Devious Followers (8 June 2019)

[Lupine00]

8 hours ago, Lozeak said:

DF-EFF patch is needed I think it isn't done by me.

The EFF patch is a luxury you don't really need. Probably the old patch will work anyway, as it's mainly EFF that needs to be patched, not DF.

TBH, I never used it, I just made my own.

 

If you are careful you can live without it. Let DF handle your follower recruitment and dismissal, then "clean up" by performing the EFF action afterwards.

[Lupine00]

8 hours ago, Krynn said:

$$ are because I forget putting the translation stuff in.

Maybe you could post a quick fix for this?

[Lupine00]

DF certainly doesn't block fast-travel.

 

In fact, fast-travel is probably the best way to build up "unexpected" debt in DF.

 

The debt-peril trade off in DF works pretty well overall. I had many weeks - months perhaps - of solid entertainment from it.

 

 

However, it has its downsides. It makes your game cash-centric to the point where it can be fatiguing.

 

It's certainly not always immersive either. When a follower enslaves an "employer" who was paying them literal thousands of septims per day, and makes them into a slave worth less than a single day's income, and makes them work for a pittance, it seems silly at times.

 

 

I added a mechanic to my DF that would ramp up the cash demands in cases where the player could always make the payments. Though this fixed a mechanical problem in DF, it didn't add a huge amount of fun.

 

 

One of the meta-weaknesses of DF, is that if you have money, you can just pay off the follower and do without one. Followers are not that big a benefit anyway, so why wouldn't you?

 

I liked the idea behind the mechanic in Sexlab Survival that made you need a follower to leave the city (at least some cities), but it was too blunt an instrument to feel fair or polished.

 

Either DF, or perhaps Sexlab Adventures ought to add a more nuanced version of that.

 

 

I also wished that DF had a mechanic so that having a follower was a choice, but one with consequences.

 

 

Here's a theoretical example ... it's just an example ... don't read too much into it ... it's not a game design, it just explains a point.

I'm not asking for it to be implemented, nor am I planning to do it myself  

 

In the DF version of Skyrim, it's made explicit that you must belong to a guild to adventure, and be a local to engage in commerce. Foreigners cannot sell in a city. Period. If you aren't a "local" you're almost as excluded from the local traders as the Khajit, even if you can come in and buy stuff ... maybe in special cases you can talk to the Jarl ... but largely you are excluded.

However, if you hire a local to work for you, they can buy and sell, and they are the conduit through which you talk to anyone important in the city.

While in practice this just means Skyrim works as normal when you have a follower, if that follower isn't with you, traders get their cash reset to zero every time you open a trade dialog.

Also, you get blocking dialog on jarls, thanes, and their closest guards and functionaries. This isn't too many characters, three or four per city.

But if the follower is present, the blocking dialogs are disabled, and everything works normally again. Except the "become a thane" dialog is always disabled. If you buy property, it belongs to the follower, not you. Lose that follower, lose the property.

 

So, you can have a follower, sell stuff, and advance the game, or not have one, throw your loot in a chest, and be locked out of a lot of city quests - but none of the Skyrim main plot quest, which would be set up to work regardless of follower (achievable with a few trivial quest stage checks).

 

When enslaved, trader dialogs once again zero their cash, but you can give items to the follower with a special dialog. Those items disappear immediately and turn into credit- at a terrible exchange rate. If you get sold, you lose access to properties that your old "follower" was the technical owner of. Re-hire (or be bought by) that follower and you can get back in. The follower becomes the property owner in a real "owning faction" sense, and can lock and unlock the doors. Lose that follower and you're out of the faction. Even if you can get it, taking anything is theft. This is pretty much vanilla skyrim. Not hard to do.

 

The guild part of this is essentially just a fee you have to pay the city on a regular basis, like the ME whore license. If you don't pay, then you're an unlicensed mercenary, and you get a bounty that makes the fee look cheap. It requires you to return to a single particular town on a regular basis. It increases your travelling time and travel costs - makes it so it's much harder to be efficient in how you farm dungeons.

 

This immersively explains why you are prepared to pay followers so much, and how they can make such arbitrary demands. Of course there are other solutions. I'd love to see any new content in DF, but there won't be any unless Lozeak is inspired to create it.

 

If we all post enough stuff, hopefully somebody will come up with an idea that inspires him.

[Rob_J]

Can I ask could you put more granularity into the options screen for deals. Say you don't want corsets but want the boots and gloves and collar on. Or buy off the deals a bit a time instead of all or nothing, with say the later stages costing more so 500 for the 1st stage 1000 for the second stage, 1500 for the third 

[SkyAddiction]

9 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

In the DF version of Skyrim, it's made explicit that you must belong to a guild to adventure, and be a local to engage in commerce. Foreigners cannot sell in a city. Period. If you aren't a "local" you're almost as excluded from the local traders as the Khajit, even if you can come in and buy stuff ... maybe in special cases you can talk to the Jarl ... but largely you are excluded.

However, if you hire a local to work for you, they can buy and sell, and they are the conduit through which you talk to anyone important in the city.

While in practice this just means Skyrim works as normal when you have a follower, if that follower isn't with you, traders get their cash reset to zero every time you open a trade dialog.

Also, you get blocking dialog on jarls, thanes, and their closest guards and functionaries. This isn't too many characters, three or four per city.

But if the follower is present, the blocking dialogs are disabled, and everything works normally again. Except the "become a thane" dialog is always disabled. If you buy property, it belongs to the follower, not you. Lose that follower, lose the property.

 

So, you can have a follower, sell stuff, and advance the game, or not have one, throw your loot in a chest, and be locked out of a lot of city quests - but none of the Skyrim main plot quest, which would be set up to work regardless of follower (achievable with a few trivial quest stage checks).

 

When enslaved, trader dialogs once again zero their cash, but you can give items to the follower with a special dialog. Those items disappear immediately and turn into credit- at a terrible exchange rate. If you get sold, you lose access to properties that your old "follower" was the technical owner of. Re-hire (or be bought by) that follower and you can get back in. The follower becomes the property owner in a real "owning faction" sense, and can lock and unlock the doors. Lose that follower and you're out of the faction. Even if you can get it, taking anything is theft. This is pretty much vanilla skyrim. Not hard to do.

 

The guild part of this is essentially just a fee you have to pay the city on a regular basis, like the ME whore license. If you don't pay, then you're an unlicensed mercenary, and you get a bounty that makes the fee look cheap. It requires you to return to a single particular town on a regular basis. It increases your travelling time and travel costs - makes it so it's much harder to be efficient in how you farm dungeons.

 

This immersively explains why you are prepared to pay followers so much, and how they can make such arbitrary demands. Of course there are other solutions. I'd love to see any new content in DF, but there won't be any unless Lozeak is inspired to create it.

 

If we all post enough stuff, hopefully somebody will come up with an idea that inspires him.

 

That's... I like it. It's actually a fair amount of work, so I doubt we'll see anything like it anytime soon, but it would make a great system.

 

In the meantime, it's actually possible to create a sort of soft, similar system in Skyrim already with a few mods:

 

Scarcity:

1. I use x8. No more Smaug-hoards in necromancer hideouts and bandit camps. It dramatically cuts down on common loot too, to the point it sometimes becomes worthwhile to pick up clutter for the coins.

 

Skytweak:

 

1. Reverse damage dealt/taken per difficulty level. This removes mobs as XP pinatas and still allows them to be dangerous. If you do it right, Plan Brave Sir Robin is often a good one if you're alone and aggro a small horde.

2. Change min/max buy/sell and barter. I generally have it set so buying is 30% more expensive and selling is 80% less profitable. Speech has a big effect on prices, which rather neatly simulates the outsider effect. The rationale being everyone has their own long-term, steady supply source and nobody wants your wrecked, bloody armor or nasty potions that have no useful focus. They'll happily buy your garbage as surplus stock, but for very little, and less if they think you're a rube. I set max training per level to 50, too.

3. I severely curtail the experience gain from enchanting, smithing, and alchemy. I also increase the skill level cost multiplier for slower leveling.

 

This combination gets me a far tighter economy where money matters, makes solo dungeon-clearing dangerous, and makes perk points really matter. A follower can guarantee you can win fights nearly every time, but they represent a serious drain on your finances. Do you take one with you for a few days, or do you risk it alone? Getting Breezehome under these conditions is an achievement, and your finances are further strained because training is highly attractive.

 

iNeed, Realistic Room Rentals:

 

1. Because RND has never played well with my setup, and both mods either cost you money in food or time and money in sleeping.

 

Apropos, SD+, DCL, DF:

 

1. Apropos exists in my build entirely for wear and tear. Now you can't just blithely wander into a camp and not care if you win or lose, because if you do lose, you're going to be slower than anything you might fight. Plan Brave Sir Robin isn't viable anymore, or at least until you take a few days off.

2. SD+ just makes the Apropos problems worse. Any even slightly creative player is getting out of enslavement after one or two days, but now you might need a week of rest if you don't have a follower, and you just lost all your stuff.

3. DCL gives combat surrender (this and #2 are why I would love an SD+ DCL combat surrender link) which, again, can lose all your stuff, dump you at random in Skyrim, or simply wreck your plans for the next day or two. The cursed loot mechanic also introduces the need for a normal sex life if you don't want to constantly get trapped, so that's neatly immersive.

4. DF doesn't just generally make you immune to all of the above, you can almost immediately dig your way out of a deep hole with a loan and a few deals. It may or may not be a better choice than turning a few tricks at the inn so you can buy a cheap iron sword and some fur armor, but that's entirely the point.

 

Combine everything and suddenly Skyrim is a very dangerous and unforgiving place where you can lose it all in a moment. Perhaps there's a reason all those guards "used to be adventurers" and there are so few actual adventurers on the roads. Steady pay sitting at the gate watching people walk by must look pretty attractive compared to what that naive little woman is doing. She's foolishly running off to attack another group of bandits to sell their bloody, trash armor and trinkets to Belethor for pennies again, isn't she?

 

This is the build I've had for a very long time, and it's tweaked to my personal tastes just right. Followers were always the problem, because unless you hired the mercs, they would happily get dropped to the ground in fights, tank war hammer hits, be roasted, frozen, or pin-cushioned, and generally be your trump card in any fight. All for the wonderful price of free. Even with my build, I'd always see a steady progression of wealth and power until about level 20-30, when I'd start over because there was no threat left in the world.

 

Now, with DF, followers are a very real choice. If you set the game up just right, paying them the MCM allowed minimum can constitute not just a real decision, but an important one.

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, SkyAddiction said:

Combine everything and suddenly Skyrim is a very dangerous and unforgiving place where you can lose it all in a moment. Perhaps there's a reason all those guards "used to be adventurers" and there are so few actual adventurers on the roads. Steady pay sitting at the gate watching people walk by must look pretty attractive compared to what that naive little woman is doing. She's foolishly running off to attack another group of bandits to sell their bloody, trash armor and trinkets to Belethor for pennies again, isn't she?

It sounds like we've had some similar ideas, and game setups.

 

There are all options I've played with, or am playing with ... though scarcity ... it doesn't cut it if you have mods that add armor to NPCs, so I had to do a lot of TES5Edit fiddling to make all that fancy armor impossible to sell, or more appropriately valued. Sometimes setting the value higher is the answer because nobody can afford to buy it.

 

Of course, if you make money hard to get, you have to make the followers cheaper. I found that leaving money alone to some extent was easier, as long as I made sure those fancy Tera armors weren't vendable. Just put the follower costs up, more or less same result. Obviously, not the same as your finely honed balance point, but you can find different points with different feels to them. Some, quicker than others.

 

100 a night for an inn in really cash-tight circumstances often seemed a bit much - though you can tweak that easily anyway. But if you don't go for scarcity, and just go for high costs, it makes perfect sense.

 

With iNeed, the cost part is fine, but the tedious inventory lint management of food and drink becomes boring. I have a solution for that, but that's a long story.

 

The idea of making training so useful is interesting. Never went down that path. Did you ever try FMEA to curtail crafting profits?

 

As for fight outcomes... I could never get the punishment I wanted from Apropos, Aroused, or SD+, and that's how SLD ended up being created. With my work-in-progress version, I have this fun setup where rape chance is very low, unless you've recently been raped, and then it's very high. With extreme "amplified" wear+tear penalties, a combat defeat rape, or an incident in SLAdventures, or getting arrested in PoP can turn into a bit of a catastophe where everyone who walks past sees you as the easy victim you have become. Apropos Classic is a bit "weak sauce" in terms of the debuffs, but Apropos2 loads on the damage a lot faster by default (or so I believe), so there's that. I never felt the descriptions offered by either were something I wanted to read though.

 

Time to head into the wilderness and camp until you've recovered. Just don't get eaten by wolves. In that state, even regular wolves are potentially lethal.

 

But even in those tough setups, I still find no follower is - in practice - better. Followers are XP thieves, and if they also cost precious money, they are really holding you back. Better to take the risks really. It's extremely hard to tune things so a follower is a balance tipper. I had many, many games, where the only outcome was absolute disaster for the PC, even with a follower, or multiple followers, because I'd set the mob difficulty too hard. Getting a sweet spot of difficulty and follower toughness was exhausting, and when I'd done it, it left me with that same cheating feeling that constantly increasing your follower costs until you end up in debt gives you. It's like you deliberately configured your own failure, and isn't very satisfying.

 

It's easier to make the follower useful if they are a bit over-powered, but that leaves you doing nothing but collecting and selling, and you're relegated to playing a supporter character with a dull job, that only gets interesting when your follower says you didn't make enough money (though it was her doing it all). Which brings me back to immersion problems. In that case, the tough follower should be more pro-active generally, but of course can't be, because NPC AI is not so hot in Skyrim. Ultimately, Skyrim is a game where you're supposed to enjoy the fights, and if the follower is carrying you, that becomes empty.

 

Tweaking followers is tough too, because they behave erratically. You can make one tough, but because they are utterly stupid, they will lose fights they should win, then steamroller the opposition in different circumstances, where the pathing favours them. Followers, for example, do Valtheim Towers very badly. It's like a suicide trap for them. Some dungeons have similar problems, while even a weak follower can be an easy way to beat Potema's catacombs.

[SkyAddiction]

4 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

There are all options I've played with, or am playing with ... though scarcity ... it doesn't cut it if you have mods that add armor to NPCs, so I had to do a lot of TES5Edit fiddling to make all that fancy armor impossible to sell, or more appropriately valued. Sometimes setting the value higher is the answer because nobody can afford to buy it.

 

Of course, if you make money hard to get, you have to make the followers cheaper. I found that leaving money alone to some extent was easier, as long as I made sure those fancy Tera armors weren't vendable. Just put the follower costs up, more or less same result.

 

Ha! I'm not the only one who did that then... 

I don't use Tera armor sets, but I did have one with about 40 or so pieces and vendor values in the low 1,000s. At that point I just said "fuck it" and set them all to impossible. Then I stopped using it, so it was sacrificed on the altar of .esp slots. Go figure.

 

5 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

As for fight outcomes... I could never get the punishment I wanted from Apropos or SD+, and that's how SLD ended up being created. With my work-in-progress version, I have this fun setup where rape chance is very low, unless you've recently been raped, and then it's very high. With extreme "amplified" wear+tear penalties, a combat defeat rape, or an incident in SLAdventures, or getting arrested in PoP can turn into a bit of a catastophe where everyone who walks past sees you as the easy victim you have become.

 

Time to head into the wilderness and camp until you've recovered. Just don't get eaten by wolves. In that state, even regular wolves are terrifying.

 

But even in those tough setups, I still find no follower is - in practice - better. Followers are XP thieves, and if they also cost money, they are really holding you back. Better to take the risks really. It's extremely hard to tune things so a follower is a balance tipper. I had many, many games, where the only outcome was absolute disaster for the PC, even with a follower, or multiple followers, because I'd set the mob difficulty to hard.

 

It's easier to make the follower useful if they are a bit over-powered, but that leaves you doing nothing but collecting and selling, and you're relegated to playing a supporter character with a dull job, that only gets interesting when your follower says you didn't make enough money (though it was her doing it all). Which brings me back to immersion problems. In that case, the tough follower should be more pro-active generally, but of course can't be, because NPC AI is not so hot in Skyrim.

 

I like the idea of SLD, I'm just not set on how it fits into my game just yet. I suspect that, like Sky Tweak, it'll eventually become a load order staple since I tend to squeeze back-end mods until their eyes bulge. Right now it's just kind of sitting in my build waiting for creative synergy to strike.

 

Yeah, for me it's economy, economy, and more economy. I ran into the same problems. That's when I reversed the damage multipliers to difficulty, and it made all the difference. My followers don't really steal XP because there's so very little to be had in combat. Most combat leveling comes from training, which just feeds right back into the economy. It seems kind of ridiculous to get knocked down in two hits on novice, but when you have to deal four for the same and your follower can either make or break a fight by taking out a bandit, it feels much better than vanilla. I run away. A lot.

 

Now if only the combat AI wasn't set on Valhalla every time something turns red on the compass...

[Lupine00]

1 hour ago, SkyAddiction said:

That's... I like it. It's actually a fair amount of work, so I doubt we'll see anything like it anytime soon, but it would make a great system.

Doing it hold by hold would be a tractable approach, but I'm committed to SLD for the time being, and after that I want to return to other projects.

I don't think there's anything in the concept of it that is difficult. A bunch of aliases with some dialog and conditions on.

Some of it would be tedious though, like making sure the vanilla main quest didn't get blocked. That would be boring to research, and dull to test.

Probably there are some vendors on weird factions that would mess it up in places, but the majority of that should be straightforward.

There's be the usual long tail of bugs to fix, but it would probably be possible to get most of it fairly quickly.

The player homes thing might prove to be a pain. I've never studied how those work, though my first guess is that they are quest stages.

 

The real problem with it is that you're making a mod that is mostly only of interest to DF users who want a twist, so it's a niche within a niche.

[Lupine00]

17 minutes ago, SkyAddiction said:

I like the idea of SLD, I'm just not set on how it fits into my game just yet. I suspect that, like Sky Tweak, it'll eventually become a load order staple since I tend to squeeze back-end mods until their eyes bulge. Right now it's just kind of sitting in my build waiting for creative synergy to strike.

The next edition will be a significant advance from version 12. If you aren't using it yet, definitely wait for 13. Just the addition of Apropos support adds a lot of flexibility, and the rape tracker is broken in 12 (oops). There are new options on events that while simple, let you make some interesting changes to combat, and ... when I finish it ... configuration for DD items by type, armor by class, plus clothes/naked. Oh, and cum stack counting so you can debuff your speech off the chart if you want, or make a dirty little stain into an instant rape trigger.

 

Probably, the version after that will have DF willpower as an input.

[SkyAddiction]

4 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

The next edition will be a significant advance from version 12. If you aren't using it yet, definitely wait for 13. Just the addition of Apropos support adds a lot of flexibility, and the rape tracker is broken in 12 (oops). There are new options on events that while simple, let you make some interesting changes to combat, and ... when I finish it ... configuration for DD items by type, armor by class, plus clothes/naked.

 

Probably, the version after that will have DF willpower as an input.

 

It's more that I get the usual flashes of brilliance, which then turn out to be horribly flawed, than lack of interest or utility. Mods like that tend to take a while for me to integrate because of the sheer power they can potentially provide. Skytweak was originally a way to get rid of Trade and Barter and a leveling hindrance mod, but now I use it for about ten different and essential things. SLD is in my build, it's just waiting for the proper inspiration and synergistic mechanic loops to appear in my head.

[Lozeak]

2 hours ago, Rob_J said:

Can I ask could you put more granularity into the options screen for deals. Say you don't want corsets but want the boots and gloves and collar on. Or buy off the deals a bit a time instead of all or nothing, with say the later stages costing more so 500 for the 1st stage 1000 for the second stage, 1500 for the third 

 

A lot of these things are by design or built in a certain way.

 

Not being able to pay of a deal a little at a time... this is more a risk thing than anything else.

 

If you take a deal then for some reason you need to take another deal there is a chance you'll be forced to upgrade a exsisting deal making it harder to escape so you need to hold on to gold until you have enough or borrow some extra (gold mode can let you do this at times but that system is another thing that makes things harder so up to you!).

 

The only have the rule for certain stages like stage 2 but not 1 would take some time to make and a lot of tweaking so it's unlikely I'll ever do that. If it helps you could wear a harness instead of a corset though.

 

 

[Lupine00]

21 minutes ago, SkyAddiction said:

That's when I reversed the damage multipliers to difficulty, and it made all the difference. My followers don't really steal XP because there's so very little to be had in combat. Most combat leveling comes from training, which just feeds right back into the economy. It seems kind of ridiculous to get knocked down in two hits on novice, but when you have to deal four for the same and your follower can either make or break a fight by taking out a bandit, it feels much better than vanilla. I run away. A lot.

I'm not sure I'm entirely following what you did here. When you say reversed, do you mean, for each difficulty level, you swapped dealt vs received scale?

Wouldn't that make novice harder than adept etc? How is this different from picking a harder difficulty, as the hard difficulties increase taken and reduce dealt also.

What is the benefit of changing novice to have a hard damage balance? I'm guessing it's because it relates to some other aspect of the game you wanted to preserve, but I've only ever seen information about the difficulty modifying combat damage received/dealt; so anything else it might do is a bit ... secret?

 

Historically, I've scaled down damage taken and dealt across the board, so fights are longer and less random. This leads to more strikes, and more XP from combat I suppose, which is something that didn't bother me, as I was never trying to slow levelling.

 

For a while I had a huge set of modified dungeon levels. There's a mod somebody made, but it's insanely hard. I moderated it so it made more sense to me, and restored some of the newbie areas to being approachable - the original made draugr all high level, which walled you out of most quests.

[Lozeak]

The need for a having a follower...

 

It's something I do think about but I always come to the conclusion that it's something that needs to come from other mod or something I can work in later...

 

In one mod (petcollar) you'd be debuffed if you didn't have a follower or something while it worked I don't want to slap a debuff on a player for no reason.

So when I need a reason to get a follower when followers do all the things in my mod it's source it out of place for this mod.

 

When/If I make more mods it will be something I'll consider. 

The reason I need a follower in my game is DCL having a follower to get you out of those yokes and armbinders is insanely useful but of course if I get unlucky or gamble I could end up with a lot of debt and deals.

 

I did talk about a stalker system coming from this mod but that is well down on the list of things I want to do.

 

=====

 

Talking about cities and stuff...

 

I kinda want to make a devious followers system for city and apply the same mentality...

 

A lot of the ideas i have it are rough but things like you can only be registered to one city at a time... outside of that city's control guard may want taxes/claim you as a slave/not allowed to wear clothes in cities.

 

The real content is when your enslaved you could only loot and exist in a certain region of skyrim and if you left and got caught it would extend increase buy out of being a slave..

 

Of course as a slave you'd need a owner to leave cities and stuff too hence the need for a follower.

 

either way.... all rough ideas and well I have too many things I want to make. I do know I won't consider this until DD has some furniture.

[Lupine00]

29 minutes ago, Lozeak said:

The only have the rule for certain stages like stage 2 but not 1 would take some time to make and a lot of tweaking so it's unlikely I'll ever do that. If it helps you could wear a harness instead of a corset though.

It was apparent that you could re-engineer a lot of the existing deals so they are much more mix-and-match. It's work though. Definitely work. Lots of it.

So, for a given deal, you have a set of pre-requisites - deals you must have to enable it.

 

Then when you get a new deal, it's chosen randomly from all enabled deals (deals that you meet the requirements for).

 

Pre-requisites would normally be lower level deals, but wouldn't have to be. They could in some rare cases be of the same level, or higher.

Such a system would allow a level three "slut" deal to unlock a level one "bondage" deal, that might unlock a broad range of level two bondage themed deals. When you go to level two, one of those deals is selected at random, so it can be different each time.

(Basically, it would be data driven, off some jcontainers data, each rule is a self contained script).

Would be a bit like XDFF in implementation. I ended up making something a bit similar for my profoundly stalled follower mod, but that was neither about deals, nor slavery rules, so slightly different to both cases.

 

I thought I might do such a thing when I first started playing with the DF source, but after a while decided I'd be better of re-architecting how all the dialog works too at that point. It was too big an ambition, and for a mod the actual author is actively developing anyway.

[Lupine00]

9 minutes ago, Lozeak said:

I won't consider this until DD has some furniture.

Unless Kimy is making it for her new DCL quest content, that might be a ... long ... way off.

 

Furniture is easy, it's animations to use it that are hard  

Animations are the one big weak spot in modded Skyrim. Fantastic textures, great meshes, ENB, looks awesome. Change all your game rules, do whatever ... but the only animations that really add something new are sex, and they have zero gameplay value. Sure, there are some new walks, and runs, and jumps, and combat moves, but they just look a bit different - they don't add new play. When it comes to animations for actual new things you can do, there's not much. Zaz furniture has victim animations, but nothing for the antagonist in most cases. That one-sided nature makes it all but useless to the average modder.

[SkyAddiction]

13 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

I'm not sure I'm entirely following what you did here. When you say reversed, do you mean, for each difficulty level, you swapped dealt vs received scale?

Wouldn't that make novice harder than adept etc? How is this different from picking a harder difficulty, as the hard difficulties increase taken and reduce dealt also.

What is the benefit of changing novice to have a hard damage balance? I'm guessing it's because it relates to some other aspect of the game you wanted to preserve, but I've only ever seen information about the difficulty modifying combat damage received/dealt; so anything else it might do is a bit ... secret?

 

Historically, I've scaled down damage taken and dealt across the board, so fights are longer and less random. This leads to more strikes, and more XP from combat I suppose, which is something that didn't bother me, as I was never trying to slow levelling.

 

For a while I had a huge set of modified dungeon levels. There's a mod somebody made, but it's insanely hard. I moderated it so it made more sense to me, and restored some of the newbie areas to being approachable - the original made draugr all high level, which walled you out of most quests.

 

Sorry, that was poorly explained. Reverse damage taken and just play on novice. It's an efficiency thing. Controlling one variable instead of two. It works in tandem with the skill level cost power to force training and slow leveling.

[Lozeak]

10 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

It was apparent that you could re-engineer a lot of the existing deals so they are much more mix-and-match. It's work though. Definitely work. Lots of it.

So, for a given deal, you have a set of pre-requisites - deals you must have to enable it.

 

Then when you get a new deal, it's chosen randomly from all enabled deals (deals that you meet the requirements for).

 

Pre-requisites would normally be lower level deals, but wouldn't have to be. They could in some rare cases be of the same level, or higher.

Such a system would allow a level three "slut" deal to unlock a level one "bondage" deal, that might unlock a broad range of level two bondage themed deals. When you go to level two, one of those deals is selected at random, so it can be different each time.

(Basically, it would be data driven, off some jcontainers data, each rule is a self contained script).

Would be a bit like XDFF in implementation. I ended up making something a bit similar for my profoundly stalled follower mod, but that was neither about deals, nor slavery rules, so slightly different to both cases.

 

I thought I might do such a thing when I first started playing with the DF source, but after a while decided I'd be better of re-architecting how all the dialog works too at that point. It was too big an ambition, and for a mod the actual author is actively developing anyway.

 

Basically, it's an insane amount of work to the point it would be dumb to do.

 

Each stage is built on top of each other...

Fix one MCM options and lots of conditioning and rewriting a lot of dialogs

Or rewriting the deal system to be more script based .... 

 

So I think about this and 2 things pop in my head ... why not make more content instead and do I really want to rework something that works!

 

It does not mean I can't add more dynamic deals later on which is probably the best solution.

 

Example deal stages that add random rules (XDFF system maybe) maybe then if you have all the devices of a deal it could activate stage 3 of another deal.

(Not making it just potentially)

 

My next to do with rework willpower system then make another mod if I can ... it's something I feel will use certain DDs to make Skyrim more roguelike but I got to get through the new year first.

 

7 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

Unless Kimy is making it for her new DCL quest content, that might be a ... long ... way off.

 

Furniture is easy, it's animations to use it that are hard  

Animations are the one big weak spot in modded Skyrim. Fantastic textures, great meshes, ENB, looks awesome. Change all your game rules, do whatever ... but the only animations that really add something new are sex, and they have zero gameplay value. Sure, there are some new walks, and runs, and jumps, and combat moves, but they just look a bit different - they don't add new play. When it comes to animations for actual new things you can do, there's not much. Zaz furniture has victim animations, but nothing for the antagonist in most cases. That one-sided nature makes it all but useless to the average modder.

 

it can be a long way off. I have a million things I want to make/write ^^.

[Darkwing241]

Is there any chance of an option to make it so deals give a % reduction to gold upkeep, rather than just a lump sum of gold?  Or better yet a mix of both?  Sometimes lump sum cash is not a very logical choice to get out of debt, especially when the deal likely will make it harder to earn money in the long run.  IMO the goal of most devious mods is to lose while trying to win.  Sometimes I feel like to get to the fun parts of this mod I either have to intentionally take bad deals for no reason (to get behind and let things snowball) or I have to make the setting so intensely hard that things go out of control right away.

 

With a (randomized?) mix of both the system would kind of self balance between players who are really trying to keep their character out of debt (but still want  to experience your content) and players who want to role-play a sucker and take out a bunch of loans they won't be able to repay.  Players would just reject deals they don't want, while having an incentive to actually ask for them (because they are looking for a certain type of reward).

 

It seems like it could be as simple as copy and paste with a small change. You would just have Deal version A and Deal version B on your list to choose from... I also don't know what I'm talking about do this could be insanely difficult or time consuming.

[Lozeak]

21 minutes ago, Darkwing241 said:

Is there any chance of an option to make it so deals give a % reduction to gold upkeep, rather than just a lump sum of gold?  Or better yet a mix of both?  Sometimes lump sum cash is not a very logical choice to get out of debt, especially when the deal likely will make it harder to earn money in the long run.  IMO the goal of most devious mods is to lose while trying to win.  Sometimes I feel like to get to the fun parts of this mod I either have to intentionally take bad deals for no reason (to get behind and let things snowball) or I have to make the setting so intensely hard that things go out of control right away.

 

With a (randomized?) mix of both the system would kind of self balance between players who are really trying to keep their character out of debt (but still want  to experience your content) and players who want to role-play a sucker and take out a bunch of loans they won't be able to repay.  Players would just reject deals they don't want, while having an incentive to actually ask for them (because they are looking for a certain type of reward).

 

It seems like it could be as simple as copy and paste with a small change. You would just have Deal version A and Deal version B on your list to choose from... I also don't know what I'm talking about do this could be insanely difficult or time consuming.

 

Maybe I'll look into it. I think it would be simple to add.

 

For a lot of adult content, a lot of good content is behind losing because it fits thematically. The issue is making it fun to play the game and try to win while the player will lose occasionally. It's actually a challenge and games that do it well are RARE!

 

The 3 systems I feel that work...

 

The YO-YO system where one you fail there is a way back to normal (this was the original concept of the mod hence why debt per day stops when you're enslaved)

 

The survival system.... as time goes on the game gets harder in some way and eventually, you will lose the fun is seeing how far you can get.... (Debt per level/Willpower)

 

Event system.... events that make the game hard for a certain amount of time so you will lose(for a while) and the way to trigger them is random so it's unavoidable (DCL!)

 

The last is a system is a game that is hard to the point you will lose but with time you'll get good enough to win. (not in this mod :P)

[SkyAddiction]

49 minutes ago, Lozeak said:

Maybe I'll look into it. I think it would be simple to add.

 

For a lot of adult content, a lot of good content is behind losing because it fits thematically. The issue is making it fun to play the game and try to win while the player will lose occasionally. It's actually a challenge and games that do it well are RARE!

 

The 3 systems I feel that work...

 

Don't underplay the fact that you've created a very versatile mod which almost seamlessly integrates with a lot of the content here and will happily generate synergy with a vast number of non-adult mods. My avoidance-style build means I rarely take deals, but the threat of disaster from other mods means DF provides a huge amount of variable content to address it. Not to mention you singlehandedly fixed the one glaring hole in Skyrim's stupid economy, which ended the seemingly endless cycle of games turning stale and forcing a restart. 

[galgat]

  Really like what you have done with this, and glad that some one actually played my Oblivion mod's :), and is still around

Something in the MCM that might be easier, and although it would be a cheat, is and option to move the amount owed to the  follower, and the willpower up and down. slider maybe? For me testing different Ideas with the mod that would be helpful. ( sure it would be cheating, but It could be nice too I think )

   I saw where someone asked for and Option to not have the corset, not sure how you have stair stepped the Deal's, but that might be nice, I have never really liked the Corset much, as it has always been a problem to remove, or sometimes has been for Me. ( the transparent look though is pretty nice )

   I do think they have fixed this in the Newer versions of DDI, but its earlier problems left a bad taste for me, and I learned to hate it.. LOL.  Not a biggy, but could be nice to opt out of a couple of the item's.

    Over all, knowing how messed up the casting can get for scripting ( sense they removed the Scripts from the ESP ) which makes searching for script problems or changing multiple script usage of a variable or fragment of code harder, and doing the scene's can be real time consuming. You have done a fantastic job on this.

   It is your mod do it the way you want.. I like it.

[strawberrysnolf]

Having a bug since a few versions:

 

Can't ask for a deal. If i want all i can select is the "How does it work" and "Nevermind" thing :X 

[Lupine00]

12 hours ago, Lozeak said:

So I think about this and 2 things pop in my head ... why not make more content instead and do I really want to rework something that works!

Well, yeah... That is pretty much what I concluded too.

 

When you look at deals naively, from the end-user side, it seems like they could easily be mix-and-match in many cases.

Underneath, the way they are built is much more wired together. Stages aren't discrete, interchangeable derivatives of a base object, they are just a state within a rule quest, and you cannot just pull them apart.

 

Anyway... looking forward to new content  

 

 

I made some changes to willpower loss for myself, trying to make it a bit less all-or-nothing.

 

Some things I tried:

 

• Scaled down losses for rapes by adding a "roll lower than existing willpower" check before applying them.
• Gave followers extra lives as willpower dropped. (Not lives actually - see below).

Actually, now I think about it, that's not true, I think I changed that other stat ... resistance or whatever it's called, so it got bigger, not smaller.

Or maybe I did both. Don't have access to the code just now, so I can't check.

 

Update: It was resistance. Not lives. See new post below for more detail.

 

 

It made a difference, but there's still a sharp transition between having a deal that gets you regularly raped and not having one.

 

It's that switch point that makes it hard to get a smooth progression over willpower.

 

 

I also added my long wished for feature: ability to dismiss follower linked to willpower.

 

Like gold control, it checks each day to decide if the follower feels dismissable or not.

At 10 willpower, you can always do it if you aren't in debt etc. At 0 willpower, never.

 

Was a while ago now. I would need to go back and check the code.

I think actually it was totally blocked on will below 4 or something like that, because it made it easy to work the dialog conditions.

[Lupine00]

I had modified the code in _DFTools.psc thus:

I then made the changes in red. (See inside spoiler section).

 

Spoiler

 

; Returns updated willpower (new)
Int Function ReduceWill()

    Int will = _DFlowWill.GetValue() as Int
    will -= 1
    If will < 0
        will = 0
    Else
        MCM.noti("Will" , will)
    Endif
    
    _DFlowWill.SetValue(will)
    
    Return will
    
EndFunction

 

Int Function IncreaseWill(int by)

    Int will = _DFlowWill.GetValue() as Int
    
    will += Utility.RandomInt(1, by)
    
    If will >= 10
        will = 10
    ElseIf will <= 5
        will = 5 3 ; this made will values between 0 and 5 rarer than expected
    EndIf
    
    _DFlowWill.SetValue(will)
    MCM.noti("Will" , will)
    
    Return will
    
EndFunction

 

Function ReduceResist(int by)

    Int resist = _DFlowResist.GetValue() as Int

    While by > 0
        resist -= by
        If resist <= 0
            Int will = ReduceWill()
            by = -resist
            resist = will 20 - will
            If resist < 5
                resist = 5
            Endif
        EndIf
    EndWhile
    
    _DFlowResist.SetValue(resist)

EndFunction

 

Function IncreaseResist(int lo, int hi)
    ;Debug.notification("Firing")
    
    Int resist = _DFlowResist.GetValue() as Int
    Int will = _DFlowWill.GetValue() as Int
    
    resist += Utility.RandomInt(lo, hi)
    
    While will < resist && resist > 5
        If will > 5
            resist -= will
        Else
            resist -=  5
        Endif
        will += 1
    Endwhile
    
    If will > 10
        will = 10
        resist = 10
    EndIf
    
    _DFlowResist.SetValue(resist)
    _DFlowWill.SetValue(will)
    
    MCM.noti("Will" , will)
EndFunction

 

Hopefully, it's easier to read and see how it works in my refactored version. I was also able to stop use of the script-scoped variable Leftovers, which was creating the impression that the interactions between the functions was more complex than they really are. I made this kind of refactor wholesale, which unfortunately makes my code pretty much unmergeable with the Lozeak main line.

 

This gives you 'normal' resist if you have willpower 10, but, as your willpower drops, instead of losing resist, you gain it. This means it takes several more rapes to lose each willpower point, and the increased resist somewhat offsets the increasing frequency of rapes. Obviously, you could reduce the magic number I introduced as low as 11 and still have it work, allowing you to tune how strong-willed the PC is. I think I may have played around with it at 15 as well as 20, but I can't remember if I noticed much difference.

 

Note:

Spoiler

I realise that this would actually "give" you willpower, if your will is low. I believe I have a mitigation for this in RestoreResist that sets resist to willpower-1 prior to running, then adds back the amount of resist removed, then cap the amount at 20. I'm not 100% sure this actually worked as intended, as in most cases you burn the excess resist up anyway. Probably, a setting of "15" would be more balanced, but I'm not sure it was all that obvious one way or the other in actual play. (Should have looked down).

 

Also, when you regained willpower and levelled, the code would jump you straight from 0 to 5, which was odd generous, making the values between 0 and 5 rarer than they might otherwise be, because you'd go straight to 5 when regaining willpower from 0. I know this seems an outlier, but because of the way this is "held over" if you don't get a good sleep it's not so rare.

 

In practice, IncreaseWill is normally called with a fixed value of 3, when you sleep at an good location, and aren't wearing restraints, and gained a level, so at will 0, you would get from 1 to 3 points, but this would be clamped up to a willpower of 5 no matter the result of the roll. Mostly it isn't called and it's just RestoreResist. Gaining levels gets rare enough this is perfectly good gameplay; again I'm fixating on the behaviour of willpower here.

 

If you doubt this, the original Lozeak code is as follows:

 

Spoiler

Function IncreaseWill(int a)
    Int Temp = _DflowWill.GetValue() as int
    Int Rnd = Utility.RandomInt(1 , a)
    Temp = Rnd + Temp
    If Temp >= 10
        _DflowWill.SetValue(10)
    Elseif Temp <= 5
        _DflowWill.SetValue(5)
    Else
        _DflowWill.SetValue(Temp)
    Endif
    MCM.noti("Will" , _DFlowWill.GetValue() as int)
EndFunction

Where 'Temp' contains the updated will value, and if it's <= 5, will is set to 5. the final case where will is set directly to Temp only occurs for will > 5 && will < 10.

I don't think this was an accident, it's a design decision designed to speed will recovery. However, I wanted to see a bigger range of will values more often, and thought recovery was easy enough even with the change. If you've dismissed your follower, recovery is somewhat inevitable.

 

 

It should be noted, that the fast transition of will from 10 to 0, or from 0 to 10 is not really a problem in itself. In the context of DF operation, it's perfectly fine for this to happen.

 

However, I'm hung up on the idea of using willpower to drive an SLD input, and so I want the values to be better distributed across the range  

 

For now, the likely way I'll use willpower in SLD is as one of the new "yes/no" (boolean) tests, that is either true or false, and it will simply test whether willpower is less than five or not. Trying to get more resolution out of it is pointless; it wasn't designed to deliver a smooth continuum.

 

 

[Lupine00]

Something I didn't tweak, but which is nagging at me now, is how willpower and devices interact.

 

DF is quite straightforward about this. If you have a lockable device on you (locked or not) you don't regain willpower normally.

 

 

I like the idea that certain devices could make more difference.

 

Hidden devices should count less. Visible devices should count more.

 

This can be done quite easily by tweaking the RestoreResist function.

(Note this restores willpower directly if you can sleep properly with no devices on, but that's not a case I'm interested in).

 

Currently, if you're bound, you get 1 to 10 resist back, or if you sleep in a crappy location, you also get 1 to 10 resist back.

 

I would be tempted to go for a rule that a collar, or "heavy bondage", or more than four items, blocks willpower restoration substantially, so you only get 1 to 5 resist.

Whereas, if you only one or two items that can be hidden under clothes - whether they are hidden or not - basically bra/corset/belt/piercings, you get 5 to 10 resist.

The 1 to 10 range would remain for all other cases.

 

That way, getting into serious bondage/enslavement would lead to quicker resistance decline than light bondage.

 

Though TBH, it might be quite hard for the player to tell the difference. Usually, in those cases, it's the rapes that suck away your willpower, and as the difference between simply getting average 5.5 resistance back and getting THREE solid willpower points, is substantial. Wearing any devices at all makes a huge difference (still).

At low willpower, each point costs 5 resist, so you can get at most two, but probably only one, or not even that. At higher willpower, you might not (seem to) get anything, because the resist gained is less than your will, and you might not get enough to "buy" a new point.

 

Getting willpower or resistance once you are getting seriously chain raped is all but irrelevant, because you hit the floor at 0, and anything that happens after that is just a brief "bounce".

 

There's nothing wrong with how it works overall, the gameplay outcomes are functional, but it does mean that minor tweaks to willpower mechanics in "high stress" situations are mostly for their own sake.

 

This leads to another minor point...