod depends less on debt spirals if the player wants to set up up that way.  Might be a thing just with the scaling work that is happening, but it could be fun to be hidden event based as well.

 

It could be cool to have a follower "deviousness" factor that increases through exposure to various events like the ones you listed.  So perhaps each "event" could cause a scaling up of the DF values by a set factor (set in the MCM menu) to a certain maximum.  Meaning that if the player gets into a variety of bad situations, with the right MCM menu settings the DF could become more aggressive at attempting to get the PC under their thumb and into pseudo-slave status.

 

I could see these being almost like "achievements", simple situations that can cause a DF to scale up their efforts when they realize the PC isn't necessarily classic hero material.  Each could only trigger a DF attitude change once, and a swapping to a different DF could reset all the achievement flags (for the new DF).

• The PC has non-con sex X times
• The PC wears more than X devices at a single time
• The PC is involved in a 4p or higher animation
• The PC is drugged
• The PC hits 0 willpower
• The DF is knocked down X times
• The PC has sex with certain creature/nonhuman races 
• lots of opportunity for soft dependencies too - begging x times in SLSurvival, or reaching max redness in Spank that Ass for example

A fun side-effect of something like this could be the follower making comments to the PC about their activities.  I love Sexist Guards/Apropos, but one of the limitations on those mods is that they have to make assumptions on the PC's activities and sometimes just don't fit with what they are doing. 

 

If the DF was tracking certain humiliating/lewd scenarios, they could make comments about stuff that actually happened to the PC in their presence.  So if the DF comments on how much the PC seemed to enjoy getting gangbanged and how they should organize another one, it actually would have happened at some point in the past (and the "achievement" was unlocked for it).

 

[Darkwing241]

2 hours ago, Reesewow said:

I could see these being almost like "achievements", simple situations that can cause a DF to scale up their efforts when they realize the PC isn't necessarily classic hero material.  Each could only trigger a DF attitude change once, and a swapping to a different DF could reset all the achievement flags (for the new DF).

• The PC has non-con sex X times
• The PC wears more than X devices at a single time
• The PC is involved in a 4p or higher animation
• The PC is drugged
• The PC hits 0 willpower
• The DF is knocked down X times
• The PC has sex with certain creature/nonhuman races 
• lots of opportunity for soft dependencies too - begging x times in SLSurvival, or reaching max redness in Spank that Ass for example

I really really like this idea.  

 

One of the the things I think is missing from DF is some basic responsiveness to what going on in your game.  Have the follower say something about the fact that the PC just got raped 20 times in a row.

 

I think a lot of "bang for your buck" could be gotten from literally just 1 line of dialogue.  Each line of dialogue where the DF acknowledges your developing drug habit ect.  

 

Achievements are a pretty proven to be fun concept.  Maybe even tie some "rewards" to them.  

 

-PC is drugged  DF supplies drugs 24 hours later and drains willpower.

-PC has her armor stolen DF provides a free slutty armor to the fashionista and drains willpower

 

Or maybe they are more in the spirit of "de-chievements."  Notifications of your failure and incompetence as an adventurer. 

 

-PC eats her 100th food item ("you fatty!")

-PC suffers her Xth defeat

-PC completes Xth menial gopher quest

-PC gets paid for sex the first time

-PC has sex with undead/monster/animal/beast race for the first time

 

For some reason I really like the idea of being given demeaning but not overly disrespectful "gifts" stuff like high heels, sexualized clothing/armor and high heels.  One of my favorite accidental Skyrim Kink moments was when I installed immersive armors. In a very standard Skyrim playthrough Jarl Balgruuf gives the PC armor for completing an early story line quest, this armor is almost always superior to what the PC could otherwise get at that level.  The jarl gave me this "barbarian armor" that was little more than a bikini top and a mini skirt. The Jarl was a powerful man though and not wanting to insult him my PC wore the gift every time she would stop by to visit.

 

-PC arousal hits 100 the DF gifts her a dildo

-PC crafts a pair of boots DF gifts her an enchanted pair of high heels of the corresponding armor type

-PC enters a tavern and the DF gifts her some YPS makeup or gaudy jewelry along with a comment about her appearance.

 

These gifts don't even really have to do much of anything, they can just be a little bit of roleplay opportunity.  The dildo can literally be a junk item with no purpose that the player can toss out of their inventory on the floor.  Leave it up to the player to decide if they want to try to do it out of sight of the DF.

 

Oh and don't forget a little condescending pop up icon!

[Hex Bolt]

I like the idea of low-point "achievements" influencing DF behavior and driving some dialog.  It wouldn't have to be a lot, just enough to know that the DF hasn't forgotten that event.  Ideally something like this could be designed to cover a broad range of DF mind sets, from the ones who start out viewing you benignly to those who are plotting to ensnare you from the start.  I personally see DFs as the latter, but flexibility is good since a follower personality feature (as has been discussed) is a major effort, something that might never get built. 

 

Beyond dialog (which in itself is fun), how could these "achievements" affect the relationship?  The DF is accumulating some dark secrets about the PC.  You've been seen in some pretty compromising situations.  And what is the DF's ultimate goal?  Is it enslavement?  That aspect of the mod seems the least interesting.  The real DFC action is in managing the debt, deals, and boredom.  Is there a place for status "deals" or agreements?  In addition to wearing a collar, perhaps a new deal opens up to wear a "pet" collar, not necessarily functionally different from a normal collar but more embarrassing, with the side effect of lower willpower recovery rate.  Some of the other deals might have similar special variations.  Not a deal, but after hitting a few low points, the forms of address might change to "Boss" and "Hun", evolving to "Sir/Lady" and "Pet" if the PC keeps "achieving", without having to trigger DFC enslavement.

[Lupine00]

5 hours ago, Darkwing241 said:

One of the the things I think is missing from DF Skyrim is some basic responsiveness to what going on in your game.  Have the follower say something about the fact that the PC just got raped 20 times in a row.

Fixed it for you.

Yep... DF, and just about every other mod.

 

DCL's bondage consequences dialog is the worst for this. Almost never appropriate.

"Oh, you look cute in your armbinder. I wish I could make you my slave."

Duh. I *am* your slave.

"You're so hot bound up like that. You're lucky I don't take advantage of it."

Uh. But that's how I *got* bound up like this.

Zero consideration for any past event. Draws attention to simplistic behavior of NPCs, makes things feel worse not better.

 

SexLab Sexual Fame sort of had a shot at doing something with this, but spent all its time calculating rumor transfer stats, and not enough tracking meaningful data that would be of use to a mod. It can basically distinguish between a PC who walks around naked all the time and one who doesn't.

Spoiler

(I was j/k about this BTW. It also tracks sex, sex in public and the kind of partner. This is somewhat useful, but very limited data, which means SLSF can really only create a limited range of comments about slutting around and animal fetishes).

 

Sexist Guards does one or two things.

 

Deep recognition of past events is probably not practical to try and fit into DF anyway.

 

An SL Approach style mod with SLSF type features is something I really want to do, but I spend too much time playing Skyrim and posting in forums to make enough coding progress.

 

Why not do it yourself? Maybe mix it into an RDO replacement that is more LL-aware?

[Lupine00]

Responding to the recent thread more broadly, the way dialog is usually set up in DF right now is that the follower's tone and reactions are willpower related.

Low willpower and they will treat you badly and push hard.

High willpower and you get more respect.

 

I can live with that simplification.

Maybe the follower does remember your incident with the troll, or that time you nearly drowned in horse-cum, but when your willpower is 10, they decide it's just better not to bring that stuff up.

But if you're low on willpower, they tend to be more abusive. Not -selectively- abusive, and not remembering past events alas.

The positive of this is you don't get those repetitious comments, "You consider yourself an alchemist eh? Why don't you brew me an ale?"

Comments cease being appropriate when they become repetitive. Having enough to play them with any meaningful frequency and not repeat might be a bit of a load on the system. 

 

Another thing is relevance. If the follower says things that are true, but not relevant, they seem like a bot. If they say things that are true, and reference past events, and that have some bearing on the present, they seem more like a person.

 

e.g. The PC has sex with a dog. The PC has had sex with dogs before, but only once or twice. The follower thus remarks on it:

"If you make a habit of dog-fucking, people might start assuming that's all you're good for."

 

If the follower said that when you were just buying shoes, or having sex with a horse, or Nazeem ... well, the latter is pretty funny maybe? But only when we know it's on purpose.

 

It's the sort of thing that might work better if it wasn't done by the dialog system at all, and simply used Say, or similar, though that also has its down sides.

 

 

Willpower is also the "tipping point" for follower behavior. Once willpower tanks the follower starts deciding its time for you to have deals and you just agree, and that is basically piecemeal slavery. A bunch of deals is worse than actual enslavement, and either will rapidly destroy willpower. In practice, it's a conflux of events: cash problems and mishaps lead to low willpower leads to more deals leads to lower willpower and more cash problems and it all piles up and leaves you desperately trying to farm cash for a follower you will never manage to pay off completely.

 

That the tipping point isn't explicitly coded, but is somewhat emergent is ... ok ... for me. It makes it harder to say "that was the point". I like that.

If it were explicitly coded - and the custom-follower mod I did some work on prior to Lozeak retiring used explicit conditions like that, there are only a few ways to play.

 

The approach there was that certain actions could unlock the next level of progression, which you would then accumulate points towards achieving through more of that, and similar actions. I won't say it's a bad idea, because I was going to do it  but it suits a single linear story approach rather than sandboxing. Those wired in story events allow you to refer back to them appropriately, so you get "less stuff" but it all feels connected up. Trade offs.

 

 

@Darkwing241 put forward some nice ideas. I like them as a general concept. I think they could work fine as a standalone mod though.

[renkai0821]

Hello, I'm a big fan of your mod. I have a question: is there any way to disable the function of removing DD device in MCM menu in the new version?

[Lupine00]

Somebody was asking me about gender selection for sex partners in DF.

It would be nice to have a choice, but it's currently done all over the place in dialogs, and in the cloak spell.

 

The cloak spell is quite toxic. 

 

If you notice that after running DF for a while, certain NPCs who ought to be hostile stop being hostile and stay allies forever...

And you don't have SD+ (as that could muddle the issue) ... then let me know.

 

I want to get a measure of how much trouble this is causing.

[Lupine00]

41 minutes ago, renkai0821 said:

Hello, I'm a big fan of your mod. I have a question: is there any way to disable the function of removing DD device in MCM menu in the new version?

You mean conversations with the follower that mean they will remove devices for a fee?

 

That is a necessary feature. If you find it too easy, raise the fee, which you can do in the MCM.

You can also set the additional cost per subsequent item.

At lower willpower it will also consume follower "lives", so you need to be careful using it.

 

If you mean the removal feature in the Debug menu. It makes no sense at all to remove that. It's a debug feature, useful for fixing broken games. It's clearly "cheating" to use it.

If you don't want to use it, don't use it!

You can remove devices via console, or other mods Debug feature, including DD itself, so breaking the DF Debug menu just to make it a bit harder is pointless.

 

If your follower is removing devices for FREE, that is not DF; and is either Devious Helpers, or Devious Lore, or something like that.

[renkai0821]

Well, what you said makes sense, thank you for your reply. I look forward to your updates or new works, you are the best!

[SlayerSilverWolf]

So I have run into some very amusing bugs, I cannot dismiss Sasha and she is stuck in a corset that doesn't exist.

 

I have all the dialogue to dismiss her and no debt or deals, I ran through the dialogue option to pay my debt and make her dismissable then followed the dialogue to dismiss her which she accepts.

 

Only she doesn't go away, she says she's going home but continues to follow me around and charge me debt.

 

I tried using Console commands to set my follower count to 0 and disabling and re-enabling her but she still stays around.

 

After setting my follower count to 0 I was able to take on a second follower but Sasha still follows me around as if she is my follower.

 

Even with UFO I cannot dismiss her.

 

I also cannot access her inventory, the dialogue option works but nothing happens afterwards.

 

She is also wearing a red corset which does not seem to exist, even using console commands or dialogue options to make her naked.

 

Finally I took on a second follower (Serana) and used the debug commands to make her my devious follower.

 

She functions mostly normally, adding debt, offering deals, abusive comments, etc however, there are never any consequences of my debt.

 

With Sasha if my debt gets out of control she gets quite angry at me and offers me alternatives, or just takes what she wants anyway (thieving whore).

 

Unrelated to the bugs I've encounterd I am curious if there is a way to port this mod to Fallout 4? Is there something about Skyrim's engine that Fallout just doesn't have?

 

Also finally I wanted to let you know I am loving this mod and am quite glad you chose to take it on after the previous author went on hiatus.

 

PS Adrianne Avenicci is doing a roaring trade selling me dwarven metal to replace the Dwarven Battleaxe that Sasha keeps stealing! I have lost count of how many I have had to make now!

[Lupine00]

37 minutes ago, SlayerSilverWolf said:

I cannot dismiss Sasha

I would guess your problems start there. Sasha has some funny logic on her and is not a totally vanilla follower.

I've used her in the past, but with EFF. I had to use DF, EFF mechanics and Sasha's own special dialogs in combination to send her home.

DF doesn't support UFO!

If you use DF with UFO it probably messes up.

DF support three different follower frameworks, but it doesn't support ancient old granny UFO.

I don't think DCL really supports UFO either.

 

 

You dismissed her in DF, but UFO or DCL did not let her go. So DF simply picked her up again - which it does for any follower after a short while.

 

You cannot simply use Sasha's go home dialog and expect DF to know about it, instead you have to line up ALL the ways to get rid of Sasha at once. DF doesn't really support Sasha, and as she's a complete one-off, and Kimy is hostile to patches to DCL, so you just have to be careful.

 

You don't mention if you used the DCL dialogs, only the DF mechanisms.

I wouldn't be surprised if you had the doubled-up Part Ways dialog bug going on too?

 

If you also have RDO in this mix...? Ugh! I hope not.

 

I'm not sure about the Serana issue. It sounds like you still have Sasha plugged into a bunch of the DF aliases, so only the main DF quest is using Serana, and the others are not. I would say that is 100% caused by lack of UFO support.

 

 

Here's the best thing you can try.

Get rid of Serana, and make sure that seems OK.

Make sure that she walks off. If she doesn't walk away and leave the cell she is likely still your follower.

 

Let Sasha become your DF again.

Use the "repair follower' Debug menu option.

 

Tell Sasha to go away in her DCL dialogs.

Pay off and dismiss Sasha in DF.

 

Quickly...

Dismiss Sasha in UFO. Use every debug tricks and reset option UFO has to offer.

 

Pick up Sasha again. Wait until she becomes devious once more.

Repeat above.

Then don't rehire her. Hopefully you are in luck and she is gone.

 

You can try the Reset DF option in the Debug Menu. Try doing it after trying to release Sasha.

 

 

A broken corset is a DD bug. I'm just a "user" of that framework.

It breaks devices fairly often. I suggest you resort to the DCL "FREE ME!!!" or "End all quests and remove all devices" mechanism in the DD Debug menu to fix that. 

DF knows nothing about that mechanic, so its quests will not be ended.

 

If this gets you nowhere. Remove DF. Remove UFO. Clean save. Make sure that you use your save cleaner to purge any trace of either mod.

Reinstall DF and a supported follower framework (or no framework). EFF might be safest as I know you can reset followers out of that reliably.

 

Even then, you might be pushing your luck trying to use Sasha as a DF. It may be safer to set her ignored by DF.

She has been sort of OK for me in the past, but YMMV with latest DCL and DF.

 

 

Fallout 4 has no DD framework.

It has ... something ... extremely similar, but I don't believe they are the same.

It's not like you could simply import the DF ESP, it would be all different Forms for references, and probably API differences for the DD-like framework too.

DF relies on Skyrim NPCs etc.

It would be hard for the FO4 "DD" to work exactly the same as Skyrim, because of how FO4 outfits work.

[A Little Kitten]

21 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Spoiler

I'm not going to add a weight changer for gold to DF because there are standalone mods for that, and SLS, and SL Adventures also have it; SkyTweak probably does it too.

 

NFF allows followers to sell loot for  you.

iNeed makes them buy food (optionally).

 

I don't really know what you mean about imaginary coins.

DF debt is accumulated, then you must pay the follower ... with actual coins.

Unless you are in gold control mode, in which case the follower adjusts your carried gold when you change cell.

 

Perhaps you can explain just this one issue more thoroughly?

 

If you mean "money the follower takes from you is not in the follower inventory", then there's an obvious reason for that.

If it was there, you could just take it back off them, or pick pocket it off them for fun.

 

 

The follower is still carrying that gold, but they hide it from you! You will never find where they hide it. It's a very secret place!  

But seriously, having the follower keep that gold on them would add nothing but bugs and coding problems to stop those bugs, with little in the way of benefits.

 

That is why i wanted follower to not trade valuable items of low weight... to prevent taking gold

You cant pick pocket own follower, if you cruch and E them, you talk to them.. even if you stand behind them. Maybe you could pick pocket them after you depart with them.. but after that you can make follower to give the player everyhting from inventory (except the expensive items i talked about) and discard the rest. picketpocketing and taking gold from inventory are absolutly minor complications easily prevented.

 

DCL is already making PC to not drop devious items, make follower to not trade with expensive items (mentioning the IF XXX's value / weight => 1000 Then XXX is Expensive item) shouldnt be much more difficult. I'd immagine if you take from follower 100 septims then Player.removeitem 000000f 100 and then Target follower Additem 000000f 100. There we go follower has back her gold, only missing a top left corner message I wont give you my valuables...

 

Benefit is that follower has own gold, is independant. That is something you can work with in the future. For example INeed mood we talked about, if you want follower to buy food you must also give the follower your own money for that.. meaning money from debt is not used in any sort of way.

 

By paying debpt the follower is not gaining money, is just discarting yours. That fact is making it less interesting, we think about it as "It's programmed that way to create an illusion of follower being paid" instead of "The follower is actuallly getting paid".

 

Want to make use of the gold in inventory ? If follower can buy food i assume its possible to make follower armor and weapons and potions - keeping on making the follower more independant.

 

Just already seeing that follower has more gold than you is creating the dominance.

 

 

"I don't really know what you mean about imaginary coins.

DF debt is accumulated, then you must pay the follower ... with actual coins."

noo.. player has the actual coins, follower  only discarts them.. i know that im not paying the follower, the debpt is reduced and gold discarted, its not as interesting.

 

maybe i just want too much from it.. striping from ilusions and make it actually work as written.

[SlayerSilverWolf]

Thanks for responding.

 

I had these issues before UFO, I actually installed UFO as an attempt to resolve these issues, to no avail.

 

Perhaps replacing it with EFF will give me better results, something to try anyway.

 

Apologies I wasn't totally clear on that point, I only have the one option to dismiss her through her dialogue choices I choose to pay my debt with the option that the follower is then dismissable. I get the dialogue from Sasha that "This seems strangely final" or something along those lines (Sorry it's past midnight my brain is dead) then I tell her it's time for us to part ways which she then responds that she will head home. Then nothing happens.

 

I tried to repair her using the debug options but there was no change. I don't think I tried reset so I'll try that as well.

 

I don't have the doubled up Part Ways dialogue that i've noticed.

 

Given I actually don't know what RDO is I don't think I'm using it, checking my modlist doesn't show anything with those letters haha.

 

I wasn't expecting you to fix the corset, just listing all the issues I'm having in case it helped with the resolution haha FREE ME!!!! didn't work either, tried that when I first noticed it lmao.

 

Honestly, I was only using Sasha because I didn't know about Serana and Lydia seems to deliberately get in the way at every possible opportunity I really haven't played a huge amount of Skyrim lol.

 

If I was to rip out UFO and install EFF how likely are things to break? If it's going to break everything I probably won't bother, I have both followers right now and while it's not what I wanted, It works

 

 

 

So the existing DD mods for FO4 don't work off a framework? I'm just curious about it is all, I really have no idea how all this works in the backend. I figure theres no harm in asking the question, unless I'm being a bother haha.

[Lupine00]

49 minutes ago, SlayerSilverWolf said:

"This seems strangely final"

That's the way you know that DF has triggered a full payoff.

 

49 minutes ago, SlayerSilverWolf said:

If I was to rip out UFO and install EFF how likely are things to break? If it's going to break everything I probably won't bother, I have both followers right now and while it's not what I wanted, It works

If you clean save properly it should be ok.

 

But you said you had issues before installing the follower framework. Could just be Sasha specific but sounds ominous.

 

Install some plain follower mods like Velma the Shadowknight etc. Just a follower with an outfit. See if that works alright for you.

There are hundreds on the Nexus.

 

It's the fancy super-Nexus-popular ones that cause problems, such as Sophia, Inigo, etc.

I'm told that Recorder is ok though.

Lydia should be fine, the vanilla mercenaries should be fine, though some people get oddities with them.

 

  

49 minutes ago, SlayerSilverWolf said:

So the existing DD mods for FO4 don't work off a framework?

They do, and code-wise very similar. But FO4 outfits are somewhat different to Skyrim outfits due to some unhelpful design decision in FO4.

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, A Little Kitten said:

Benefit is that follower has own gold, is independant.

It's a low reward to effort mechanic that has a whole bag full of gotcha problems hiding inside it.

Each one can be sort of fixed. To achieve ... nothing really.

 

It adds a new, set of potentially brittle event handlers that can mess up when the scripting engine is lagging, to achieve "follower has money".

And every 100 lines of code introduces a bug right?

It's not possible to make such things entirely reliable with Papyrus, so by making it more fragile, it's more easy to break. The existing mechanic is pretty robust.

The complexity follower-gold adds so you can see your follower go shopping is hard to justify.

(And presumably this puts money into vendors, which means you can get more out when you go to sell, which is definitely not what DF wants to happen).

 

DF is not - at this time - a follower shopping simulator that makes them visit vendors looking for hot deals, or buy random bits of armor they like.

As we know, vendors are rarely a good source of gear anyway.

 

There are other ways to make your follower eat some food without having to build a little economic model for them.

 

There is no proper economy for NPCs in Skyrim, so the iNeed mechanic was designed entirely as a cash sink for the PC, who would give them cash to pay for food.

If the follower is spending money they already cash-sinked from you, then it's defeating the intent of the iNeed mechanic, and now the follower is effectively just buying food for free - as far as you are concerned.

 

Set your follower to magically produce food and you will get the exact same game outcome without any new coding effort or feature changes. iNeed will already do that for you.

Not that iNeed for followers is really that helpful.

 

 

DF's own mechanic is to use up lives and eventually demand sleep in an inn or other nice bed. This gets a result where you must spend money so the follower can sleep - though it's actually you sleeping. Use some imagination  

 

DF already has systems the player can interact with.

 

If DF were to track follower gold, by far the best way to do it would not be gold in the follower inventory.

What makes you think the follower would ever let you see that, or where they keep their money?

You think they trust you not to steal it? Of course not.

 

Seeing it in their inventory is not realistic either. You have confused one illusion with another.

The interactions you have with follower inventory are completely unrealistic, and realism has no place in Skyrim anyway.

The inventory merely simulates you asking your follower for items, of handing them stuff. It's not as if you really see what they have in their bag, or hidden all over their person.

 

I don't have any more to say on this really. Ideas of followers buying upgrades for themselves have been suggested before, and I quite like that aspect. But there's no benefit to actually tracking the cash required to do so, because there is no Skyrim economy for NPCs and it would be a huge effort to make one - and only NPCs would see it, so it would be an almost complete waste of time.

[TheSimilier]

6 hours ago, SlayerSilverWolf said:

Finally I took on a second follower (Serana) and used the debug commands to make her my devious follower.

 

She functions mostly normally, adding debt, offering deals, abusive comments, etc however, there are never any consequences of my debt.

 

6 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I'm not sure about the Serana issue. It sounds like you still have Sasha plugged into a bunch of the DF aliases, so only the main DF quest is using Serana, and the others are not. I would say that is 100% caused by lack of UFO support.

I've actually had that exact same issue a couple of months ago, even in playthroughs where Serana was my first follower. But in those runs DF never naturally picked Serana up, and I had to turn her into a DF via MCM. I stopped using Serana entirely since, so I never went back to check if any of the updates since fixed that.

Edit: And that was with EFF. Serana is the only vanilla follower I never managed to get to work with DF.

[Avelyn]

Perhaps a simple mechanic for adding debt if DF's health gets below x% theshold in combat? Gives you an incentive to keep them safe!

[TheSimilier]

42 minutes ago, TheSimilier said:

 

I've actually had that exact same issue a couple of months ago, even in playthroughs where Serana was my first follower. But in those runs DF never naturally picked Serana up, and I had to turn her into a DF via MCM. I stopped using Serana entirely since, so I never went back to check if any of the updates since fixed that.

Edit: And that was with EFF. Serana is the only vanilla follower I never managed to get to work with DF.

I went and checked just to make sure, and she definitely isnt getting picked up by DF for me when you first free her. Obviously with the quest of bringing her home being a thing there is a chance she just isnt turning DF until you've reached a certain point in the dawnguard storyline, but I don't have time right now to play more than this.

[SlayerSilverWolf]

2 hours ago, TheSimilier said:

I went and checked just to make sure, and she definitely isnt getting picked up by DF for me when you first free her. Obviously with the quest of bringing her home being a thing there is a chance she just isnt turning DF until you've reached a certain point in the dawnguard storyline, but I don't have time right now to play more than this.

Interesting, perhaps there is more to Serana than just my mods breaking her.

 

I had got her to the point of her actually becoming a follower, after you refuse to become a vampire and she comes to see you at Fort Dawnguard.

[Lupine00]

6 hours ago, SlayerSilverWolf said:

Interesting, perhaps there is more to Serana than just my mods breaking her.

I never played using Serana without fist making sure she was excluded from DF, so I don't know if she uses the vanilla slot or not.

However, if you use NFF, it probably converts her to NFF, which might cause DF to pick her up.

 

If Serana uses the vanilla follower mechanics, there would be no reason for her to behave strangely in DF, so it seems likely that she doesn't.

IIRC I think there are times you cannot get rid of Serana and cannot progress certain content unless she's around.

It may depend on what path you take. I only ever played Dawnguard as a vampire so I'm totally dumb about playing it from the other side.

She's basically the core "feature" of Dawnguard (apart from the fairly rubbish/half-finished being a Vampire Lord thing) so she isn't vanilla-vanilla.

 

For a follower to enact all punishments, they need to be able to run the DF consequence packages, and also speak certain Hellos.

If Serana doesn't Hello, or her vanilla packages are so high priority that they block DF's from running, she would not work properly as a DF.

If both problems arise, she won't punish you and won't do aggressive debt collection, forced deals, piercing inspections, or anything like that.

My guess is Serana does "Hello", and uses it to produce the usual kinds of Beth commentary when you go to certain locations etc.

However, there may be something a bit odd about how they do that, which is stopping the DF Hello items from running.

Most of those are slavery related anyway - so as she wouldn't enslave you, you wouldn't see the majority to start with.

I'd also guess that her DF AI packages do not get to run, and that's the dominant problem here.

I can see if there's scope to turn the priority of those up, as they are not long-running packages and shouldn't break anything.

 

If you use something like To Your Face with DF, it severely hampers those Hello-based dialogs occurring, and also impairs follower pick-up.

 

Have you tried using the "force follower" dialog on her?

@TheSimilier used that mechanic but didn't make completely clear whether she functioned properly after doing it.

 

It never made sense to me to have Serana as a DF, as she is the definitive Bethesda waifu.

 

"You rescued me from centuries buried in a tomb so... I'm going to charge you by the hour for my company while you sort out my family problems!"

It doesn't work for me.  

 

Plenty of slooty vampire follower mods on Nexus if you like that sort of thing.

[Lupine00]

10 hours ago, Avelyn said:

Perhaps a simple mechanic for adding debt if DF's health gets below x% theshold in combat? Gives you an incentive to keep them safe!

The lives mechanic is for this.

If follower goes into bleedout, they lose a "life".

Once the follower is out of lives, they become ... very grumpy and unhelpful.

Or if you're enslaved, it's a bit worse.

Regain lives by sleeping, like willpower.

 

This doesn't explicitly add debt, partially because it's a habit of some silly followers to just stop in the middle of a swinging blade corridor and get cuts to pieces. Repeatedly.

[SacredDatura]

Is the "the follower is tired and has added some debt" notification related to losing all their lives that day? Or is it purely a time-based thing?

[TheSimilier]

 

Quote

IIRC I think there are times you cannot get rid of Serana and cannot progress certain content unless she's around.

It may depend on what path you take. I only ever played Dawnguard as a vampire so I'm totally dumb about playing it from the other side.

I just always thought she'd still run as a normal follower with a few checks since even when you cant dismiss her she still has the dialogue option to do so, but just gives you dialogue after why she wont leave. And it's only really the beginning quest where you can't dismiss her, but she usually also doesnt work past that point.

 

Quote

If you use something like To Your Face with DF, it severely hampers those Hello-based dialogs occurring, and also impairs follower pick-up.

I don't think I'm using anything that impairs Hello, considering every other follower works.

 

Quote

Have you tried using the "force follower" dialog on her?

@TheSimilier used that mechanic but didn't make completely clear whether she functioned properly after doing it.

There is definitely something up with Seranas Hello. You can turn her into a DF via MCM, but she wont Hello you for aggressive debt collecting or slavery ever.

 

Quote

It never made sense to me to have Serana as a DF, as she is the definitive Bethesda waifu.

From a roleplaying perspective the idea just appealed to me that you're a normal vampire, open this casket without knowing whats in it, and out comes this pure blooded vampire lord lady that thinks you're beneath her and wants to make you her bitch. Serana being canonically royal blood just gives certain rp advantages, but if you can't user her with DF that just kinda falls flat, which is why I stopped using her after trying to make her work for about 20h of playing. Going in manually to add deals when you reached the debt limit becomes too tedious after a while.

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, TheSimilier said:

From a roleplaying perspective the idea just appealed to me that you're a normal vampire, open this casket without knowing whats in it, and out comes this pure blooded vampire lord lady that thinks you're beneath her and wants to make you her bitch. Serana being canonically royal blood just gives certain rp advantages, but if you can't user her with DF that just kinda falls flat, which is why I stopped using her after trying to make her work for about 20h of playing. Going in manually to add deals when you reached the debt limit becomes too tedious after a while.

Serana was in the back of my mind as a candidate for the "alternate debt payment mechanic" - which still lacks any firm design.

 

There seems some logical path from "acting like DFs act" to dominant spouses, lovers, entitled vampire-princesses, etc that would allow DF to work in those situations and still make some kind of sense.

 

It doesn't make sense for Serana to ask for money, as it's meaningless to her. It's just not her existential crisis.

 

The DF "persona" is the cash-obsessed trope from manga and anime. The trope usually gives the character some legitimate reason for being cash-fixated - some terrible debt they're trying to overcome, often to save others - but DF doesn't dig into that, and doesn't need to.

 

The problem is that your Pet Project spouse, follower-mod-that-starts-at-lover, or Serana, don't quite fit with a gold driven mechanic.

Having to drag Serana away from solving her core plot problems just to farm cash doesn't make sense to me, personally.

 

A great amount of material has been written on this now, with a lot of ideas put forward.

None of those ideas, however good, result in a quick-easy fix, so what I'm going to do there, if anything, is open for now.

 

If you want DF+vampire princess ... add some vampire sloot mod, use NFF and recruit them both, with the follower-mod follower in the DF role.

I say NFF because I think it's most likely to handle Serana in the auxilliary role safely, though EFF and AFT are likely also fine with her.

You could also set her ignored for safety. She won't count as an extra follower then, and that should be fine, as you'll be setting your costs up accordingly anyway.