That's quite a project, I wish you success and thank you for taking it on.

I like everyone's ideas about making NPCs treat friendly fire like, well, friendly fire.

Another request I'll add to this thread is to add options to NPC and creature AI for recognizing when the player has a height advantage. Currently, a low level player can take out very high level opponents by simply jumping onto a rock. The opponent keeps running around in front of the rock while the player slowly ticks their health down with spells, arrows, or summoned minions.
If a creature were to recognize that enough time has passed where they did not get significantly closer to the player, but the creature's health managed to go down, then a few things could be tried. Such as jumping, switching to a ranged attack, or fleeing.

This may or may not be related to this mod idea (it kinda falls into the "friendly fire" notion), but a few times I have experienced the game treat the humanoids of the Oblivion realm as NPC's that can be "murdered" and "assaulted". After clearing out an Oblivion gate, Imperial guards treated me as a murderer and the Dark Brotherhood paid me a visit.

Thank you all for the great feedback!

Here are the ideas that I'm adding to the feature wishlist:

• NPCs will flee to their allies and come back with backup
  
• NPCs will not gang up on one target if there are enough people to take care of the problem already
  
• NPCs will forgive accidental friendly fire
  
• NPCs will heal each other if they have restoration spells
  
• NPCs will not stand around while you take pot shots at them from higher ground (I always wanted to make an NPC jumping mod)

@shadeMe: About disarmed NPCs picking up weapons. How bout this: Instead of just picking up weapons on the ground they will search dead bodies for weapons and armor then equip it? Also, if an NPC doesn't have a weapon (not disarmed) he will search for one if one is available nearby.

@PacificMorrowind: Yeah! Those Bruma NPCs always get killed in my game since they like working outside the city, close by to the Amazon hideout (added by OOO)

@Hasteric: Yes, this really isn't a Radiant AI mod since it doesn't deal with NPC schedules.. I just liked the acronym. Another name I came up with was Battle-Ready AI for NPCs but it sounded a bit too generic. Dunno what other ppl think.

@tejon: Yes! I was thinking of using the apostrophe too since it's already in the name. Plus it looks like the dot of the "i".

@claudekennilol: Unfortunately, this mod will not solve the behavior of that guard. That is more an oversight of the developer in making that quest. The guard saw those mages assaulting another person and assault (attacking someone first) always counts as a crime.

@Ludicrous: Bit off topic but I was actually thinking of making a sub-mod called "Natural Selection". Basically it would keep NPCs from getting themselves killed by running away when outmatched and finding guards/locking themselves in their homes/shops. I hate it when my NPCs die from OOO baddies.

Lastly, I've been coding straight for the past two weeks and I'm getting to the point where not much progress is being made since I'm so tired I can't think straight. So I'll be taking a break from developing this mod at the moment, but I'll keep updates posted on this thread.

No. For players like me out there that aim for realism, having some NPC magically take the armor off someone and put it on themselves instantaneously in the middle of battle is a big no-no.

Grabbing armor = Bad
Grabbing weapons = Good

Hrm.. how about shields and helmets? Also how do you feel about NPCs taking those items from corpses as opposed to only items that are lying on the ground?

Sheilds are fine, helmets are kinda iffy, I would say it depends on the type. Any helmet where you can see the players face would be fine to pick up. Like, npc's can grab a steel helmet, but not a deadric or dwarven. The reason for this is that full face helmets would be harder to take off and put on.

I'm fine with armor if it takes time for the NPC to equip the item. Heavy armor can take more time to equip. A NPC equipping armor in combat should be unable to do anything until he does. If he does decide to attack, the time should be reset to make him do the process all over again.

Also, if a NPC picks up a better weapon off the ground, then the NPC should drop the weapon they had before, not just put it in their inventory.

Okay, for now I think I will stick with weapons and shields. I'll give picking up armor more thought after I can prove the concept with the weapons.


I just tested it out today, NPCs cannot use locked doors they do not own, YAY! this will make things interesting :dance:

I want to make sure that this is dependent on the NPC's Aggression stat and their disposition toward the source of the friendly fire. Anyone with 100 Aggression should be completely unforgiving. I depend on this for at least one mod effect.

If you can find a way to work Confidence in there, that'd be pretty neat too... lower Confidence might make the NPC more likely to stick with their friends even if they're taking hits from same. A bit lower still, of course, and they'll just run.


Hehe. It's one of those lessons some of us have to learn the hard way... take a break, or you'll burn out and we'll never see RELz!

I want RELz! This mod looks amazing.

I think that if the PC is involved with a battle the npc cannot flee. Or if you start a fight and the npc see that YOU need help they should rush in and help out. So what I mean is I have a companion like that guard from bruma helping me in the OB gate, Even if I can't take him he shouldn't start running around looking for help.

Also NPC allies should take in account your combat method and attack the enemy accordingly. So If I want to use a bow to shoot my enemies down the npc will want to get behind the enemy to attack and not in my LOS.

Just a question, will this break any quests? Like that guy from Skingrad the crazy one. Will he still fight or just run away?

I think the name INSTNCTS works better for the mod you're trying to achieve. BRAINS refers more to brighter NPC AI in general. If you are trying to accomplish that then I hope you will include other non combat things kind of like the one Bethesda tried to create. So far it looks awesome, I can't wait!

tejon, I've learned that you are very thorough and detail-oriented. I love that about your mods and I hope to do the same with mine. Yes, many aspects of the mod will take into account confidence, aggression, disposition, responsibility, etc., etc. If Bethesda put it in there, why not use it right? Also, I took a short break from BRAINS/INST'NCTS by developing another mod hehe once I get it working well enough I'll include it as a new feature.


You'll be glad to know that I've developed a system to track who the PC is fighting and accordingly factor that into any allies decision to flee or continue fighting There will also be a feature to have NPCs come and help you when in need.. working on that right now actually.

NPCs will eventually take combat style into account and develop attack strategies. This is pretty complicated though and prally won't make it to the first release. Especially since the OBSE functions I need are not there yet (scruggs has generously agreed to add some functions I need. what a stand up guy)

As to whether this mod will break quests.. hehe dude it probably will break something. It's pretty complicated to build responses to various different scenarios and I simply cannot account for every possible situation. One solution is that I can selectively disable BRAINS on scripted NPCs, a.k.a. quest NPCs, but this will also mean it won't work on a good number of other NPCs and possibly companion mods. Honestly, I don't know at this point, but I'll try my best m'kay?

SMRT NPCs
Strangely More Reactive Thinking NPCs

(hehe, homer spelled it SMRT... >.>)

BAIT Better AI Targeting

Strangely More Reactive And Thinking - SMART

SMART - Smart Merchants And Residents of Tamriel

Damn your recursive acronym!

SMART Merchants Shop S-Mart...?

lol. um.. how about Behavioral Revamp of Artificial Intelligence for NPCs?

I really like BRAIN as an acronym for the mod, but as people have pointed out, radiant AI is somewhat separate from the combat AI. SMRT/SMART/BAIT don't quite capture the entire mod.

Don't forget DW's point about searchability. The more common the word, the harder it is to find the mod. Clever misspellings are sometimes a bonus.

AWARE: Actors Will Attack Real Enemies
AWAKE: Allies Won't Attack / Kill Eachother
SMARTIES: Syclonix's Mod Arguably Representing Thoughtful, Intelligent Engagement Strategies
NADS: NPCs Aren't So Dumb
HIPPOCAMPUS: Higher Intelligence Properly Placed Over Cooperating Actors Making Pugilism Unlikely, Sailor!

This is why I rarely use acronyms.

Spoiler

I know it expands to NASD.

Why not UERAI? - Unofficial Enhanced Radiant AI
or just ERAI - Enhanced Radiant AI

It just goes well with UOP / USIP / FCOM / OOO, meaning hard to decipher for newbies :liplick:

Oh, I like NADS, that way it could also function if the mod turned out not to work!

:lmao: lol. i'm impressed. I especially like SMARTIES and HIPPOCAMPUS. Anyone else wanna second?

:lmao:

Someone's got too much time on his hands!

This thread is starting to remind me of the Campaign for the Liberation and Integratation of Terrifying Organisms and their Reintegration Into Society

Sorry - couldn't resit. Getting a great acronym is bordering on vital on academic publishing in computer science these days. Its occasionally bizarre. Sometimes you get the feeling researchers come up with the acronyms first and the systems second

BAIT sounds great

Can't wait to see this mods finished , it is going to be awesome, wonderful job Syclonix!