Devious Strike - beta - LE/SSE

[Laezel]

1 hour ago, CrymH said:

 

Do you have a mod installed that changes the bandit or forsworn Faction in some way? Or do you have some kind of mod that handles relation ships between people?

 

i have the mod called OBIS.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4145

[BYJE137]

4 hours ago, Þursona said:

Been playing with this mod pretty much since it was released. But since a few updates ago Devious Striker spawn went through the roof; meaning in some bandit camps there's above 75% Devious Strikers. I'm playing with ASIS and use decent settings for playthroughs with much more bandits (higher danger) but since the Devious Striker amount has increased so much (I think it's since after the Mages and Rangers were added / level based spawns removed/altered) it's not really playable anymore.

 

"- new: chance to encounter Striker is now the same regardless of playerlevel"

 

With how fast they are there's no way to defeat them before getting fully tied up at least 2-3 times per fight.
So that might be a soft incompatibility with ASIS if there's no way to work around it. I'm going to try blacklisting Strikers and this mod in general in ASIS and see if that works.

Would be great for future updates to have a configurable amount of Striker spawns i.e a %-chance.

 

Edit: Blacklisting the mod in ASIS did not work. I think it's because ASIS edits and increases spawns outside the game and applies changes once a cell is loaded. Then bandits are turned into Strikers by this mod, if I'm not mistaken, resulting in (somewhat frequent) hordes of Strikers. The location shown on the screenshot I think has 2 bandit spawns. In this case ASIS increased it to 10 (which is fine) but 8 out of 10 bandits were turned into Strikers (not fine)

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Just an idea, but have you considered changing your load order so that Devious Strike is placed above ASIS in the load order?

[BYJE137]

Is it possible/a good idea to upgrade from one version (0.1.4) to the current version (which looks like it has a lot of awesome new features ?) - will this break my game and should I just start over instead?

[Cursed Raccoon]

5 hours ago, BYJE137 said:

Is it possible/a good idea to upgrade from one version (0.1.4) to the current version (which looks like it has a lot of awesome new features ?) - will this break my game and should I just start over instead?

 

You should be totally fine with just upgrading to the new version, all you have to do is to distribute striker and set the device outfits in MCM, after updating. 

[Cursed Raccoon]

10 hours ago, Þursona said:

Been playing with this mod pretty much since it was released. But since a few updates ago Devious Striker spawn went through the roof; meaning in some bandit camps there's above 75% Devious Strikers. I'm playing with ASIS and use decent settings for playthroughs with much more bandits (higher danger) but since the Devious Striker amount has increased so much (I think it's since after the Mages and Rangers were added / level based spawns removed/altered) it's not really playable anymore.

 

"- new: chance to encounter Striker is now the same regardless of playerlevel"

 

With how fast they are there's no way to defeat them before getting fully tied up at least 2-3 times per fight.
So that might be a soft incompatibility with ASIS if there's no way to work around it. I'm going to try blacklisting Strikers and this mod in general in ASIS and see if that works.

Would be great for future updates to have a configurable amount of Striker spawns i.e a %-chance.

 

Edit: Blacklisting the mod in ASIS did not work. I think it's because ASIS edits and increases spawns outside the game and applies changes once a cell is loaded. Then bandits are turned into Strikers by this mod, if I'm not mistaken, resulting in (somewhat frequent) hordes of Strikers. The location shown on the screenshot I think has 2 bandit spawns. In this case ASIS increased it to 10 (which is fine) but 8 out of 10 bandits were turned into Strikers (not fine)

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

I understand your concerns, sorry for the inconvenience.

I would have already added a setting for spawn chances if it werent so difficult. The reason for this being the way my mod spawns striker: 

the script does not replace existing bandits with striker on entering cells (similar to how ASIS spawns more bandits than vanilla), it adds striker to the LeveledLists of bandits with the normal bandit levels that are the same as the vanilla ones, which means the spawning is handled as follows: 

 

"When the player enters a location, the game checks the player's level against the Encounter Zone's Min and Max levels, then resolves a level for the space. It then determines which leveled actors should be generated from each leveled list." ~Creation Kit Wiki

 

This means that when i add, lets say 3 strikers to any bandit Leveled List (Level in the list: #1~Lv1; #2~Lv5; #3.~Lv10 ), and the player level is 4, the game only takes Striker 1 from the list and excludes any other striker. Now there are bandits + striker in the list and the game decide what actor to spawn depending on these levels in comparison to the player's level. In Conclusion: on player level 4 the game will only spawn either striker #1 or bandit #1 (as bandits have the same Levels in the list as the striker). 

 

This means that on default skyrim you are just a very unlucky person to encounter this many striker. When you have a mod that increases the spawned amount of bandits, the only way so many striker can spawn is that your mod's script probably takes an actor of any bandit LvList and just throws them next to the bandits who spawned naturally. The only logical explanation for the huge amount of striker spawns would be that ASIS' script takes not just a random actor from the list but always the next best one, which happens to exclusively be a striker, as their EditorID is above/below the one from bandits. Therefore the ASIS script most likely searches for viable actors by iterating through the list from top to bottom or the other way around. Causing only strikers to spawn.

 

Even thinking about combining The encounter zone's min max level with the player and LeveledActor level in a script gives me a headache. So if i were to avoid this method of manipulating the spawn chance, i have to think around corners which might take a while or end up as a buggy mess. And i mostly want solid functional scripts in my mod, not some wonky workaround stuff, as they usually make things worse for the most part. 

One thing i could do is to give the player a choice between a much simpler and the new more complex spawn method, but apart from that there is not much i can do at the moment to fix your problem.

Either you choose ASIS or DS or you (could also be me or someone else) comes up with a patch for both mods, that edits/changes the spawn function from ASIS if my thesis is correct. If it is not correct then i have no clue on why this happens and not even i can help you anymore...

 

I hope this explains your problem. Just ask when you have any more questions 

 

EDIT:

did you use the SkyProc patcher ASIS provides after installing DeviousStrike?

Edited June 29, 2021 by CrymH

[Cursed Raccoon]

9 hours ago, hurensohn1998 said:

 

i have the mod called OBIS.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4145

 

Are you a perhaps a vampire or have done the silver hand quest that starts in markarth? i think you can somehow become friendly towards forsworn with this quest 

[Player80]

Would it be possible for strikers to loot their devices on death? Maybe as a toggleable feature, because it would be a waste letting any more of these devices vanish into thin air...

Edited June 29, 2021 by Player80

[Cursed Raccoon]

12 minutes ago, Player80 said:

Would it be able for strikers to loot their devices on death? Maybe as a toggleable feature, because it would be a waste letting any more of these devices vanish into thin air...

 

it would be possible yes, noted down  

[Þursona]

17 hours ago, BYJE137 said:

Just an idea, but have you considered changing your load order so that Devious Strike is placed above ASIS in the load order?

Not possible as ASIS is a skyproc patcher and requires the esp being loaded at the very bottom, after every other mod.

 

11 hours ago, CrymH said:

This means that on default skyrim you are just a very unlucky person to encounter this many striker. When you have a mod that increases the spawned amount of bandits, the only way so many striker can spawn is that your mod's script probably takes an actor of any bandit LvList and just throws them next to the bandits who spawned naturally. The only logical explanation for the huge amount of striker spawns would be that ASIS' script takes not just a random actor from the list but always the next best one, which happens to exclusively be a striker, as their EditorID is above/below the one from bandits. Therefore the ASIS script most likely searches for viable actors by iterating through the list from top to bottom or the other way around. Causing only strikers to spawn.

 

EDIT:

did you use the SkyProc patcher ASIS provides after installing DeviousStrike?

If that was the case, blocking DS and Devious Strikers (NPC) entirely in the ASIS config files, so they're no longer eligible NPCs to spawn through ASIS, should work, right? It doesn't though. ASIS also spawns extra Bandits and Striker, not exclusively Strikers.

This problem only occured since version 1.4.0 of DS. I'm not sure what you changed since then but something caused this issue with ASIS to appear. The only thing I can think of is the new feature:

- new: chance to encounter Striker is now the same regardless of playerlevel

Before that I encounter only a handful of Strikers per bandit camp even at much higher levels. (Started a new playthrough ~lvl 10. Previous char lvl 30-40)

 

Yes, I did use the SkyProc Patcher. I'm using all three of my patchers each and every time I (un)install a mod.

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by Þursona

[Cursed Raccoon]

12 minutes ago, Þursona said:

This problem only occured since version 1.4.0 of DS. I'm not sure what you changed since then but something caused this issue with ASIS to appear. The only thing I can think of is the new feature:

- new: chance to encounter Striker is now the same regardless of playerlevel

Well i was trying to explain exactly that in my previous post:

11 hours ago, CrymH said:

This means that when i add, lets say 3 strikers to any bandit Leveled List (Level in the list: #1~Lv1; #2~Lv5; #3.~Lv10 ), and the player level is 4, the game only takes Striker 1 from the list and excludes any other striker. Now there are bandits + striker in the list and the game decide what actor to spawn depending on these levels in comparison to the player's level. In Conclusion: on player level 4 the game will only spawn either striker #1 or bandit #1 (as bandits have the same Levels in the list as the striker). 

The old method only added one Striker with LV 1 to the List, that is the only change i made... 

 

It seems like there is a incompatibility between Devious Strike and ASIS, to fix this i need some time to figure out how ASIS works. Afterwards i might be able to release a patch for them. 

[Tron91]

41 minutes ago, CrymH said:

Well i was trying to explain exactly that in my previous post:

The old method only added one Striker with LV 1 to the List, that is the only change i made... 

 

It seems like there is a incompatibility between Devious Strike and ASIS, to fix this i need some time to figure out how ASIS works. Afterwards i might be able to release a patch for them. 

@CrymH

 

It's basically good to stay away from leveled lists, since it needs many patches to accommodate other mods which modifies the lists. 

[Cursed Raccoon]

11 minutes ago, Tron91 said:

@CrymH

 

It's basically good to stay away from leveled lists, since it needs many patches to accommodate other mods which modifies the lists. 

 

That shouldnt be as huge of a problem since i only touch the LvLists with one script instance and that's it. Basically the default lists stay how they are and only get modified once you hit the Distribute button in MCM, and can also be reverted with the other button right below it, which returns them to vanilla state. 

But i have no clue about patches in combination with LVLists, so thanks for the warning, i will keep it in mind 

Or do you know a possible solution to this problem?

[Laezel]

12 hours ago, CrymH said:

 

Are you a perhaps a vampire or have done the silver hand quest that starts in markarth? i think you can somehow become friendly towards forsworn with this quest 

 

no i didnt, im normal nord and i also only got the letter from the guy from markarth i didnt read yet.

Its also not only the forsworn, the strikers in the bandit camp are not attacking me aswell.

[ttpt]

If you're using the ASIS increase spawn I think it's perfectly normal to see an increase in strikers, since basically every chance a bandit spawns that's a chance to a striker to pop up. More bandits means more chances, doesn't seen like an incompatibility so much as everything working together as intended.

 

Personally I use ASIS just for perks and stuff without extra spawns and there's quite a few strikers but not too many, so it feels perfectly fine.

[Tron91]

Do Encounter Zones scale as per player level?

[Cursed Raccoon]

9 hours ago, hurensohn1998 said:

 

no i didnt, im normal nord and i also only got the letter from the guy from markarth i didnt read yet.

Its also not only the forsworn, the strikers in the bandit camp are not attacking me aswell.

 

It doesnt matter whether they spawn in bandit or forsworn camps as they are the same strikers. 

 

After installing OBIS myself to see if i could repeat the bug, everything worked just fine. I got attack like i should have, right next to an OBIS Bandit:

Spoiler

 

This means that OBIS is most likely not the cause of your issue.

Have you played on the older versions of devious strike and did the bug occur after installing the newest version?

Can you send me your full modlist?

[Cursed Raccoon]

7 hours ago, ttpt said:

If you're using the ASIS increase spawn I think it's perfectly normal to see an increase in strikers, since basically every chance a bandit spawns that's a chance to a striker to pop up. More bandits means more chances, doesn't seen like an incompatibility so much as everything working together as intended.

 

Personally I use ASIS just for perks and stuff without extra spawns and there's quite a few strikers but not too many, so it feels perfectly fine.

 

Good to hear that someone uses ASIS + DS and it works just fine (even though you use it differently). I hope it is as you say it is, but to confirm your theory i need to test it myself.

[Cursed Raccoon]

7 hours ago, Tron91 said:

Do Encounter Zones scale as per player level?

 

If i understand your question right then No i dont think so. Encounter zones have fixed Min and Max Levels, and all the stuff in the encounter zone scales with the player level, but only if they are in the min max range, else the zone takes the set limit and applies this to all the stuff in the zone. 

You can take a look at the wiki page, they explain it better than i ever can:

https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Encounter_Zone

[ttpt]

On 6/28/2021 at 8:00 PM, hurensohn1998 said:

dont know if im the only one but when i meet these strikers, they dont attack me, even when i hit em.

 

1 hour ago, CrymH said:

 

Good to hear that someone uses ASIS + DS and it works just fine (even though you use it differently). I hope it is as you say it is, but to confirm your theory i need to test it myself.

 

On the other hand, I did just encounter some strikers that were surprisingly passive, next to a striker that actually attacked me.

 

This happens in Moldering Ruins, which is a location near rorikstead added by dawnguard.

 

In the camp just outside two striker's spawned as vampire thralls, which pulls from the leveled list from bandits, one a mage and one equipped with the dagger, they both actually attack but as soon as I kill one, the other one goes passive, reloading the save to test it, if I kill the mage first, the dagger one goes passive, and if dagger dies then the mage gives up. Attacking them once again does make then go aggro once more though.

 

Once inside the mouldering ruin, there's vampire along with another vampire thrall dagger striker, this striker was just kind of staring for the most part while my companions fought the vampire, after a while though, they did decide to fight, but where eventually defeated. On another try I was able to defeat the vampire before they decided to join the fray and after that was done they just stood around. Attacking them makes them aggro again though.

 

I get the impression that since they're getting spawned from the leveled lists as vampire thralls, that is actually fiddling with their faction to make them friendly to vampires and probably unfriendly to bandits. Plus some other weirdness.

 

EDIT: In fact yeah, they are only members of the Vampire Thrall faction, and not members of the DeviousStrike_StrikerFaction, so if you're using that faction for something like to control their AI in some fashion then it's kind of failing when spawned as vampre thralls. They still do transfers and what not when they actually attack however.

Edited June 30, 2021 by ttpt

[ttpt]

Also since I'm here, I'm gonna add that in the version after you fixed the striker's potentially eating quest location keys and stuff, after I kill a striker, the ghostly remains usually contain more than just possible restraint keys, there's no devices on the loot, but they do have full blown loot like shields, enchanted weapons and gold, these weapons and gold are not weapons they had on them before dying, they are just new loot straight up, Not sure if this was intended but hey free loot.

[Cursed Raccoon]

1 hour ago, ttpt said:

Also since I'm here, I'm gonna add that in the version after you fixed the striker's potentially eating quest location keys and stuff, after I kill a striker, the ghostly remains usually contain more than just possible restraint keys, there's no devices on the loot, but they do have full blown loot like shields, enchanted weapons and gold, these weapons and gold are not weapons they had on them before dying, they are just new loot straight up, Not sure if this was intended but hey free loot.

 

It's in the changelog under 0.1.4: 

- change: Striker loot drops

 

1 hour ago, ttpt said:

 

 

On the other hand, I did just encounter some strikers that were surprisingly passive, next to a striker that actually attacked me.

 

This happens in Moldering Ruins, which is a location near rorikstead added by dawnguard.

 

In the camp just outside two striker's spawned as vampire thralls, which pulls from the leveled list from bandits, one a mage and one equipped with the dagger, they both actually attack but as soon as I kill one, the other one goes passive, reloading the save to test it, if I kill the mage first, the dagger one goes passive, and if dagger dies then the mage gives up. Attacking them once again does make then go aggro once more though.

 

Once inside the mouldering ruin, there's vampire along with another vampire thrall dagger striker, this striker was just kind of staring for the most part while my companions fought the vampire, after a while though, they did decide to fight, but where eventually defeated. On another try I was able to defeat the vampire before they decided to join the fray and after that was done they just stood around. Attacking them makes them aggro again though.

 

I get the impression that since they're getting spawned from the leveled lists as vampire thralls, that is actually fiddling with their faction to make them friendly to vampires and probably unfriendly to bandits. Plus some other weirdness.

 

EDIT: In fact yeah, they are only members of the Vampire Thrall faction, and not members of the DeviousStrike_StrikerFaction, so if you're using that faction for something like to control their AI in some fashion then it's kind of failing when spawned as vampre thralls. They still do transfers and what not when they actually attack however.

 

I will take a look at it, thanks for reporting the bug

 

EDIT:

Bug is already fixed  

Edited June 30, 2021 by CrymH

[Þursona]

22 hours ago, CrymH said:

Well i was trying to explain exactly that in my previous post:

The old method only added one Striker with LV 1 to the List, that is the only change i made... 

 

It seems like there is a incompatibility between Devious Strike and ASIS, to fix this i need some time to figure out how ASIS works. Afterwards i might be able to release a patch for them. 

Ah gotcha, sorry for not getting that the first time.

 

18 hours ago, ttpt said:

If you're using the ASIS increase spawn I think it's perfectly normal to see an increase in strikers, since basically every chance a bandit spawns that's a chance to a striker to pop up. More bandits means more chances, doesn't seen like an incompatibility so much as everything working together as intended.

 

Personally I use ASIS just for perks and stuff without extra spawns and there's quite a few strikers but not too many, so it feels perfectly fine.

That is true, of course. To put it into perspective, on previous versions I had bandit forts with let's just say 50 bandits (sometimes more, sometimes less) and maybe 5 Strikers. Now It's pretty much the other way around.

[ttpt]

2 hours ago, Þursona said:

Ah gotcha, sorry for not getting that the first time.

 

That is true, of course. To put it into perspective, on previous versions I had bandit forts with let's just say 50 bandits (sometimes more, sometimes less) and maybe 5 Strikers. Now It's pretty much the other way around.

 

I think you are definitely on to something, especially since as I described when gong to Moldering Ruins, all the vampire thrall who are usually bandits were just strikets. Like I don't use increased spawn on bandits so it was 3 vampire thralls all 3 were strikers which is too much bad luck.

 

On actually checking the mod on TESEDIT and checking the formdids list as to which leveled lists it injects into, everything may seem normal, but I think it has to do with encounter zone restrictions. Strikers are usually the highest leveled NPC on those lists, and while the leveled list have flags to calculate all levels, the encounter zone settings sort of override those flags. Like you'll notice some of the affected leveled lists include bandits of level 1, but in actual practice on high encounter zones I don't think you'll ever run into a level 1 bandit.

 

What this all means is that when the PC is at a high enough level on a high enough level encounter zone, most of the NPC will probably spawn as strikers, since the encounter zone setting will prevent the lower leveled NPC from spawning, so the chances of spawning are probably a 50/50 between a striker and like a level 25 bandit marauder.

 

EDIT: forgot to mention though, strikers aren't always at max level, but their level multiplier is 0.8 to player level, this means that in general regardless of encounter zones, you have a chance of encountering strikers since they'll always be near the player level, But at a high level encounter zone, lower leveled enemies from leveled list will not be spawned, only those at high level, so for example marauders at 25 or say strikers at level 26 when the player is level 33.

 

It's all up to chance of course, but you will definitely be seeing more strikers than regular bandits at higher levels.

Edited July 1, 2021 by ttpt

[ttpt]

Of course the way I use the mod now is that I did lower the chance on hit of transferring devices to like 15% on hit, since there does seem to be a lot of strikers, not that I really  mind.

[Cursed Raccoon]

9 hours ago, ttpt said:

strikers aren't always at max level, but their level multiplier is 0.8 to player level, this means that in general regardless of encounter zones, you have a chance of encountering strikers since they'll always be near the player level

I think you got something confused, let me explain:

The Level any actor has in a leveled list is NOT the level they are spawned with ingame. The LeveledList Level is just there so it can be compared to the player level AND the encounter zone. The Level modifier in the Strikers actorbase, which is currently set to 0.8, is for the actual ingame Level of the striker that is being calculated from the players level when they spawn.

To simplify:

LvList Level is for determining what actor to spawn. Actorbase Level is either preset to a fixed value or calculated from the players level and is there for the actual ingame Level of the spawned actor, it does NOT affect the spawn chance in the LvList. 

Here is a quote from the CKwiki that proves this point:

"Level: The selected actor's associated level. This level is used in the conjunction with the Encounter Zone, the player's level, and the check boxes to determine what creature the list will produce. This level does not have to match the NPC's actual level." ~ CK Wiki - LeveledCharacter

 

I have also tested the mod myself and here is the result:

I set the extra spawns to 5 which means i will get 1+5=6 spawns on every single actor that is placed in the world by default. after visiting the same 3 bandit camps with player level 1; 25; 50 everything worked as it should have. Sometimes there were fewer strikers than bandits and vice versa, e.g.: 2 Striker - 4 Bandits or 3-3 or 4-2 (per default single actor).

My Conclusion:

After testing, the chance of a striker or bandit is for me atleast 50/50, which means that @Þursona is either very unlucky or has some other mods/ settings/ etc. that influence the spawn chance of strikers in some way or another.

OR it is caused by the encounter zones in conjunction with your and the LvList level, which basically means you were unlucky. But when you say it happen all the time, it is evident that you are not unlucky and most likely have some differences compared to my setup. Which leads me to your modlist, you mind sharing it?