How to Keep NPCs Disarmed?

[hawkzor]

I'm having trouble keeping my NPCs, even followers disarmed, so when they are naked or in skimpy outfits and shouldn't have weapons, weapons often respawn in their equipment after a I leave and come back a few times. I was wondering what people do to keep their NPCs 'behaved' in terms of what outfits they wear and gear they equip.

[Just Don't]

I use EFF because it let's you remove all items from NPCs in the follower faction. I'm not sure if other mods to manage followers offer a similar feature. But EFF works fine for me, I've done several playthroughs where my followers stay at home with custom outfits doing nothing and they never regain their vanilla items or equip anything else.

[Myst42]

I'm not sure if I'm the best person to answer this since there are very complex mods out there that handle equipment, namely, the devious devices saga, which I havent even dared to look inside of, but still...

Also not entirely sure if you're looking for a technical answer to make a mod, or just a feature to manage inventory (as I read above about EFF)

But if you're asking about making a mod for it, here it goes:

 

I can say that most of what I've seen and worked with, handles equipment via scripting. First, you need some kind of system that adds a script to the NPC in question, whether it's a ReferenceAlias or a magic effect or even a specific NPC actor script.

Second, that system must be optimal, meaning the script is always active when you want it to function. IE, instant magic effects, will end with the script when the effect is no more, while abilities stay for as long as the NPC has them.

If you dont want the unarmed mechanic to work always, a good idea is to make the system something you can remove. One setting I like IE, is an ability that you can condition on the CK to whatever you want. Say, if something with a keyword is worn, then the effect is active, if keyword is not there, then the effect is off. You can put conditions both on the Ck and on the script depending on how you design the thing.

 

And finally, there's the script in question which depends on various possible settings, but if I were you and wanted to keep my NPCs unarmed, I'd probably use a mixture of monitoring effects (say an update loop that checks on worn gear) and/or a mechanic to respond to OnItemEquipped event, so it will trigger the event every time something is equipped, and if the rest of the code channels it right, the result is to unequip the newly equipped item, giving you unarmed hand slots again.

 

Be warned that this is simple enough to imagine and design (depending on how much you know or not about the CK and papyrus) but the biggest threat, is other mods.

Some of them will try to force equips/unequips as well, and depending on their design they might cause your mod problems, or make potentially game crashing situations of in-game mod competition.