Making a "lead an animal pack" mod, looking for feedback and ideas

[tasairis]

Wall of text. Scroll down for an overly-brief tldr.

 

 

Basically what I'm thinking is, the (female) player forms a pack and travels around with them instead of amassing regular NPC followers (at least for the most part). No plot or major quests or even that much of a background story, just pack/follower mechanics.

Would support two options for how someone could play:

a) Pack followers are protected so they can't be killed by enemies, but they need maintenance to stay satisfied or else they'll leave/attack you/etc. A little awkward to deal with them leaving because what if that's in the middle of a city or somewhere weird: where would they go? (Also applies to dismissal...) So maybe they attack you, but you only have to defeat them (bleedout) before they get back in line again. But the point is that you're supposed to keep them happy so they don't do that.

b) Pack followers are not protected, but will follow you indefinitely without maintenance until killed. Would need some deliberate buffs to keep them viable at higher levels, which could be the counterpart to the other's "maintenance" requirement.

 

The pack concept is leveled. Each level grants a "command point" (let's just call it that for now) which you "spend" by having animals in your pack. Different animals have different point requirements, like dogs and skeevers are 1 point while bears and sabre cats are 5 points. I'm thinking a cap of 15 levels/command points used for up to 5 followers, so at maximum level with 15 pts that's like 5 dogs (5pts), or 5 wolves (10pts), or 5 draugr (15pts), or 3 bears (15pts); or a mix like 3 wolves + 1 bear (14pts), or 3 draugr + 1 skeleton (11pts).

 

 Pack members are intended to be recruited from the world, as in be wild animals that you encounter - even something that wants to attack you. Could also recruit existing friendly animals like those from More Creatures-type mods, but only if they aren't already owned by someone else (so Meeko but not Stump).

 

Recruitment for hostile/prey animals would be shouting at them (?) to calm them down so they won't fight or flee, then you ask them for sex, then you can say you want to recruit them. For friendly animals, you could shout if you wanted, but mostly you'd just skip that step and go straight to asking for sex. I say "ask for sex" because I'll probably tie success to their SL Aroused level and maybe your pack level, but anything that initiates sex would be fine too: Aroused Creatures would be great for this, while MatchMaker would be cheating.

 

Pack leveling is through sex with creatures (your pack or not), but probably only under specific but relatively common situations/conditions so you can't simply slut yourself around for a bit and level up. Example: the shout to calm an animal so you can approach and recruit them counts, but a random encounter triggered outside the mod probably doesn't.

Tentative milestones are n^2, meaning level 5 requires 25 animals (4->5 is +9), 10 requires 100 (9->10 is +19), and 15 requires 225 (14->15 is +29), because I don't want the player to (again) simply slut themselves around and level up.

 

Levels should unlock things, like elemental resistances or some pack abilities. I do want to support nude gameplay so there should also be some standard player buffs to armor rating and such. And I realize I've been thinking about this from the viewpoint of a new character starting at level 1 (and therefore whose world around them is also low-leveled) so I'm not sure how best to allow an established character (who's used to fighting at higher levels) to rely on the mod for gameplay.

My list of 25 supported animals is dictated almost entirely by animation coverage, and is currently: ashhopper, ashman, bear, chaurus, chaurus hunter, death hound, dog, draugr, dwarven sphere, dwarven spider, fox, gargoyle, horse, ice wraith, lurker, netch, riekling, riekling+boar, sabre cat, seeker, skeever, skeleton, spider (small), troll, and wolf.

 

Species from other mods would be nice too, if I can implement that easily enough.

 

Every other sex-able creature I could think of I'm excluding for various reasons, like practicality (giants) or lore/sentience (falmer) or general appropriateness (deer). With that said, I'm also considering a sort of "temporary ally" mechanic for places where you'd like to recruit a single creature you come across who would only follow you inside the encounter area and only for a limited time, which could allow potentially virtually anything; also consider Apocrypha where you can't have your pack/followers but there are plenty of lurkers and seekers around...

 

Each species has some perks, like ice wraiths chill nearby enemies and wolves are naturally stealthy. Some are non-combat and offer more utilitarian features, like foxes can loot small valuables and netches can carry items. I also like the idea of "set bonuses", like having multiple wolves or a pack of rieklings - TBD on what those bonuses are. Sex with each species also comes with some sort of temporary special bonus, and extra bonuses for 2+ creatures at once.

 

I'd think that pack animals should also get individual sex-based leveling, like levels 0-3, and those levels obviously would unlock something, but I'm not sure how to reconcile innate abilities with unlocked abilities. Also, coming up with mostly-unique innate abilities for 25 species is hard enough, so those 75 more abilities would have to be from a common pool - perhaps even a prompt for the player to pick one of a few to "teach" the animal?

 

TLDR:

• Player has sex with creatures to build a pack of up to 5 animals
• 25 animals supported, each will have special abilities, some will have combo abilities
• Pack levels from 1 to 15, increases as you have sex with animals
• Pack leveling and individual pack member leveling gives bonuses/abilities
• No quests, no story or plot, just mechanics

 

Thoughts?

 

 

"How is this different from Beastess?" (summary:)

Spoiler

Quote

Sexlab Beastess is a combination of new powers and alterations to old sexlab plugins to create

the most immersive beast lover experience possible. Skyrim is full of exotic powers and

predilections of every sort, but few predilections are as taboo as bestiality and the power to

harness raw sexual energy.

 

Beastesses can be of any race, and gain their power by pleasing Hircine and Dibella, who once

joined forces to create a new strain of mortal on Tamriel, who was both beautiful and of the

hunt. Beastesses are women who mate with animals for the deities' amusement, and if they are

sincere, they're blessed with magical powers to protect their bodies.

 

Use the Beastess Mating Call to seduce creatures and turn them into temporary

allies. You'll get a significant buff that'll show up in the magic effects menu, such as "recently knotted,"

after you've seduced a wolf or dog. The buffs you receive as a Beastess are very powerful...

 

Only played it briefly so I don't know much more than what the mod page says, but I'm aiming here for something of a follower system while Beastess felt more like it revolved around a plot or story.

 

"How is this different from Untamed?" (summary:)

Spoiler

Quote

This mod aims to handle two main gameplay mechanics:

 

Nude Play.
How do you play nude and be a tank without getting slaughtered? Every time you lay with a beast you get stronger, more resilient, you will find yourself not depending on armour for too long. The whole reason I came up with this was because the game does not put your armor back on after you revert from werewolf form, and I got super tired of equipping it. Obviously, the logical solution was to make the game so I can play without armor.

 

Animal Companion / Pack Mentality.
Beasts will follow and fight for you. The more experience you gain with them the more you will be able to control and use the pack. From the start you get the Mating Call shout which will charm any of the animals who heard it, and perhaps engage in some sexy times. Just as you get stronger by the beast, so does the beast by you. They will get stronger in a similar mechanic as you do for nude play the more time you spend with them.

 

Also only played briefly because it doesn't work well on SE, so again I'm mostly going off the mod page, but... well, this is a good question. I'll admit I'm greatly inspired by what Untamed looks like, and I think it has a very similar purpose, so I guess the answer is "it's different by being different"? The general concept is the same and that means a lot of what it does will be the same, or at least very similar, but I've been thinking about this while not looking at the Untamed page and I think I'm doing a reasonably good job of not duplicating everything it does.

 

It's like SexLab versus Flower Girls versus OSA: same concept, done differently.

 

 

"A new mod? What about your other one?"

Still working on that, but this has been gnawing at me for a couple days so I have to get it out of my head.

[seshomaru212]

Sounds good, I can tell you have put a lot of thought into it! I had some ideas while reading you concept, mind if I toss them around?

 

I like the idea of some followers being protected. I think it would also be interesting if these followers had some uniqueness about them. Not like they need to talk like Barbas, but maybe some of them are ferocious and more likely to play animations with the aggressive tag, while others are more caring and loving. Or maybe one of them is unlikely to engage in sex at all, and only do so if certain condition (like high arousal level) is met.

 

These can make for some cool ways to introduce these followers to the player. Maybe the ferocious one and his pack need to be defeated in order for the player to recruit him. Maybe the player finds the loving one mourning their former mate. Maybe the lonely one is defensive and the player needs to earn their trust by giving them some venison.

 

Things like these could make so that people can bond with these followers for reasons other than the way they look, while still playing into their personal kinks. It would also make for a good way to differentiate your mod from others similar to it. If followers are somewhat unique, every player can have their own favourites ?

 

As for upgrading the pack, I know that Sexlab Achievement has a way of keeping track of how many times the player has sexed a certain species. That could be a good way to stir the players into pleasuring certain creatures rather than others. If you want the OP tanky bear build, you better put some work into it (lol). Also, thats the sort of thing that can push people out of their comfort zone. Some might explore themselves and discover new kinks, while others might chose to put up with things they dont particularly like for the sake of cool/interesting gameplay.

 

Just some ideas. Maybe you will find something cool/helpful that is not so hard to implement.

 

Also, I like the way you write, its very clean and organized! Your wall of text did not feel like a bad reading at all!

 

I guess thats it lol. Happy modding!

Edited November 20, 2021 by seshomaru212

[tasairis]

On 11/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, seshomaru212 said:

I like the idea of some followers being protected. I think it would also be interesting if these followers had some uniqueness about them. Not like they need to talk like Barbas, but maybe some of them are ferocious and more likely to play animations with the aggressive tag, while others are more caring and loving. Or maybe one of them is unlikely to engage in sex at all, and only do so if certain condition (like high arousal level) is met.

 

A handful of randomized personality parameters. Sounds good.

 

On 11/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, seshomaru212 said:

These can make for some cool ways to introduce these followers to the player. Maybe the ferocious one and his pack need to be defeated in order for the player to recruit him. Maybe the player finds the loving one mourning their former mate. Maybe the lonely one is defensive and the player needs to earn their trust by giving them some venison.

Things like these could make so that people can bond with these followers for reasons other than the way they look, while still playing into their personal kinks. It would also make for a good way to differentiate your mod from others similar to it. If followers are somewhat unique, every player can have their own favourites

 

Not where I want to go with this.

 

Think of this as a follower management mod. Like the kinds you see for NPCs, such as AFT and NFF. Those are about providing tools for playing with followers in your party - actual followers themselves, with background stories and custom behaviors and deep personalities and whatever, are best served by dedicated mods that create them. But I also don't want to go anywhere near the scale and complexity of those management mods (and besides, many NPC things just don't apply to animals in the first place).

 

That said, ideas like randomly assigning certain attributes and aspects (cf. Sexlife and Reward Your Followers) are fairly simple, and can provide a lot of value for a relatively low cost. There is also a benefit to branching out into some things that are slightly less than "fairly simple" in order to cover gaps in the animal modding scene, such as supporting custom names.

 

On 11/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, seshomaru212 said:

As for upgrading the pack, I know that Sexlab Achievement has a way of keeping track of how many times the player has sexed a certain species. That could be a good way to stir the players into pleasuring certain creatures rather than others. If you want the OP tanky bear build, you better put some work into it (lol).

 

 

I forgot about Achievement. That would pair well with this.

 

 

On 11/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, seshomaru212 said:

Also, thats the sort of thing that can push people out of their comfort zone. Some might explore themselves and discover new kinks, while others might chose to put up with things they dont particularly like for the sake of cool/interesting gameplay.

 

That's one of the good reasons to give special abilities/effects to various races, instead of having the player do things like assign "roles" to particular animals: if you like some animals then you'll find a play style that uses their abilities, and if you like some play styles then you'll find animals with suitable abilities. Because doing the same stealth archer build every time gets so incredibly boring.

[Ramien]

How about creating or modifying some sort of den/home area that dismissed followers can return to and be recruited back into the party from? That way a player can change their party up as needed for different tasks and also where they could potentially make up with any followers that left due to neglect.

[tasairis]

11 hours ago, Ramien said:

How about creating or modifying some sort of den/home area that dismissed followers can return to and be recruited back into the party from? That way a player can change their party up as needed for different tasks and also where they could potentially make up with any followers that left due to neglect.

 

I'd suggest using mods like MHIYH if you wanted that kind of control.

 

That aside, specifying a place for them to return to if you wanted to kick them out of the party is reasonable. I'm not sure how it can be done without also replicating how MHIYH works (which is by remembering every NPC you've told to wait), but it's at least worth looking into at some point.

[bluestun]

Not sure if it is possible to do, but perhaps something like jealousy could be added as a trait, where animals will be more likely to mount an NPC instead of the player if you don't initiate sex with them after a certain amount of time.  This could possibly also have a negative standing with the town

[Violence6884]

Would it be somehow overstepping, to first aim for a fully functional, glitch free UnTamed clone? If that can be done then building from there and adding more uniquely identifiable systems or tweaking existing ones should be easy, so that it doesn't remain "UnTamed SE".

 

Back to the point, if you're asking for very early feed back, I would suggest allowing pack members to be killed in combat normally. Not only because it then raises the stakes in combat and creates some sort of investment game play wise that a player would like to safe guard(Either by taking the role of a healer in the pack or Tank, which Skyrim gives us little reason to do otherwise) but also because messing with Protected/Essential ETC systems could potentially limit compatibility with other LL mods that deal with defeat and battle outcomes. That whole system is a bit clunky to be honest. So... Yes, perhaps not mess with that. Mostly for the first reason I mention.

UnTamed was just a silly "Run a Pack" mod, in a good way, with a strong dosage of LL fun which is what I'd bet most users focused on; But it was just as interesting to instead focus on commanding a group of monsters, trying to take over Skyrim, letting them fight while supporting them and using the LL part as little as possible(Bringing in new pack members, XPing ETC). IMHO that was more than half the fun really.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Violence6884

[tasairis]

5 hours ago, Violence6884 said:

Would it be somehow overstepping, to first aim for a fully functional, glitch free UnTamed clone? If that can be done then building from there and adding more uniquely identifiable systems or tweaking existing ones should be easy, so that it doesn't remain "UnTamed SE".

 

Not a clone. Same basic concept, and that will naturally mean some amount of overlap in the features, but I'm deliberately avoiding thinking about how Untamed (and Beastess, for that matter) works so as to not copy it.

 

 

5 hours ago, Violence6884 said:

Back to the point, if you're asking for very early feed back, I would suggest allowing pack members to be killed in combat normally. Not only because it then raises the stakes in combat and creates some sort of investment game play wise that a player would like to safe guard(Either by taking the role of a healer in the pack or Tank, which Skyrim gives us little reason to do otherwise) but also because messing with Protected/Essential ETC systems could potentially limit compatibility with other LL mods that deal with defeat and battle outcomes. That whole system is a bit clunky to be honest. So... Yes, perhaps not mess with that. Mostly for the first reason I mention.

 

I wanted to go with both essential and non-essential options because I think there are going to be many people on both sides: those who want to pick and choose their animals, develop some sort of relationship, and invest time and effort into improving (strengthening, levelling, whatever) their pack members; and those who like the more impromptu style of recruiting a follower, playing and fighting with them for some amount of time, getting the variety that it offers, then moving onto someone else for a change of pace.

 

Technically speaking, I don't see why I couldn't do both. It's mostly just about turning some options on and some options off.

 

 

5 hours ago, Violence6884 said:

UnTamed was just a silly "Run a Pack" mod, in a good way, with a strong dosage of LL fun which is what I'd bet most users focused on; But it was just as interesting to instead focus on commanding a group of monsters, trying to take over Skyrim, letting them fight while supporting them and using the LL part as little as possible(Bringing in new pack members, XPing ETC). IMHO that was more than half the fun really.

 

That's a big part of why I wanted to do this. I've never been the type of player who uses followers - would rather do everything myself. But for assorted reasons, lately I've been playing with 2-5 followers at once, and having them handle most of the combat while I support them or do whatever else has turned out to be more fun than I expected. Then I tried to translate that to animal followers but Untamed and Beastess didn't quite work how I wanted to play. So I decided to embrace the traditional modder mentality of making my own version.

[Violence6884]

16 hours ago, tasairis said:

But for assorted reasons, lately I've been playing with 2-5 followers at once, and having them handle most of the combat while I support them

Especially if you have loaded your SE to the brim with combat mods such as TDM, Obstruction System, SkySA + Animation packs, Ultimate Dodge and so on- Ones that affect NPCs and the PC... Then, watching NPCs/Allies fight it out and trying to buff and heal and such, is quite interesting. More so if you mix in some creatures and monsters altering mods IE ones that give them more abilities.

One of UT's most annoying aspects that kind of pushed me to leave it in the end, was how OP your pack could get- And how quickly, at that. With that in mind, perhaps a good suggestion would be to have most creatures work as side grades and not direct upgrades... At least those in the same general category as in ones mainly dealing DPS, or ones mainly able to take a hit or two ETC. With UT there was basically one single creature(Base Skyrim one, not a mod addition) you could clean house with, even if its level was low at the time. More than 1, was just pointless slaughter ;3 But no spoilers, it doesn't matter now any way for this conversation. UT's shouts were also horribly OP, I consciously avoided using them. That movement speed one... Sigh... :3

Options for Protected/Essential and what not, sounds like a good idea.

Are you thinking of balancing Pack abilities with any combat or difficulty mod, considering the vast majority runs those? Can't account for every single configuration, but perhaps roughly accounting for out of the box configurations(EnaiRim and a couple of others) wouldn't be too insane, going forward?

Edited December 2, 2021 by Violence6884

[tasairis]

Balance is definitely going to be tricky: I want animals to remain more or less unchanged, but they probably aren't going to level with the player and that means they aren't going to level with enemy NPCs either. So they'll need some kind of buffs or abilities to remain viable at higher levels.

 

I don't really have many combat or difficulty mods, or at least I don't think I do. Regardless, I can't really try to support a whole bunch of things that drastically change how combat works - unless I do so by staying out of their way, such as by not changing combat styles or providing new AI packages. Still leaves me with the levelling problem.

 

But I also haven't researched any of this yet because right now I only care about the basic mechanics.

[Koiana]

Untamed is a great mod, unfortunately, the modder looks like he gave up making a new one to work with SE (checked his patreon, hasn't made a post in ages). Untamed is my favourite mod and i've been searching like crazy trying to find an alternative but none could compare. So if you make this for SE, even if it's not different from untamed, i'd be ecstatic af. 

 

Also if you could make pack members rideable (as in actually sitting on their backs and riding) that would be amazing too. But I could live without it if not possible. Anyways, Hope to see this mod materialize in the future ☺️

[tasairis]

30 minutes ago, Koiana said:

Also if you could make pack members rideable (as in actually sitting on their backs and riding) that would be amazing too. But I could live without it if not possible. Anyways, Hope to see this mod materialize in the future ☺️

 

I can look into it some more, but I believe there are only two ways to accomplish animal mounts: (a) make the animal work like a horse, like some large animal mount mods do, or (b) special skeleton support. Both of those pretty much preclude using the animal in SexLab.

[StickyTheHyena]

Maybe some sort of player based auras (that are adjustable in cost/power) that scale with beasts slept with/birthed ? And/or a perk system that works off of that - like how werewolf perks grow in their own little tree from enemies eaten?

[tasairis]

45 minutes ago, StickyTheHyena said:

Maybe some sort of player based auras (that are adjustable in cost/power) that scale with beasts slept with/birthed ? And/or a perk system that works off of that - like how werewolf perks grow in their own little tree from enemies eaten?

 

Can't do a new perk tree, but auras/buffs/perks/etc. that improve with some measure of progress is on the list.

[nilead]

 As an idea - this is interesting.

From a viewpoint of someone who repeatedly tried to make a party  CRPG experience in skyrim work, some notes:

 Balance is a massive issue, if your character can solo the encounter - it makes the idea redundant. If it cant - you rely on Skyrims AI actually working. That is not something one can rely on. Not NFF, not wildcat, neither any other combat mod i tried seem to really solve the problem, just tweak the level of disfunctionality a bit. And the more followers you get - the more problematic it becomes. Initially, it was party of 4, but that worked so horrendously bad i had to scrap the idea early on and go for 3 characters to keep chaos tolerable.

 Another issue is - Skyrim level design. We do have a follower system, and even in vanilla we could get 2 followers at a time. But levels, particularly caves, are designed for player only, first person, and dont really work in any other setup. Not all of them, but enough to make a game balanced for a group to be impossible to complete, because only one character can effectively engage at a time. Problem can be partially helped by using ranged followers, but its hard to see how that would work with creature followers.

 I do love the idaa of animal companion(s) with extra LL twist, and i would love to be proven wrong, but my experiments convinced me that having more than 2 followers is fundamentaly incompatible with what skyrim is, with even 2 being too much quite often. Considering those are pracicly mellee - only followers, and some of them are quite a bit larger than a playable race humanoid, it might take something radical, like removing their collision with PC/NPC allrogether and allowing them to "phase-walk" to actually make such gamplay function.

[tasairis]

2 hours ago, nilead said:

 Balance is a massive issue, if your character can solo the encounter - it makes the idea redundant. If it cant - you rely on Skyrims AI actually working. That is not something one can rely on. Not NFF, not wildcat, neither any other combat mod i tried seem to really solve the problem, just tweak the level of disfunctionality a bit. And the more followers you get - the more problematic it becomes. Initially, it was party of 4, but that worked so horrendously bad i had to scrap the idea early on and go for 3 characters to keep chaos tolerable.

 

Yeah, balance is going to be a problem. Primary thoughts so far are:

- "Command points" (name TBD) system where you gain points with levels and "spend" them on having different creatures in the party, with stronger/interesting species (like a bear or sabre cat) costing more points than weaker/boring species (like a wolf or even horse). So that way you can't enlist five trolls and win at everything. Currently capped at 5 creatures.

- Tiered system where one creature fights at 100% strength, two at like 75% each, three at 60%, etc. More animals still means a stronger party, but not linearly strong like followers.

- Focusing on buffs and perks and not so much raw combat stats. One or two that can serve actual tank and DPS roles, but others heal or buff stats or debuff enemies or whatever, then there's also utility-type roles for the non-aggressive creatures.

 

Ultimately I think I'll end up just aiming for a middle-ground and then trust that people will not do stuff they don't find fun.

 

2 hours ago, nilead said:

Another issue is - Skyrim level design. We do have a follower system, and even in vanilla we could get 2 followers at a time. But levels, particularly caves, are designed for player only, first person, and dont really work in any other setup. Not all of them, but enough to make a game balanced for a group to be impossible to complete, because only one character can effectively engage at a time. Problem can be partially helped by using ranged followers, but its hard to see how that would work with creature followers.

 

Yup. Most doorways are damn near the width of a bear and AIs just love getting stuck in doorways.

 

And it doesn't end there. Consider getting animals into the interiors in the first place. Large utility animals like horses can stay outside, no problem, but what about large combat-oriented animals? Do they follow through load doors into a dungeon? What about into a city?

 

And I don't have answers to that.

 

2 hours ago, nilead said:

I do love the idaa of animal companion(s) with extra LL twist, and i would love to be proven wrong, but my experiments convinced me that having more than 2 followers is fundamentaly incompatible with what skyrim is, with even 2 being too much quite often. Considering those are pracicly mellee - only followers, and some of them are quite a bit larger than a playable race humanoid, it might take something radical, like removing their collision with PC/NPC allrogether and allowing them to "phase-walk" to actually make such gamplay function.

 

The pack size limit combined with the command points system should effectively keep the number of actual creatures, or at least the number of larger ones, down to a reasonably manageable set of actors. It's also somewhat self-repairing in that too many awkward creatures will be annoying and prompt players to change what they're doing.

 

Balance is a problem that can be solved by adjusting assorted parameters, so that leaves interiors as the biggest hurdle to clear. It's quite possible I'll have to make some concessions to what I wanted in order to make the concept more feasible - but if I can affect gameplay in a good way, perhaps more interesting too.

[unwashed biomass]

Tasaris if you pull this one through and it will be VR compatibile I will build some shrine dedicated to you. And let me trow some ideas: Making pack members hostile while neglected would be lil 2 much imho, let's make them just leave (then delete them) after maybe a week of not interacting with them or something. Also leveling thou sex (bonding?) is eccelent idea but don't do it like it was in Untamed, aka insignificant levels throu many, many sessions  - rather i think would be better significant raise but when such bonding lvl occurs apply some cooldown for creature preventing lvling him to max in one ingame evening. As for how big pack could be i propose to make presets for people not caring much about inplayable combat etc. Anyway good luck with this project.

 

Edit: Synergy for having werewolf and a wolf in your pack - there is very nice animation featuring female,wolf and werewolf.

Edited January 2, 2022 by unwashed biomass

[tasairis]

13 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

Making pack members hostile while neglected would be lil 2 much imho, let's make them just leave (then delete them) after maybe a week of not interacting with them or something.

 

The biggest problem with making them hostile is that the rest of your pack would immediately attack them.

 

If anything, this would be a little more along the lines of non-compliance: they don't follow closely anymore, or they don't attack your enemies, or they occasionally run a growl/attack animation (so they look angry but aren't hostile).

 

13 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

Also leveling thou sex (bonding?) is eccelent idea but don't do it like it was in Untamed, aka insignificant levels throu many, many sessions  - rather i think would be better significant raise but when such bonding lvl occurs apply some cooldown for creature preventing lvling him to max in one ingame evening.

 

The overall pack level was going to be "many sessions", but with any animal at all, and it's set up so that you get a few levels relatively quickly while it'll take longer to reach the higher levels. Don't know how the individual per-animal thing was going to go.

 

13 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

As for how big pack could be i propose to make presets for people not caring much about inplayable combat etc. Anyway good luck with this project.

 

Presets? Right now, you build your own by having sex with an animal and then deciding afterwards to recruit it - provided you have the "points" to do so.

 

13 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

Edit: Synergy for having werewolf and a wolf in your pack - there is very nice animation featuring female,wolf and werewolf.

 

Yup. Animations like that don't get many opportunities to run.

[unwashed biomass]

Just checking if idea is still alive.

[tasairis]

20 hours ago, unwashed biomass said:

Just checking if idea is still alive.

 

Kinda. Mostly working on other things.

 

I still don't quite know how some aspects of this mod/idea are supposed to work: it's easy to say stuff like "lead an animal pack" but there are so many little complications here and there that would have to be dealt with and I'm not sure how. What about cramped interiors? How can I balance the species so that there's incentive to go beyond obvious choices like wolves and bears? Of the half-dozen gameplay styles I can imagine, which one(s) do I think will work out and should be supported? How do I make naturally low level creatures viable when dealing with high level enemies? Can you recruit any animal (of a given species) because what about NPC-owned creatures, or quest-sensitive creatures that shouldn't be messed around with? Though it wouldn't make sense to allow recruiting species like dragons or dwarven centurions in general, what can I do with them so they can still contribute some kind of functionality to the mod?

 

Most likely outcome is I'll come back to this when I've been able to play around with some ideas, some of which I'm dealing with in the other things already.

[belegost]

On 11/20/2021 at 12:46 AM, tasairis said:

A little awkward to deal with them leaving because what if that's in the middle of a city

 

Have them wait outside walled cities like summons and horses do. Player would need to go out the gate in order to maintain the pack. Set up some kind of reminder message if they're about to leave or something similar. If they leave, they're gone (disabled, removed from the game, etc.) - solves problem with wild animal wandering around the city, potentially getting into fight with guards or killing npc's.

[tasairis]

14 hours ago, belegost said:

Have them wait outside walled cities like summons and horses do. Player would need to go out the gate in order to maintain the pack. Set up some kind of reminder message if they're about to leave or something similar. If they leave, they're gone (disabled, removed from the game, etc.) - solves problem with wild animal wandering around the city, potentially getting into fight with guards or killing npc's.

 

Cities, sure, that makes sense. But what about ruins and dungeons?

[belegost]

Dunno. Guess it depends on the type of beast. I could see skeevers and chaurus following inside a dungeon but not wolves or bears, unless these are certain types of caves, like e.g. Honeystrand Cave or the one under Ritual stone which are kind of "forested".

 

If that's to much work your can always make them walk to the nearest load door and then disappear once they go through or walk away sufficiently far away from the player. 

Edited May 9, 2022 by belegost