Follower framework suggestions?

[libertyordeath]

I know from years ago that AFT is neat, intuitive and easy to use, but also prone to incompatibilities with other mods.

 

So this time around i thought "lets go for max compatibility and minimal trouble": NFF + Simplest Horses.

 

The rationale for this setup was as follows: Simplest horses is minimal and conflict free. It just does the basics for player horses with a single button press, and skips all the bloat of Convenient Horses. Therefore for it needs no patches for other mods. Support for follower horses is by now implemented in most follower frameworks, so that part is already covered. Then i choose NFF, because i heard it is designed for compatibility, performance and reliability. 

 

Well, here's how that turned out: Simplest Horses indeed works just as advertised. No complaints there. NFF on the other hand... oh dear, where do i even start? On paper it should be doing everything i wanted, but in practice it feels like managing a battlecruiser: Big, cumbersome to control, pages worth of feature creep. Even the most basic stuff like hiring and dismissing followers requires you to press a hotkey and scroll down in a list of commands, instead of just walking up to an NPC and selecting hire/dismiss in the dialogue. On the plus side: Yes, it does have every feature i want, but like i said: Using NFF is like fiddling around with the controls of a battlecruiser.

 

Homebases are the worst part of it. In theory it looks all neat, tidy and sorted in the MCM, but in practice configuring it is again tedious. So then i read that NFF is compatible with MHIYH. Great, but wait a minute: So i don't want NFF for homebases, and i don't want companions to play around while actively following me? But that's like half of NFFs whole featureset? Anyways, removing my companions from NFF-bases and assigning them to MHIYH worked as it should. At first that is. Soon after, proplems popping up: Companions wouldn't use beds, even though i own them and have the MHIYH bed-ownership patch installed. Dismissed, cleaned, and rehired my companions a few times. Now they do use beds, but all their idle behaviors are stuck in i-loops: Get into-bed, abort, get out of bed, abort, get back into bed. Same with chairs and any other "workspot".

 

Great, so now instead of incompatibilities with other mods, i have NFF and MHIYH glitching out internally. Wasted 5 HOURS just to configure work and sleep places at a single home for 4 companions, and it still doesn't work correctly. That's shit i want to be working in 10 minutes, so my current setup clearly isn't giving me what i want.

 

So that's where you come in: Is there a follower framework that does what i described above? I only have experience with AFT, NFF and MHIYH - none of the others. Here are the feature's i'm looking for again:

 

1. Follower horse support.

2. Basic movement and combat brains (tank, ranged, healer, noncombat).

3. Common follower fixes, like no trap damage.

4. Should support at least one custom outfit per follower. 

5. Home support or full compatibility with MHIYH

6. Max compatibility and reliability with all kinds of NPCs

7. FAST AND INTUITIVE TO USE! Basic stuff like hiring and dismissing, stay and follow, should be simple commands i can give without breaking immersion.