Devious Followers - Continued

[Lupine00]

4 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

They exist.  These are the various "sexy", "pretty", "cute", or "better" female idles on Nexus and other sites. 

I guess that's not quite what I meant. Of course there are various idles.

They aren't overrides though, they are straight-out idles.

They are easy to play as a spot-effect, but it's more like a poser mod, or like DD playing one of its frustration idles.

 

An override to render the PC more timid or heroic looking would potentially apply to other actions, like walking or running.

 

If you just "drop those idles in", you will get universal idle replacement.

You would need to set them up in PCEA2 just to use them without impacting NPCs.

 

To use them as on-demand idles, they would require other support, but I suppose you could sort of just drop them in ... in the sense you can just drop in custom whore armors ... which is not entirely without its problems for some players.

 

I do have a pre-existing interest in playing certain "idle" animations within DF2, but with more specific intent.

There's definitely -scope- there. I might play about with it a bit once spanking is in.

[HexBolt8]

5 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

An override to render the PC more timid or heroic looking would potentially apply to other actions, like walking or running.

Ideally, yes.  It would be great.  But that would be a much larger effort, and it would begin to conflict with a range of animations.  My suggestion was intentionally limited in scope to just the one standing idle animation, for simplicity, minimal risk of overriding other custom animations, and the practical consideration that there are many standing idles to choose from but not so many for running or walking.  I'm experimenting with it now, just manually switching the standing idle when I think my character's state of mind has changed.  It's enough for a different feel, a bit of visual feedback on the character's mental state.  A change in stance probably wouldn't be that noticeable even if there were animations for walking or running.  But it's only a suggestion.

[unmog]

On 5/20/2020 at 6:00 AM, Lupine00 said:

Here: https://www.loverslab.com/topic/130527-devious-followers-continued/

 

 

There are instructions in the section under the friendly green heading "How to Install Custom Whore Armor"

... in that section ... in a spoiler box it says:

 

 

These are the locations you need to put your custom whore armors in:

 

For females:

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Heavy\heavy_F_0.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Heavy\heavy_F_1.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Light\light_F_0.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Light\light_F_1.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Mage\Mage_F_0.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Mage\Mage_F_1.nif

 

For males:

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Heavy\heavy_M_0.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Heavy\heavy_M_1.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Light\light_M_0.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Light\light_M_1.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Mage\Mage_M_0.nif

armor\DFCustWhoreArmor\Mage\Mage_M_1.nif

Thanks for the help. But, it's not working for me. Granted I'm working with the SE version of this mod which doesnt seem as active and why I asked here to double check my base. Maybe something broke in the conversion?

If anyone wants to help, would you consider posting the cbbe converted nif files so I can try those instead? Maybe something is wrong with my files~

[Lupine00]

2 hours ago, unmog said:

Granted I'm working with the SE version of this mod

I don't know anything about the SSE version.

 

But if you are trying to use LE NIFs in SSE, that might cause you a problem. SSE is more restrictive in what NIFs it will accept.

[slvsaris]

Potentially stupid question about follower payment.  The option to manually pay goes away once the follower takes control of your gold.  I am assuming at this point the follower pays themselves.  What confuses me is that they still tell you that they need their share as if you are supposed to manually pay them.  If they are indeed taking their cut automatically when controlling your gold, can you maybe change the comment they make to say something like, "I am taking my cut".

[Lupine00]

47 minutes ago, slvsaris said:

What confuses me is that they still tell you that they need their share as if you are supposed to manually pay them.  If they are indeed taking their cut automatically when controlling your gold, can you maybe change the comment they make to say something like, "I am taking my cut".

Good point.

 

The purpose of that dialog is twofold:

1) it lets you know that the payment period is up, and a new payment is due

2) it runs the script to update your debt

 

Providing a more appropriate dialog for gold control mode is a fairly easy fix (I hope). It seems like it will be easy...

 

Should the follower say something different depending on whether you are currently in debt?

Currently, the only way to get information about your debt - in gold control - is in the morning. Which is by design.

 

They can't say something different based on whether you WILL BE in debt after the update, because that isn't known yet.

But they could still use this to give you a clue how you're doing?

Is that too easy?

 

e.g.

In debt:

"You owe me money you know? Are you sure you don't want to make a deal?"

 

Not in debt:

"Time for me to get paid. I'll just take my share. Keep up the good work."

 

Could also be willpower variations, depending on how keen I am to make more dialogs.

[HexBolt8]

It would be good for the comment to at least vary between indebted and not.  That's not making things too easy, since it doesn't reveal how much debt.  You could add willpower variations, keeping it simple (high or not-high), for just 4 variations.  A small amount of variability in comments is a substantial improvement over none at all.

[slvsaris]

13 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Good point.

 

The purpose of that dialog is twofold:

1) it lets you know that the payment period is up, and a new payment is due

2) it runs the script to update your debt

 

Providing a more appropriate dialog for gold control mode is a fairly easy fix (I hope). It seems like it will be easy...

 

Should the follower say something different depending on whether you are currently in debt?

Currently, the only way to get information about your debt - in gold control - is in the morning. Which is by design.

 

They can't say something different based on whether you WILL BE in debt after the update, because that isn't known yet.

But they could still use this to give you a clue how you're doing?

Is that too easy?

 

e.g.

In debt:

"You owe me money you know? Are you sure you don't want to make a deal?"

 

Not in debt:

"Time for me to get paid. I'll just take my share. Keep up the good work."

 

Could also be willpower variations, depending on how keen I am to make more dialogs. 

I figured it to be fairly easy, but the word easy and making mods for Skyrim don't always go together lol.

 

More variation is always nice, so if you can somehow work some in I am sure people will enjoy it.

 

I am glad you are still working on this, I like this mod.  It will likely be added to the must have list for every playthrough.

[HexBolt8]

A few weeks back I suggested a contract extension feature.  I'll try one more time to express it, more coherently.  The concept only applies if the contract duration is turned on.

 

Purpose:  Willing Suspension of Disbelief can stretch far enough for the PC to be naive or foolish enough to not read the fine print in a follower contract, but it breaks when the PC manages to pay off debt and deals and then chooses not to walk away from the follower who humiliated her in many ways.  Go find a better follower!  There are people who stay in abusive relationships, but I prefer a stronger-willed character who gets dragged down by events. 

 

Upping the payments enough to guarantee that my character will keep failing is not fun.  The upcoming scaling features will certainly help.  But it's most fun when I can get clear at times, not just an inevitable downward spiral as soon as I miss a payment.  The mod already allows that (if configured right), but I'd like a reason to stay with the DF long enough to really mess up.  The contract term is a way to do that.  Besides, the DF wants you to stay.  Whether it's to be a gold leech or to make you an actual slave, you can't be allowed to just walk away.

 

Details

Spoiler

The DF could have a configurable contract term target, and will try to get you to keep agreeing to extensions to meet that target.  (If you don't want this feature, set the target to 0 days.)  

 

Step 1:  Debt Relief

When you fall into debt, you can ask "Is there some other way to work this out?" if you don't want a deal.  A deal's worth of debt is removed in exchange for a large (configurable) extension to the contract "to give you more time".  The DF trades current debt for many days of future payments and a longer period to better ensnare you.  When the term exceeds the target, the DF stops offering debt relief.  You can't avoid deals for long, and with that lengthy contract term you've dug yourself a deep hole.  Also, since you're not taking a deal, this does not relieve boredom. 

 

Step 2:  Deal Bargaining

This can occur along with step 1.  When you're given a deal you don't like, you can ask for a different one.  "All right, but since we're having such fun, let's extend our time together, okay?"  The extension should probably be less than the one for debt relief.  You're given a different randomly-selected deal.  If you don't like that one either, too bad.  A deal's a deal.

 

Step 3:  Permanence

Like the weird potion, this is a one-time deal.  It removes the ability to dismiss the DF (set the contract to 30,000 days).  Of course it's not worded as "permanent"; the DF says it's just "until I decide we should part ways".  Which never happens.  (Well, you can still escape by triggering discardment or being sold.)  It represents the fall into failure and dependence on the DF.  The deal could be offered (or requested) at various points:  when enslaved, when there are 6 or more deals, or when debt is close to triggering enslavement.  You can choose to clear all debt (or have the price of freedom paid off, if enslaved) OR clear all deals.  And you've traded away your freedom.  The follower's tone could be more dismissive from then on.

 

Alongside debt and deals, these bargains to stay with the DF for long periods would signify the character's downfall, step by step, into being dependent.  It's optional if you don't want it.  But this helps explain how you end up stuck in a bad relationship and provides an extra sense of downward progress.

 

[Lupine00]

11 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

Step 2:  Deal Bargaining

Something like deal bargaining was mentioned as a way of compensating for the inability to refuse a modular deal based on knowledge of what it will be.

 

I still feel that adding an ability to back out of level 1 modular deals, based on willpower, is worthwhile adding as a feature.

General deal substitution for high willpower ... I'm not sure ... let's see how things go.

 

 

Contract extensions were mentioned before too. 

 

I think it's enough to just have a deal. You can't dismiss a follower if you have a deal in effect.

 

It would be "simple" to add a modular deal that has as a feature, a non-standard buyout cost that is rather high.

And of course, as if you take level two of this deal, that is double, and at level three, triple.

 

Extending contract is not hard in itself, but it is then a special mechanic with special dialogs.

 

Maybe it's a fixed factor, like x10 ? So if your normal deal buyout is 1000, then it's stage 1 = 10,000, stage 2 = 20,000, stage 3 = 30,000

By fixing the multiplier, it makes it less likely players will be tempted to neuter it with a low multiplier.

Also, deals can't be bought out with partial payments, so you need all that cash in hand.

And of course, each stage comes with a standard deal duration and early-buyout multiplier.

I'm not sure you need "permanence" if you have stage 3. Remember that in 2.12 deal prices will auto-scale with level...

 

Possibly, the higher level deals could bring extra problems too?

 

Stage 2: follower boredom level increased. The follower knows they have you hooked now, and just want to hurry things up a bit.

 

Stage 3: willpower recovery from sleep reduced. The PC realizes they aren't likely to get rid of the follower and it weakens their resolve.

 

Plus some attendant dialogs.

 

I like that it adds a modular deal with no conflict points.

[HexBolt8]

11 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

I think it's enough to just have a deal. You can't dismiss a follower if you have a deal in effect.

It would be "simple" to add a modular deal that has as a feature, a non-standard buyout cost that is rather high.

That might help, but unless that deal also has a longer than normal duration, it only keeps you with the DF for a few days.  If modular deals are semi-randomly chosen, it's quite possible that the PC will pay off debt and other deals before getting this one.  That could be handled by always offering the special deal first, plus scaling up its duration.  I guess we could call it the Time Deal?  To give the PC enough time to get that debt under control, of course. 

 

That fits what I was looking for, that the DF is scheming, trying to ensnare the PC into a long term state of indenture.  And it's a plausible deal for the PC to accept. 

11 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

Possibly, the higher level deals could bring extra problems too?

These are fun ideas!  To keep boredom from getting too high though, would it make sense that the increased boredom at stage 2 is removed at stage 3 because now the DF has you where he/she wants you?

 

How is 2.12 coming?  Will we be able to see an alpha soon?

[Lupine00]

19 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

How is 2.12 coming?  Will we be able to see an alpha soon?

Yes.

I added some of the "expensive" deal stuff last night, and fixed a lot of MCM cruft, but there's still a bit of MCM busywork left to do, and a bunch of dialog updates.

I'm going to do a bit more MCM any minute now.

 

As far as the debt-chaos-rework goes, that's feature-complete and I have an alpha I'm testing a bit now.

I think I need to add a couple of "quality of life" features to help you see your debt values.

There will be something to play with any day now.

 

While people are mucking about with that I'll move onto adding the spanking stuff ... also:

 

• Fix the rubbish pause/unpause toggle in Debug.
• Add a debug button to enslave you via SS.
• Add a debug button to reset your boredom.
• Maybe some other debug buttons.
• Improve the info text for all chaos items.
• Add some flavor dialogs for high boredom.
• Add some flavor dialogs for lock-in debt.
• Add boredom bonus based on lock-in-debt.
• Add willpower regain penalty for high values of lock-in debt.
• Tweak Chaos Mode options so you can have chaos only update on new follower hires.
• Add some missing priest faction members.

 

Also, somebody mentioned a piece of clunky dialog that needs a fix (HexBolt?) but I didn't add it to my list at the time and can't find the post on it now.

[Tiress]

@HexBolt8 @Lupine00 Perhaps this could be utilized to manage idles?

[Lupine00]

19 minutes ago, Tiress said:

@HexBolt8 @Lupine00 Perhaps this could be utilized to manage idles?

I'll look into it at some point.

[The Zen]

On 5/21/2020 at 8:46 AM, Lupine00 said:

An override to render the PC more timid or heroic looking would potentially apply to other actions, like walking or running.

OK, not gonna lie; this sounds amazing.

Not sure if it was asked before (pretty sure it was but I drop by this thread here once in a blue moon), but are there any plans for whipping? Or is that more a SD thing and you want to differentiate?

11 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

There will be something to play with any day now.

Awesome.

[HexBolt8]

Thank you for sharing the link for Dynamic Animation Replacer, @Tiress.  It has a ValueLessThan function to compare two global variables, so _DWill could be compared to a threshold value.  I think it will work, but there's a good-sized learning curve, so I won't try it right now but I will get back to it.  It can be used on any actor, so there's potential for the devious follower too.  Best of all, no changes are needed for DFC. 

[HexBolt8]

11 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

somebody mentioned a piece of clunky dialog that needs a fix (HexBolt?) but I didn't add it to my list at the time and can't find the post on it now.

That was this (link is to your responses).  Mostly I had MCM oddities (reversed help text, a bad help text reference, and confusing labels).  The clunky dialog is this:

 

A minor thing (I was testing several scenarios so I kept seeing this) is that the line "As long as I get my share of the money, things will be fine... and if I don't, at least things will be fun. For me, at least." uses the phrase "at least" twice near the end.  It's awkward and repetitious.  If it ended with "For me, anyway" it would sound more natural, and the relationship with the DF won't start out with that character sounding goofy.

[Abaddons_Corruption]

Sorry if this is explained somewhere, couldn't find it. I took a deal, my follower said she'd add a random rule to the bear deal. I already had boots as part of the bear deal, so when I looked in the MCM to see what the rule was, it said

 

Rule 1  Boots

Rule 2  No Deal

 

I can't find an explanation of what "No deal" means, it doesn't seem to do anything? Don't want to be making things easier for my sad excuse for a dragonborn if this is a bug or a freebie

[Lupine00]

4 hours ago, Rapin' Born said:

I can't find an explanation of what "No deal" means, it doesn't seem to do anything? Don't want to be making things easier for my sad excuse for a dragonborn if this is a bug or a freebie

It literally means you got no deal; it was a freebie.

 

This should only happen if you have so many deals that there is no enabled modular deal that can be allocated.

This is more likely if you disabled a lot of modular deals, or if you already have several classic deals.

 

If you have an old, pre 2.11 version of DF, it could produce "no deal" entirely at random, so make sure you are up to date.

 

 

If you are on 2.11 and believe you should have been able to get a non-conflicting deal, then please post a screenshot or screenshots of your stats page to show all the deals you have reported so I can investigate further.

 

When 2.12 releases, the "lock in" deal should always be available as a non-conflicting deal, assuming you don't disable it, and there are ... plans ... to add more conflict-free modular deals; but in practice there are a lot of deals available now - unless you disable them. In my own testing, I had to get a crazy number of deals before I started to run into "no deal" problems. At that point your character is probably better off enslaved.

 

 

Technically, "no deal" is a deal that has no penalties or downsides, you just get the debt relief, and you have to pay it off.

It isn't completely harmless as:

You can't drop your follower if you have deals.

It still advances the deal stage, possibly enabling a stage 3 deal you might find interesting.

If a state 2 or 3 deal, it still resets the deal duration, and increases the payout cost.

Spoiler

 

Probably, after 2.12, I will do a total rework of the modular dialogs so they work like classic deals, so you won't just told what deal will be extended, but instead what the condition will be. Currently, DF doesn't know what deal you'll get when you ask for a modular deal, and sometimes there is nothing available, so it gives you no deal instead of exploding. It should give a deal extension in that case.

 

 

[Lupine00]

7 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

A minor thing

Ah, the debug starting dialogs.

For whatever reason, I never need to use them so didn't see it.

 

Fixed.

Also changed so that [Debug: become my Devious Follower] only appears for PotentialFollower and Hireling factions; you can't hire Belethor like this any longer.

 

If you want to add crazy NPCs, you'll have to add them to the PotentialFollower faction first.

So, if the dialog doesn't show up for some NPCs, that is a clue they probably won't work properly as a follower.

[Abaddons_Corruption]

53 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

It literally means you got no deal; it was a freebie.

 

This should only happen if you have so many deals that there is no enabled modular deal that can be allocated.

This is more likely if you disabled a lot of modular deals, or if you already have several classic deals.

 

If you have an old, pre 2.11 version of DF, it could produce "no deal" entirely at random, so make sure you are up to date.

 

If you are on 2.11 and believe you should have been able to get a non-conflicting deal, then please post a screenshot or screenshots of your stats page to show all the deals you have reported so I can investigate further.

That makes sense actually, I should have figured the way I fiddled with the setting would cause some bugs. I did update just a few days ago, I'm on 2.11. Don't know why I thought turning down "number of deals to use" so it would let me turn more things off, then turning that setting back up, wouldn't cause problems. So that's my bad. Still, there was an option or two not in use, if whore armor is an option for the bear deal. Since there were some choices, I'll give you some screenshots just in case it's not 100% me being dumb about computers. It could only be 80%. Just to clarify, does turning down "number of deals to use" mean it'll go to the more specific deals (piercing, slut, ownership, etc) instead of the modular ones? (bear, wolf, dragon....)

I mostly turned a bunch of stuff off because my succubus character is smart about these things, wears cuffs and a harness to block more punishing items from filling the same slots. I didn't want my follower offering me a deal to wear something I'm already wearing, so maybe I should just be less smart. I have no idea how programming this would work, but it would be cool if your follower wouldn't try to make you wear things you already have on. I'm probably asking for too much though, this mod already does a tonne of great things. Solves the problem of ending up with obscene amounts of money when you can barely stay ahead of your follower's bills. Who knew sex mods would make a game more balanced...

Spoiler

[Lupine00]

21 hours ago, Rapin' Born said:

I didn't want my follower offering me a deal to wear something I'm already wearing, so maybe I should just be less smart.

Your follower won't give you deals on conflicting slots.

 

However, deals are managed in the MCM on a per-deal basis rather than letting you disable specific slots and then the deals auto-managing around that.

It would be an interesting way to have configured deals, but that's not how DF works unfortunately.

 

Wearing a harness will conflict with the ownership deal, as will "arm cuffs", but if you're going to wear them anyway, why not take the "free" deals? They're not really free because you are wearing the items.

 

You can dial the Ownership deal down to 0 stages allowed to block it, which would make sense if you don't want "free stuff".

 

It's a bug that you can set more deals to use than you have enabled via the trickery you used - but the way it's enforced was totally broken before I mostly fixed it. The existing code isn't called all the places it should be, and tries to do too much - figures out whether deals are blocked by existing conflicts.

I was a bit halfhearted in fixing it, as it seemed to me a pointless endeavor.

If players want to enable "up to" 17 modular deals, but only select five possibilities, I guess that's their business.

There are other silly configurations you can make. I don't see any point in trying to police player choices.

 

The only "use" for that option is for the player to set it lower than the number of enabled modular deals, so they can avoid having too many modular deals in play.

I could make it auto-reduce to the number of enabled deals, but in 2.12 you will be able to get the "Expensive" deal an unlimited number of times, and there will probably be other deals like that at some point.

 

[HexBolt8]

On 5/11/2020 at 11:31 PM, Lupine00 said:

The curves apply an exponent K to the level, so the daily rate formula becomes:

daily rate = S + Pow(L-1, K) x (E-S) / Pow(100 - 1, K)

I just wanted to say how much I like this daily rate method.  While waiting for 2.12, I've been manually calculating the rate using the "Hard" 1.34 exponent, which is still a good bit easier than the old linear method.  It's a better fit for the way I typically make money as I advance in level, and although it's kinder especially at lower levels, I also like that the ramping up feels sneaky.  Very nice.

[Lupine00]

5 hours ago, HexBolt8 said:

While waiting for 2.12

I wasn't able to get much time for it yesterday.

I still need to test the basic dialog features (priest payments) and add some kind of preview for daily rates.

Other than that last part, it seems playable.

 

I'm still pondering the idea of moving the high-level point to level 101, rather than 100, so you can easily calculate exact per-level values in your head.

So you would have: daily rate = S + Pow(L-1, K) x (E-S) / Pow(101 - 1, K)

 

e.g.

I want to set a base of 400, plus 100 per level...

 

Level 1 cost = 400 (duh!)

Level 101 cost = 400 + levels x 100 ... but levels = 100, so this is obviously 10,400

 

If I use level 100 as the high-point, then you could set 10,400, but it's not quite what was intended ... close enough but not quite ... you want 400 + 99 x 100 ... it's just a little less easy to work out 9900 + 400 = 10,300. Fine when you're adding 100 per level, but what if you want to add 87?

87x99 is ... uh ... 8613 ... it sends you reaching for the calculator, even though it's really just 8700 - 87, but 87x100 is instantly obvious.

 

Or the reverse, set level 1 to 250, level 101 to 10,000 ... what is the per-level? 9750/100 = 97.5, but 9750 / 99 ??? 98.4848484848etc ... yuk

 

The tweaked exponents will actually be:

Easiest     2.63
Very Easy   2.17
Easy        1.82
Moderate    1.54
Hard        1.33
Very Hard   1.16
Max         1.00

Or you can set a custom value. For a "fair" game, about 0.75 is probably OK.

 

Gambling values, and gold control amounts, and credit-to-leave are not controlled by this system.

Gambling, perhaps should be. Gold control it doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

Thoughts about gambling jackpot? Fixed, or level scaled?

[Abaddons_Corruption]

Yeah my bad, I'll avoid bending the settings in ways they weren't meant to bend. Can't anticipate every silly thing a player might do. Skyrim's such a buggy game that I'm used to using the console and whatever shortcuts I can think of to make it work, but that just doesn't work the same way for mods.

 

I am having trouble with the gold donations to priests, the dialogue option never shows up. Except once, but I was talking to my follower, so that was odd.

 

I also had resistance fatigue crank up really high, I guess that happens when you just pay your follower without taking deals for a long time? Not sure if that's intended, it was something like 83 and I couldn't find a way to bring it down, even when I reset the mod. I was 1 version behind at the time, not sure if that changed at all. This was before I learned not to meddle with things I don't understand, so I ended up using the console to set it to 0, as a global variable, just so I could start fresh with a new follower.