NEW VERSION of Charon Improved released today at Nexus July 11, 2010

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12221

I've rewritten my original post to reflect what Charon now does. I'll detail the changes from the original release in my comment in the thread. If you go to download and update PLEASE read what I've written there about how to go about it. I've made so many changes you will want to do it carefully to enjoy what I've done rather than be frustrated by it.

VERSION 1.1 CHANGES:

1. COMBAT WHILE SNEAKING: In his sneak/follow/fight package Charon will now only engage the enemy once the player pulls out his weapon and is in combat. So if you always have your weapon out Charon will only start to fight once you are in combat, but if you keep your weapon holstered he will not attack even when you are taking damage. Once you pull out your weapon he will engage. He will disengage after each encounter unless they are extremely close together. You can help him calm down again by holstering your weapon, since that is the trigger (along with you entering combat).

2. CHATTING WITH FELLOW COMPANIONS WHILE FOLLOWING: He now talks to Sydney, Clover and Jericho while following. Once you hire them he will talk to them at around 10ish minute intervals. If you bother to hire one of the others and you find the intervals to be too long or short you can contact me and I can tell you how to change it. I put it there because of the number of lines I was able to come up with. I didn't want the repetition to become to boring. Also, if you are getting no dialogue between them try putting him at his longest following distance. He needs to see the other follower to talk to him/her. Also, he doesn'/shouldn't talk to anybody/say anything when he's sneaking, so keep that in mind.

MORE NEW STUFF: You can toggle his infinite ammo on/off in the personal weapon menu under his trade menu, I changed him to be Essential by default. I changed the CTFTD so that it is no longer a quest item. I decided I wanted to be able to hotkey it on my controller, which I couldn't do when it was a quest item. So it now has a world model, which unfortunately, is a sensor module. Beth didn't make a geomapper world model as it's a quest item in the game so it never got dropped. And I made a few fixes from the first release. I've added an esp for the four human vanilla followers. See below description.


THE BASICS OF CHARON IMPROVED:

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! If you do not start the mod before you hire Charon you will not get the CTFTD from him. You so want this! Look below toward the bottom of the page for the item number so you can get it through the console. You'll want it to call him back to you (so useful for followers in general) and in case he decides to go on a walkabout or something if one of his many, many packages goes haywire which is always possible and why I added it in the first place.

The CTFTD (The Companion Tracking and Fast Travel Device) is my version of the radio that so many mods have. It isn’t a radio, but works to find him and bring him back to you. It can remotely get him out of the Ninth Circle if he’s been fired back to there, and as a benefit of that, can take him into Raven Rock and all of the DLCs. It is extremely useful during the game for retrieving him if he wanders off too far, or if you leave him somewhere and don’t want to go back to get him. It will also “reset” him if he goes haywire and won’t stop doing an action you’ve asked/ordered him to do.

COMBAT STYLE Charon now always fights with his Ranged Weapon only. So, even if he’s three feet from a target he will not use his melee weapon. This is his default Combat Style. He still unsheaths his Combat Knife when he is searching for enemies, but even if they appear while his knife is out and they are a few feet away he will put it away and use his ranged weapon. He does have a Combat choice now for using both types of weapons and will then fight using his melee weapon when he is up close to the target. That choice is made in the Tactics menu.

NOT ENGAGING IN COMBAT I’ve implemented a couple of forms of this. (1) There is an option to put him on a “Wait” where he will stay put in a location and not fight (Tactics Menu). He will try to hide if there is cover very close by. And (2) there is an option to tell him to follow while sneaking and do not engage in combat at all. This is effective all of the time.

FOLLOW He has five follow options. I’ve added a very short follow option. He’s right on the player’s tail and tends not to get lost/wander off as often , and two sneak options. The one in which he does not attack at all, and one in which he will attack as usual. Both sneak options follow at a pretty far distance.

INDEPENDENT ACTION He has a Sandbox mode, in addition to Wait, but I've also added the ability for him to go off on his own in Megaton and Rivet City. The player has to retrieve him and it’s all done in dialogue as a conversation. He will chose randomly from a couple of options what he is interested in doing when asked (one of those options is nothing though). I’ve also added the ability to tell him to “take a load off” and find a place to relax. It’s a way for you to tell him to find a piece of furniture, or what his AI will identify as furniture, and he’ll plant himself there indefinitely. Also you can tell him to sit down and have a drink in Moriarty’s and The Muddy Rudder. Also, once you have gone to see Three Dog and have gotten the directive to go get the Virgo II Dish, a dialogue option will appear in his menu (where you can tell him to do other things) and you can tell him to go get the Dish for you in the Museum of Technology. He’ll run off and return to you some time later with the Dish. It doesn’t take him too long and you can watch his progress on your Pipboy map.

DIALOGUE There is more of it. He has more Idle pvssyr when he’s walking around. He talks to you occasionally. You can “earn” a friendly activity/conversation with him that you might discover depending on what you do with him. He talks to a few NPCs in the Wasteland here and there.
Regarding talking to other followers and random conversations with some other NPCs around the Wasteland. If you are interested in follower dialogue action I would recommend Sydney, Jericho and Clover as they are the ones I've made dialogue for; be sure to take Charon with you for the entire Stealing Independence Quest. DRG6520’s Sydney mod works great with my mod as does ChromeHaster’s Clover. What happens between Sydney and Charon isn’t much, but was a brilliant idea provided by a fellow forumer at the Bethesda forums, and my tester, ghoulsrpeople2. LOAD Charon Improved AFTER the other companion mods in your load order.

Wait, there’s more:
-There's the requisite dialogue option to toggle him ESSENTIAL/Unessential (Tactics Menu). His default is Essential. He will NOT die unless the player changes that.
-The PC can trade him for his “personal weapons”; his combat shotty and a new weapon that I've given him. When the PC talks to him about it in the trade menu there is also an option to return the weapon in the menu. This allows him to have unlimited ammo for the weapon even after the PC has removed it.
-He uses StealthBoys via dialogue. (If you put more than 1 StealthBoy in his inventory he will us them all at once so give them to him via the dialogue option in his Tactics Menu.)
-If you talk to him about it in dialogue he will agree to take a good Energy Weapon and learn to use it.
- There is a dialogue option that pops up when he is injured out of combat that allows the PC to tell him to use a stimpak, which he does, complete with idle animation.
-I've implemented a dialogue option for when he’s off chasing enemies, which he has a terrible habit of doing. It calms him down. It doesn’t work all the time. If he is too close to the action it just DOES NOT WORK. In order for it to work all the time I’d have to make him cower and flee which is not appropriate to his personality. I mean, he’s chasing them down because he is so aggressive, to have him flee suddenly because I’ve said so makes no sense. If I could make him just walk off I would totally do it. So, I’ve left it in because sometimes it is really useful and works
-I've added Idle Animations to his Follow packages so that when the player has finished combat, for instance, and turns around and looks at Charon he isn’t standing there like a cardboard cutout.
-I’ve increased his starting health and one of the esps has given him red hair and blue eyes.
-Because he will sneak and follow at the same time, I made him a Head Wrap that works like the CSA. You will find it in the Ninth Circle after you’ve hired him.

REQUIREMENTS Broken Steel is required to play this mod.

COMPATIBILITY/LOAD ORDER Charon is compatible with FWE. Charon isn't compatible with Phalanx (or FOOK then). He can't be used with mods that script him, like Companion Behaviour Overhaul and can't be used with SCC. I've played with Better Companions and 0hFollowersHireContinued and he is fine if CharonImproved is lower in the load order. If you play with Followers Relax you will need to put it after my mod for it to be effective with the vanilla followers and it will mess up Charon’s wait.
CREDIT ghoulsrpeople2 for giving me the most excellent idea of having Sydney be involved. Thanks.

Mod looks really great. I have Dl'd and installed, but have not yet hired Charon yet.

Charon being my favorite follower (the only one I can take everywhere), I love the majority of the idea of this mod, however I am not too keen on his hairstyle (just my opinion, maybe it's just me) I just got used to his default style, I think it fits him better (IMO).

aside from that one gripe I really look forward to seeing what you have accomplished with him.

Very interesting. I've already hired Charon. Can I fire him, install your mod, and then hire him again?

I'm going to DL later on today. Although, I don't think it'll work for me. The Ninth Circle is bugged for me this play through. I've tried to hire Charon earlier but he just stood there. Don't worry though, I deleted all the saves related to me attempting to hire Charon, so....hopefully when I go back there it'll let me.

Be sure to come back and let me know what you think after you've taken him out. And thanks for bringing up the hairstyle thing. I'd forgotten to put up a version without the fancy new hair. It's up now at Nexus.

You don't need to fire him. You can just add the mod and all of the dialogue, etc will be there. What you won't get is the CTFTD. Here's the item code for it if you want to console it. XX001C57. I feel the need to say something responsible here about adding mods mid-game (even though I do it myself) and remind you to back up at least a couple of saves (if you don't already) so if your game gets all messed up you have something to go back to and you haven't lost your gameplay.

Thanks. It looks really good - weird to see Charon with fancy hair and business suit.

I have a problem however. Charon just wanders off away from me. I tried to tell him to wait, and after confirming that he would wait till I returned for him he just continued on his path. I tried to tell him to follow me closely, but he just moved on. I followed him from Megaton and almost to Tenpenny Towers where he killed an enemy and got stuck inside a rock or something. Strange. Maybe there's something in my load order or something. I disabled Phalanx Vanilla Hire and All Companions Essential, but this issue still occured.

I typed "player.additem XX001C57" in the console but it says item is not found.

Edit: Haha.. I'm a noob. XX represents the load order number... right? I will try that!

Ya, that's having Phalanx in there I'm guessing. No matter if you have removed it with Gary or whatever Phalanx is all powerful and FUBARs my version of Charon. I think you might need to hire him in a new game. Sorry. There is a great mod, Alternate Start, that gets you out of the Vault in about 5 minutes if you are interested in going that route.

Yes, that's right. You can try using the CTFTD to get him to do what he is supposed to do, but asking him to follow you should have worked. If the CTFTD doesn't work, then you will probably need to start a new game. Please let me know what happens.

I think it's working. I added the CTFTD and let Charon wander off to wherever he was going. I waited six hours and used the CTFTD to locate him. He was in Ronald Laren's shack in Girdershade. First thing I heard when after teleporting there was Charon telling Ronald to "watch the attitude, human". Funny

Anyway, I fast travelled back to Megaton but Charon didn't follow. I then used the CTFTD to place him next to me, which it did. However he just wandered off again. So I waited another six hours and teleported to his location. Once again he was hanging out in Ronald's crib. I told him to wait there while I fast travelled to Megaton. Then I fast travelled back to Girdershade and told Charon to come with me. And finally, after fast travelling back to Megaton he followed me. He seems to be following me around now.

Thanks for helping. I will post an update if I run into more issues.

Well, I'm interested in hearing about that. The only time I've had him insist on going to see Ronald Laren was in a dirty save, but that encounter may turn out to be an issue, but he never does it in a clean game/save. So, if he starts acting weird again, just know, it's because you've added him in the middle of a game, and you have issues. They may crop up again. To get a perfectly performing Charon you will need to start a new game. But, good luck, and as long as you have the CTFTD with you there should be a way for you to pull him out of any mischief. You can always PM me if you get stuck and want to problem solve how to get him out of it.

:) llama

Thank you. Do you think AllCompanionsEssential.esp will mess things up if it's loaded before Charonimproved.esp? It only marks all vanilla followers as essential.

If you load this mod after ACE, Charon will no longer be essential. If you load this mod before ACE, all changes made to Charon's NPC by Llama will be overridden.


P.S. Might give this one a shot myself, although I'm not really a fan of companions.

Hi Pistolero! Thanks for answering while I was away doing some RL stuff. It always makes me laugh that you create companion mods but don't like companions! If you take Charon out for a test drive be sure to let me know what you think.

@thorbjoern - I wasn't familiar with AllCompanionsEssential so I went and checked it out at Nexus and when I saw it was Princess Stomper's mod I remembered a thead she'd posted about it being a script. So that made me a little worried about compatibility so I went and DL'd it and did a test. Here's the scoop. It doesn't matter where you put it in the load order, Charon will stay essential because the mod is there. Even if you go into his dialogue and change him to unessential the change doesn't take effect. I'm not sure this is a big deal, since you obviously want your companions to be essential and that seems to be the only thing her mod does. So, I'd say put it above CharonImproved in the load order and call it done. It still makes Clover essential sitting there I checked that.

Good luck. With every character I am concerned the bug will happen. I always save before I enter the Museum and then one more time before I enter the Ninth Circle.

Update on Charon.

Finally made it to the mall this morning. Hired Charon, then took him to get Lincolns repeater ( he died. then realized I never gave him any armor :facepalm:) After a reload all went well.

On to get GNR up and running now, so I give him a new weapon and some ammo, which he didn't use... until I asked him for his weapon, Didn't give him enough ammo though, he found new weapon anyway. Charon never once used his combat shotty. He did however, pull out his knife briefly while hunting down super mutants at the mall.

What I am wondering is, Is this the intended effect with Charon using weapons (I am using several weapons mods if that helps). I did get him to use the weapon I gave him, but as I said, I had to take away his scoped .44 before he would use it, Or did I miss something in his dialog options.

1. You can make him essential in his Tactics menu if you want to do so. Talk to him about his chances for survival.

2. About the weapons. So what should happen is this (if the player has added no other weapons to his inventory). He has his original shotty in his inventory which is unchanged from vanilla when he is carrying it. I gave him his new scoped .44. If you take away the .44 he will equip the shotty. If you take away the shotty he will then equip his combat knife. I'm not sure I'm understanding if you are having a problem with him. Is he using the weapon you want him to use? Just like in vanilla, you need to take weapons away from him with higher DPS if you don't want him to use them because he'll pick them over what you want him to use if he has them in his inventory. And yes, he will pull out his combat knife when he is hunting enemies, but if you haven't changed his combat style in the Tactics Menu away from Ranged to Both, he will changed back to his ranged weapon when he attacks (or even if you do change him to Both he will use his ranged weapon if you don't give him a better melee weapon v. his current ranged weapon).

Let me know if I answered your question.

not having any problems with him. Sorry, I think that I posted before I thought It out. :shrug:

I did figure out how to make him essential after doing a little reading.

Normally what I would do i is to either remove the ammo, or do as you suggest and remove the weapon. My mistake for not realizing this first.

Great job on this mod. :tops: It make Charon so much better now than he already was.

Oh, I'm so glad you like him! He's my fav follower too and I take him out with every character, and after literally hundreds of hours of playing the game with him on the 360 I was dying to do something about all of his shortcomings and make him even better.

I posted on nexus, but thought I ought to post here as well.

I'm loving this mod so far. Charon rocks!

I did run into something weird. When asked to see his shotgun through his dialogue option, as opposed to swapping from inventories, Charon gives it to me and 200 rounds. Even though in his inventory he only had 20 shells. So I give it back to him and try it again, through the dialogue option again and receive the gun +200 shells again. So I gave them all back to him. Just an FYI, wasn't sure if this was known or intended, but it's a potential for never running out of shotgun shells and making tons of cash in game. I wouldn't abuse it, but prolly cause I'm weird.

I'm glad you like him! So with the shells. You aren't actually getting Charon's version of the weapon and Charon has unlimited ammo that you don't have access to either. The 20 shells he has in his inventory is just for show. I give you 200 shells so you have enough to keep you in shells for awhile. It's true that the number has nothing to do with what Charon has in his inventory, but I want the player to be able to use the weapon for awhile (I hadn't really thought about how stupid that looks before you brought it up, but ya, that doesn't make any sense does it). When I first created the set-up I was play-testing with a very small number of shells and got stuck out in the middle of the Wasteland with only a 10mm pistol and no ammo which is why I upped it so high. I figure we are all playing on the PC and can console all the ammo we want at any time, so I wasn't too worried about it. I was waiting for someone to come and complain about there being too much just because it is too much. Ya, you could totally exploit it. Especially with the scoped .44 and the .44 ammo. If I get enough feedback that this is just a bad idea (too much ammo) I'll lower it when I release an update. But I won't be putting out one for awhile unless a bug shows up that I need to fix right away.

EDIT: Okay, I just went and read your post at the Nexus. Ya, well, infinite ammo is bad. I don't really know what to say about that. I guess I could lower the number of shells he gives you to 20 to match his inventory or give you none. But I don't want to do that. I want him to give me shells when I'm playing. Also, if you return the weapon through the "personal weapons" menu he won't have more ammo in his inventory. What do you think?

EDIT 2: This is what I posted at Nexus and is how I've decided to handle it:

Yes, infinite ammo for the player could be bad. The scoped .44 could create the same problem. If you return the weapon to him through the "Personal Weapons" menu this won't be a problem in his inventory and he will resume using his own infinite ammo and his own version of the shotgun. If you don't want him to have his default infinite ammo then you can return the weapon through the regular menu.

But, back to the infinite ammo exploit potential. I think I will change the amount of ammo distributed to the player when Charon loans you his weapon when I release an update. I think you make a good point. It's stupid that he gives more than he has in his inventory. However, if a player chooses to exploit the system I've created to make money or play the game in a way he/she enjoys more I think that is okay too. I've exploited Sydney's gun many, many times and enjoyed it everytime. I don't feel a great need to crush that if it's possible.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

I forgot about PC console cheats anyhow. If anyone wanted to cheat they could do it really much more efficiently there. :facepalm: Anyhow, really digging the experience. I can't wait to see what else he has in store for me!

Just wanted to mention another one of those "playing without starting a new game quirks." I had just downloaded Charon Improved, but didn't use it on a new character. I then fast travelled to Megaton to get healed, and decided to wait for the Clinic to open. Apparently, Charon decided to show up, and forced me out of my rest. Acting purely on instinct, I shot him point-blank with a hunting rifle. The funny thing is, I had never seen Charon before. Is this just related to me not using a new game, or is there possibly a problem with your wander script?

Don't worry, though. I have every intention of using this on a new game.

Wow. So had you checked the mod in your load order with the intention to go and hire him? He came to you and woke you up? Do you happen to remember what he said to you? I'm assuming he greeted you in some way? I'd love to know more about the encounter if you can remember anything. It could help me narrow down what might be happening and I could stop it. And I'm glad you still want to try him out. Thanks for letting me know. llama