The Manipulator

[Guest ffabris]

ffabris.

Can Manipulator help me with this problem?

Some time ago I killed Arcadia, not a clue what happened. Anyway she died and in the blink of an eye she resurrected and Ahlem, who I think was already in the shop, took over the Cauldron (as per the vanilla game).

 

Now Arcadia stands behind the counter with her usual spiel and dialogue optins except for selling ingredients. Ahlem stands next to her and does the buying and selling.

 

I have plans for Ahlem so I want Arcadia back in charge of the shop and Ahlem back to being just Ahlem who works at the temple. Can I do this with Manipulator and if so, how?

Hum, not sure what happened there. I don't think the mod can help, no. I'm not even sure how you could console your way out of that, not knowing exactly what "broke". Sorry.

 

BTW HoM even with the light patch is way too dark for my eyes. Too cramped for my tastes also. I didn't understand you about public access to HoM with it not having an MCM menu. It was only while I was in the Cauldron thinking about the above that I noticed the option in Manipulator. Ooh, that has opened up possiblities. 'Hulda my dear, you are looking radiant. I have a business proposition you may be interested in......' [Read: an offer you can't refuse] MUAHAHA.

 

LOL!  And no worries on HoM ... doesn't suit everyone.

 

Have you considered anything like adding a hotkey that will set the targeted NPC to the defaults set in the menu? It'd make opening the MCM menu less of an issue.

Yeah I did... in the end, I went a different route. Save button on the People panel, Load NPCs in Settings.

 

Added: Also remember that People isn't showing a preset, it shows the current values what whatever NPC is under the crosshair. There are no defaults.

[Guest]

ffabris - what do you think about idea that the harem members initiate sex with each other and the player when he/she enters the harem? Is it possible?

 

btw -ver. 2.9 works like charm. Thanks for fixing all bugs and problems.

[Guest ffabris]

ffabris - what do you think about idea that the harem members initiate sex with each other and the player when he/she enters the harem? Is it possible?

 

btw -ver. 2.9 works like charm. Thanks for fixing all bugs and problems.

 

Glad it works.

 

To answer your question, it is certainly possible, yes. Before I answer though... which harem? The mod allows you to have harem NPCs in multiple places, one for each harem member.

 

Anyway, I'm not going to have Manipulator trigger sex. The goal of the mod was to mess with NPC values to make it easier/faster to use other mods, like SLEN or SSX - as well as non-sexual stuff, of course (eg, make anyone potential follower or marryable). Other functions were added to make other things easier, like accessing stuff from anywhere in Skyrim (Storage), easy fast travel to favorite locations (Places).

 

Harem was added for fun ... for me, a nice way to collect my fav NPCs in one place, where I could then use SLEN and/or SSX to have fun. That's why it is so bare bones, why I didn't bring in more functionality like "My home Is Your Home" (ie, work schedule, or making some guard specific places, etc).

 

So yeah, with a harem, they are all your lovers. If you use SLEN, talk to one and get an orgy started. Or set up rules with SSX. No need for me to reinvent the wheel.

[Guest]

I see. Thanks for the explanation. I forgot the fact that Player can have several harems.

I do have SLEN, Romance mod, SCENT .., and use them a lot.

You see, the idea is kind of (missing proper word here) but let's say a psychological, at least for me..

Sorry, don't know enough English to explain what it means to me that harem members would initiate sex with each other and the player when he comes in.

[Guest ffabris]

I think I understand. Manipulator doesn't have SexLab as a dependency, and I'm not even sure I could trigger sex via SexLab without making it one.

 

I'll think about it, but I don't think I'll implement it.

[Grey Cloud]

ffabris,

Apologies to HoM. I've realised that just downloading the brightness patch is not enough - it has to be placed in the data folder! Not only that but it also has to be ticked in NMM!! Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy.

 

Note to self: stop doing things in the early hours of the morning when you are tired and brain-dead.

[Guest ffabris]

ffabris,

Apologies to HoM. I've realised that just downloading the brightness patch is not enough - it has to be placed in the data folder! Not only that but it also has to be ticked in NMM!! Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy.

 

Note to self: stop doing things in the early hours of the morning when you are tired and brain-dead.

 

No worries at all, been there, done that. Like replying to a post, thinking it was about another mod altogether. [headdesks]

 

[JLF65]

Anyway, I'm not going to have Manipulator trigger sex. The goal of the mod was to mess with NPC values to make it easier/faster to use other mods, like SLEN or SSX - as well as non-sexual stuff, of course (eg, make anyone potential follower or marryable). Other functions were added to make other things easier, like accessing stuff from anywhere in Skyrim (Storage), easy fast travel to favorite locations (Places).

 

Harem was added for fun ... for me, a nice way to collect my fav NPCs in one place, where I could then use SLEN and/or SSX to have fun. That's why it is so bare bones, why I didn't bring in more functionality like "My home Is Your Home" (ie, work schedule, or making some guard specific places, etc).

 

So yeah, with a harem, they are all your lovers. If you use SLEN, talk to one and get an orgy started. Or set up rules with SSX. No need for me to reinvent the wheel.

 

 

And we do love The Manipulator.

 

For orgies, you might try Mass Match Maker. It triggers orgies in the entire cell, IIRC. I think a handful of slim, limited adult mods is better than a couple mods trying to do everything. It's easier to debug, and therefore more stable.

[Guest ffabris]

I think a handful of slim, limited adult mods is better than a couple mods trying to do everything. It's easier to debug, and therefore more stable.

Nicely put - my feeling exactly.

[Grey Cloud]

 

I think a handful of slim, limited adult mods is better than a couple mods trying to do everything. It's easier to debug, and therefore more stable.

Nicely put - my feeling exactly.

 

 

I agree but the tricky part is restricting yourself to a handful. Come on now, let's be honest. Hands up all those who run Skyrim with just a handful of mods? ......

 

.....I thought so.

 

[Guest ffabris]

 

 

I think a handful of slim, limited adult mods is better than a couple mods trying to do everything. It's easier to debug, and therefore more stable.

Nicely put - my feeling exactly.

 

 

I agree but the tricky part is restricting yourself to a handful. Come on now, let's be honest. Hands up all those who run Skyrim with just a handful of mods? ......

 

.....I thought so.

 

 

 

Define "handful" 

 

[karlpaws]

 

 

 

I think a handful of slim, limited adult mods is better than a couple mods trying to do everything. It's easier to debug, and therefore more stable.

Nicely put - my feeling exactly.

 

 

I agree but the tricky part is restricting yourself to a handful. Come on now, let's be honest. Hands up all those who run Skyrim with just a handful of mods? ......

 

.....I thought so.

 

 

 

Define "handful" 

 

 

 

Enough to be a waste?

 

 

 

But no, I like the modular nature of cetain mods lately. I posted on Content Consumer's alternate start thread about this when a discussion came up about all the things he could add as starts, but were already handled by other mods. Being able to pick and choose how much or how we want to mod our games gives us freedom, even if it adds a little complexity.  I feel its better than trying to use several mods that overlap and making sure they don't conflict.

 

[Guest ffabris]

Enough to be a waste?

 

But no, I like the modular nature of cetain mods lately. I posted on Content Consumer's alternate start thread about this when a discussion came up about all the things he could add as starts, but were already handled by other mods. Being able to pick and choose how much or how we want to mod our games gives us freedom, even if it adds a little complexity.  I feel its better than trying to use several mods that overlap and making sure they don't conflict.

Yes, I agree. Modding has matured well, in my view.

 

As for the mod you mentioned, I haven't tried it, since I use a similar one (Skyrim Unbound) that has the advantage, for me, of not requiring me to do any of the vanilla quests at all.

[karlpaws]

 

Enough to be a waste?

 

But no, I like the modular nature of cetain mods lately. I posted on Content Consumer's alternate start thread about this when a discussion came up about all the things he could add as starts, but were already handled by other mods. Being able to pick and choose how much or how we want to mod our games gives us freedom, even if it adds a little complexity.  I feel its better than trying to use several mods that overlap and making sure they don't conflict.

Yes, I agree. Modding has matured well, in my view.

 

As for the mod you mentioned, I haven't tried it, since I use a similar one (Skyrim Unbound) that has the advantage, for me, of not requiring me to do any of the vanilla quests at all.

 

 

(cranks the train hard right)

 

Yes I do generally prefer Unbound for messing-around playthroughs, especially since there are a variety of side quests you cannot start without the main quest starting.  Maramal will just stand in the Bee and Barb until you have been to Helgen... then he can sermonize and get kicked out. Other little fetch quests, like taking the potion from Bothela to Raerek aren't available until you've been there, or you can't talk to Svari about seeing the dragon.... which makes sense I guess but Unbound lets you ignore that and just tell her, so she's talking, and you can get the quest to talk to her mother.

 

On the other hand, Unbound isn't extensible, and only has a rather small selection of starts (pick a city, pick an inn, pick a jail, etc).

 

I just "coc helgenexterior02" to make it easy on myself, and use the practice dummies while I'm there (have a mod that lets you increase some combat skills to 20? 30? something like that).

[Guest ffabris]

On the other hand, Unbound isn't extensible, and only has a rather small selection of starts (pick a city, pick an inn, pick a jail, etc).

True, it isn't, sadly. But the selections are actually quite a few, more than LAL, I think, since for each type (city, inn, etc), you can select one of several.

 

Anyway, for me the "value" is what I said before, not having to start any quest at all. That because I don't actually play the game anymore. I'm either in it to test my mods, or when not doing that, then I'm testing or looking at other mods, or just screwing around with my current favorite NPCs.

 

For that, I like to have a stable environment, but not a "barren" one. So I have my game all prettied up with landscape and NPC overhauls, sex stuff for fun. I have a save made with Unbound (after having selected settings in Unbound, and gone to the wilderness near Falkreath), and an absolute minimum of other scripted mods, so if I need to start clean, I start from that.

[Grey Cloud]

 

On the other hand, Unbound isn't extensible, and only has a rather small selection of starts (pick a city, pick an inn, pick a jail, etc).

True, it isn't, sadly. But the selections are actually quite a few, more than LAL, I think, since for each type (city, inn, etc), you can select one of several.

 

Anyway, for me the "value" is what I said before, not having to start any quest at all. That because I don't actually play the game anymore. I'm either in it to test my mods, or when not doing that, then I'm testing or looking at other mods, or just screwing around with my current favorite NPCs.

 

For that, I like to have a stable environment, but not a "barren" one. So I have my game all prettied up with landscape and NPC overhauls, sex stuff for fun. I have a save made with Unbound (after having selected settings in Unbound, and gone to the wilderness near Falkreath), and an absolute minimum of other scripted mods, so if I need to start clean, I start from that.

 

 

Damn it guys, I wish you had had this convo a month ago.

 

I have been trying to achieve what is being discussed here: (i) remove Skyrim the game and just have Skyrim the country to play in, and (ii) reduce the number of mods but keep the functionality/options.

 

I've done ok with (i) though I suppose there are better ways to do it. I'm still working on (ii). Over the last few weeks I have probably removed a couple of dozen mods whose functions were duplicated or done better by a more recent mod. Things like enemy AI improvements spring to mind here. I removed SkyRe yesterday. It's been installed since I started modding Skyrim but it's no longer maintained and doesn't seem to do anything that isn't covered by newer mods. Removing it removed 3 or 4 entries from my mod list.

 

I use ASLAL. There are a couple of add-ons for it which increases the number of different starts. There is even a D Devices one I think. Now ffabris has made go and look at Unbound. My main beef against ASLAL is the pokey little cell you start. It's too dark to do character creaton properly so I usually just choose my basic character, wait until all the menus have loaded, configure them then leave and sort out my appearance when I get there (somewhere with light and space).

 

Any thoughts about Perkus Max?

[Grey Cloud]

 

 

 

I think a handful of slim, limited adult mods is better than a couple mods trying to do everything. It's easier to debug, and therefore more stable.

Nicely put - my feeling exactly.

 

 

I agree but the tricky part is restricting yourself to a handful. Come on now, let's be honest. Hands up all those who run Skyrim with just a handful of mods? ......

 

.....I thought so.

 

 

 

Define "handful" 

 

 

Single figures as opposed to, say, treble?

[karlpaws]

 

 

On the other hand, Unbound isn't extensible, and only has a rather small selection of starts (pick a city, pick an inn, pick a jail, etc).

True, it isn't, sadly. But the selections are actually quite a few, more than LAL, I think, since for each type (city, inn, etc), you can select one of several.

 

Anyway, for me the "value" is what I said before, not having to start any quest at all. That because I don't actually play the game anymore. I'm either in it to test my mods, or when not doing that, then I'm testing or looking at other mods, or just screwing around with my current favorite NPCs.

 

For that, I like to have a stable environment, but not a "barren" one. So I have my game all prettied up with landscape and NPC overhauls, sex stuff for fun. I have a save made with Unbound (after having selected settings in Unbound, and gone to the wilderness near Falkreath), and an absolute minimum of other scripted mods, so if I need to start clean, I start from that.

 

 

Damn it guys, I wish you had had this convo a month ago.

 

I have been trying to achieve what is being discussed here: (i) remove Skyrim the game and just have Skyrim the country to play in, and (ii) reduce the number of mods but keep the functionality/options.

 

I've done ok with (i) though I suppose there are better ways to do it. I'm still working on (ii). Over the last few weeks I have probably removed a couple of dozen mods whose functions were duplicated or done better by a more recent mod. Things like enemy AI improvements spring to mind here. I removed SkyRe yesterday. It's been installed since I started modding Skyrim but it's no longer maintained and doesn't seem to do anything that isn't covered by newer mods. Removing it removed 3 or 4 entries from my mod list.

 

I use ASLAL. There are a couple of add-ons for it which increases the number of different starts. There is even a D Devices one I think. Now ffabris has made go and look at Unbound. My main beef against ASLAL is the pokey little cell you start. It's too dark to do character creaton properly so I usually just choose my basic character, wait until all the menus have loaded, configure them then leave and sort out my appearance when I get there (somewhere with light and space).

 

Any thoughts about Perkus Max?

 

 

 

 

Single figures as opposed to, say, treble?

 

 

one of the downsides of several smaller vs one big mod is that your mod list will be (potentially) three times larger.

 

I don't play Skyrim for a challenge so I never used any of the perkus max and related overhauls to make things "real" and my computer isn't good enough to really handle all the real weather, tropical trees everywhere type mods.

 

I never had a lighting problem with ASLAL and on my computer, the character creation in Unbound happens in a cell that looks very similar to what LAL uses, so depending on your visual settings you might find it too dark too.

 

LAL does have a lot of addon starts, and yes one was for the Devious Devices group. Content Consumer has been working on his own extension mod some some wonderful and fun starts, and I think added Captured Dreams shop in the last update. One of two things I haven't liked with LAL was that I had to make a character before setting up all the mods, and having to open the console to player.removeallitems so I could see my bodies and add tats and markings. Having made the character, it seemed more problematic to make a "safe save" so I could add mods later.  Since I add or remove mods to suit the character I want to play, adding mods to the load order and then re-making the character seems clumsy to me. Since I flop load orders and mods around so much and just remake everything, and don't really use MO profiles the way I should, I guess that doesn't really matter.

 

I have to ask though, how have you played Skyrim and modded for this long without hearing about Unbound?

[Grey Cloud]

 

 

 

On the other hand, Unbound isn't extensible, and only has a rather small selection of starts (pick a city, pick an inn, pick a jail, etc).

True, it isn't, sadly. But the selections are actually quite a few, more than LAL, I think, since for each type (city, inn, etc), you can select one of several.

 

Anyway, for me the "value" is what I said before, not having to start any quest at all. That because I don't actually play the game anymore. I'm either in it to test my mods, or when not doing that, then I'm testing or looking at other mods, or just screwing around with my current favorite NPCs.

 

For that, I like to have a stable environment, but not a "barren" one. So I have my game all prettied up with landscape and NPC overhauls, sex stuff for fun. I have a save made with Unbound (after having selected settings in Unbound, and gone to the wilderness near Falkreath), and an absolute minimum of other scripted mods, so if I need to start clean, I start from that.

 

 

Damn it guys, I wish you had had this convo a month ago.

 

I have been trying to achieve what is being discussed here: (i) remove Skyrim the game and just have Skyrim the country to play in, and (ii) reduce the number of mods but keep the functionality/options.

 

I've done ok with (i) though I suppose there are better ways to do it. I'm still working on (ii). Over the last few weeks I have probably removed a couple of dozen mods whose functions were duplicated or done better by a more recent mod. Things like enemy AI improvements spring to mind here. I removed SkyRe yesterday. It's been installed since I started modding Skyrim but it's no longer maintained and doesn't seem to do anything that isn't covered by newer mods. Removing it removed 3 or 4 entries from my mod list.

 

I use ASLAL. There are a couple of add-ons for it which increases the number of different starts. There is even a D Devices one I think. Now ffabris has made go and look at Unbound. My main beef against ASLAL is the pokey little cell you start. It's too dark to do character creaton properly so I usually just choose my basic character, wait until all the menus have loaded, configure them then leave and sort out my appearance when I get there (somewhere with light and space).

 

Any thoughts about Perkus Max?

 

 

 

 

Single figures as opposed to, say, treble?

 

 

one of the downsides of several smaller vs one big mod is that your mod list will be (potentially) three times larger.

 

I don't play Skyrim for a challenge so I never used any of the perkus max and related overhauls to make things "real" and my computer isn't good enough to really handle all the real weather, tropical trees everywhere type mods.

 

I never had a lighting problem with ASLAL and on my computer, the character creation in Unbound happens in a cell that looks very similar to what LAL uses, so depending on your visual settings you might find it too dark too.

 

LAL does have a lot of addon starts, and yes one was for the Devious Devices group. Content Consumer has been working on his own extension mod some some wonderful and fun starts, and I think added Captured Dreams shop in the last update. One of two things I haven't liked with LAL was that I had to make a character before setting up all the mods, and having to open the console to player.removeallitems so I could see my bodies and add tats and markings. Having made the character, it seemed more problematic to make a "safe save" so I could add mods later.  Since I add or remove mods to suit the character I want to play, adding mods to the load order and then re-making the character seems clumsy to me. Since I flop load orders and mods around so much and just remake everything, and don't really use MO profiles the way I should, I guess that doesn't really matter.

 

I have to ask though, how have you played Skyrim and modded for this long without hearing about Unbound?

 

I don't use any environment enhancer-type mods as I don't really go for the scenary eye-candy thing. I don't use an ENB anymore.

 

I recently stopped running Skyrim in windowed mode and that made everything a whole lot brighter. I haven't started a new game since so I don't know if it's improved things in the AS prison cell.

 

It would help in AS if the body was nude or at least wearing say, underwear, rather than the shapeless sack cloth thing.

 

I'm relatively new to Skyrim modding. I got Skyrim, took one look at it and thought 'yuk'. I only came back to it few months ago and decided to have look at modding it (I've modded other games). I set off on the wrong foot and have been stumbling ever since.

 

I had heard of Unbound, probably had a look at it when I looked  at ASLAL.

 

[Guest ffabris]

Just to add... if you go with Unbound, add in The Choice is Yours. Hide Those Futile Quests is also handy.

[Grey Cloud]

Just to add... if you go with Unbound, add in The Choice is Yours. Hide Those Futile Quests is also handy.

 

What I need is NMM - No More Mods or a Mod Capper.

I already use TCiY.

 

I've settled on the location for my first brothel civic amenity and am currently on a staff recruitment and training drive. Even got an advertising slogan.

 

Expect some questions about Manipulator soon .....

[Guest ffabris]

What I need is NMM - No More Mods or a Mod Capper.

LOL!

 

Expect some questions about Manipulator soon .....

Ok then.

[JLF65]

I do admit that I use more than a handful of mods, in general. There's LAL, Immersive Armors, Immersive Weapons, Apocalyptic Spells, Inconsequential NPCs, No Magic Ninja Dodge, No Smoke, Black books Begone, etc, etc. But that's part of the reason to keep the number of adult mods to a reasonable level - there's already so many mods that are practically required.

 

On the funny side, I can now run a LOT more mods! Turns out I've NEVER had SKSE.ini in the right directory, so it's never been setting the memory block sizes larger in turn allowing more mods. SKSE doesn't complain if it can't find the ini file, so I never noticed. Herp-a-derp!

 

[Grey Cloud]

I do admit that I use more than a handful of mods, in general. There's LAL, Immersive Armors, Immersive Weapons, Apocalyptic Spells, Inconsequential NPCs, No Magic Ninja Dodge, No Smoke, Black books Begone, etc, etc. But that's part of the reason to keep the number of adult mods to a reasonable level - there's already so many mods that are practically required.

 

On the funny side, I can now run a LOT more mods! Turns out I've NEVER had SKSE.ini in the right directory, so it's never been setting the memory block sizes larger in turn allowing more mods. SKSE doesn't complain if it can't find the ini file, so I never noticed. Herp-a-derp!

Could you please explain the 2nd paragraph?

 

[JLF65]

 

I do admit that I use more than a handful of mods, in general. There's LAL, Immersive Armors, Immersive Weapons, Apocalyptic Spells, Inconsequential NPCs, No Magic Ninja Dodge, No Smoke, Black books Begone, etc, etc. But that's part of the reason to keep the number of adult mods to a reasonable level - there's already so many mods that are practically required.

 

On the funny side, I can now run a LOT more mods! Turns out I've NEVER had SKSE.ini in the right directory, so it's never been setting the memory block sizes larger in turn allowing more mods. SKSE doesn't complain if it can't find the ini file, so I never noticed. Herp-a-derp!

Could you please explain the 2nd paragraph?

 

 

Yeah, I've always put the SKSE.ini file in data/SKSE/plugins/. It SHOULD go into data/SKSE/. Then I ran into the second most common issue with skse: if you don't run Skyrim from Steam, you need to use the -forcesteamloader option with skse-loader.exe or it ignores the ini file even if it's in the right location. 90% of hits I got on google for people not getting the memory block features of skse 1.7.x working were all using a shortcut for skse-loader on the desktop. If you do so, you can add the -forcesteamloader option in the shortcut properties. In my case, I run skse-loader from the Nostromo profile manager app, which didn't allow me to pass a command line option. So I made a bat file that has but one line - "skse-loader.exe -forcesteamloader" and that finally got the skse memory block handling working for me.

 

I'd have never realized it wasn't working for me if I hadn't updated the Crash Fix skse plugin. The newest version checks the heap, and if it's not been set to at least 768, it warns you that you can have crashes. I was stunned when I got that warning since I thought I had been doing things right for the last TWO YEARS. So I checked and found I had the ini file in the wrong place. I moved the ini file, and still got the warning, so I checked again and found the info on -forcesteamloader. I made the bat file, and the warning finally went away... and things are MUCH better!

 

You can get the Crash Fix plugin here: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/72725/?

 

If you don't get a warning about the heap being too small, you're fine. If you get a warning, you might try what I did. It worked for me.