modlist help Looking for modlist advice: AI NPCs + emergent adventure + custom jackal-eared character (SE/AE) + 18+ content

[Unknown_Chort]

I have a pretty specific request, and I'd be glad if you could help.

I'm looking to build a Skyrim SE/AE modlist (GPU: [NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU]) around a long-form, character-driven adventure. Here's what I want it to include:

1. Character: a slender, androgynous adult male with jackal (or similar canine) ears and a tail, with proper physics. I'd like good-looking body/face mods and a solid visual overhaul (ENB or Community Shaders, HD textures, etc.).

2. AI NPCs: I want to use an LLM-based mod (Mantella, CHIM, SkyrimNet or similar) so NPCs can hold real conversations, remember my actions, and start spontaneous interactions on their own.

3. Dynamic events: random quests or encounters that make the world feel alive. I'm not sure whether a quest-generation mod would actually improve the setup, so I'd appreciate honest opinions.

4. Story premise: I'd like to be able to end up captured and serve as the favored companion of a powerful, kind-but-dominant noblewoman, develop a long-term romantic relationship with her, and later have adventures both inside her estate and beyond it. This should happen naturally through gameplay (e.g. a capture/enslavement framework), not as a rigid scripted quest.

5. Adult content (18+): a framework like OStim or SexLab with a wide animation range and support for diverse themes, including submission/dominance and bondage (Devious Devices or similar).

6. Spontaneity: I want the story to evolve through my choices, with emergent events (court intrigue, minor mischief, adventures with random travelers) rather than looping content.

My main questions:
• Which mods would you recommend for each of these parts?
• How well do AI mods currently integrate with OStim/SexLab and with capture/slavery frameworks?
• Are there compatibility or stability issues I should know about?

Is it realistic to combine all of this into one stable modlist? And if so, where would you suggest starting?

Thanks in advance!

[Grey Cloud]

Looks like you have a lot of reading and learning to do. One cannot achieve a mod list of the complexity you want by simply cobbling together recommends from a host of different people. Even if you managed to get a working game, what happens when something breaks (and it will)? You wouldn't have a clue where to start.

[traison]

The answer I don't think you want to hear but the one I'm going to give regardless is: the mountain textures. A modpack with simple environment mesh and texture replacers is about the most I'd recommend as anything beyond that will leave you with a black box that *will* eventually break and you'll have no idea why or how. Work your way up from there. Shader replacers probably aren't much of an option for 3050 integrated. DynDOLOD/xLODGen might also be out. Get performance working well with a custom body mod and some jiggly physics. After that you can go hunting for sticky mods on LL.

 

I'm not sure how you plan to run an LLM on a 3050 integrated GPU; but assuming there's a way around that (like a cloud service perhaps) I've yet to see a single LLM implementation for Skyrim where the NPCs didn't take up to a minute to respond to player dialogue. The videos you see on YouTube where this isn't the case, pay close attention to the background and moving objects and you'll see they're all cut to hide it. I'd consider jumping on this bandwagon myself as it's about the only true potential there is in AI, but until that time delay comes down to sub-1 second there's no value in it for me.

 

As for how well AI is integrated, my understanding is that they get some dump of Skyrim's story and lore. They probably take screenshots of your screen to extract metadata from what's going on: "I see a bear over there!". Don't expect the NPC to be aware of their surroundings - the game won't be rendering another view of the world for them. "AI" is not what Musky boy tries to tell you it is. It is not sentient, it's a huge probability calculator, dumb as a rock unless the statistical average is what you're looking for.

[Unknown_Chort]

19 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Looks like you have a lot of reading and learning to do. One cannot achieve a mod list of the complexity you want by simply cobbling together recommends from a host of different people. Even if you managed to get a working game, what happens when something breaks (and it will)? You wouldn't have a clue where to start.

What percentage of what I have in mind do you think is actually feasible? What’s possible in reality, and what’s just in my head—point by point. I’m most interested in my romantic scenario.

[Unknown_Chort]

8 hours ago, traison said:

The answer I don't think you want to hear but the one I'm going to give regardless is: the mountain textures. A modpack with simple environment mesh and texture replacers is about the most I'd recommend as anything beyond that will leave you with a black box that *will* eventually break and you'll have no idea why or how. Work your way up from there. Shader replacers probably aren't much of an option for 3050 integrated. DynDOLOD/xLODGen might also be out. Get performance working well with a custom body mod and some jiggly physics. After that you can go hunting for sticky mods on LL.

 

I'm not sure how you plan to run an LLM on a 3050 integrated GPU; but assuming there's a way around that (like a cloud service perhaps) I've yet to see a single LLM implementation for Skyrim where the NPCs didn't take up to a minute to respond to player dialogue. The videos you see on YouTube where this isn't the case, pay close attention to the background and moving objects and you'll see they're all cut to hide it. I'd consider jumping on this bandwagon myself as it's about the only true potential there is in AI, but until that time delay comes down to sub-1 second there's no value in it for me.

 

As for how well AI is integrated, my understanding is that they get some dump of Skyrim's story and lore. They probably take screenshots of your screen to extract metadata from what's going on: "I see a bear over there!". Don't expect the NPC to be aware of their surroundings - the game won't be rendering another view of the world for them. "AI" is not what Musky boy tries to tell you it is. It is not sentient, it's a huge probability calculator, dumb as a rock unless the statistical average is what you're looking for.

I realize that AI is far from perfect. But what percentage of what I have in mind do you think is actually possible to implement? What’s possible in reality, and what’s just in my head—point by point. I’m most interested in my romantic scenario.

[traison]

1 hour ago, Unknown_Chort said:

I realize that AI is far from perfect. But what percentage of what I have in mind do you think is actually possible to implement? What’s possible in reality, and what’s just in my head—point by point. I’m most interested in my romantic scenario.

 

I'm the wrong person to ask for that, I use my own mods for the most part, but from what I've seen so far:

1. The character you can do. We've had fluffy ears for a decade now. If there's none for males specifically then it's just a Blender edit away from fitting. ENB/CS I don't see working on an integrated 3050. Especially if you want to cram AI and physics in there too. Remember that AI alone would ideally want something like 16 to 128 GiB of video memory. A dedicated card from AMD is about the closest you'll get to a minimum setup, and even that may not be compatible because there's no CUDA. I have 12 GiB in my 3060 and it's maxed out doing 4x image (not video) upscaling at a somewhat lousy quality.
2. Sure.
3. As long as you're staying within the framework of what the game engine can do, sure.
4. Skyrim wasn't made for SexLab. You'll have to make room in your "story" for events like the courier walking up to you and saying "I've been looking for you." while you're "riding" a troll. Imagination has some work to do to keep up the immersion most of the time. I'm still, 15 years later, trying to figure out *why* my character would walk naked into Whiterun without it seeming insane - my imagination can't cover for that so I'm looking for a technical solution.
5. Don't know about the O-mods, but SL has all of this.
6. Don't know.

So summary in percentages I'd say looks something like 80%, and with some work and imagination 95% depending on how much weight you put on the shaders.

[Miauzi]

Vor 2 Stunden schrieb Unknown_Chort:

Welchen Anteil meiner Vorstellung halten Sie für realistisch? Was ist in der Realität möglich und was existiert nur in meinem Kopf – Punkt für Punkt. Am meisten interessiert mich mein romantisches Szenario.

 

I’d recommend buying the biggest sledgehammer you can find at a hardware store... and then using it to knock those ideas right out of your head—and not just metaphorically!

 

I’ve been playing computer games for over 40 years... modding them for more than 20... I even programmed games myself back in the day.

 

Nothing you’re imagining there is actually feasible, even with so-called "artificial intelligence"... certainly not in a game like *Skyrim*!

 

What you have in mind would shatter the "internal AI" of every NPC within less than five minutes of gameplay... meaning you’d essentially have to rewrite or reprogram the game from scratch (except for the structures and landscapes)... or offload the task to an "external AI."

 

Sure—it’s doable... given five years, a team of 100–200 skilled programmers... and a budget of 50–100 million euros or dollars!

 

Or you learn to program mods yourself—an AI can handle a lot of the heavy lifting here—to create a scenario like that and integrate it *organically* into the base game, without breaking the existing NPC AI.

 

And you’ll realize that it simply can’t be done without pre-set decision trees... because even a game as straightforward as *Skyrim* isn't a true simulation of a fantasy reality.

 

What you’re trying to achieve in-game using AI—essentially taking the player by the hand—happens for me *without* AI: it’s my own role-playing.

It isn't an AI that fills the gaps between the mods I use (which would risk breaking the whole game), but rather my own imagination—of which I have enough to write fanfiction.