I'm not sure if the GECK subforum is the best place to ask this, but I foresee that I'll need to use the GECK to "fix" things...

I recently thought I'd have some fun with the console, and used the "PRID", "moveto 14" console commands to move a handful of persistent corpses I encountered to my house in Megaton, just for decoration - these are corpses which do not disappear, unlike those random ones which do. Examples are the raiders in the library and super duper mart, the super mutants in Big Town and the odd Outcast patrol which bit off more than it could chew. They work well, and I had one on my bed, one sitting on the chair, and couple in the next room etc.. but then after a few days, when I enter my house, some of them wake up (and in the case of the raiders and supermutants, turn hostile and kill Wadsworth. The Outcasts are missing, presumably just woke up and walked off). Is there any reason why these corpses stay dead forever when I see them at Big Town, etc, but when I move them to my house they wake up and I have to kill them once every few days? Is there anything in the GECK which I can use to modify them?

C

Yes, they are respawning actors, so they resurrect after some days.
It is just a bad idea to move them home, using console commands, not only because they resurrect and attack you but also because they are no longer where they should be in the game.
If you want corpses to decorate your home, use the geck to place already dead NPC in your home, don't use actual characters in the game.
All raiders, outcasts and most supermutants respawn. In Bigtown they are not respawning NPC.
To keep the already dead characters you place in your house, check the quest item box in the character basedata tab or they will be disappear after 3 days.

What is it that makes them stay dead when I leave them where they are, though? They have been lying in exactly the same position where I shot them for the last month or two. Is there some script that keeps them dead there, but which doesn't apply when they're consoled to move to the house? These few were selected because they do not respawn, and their corpses do not poof. They just ... lie there and I thought I could at least make use of them instead of leaving them lying about.

After all it's your choice.
No script involved here, it is the game engine itself :
The easiest way to prevent them from respawning in the house is to create a never resetting encounter zone in the world menu and set the megaton house interior data to this encounter zone.

Is that the same zone which the original corpse locations are? I understand that some corpses respawn, some poof, but these are unique corpses. I killed these raiders inside Super Duper Mart when I was like level 4, and since then, they've always been dead in there. I'm now level 30, and they're still lying in the mart. Other random respawning raiders have appeared outside the mart dozens of times now, been slaughtered, and had their corpses disappear only for the next wave to come. Those few I killed those months ago are still lying all around the interior of the mart, dead. What I don't understand is why simply by moving them to another location, in this case my Megaton house, makes them come alive after a few days. Does the game actually resurrect them and automatically kill them if they're where they should be, and if they're moved they don't get killed? It doesn't look like it because they're in the exact same positions I left them in.

Same with those three Super Mutants which attack Big Town after you rescue Red and Shorty. They've been lying on the bridge for months now, and have never so much as budged an inch. Move them to Megaton house and suddenly they come alive every few days. I know they're not meant to be moved, and I'll probably just zap the whole lot of them, but I'm just curious why they resurrect in the Megaton house, and not where they originally died.. where they have lay at rest for the past few months.

I insist posting on forums like this one wih the hope it will improve my english with time because the detail is a bit complicated to explain for someone with a limited english. But it is not really difficult to understand, though.

Basically, the mutants and raiders are ordinary ones. Normally, raiders and mutants respawn by default but the raiders in superdupermart don't respawn because they are placed in a non respawning zone. If you move them to a respawning zone (like megatonzone) you get normal respawning raiders. Outside, the raiders are exactly the same, but they are in a respawning zone, so they respawn.

But Why ?

The problem with the ones you mention is they are part of a quest. One of them (nothing special, just a random raider) enables all the others. If for some reason this one disappeared all the other raiders would disappear as well. I mean if the player kills this raider then leaves Superdupermart and comes 3 days later the raiders would no longer be here or all would have resurrected.
They are not even persistent references so they can't be called in a script and they are random characters so they can't have their own script. They are enabled by the quest or by an activator, that's all.
So this specific ordinary and random enabler raider had to be made permanent. And the only way to prevent a non persistent reference respawning actor from respawning is to make the whole cell not reset.

The supermutants in bigtown are a bit different because they are persistent references. The mutant itself is totally random and levelled but it's reference is permanent, so it can be used in a script ( the raiders in superdupermart can't). The quest includes a counter to check if mutants were killed or if the player used any trick to help bigown citizens, so the mutants act differently. Once dead you can still move them but then you get just ordinary random mutants, respawning and attacking on sight like any other.

If you want them to stay in place when you move them in the house, change the reset flag in megaton player's house. Actually the house is in megatonzone, a reseting area. So you can create a new encounter zone and check the never reset box and it will act exactly as Superdupermart and the raiders will no longer resurrect. It is by far the easiest and safest way to achieve what you want.
The problem is wadsworth or any other character or container you place in the cell will not respawn. This is why I said it is no a good idea, because if you or any improvement mod add respawning containers or actors to megaton player's house they will not respawn as expected, and it will be difficult to detect the error.

Another approach you can find in game : for now forget the superdupermart raiders and find in geck the FFsurpriseraiders. They are the ones appearing when you first speak to defender morgan. These are completely different, they are specific NPC, not random ones like the others, and they don't respawn, they disappear. To keep them you can check the quest item box in the character base data and they will not respawn or disappear even if you move them to the respawing area in Megaton. For them, as they are specific identified characters used nowhere else it is safe to set the questitem flag

I hope I was clear, it is not as complicated as it seems once you get it.
The wrong thing to do is to change the respawning status to quest item on the base actor or to create persistent references for all placed characters (so they can be called in a quest or script). It breaks the game

That's actually very clear, thanks! Like you said, it's probably much easier creating a completely new custom corpse if I wanted to decorate. I probably won't, though, because the main purpose of doing it was to not waste those corpses lying about and put them to some use. I'm assuming the raiders in the Arlington Library work the same way then - because they came to life again too...

So in that case the corpses in the Deathclaw Sanctuary should be safe to use, since the Deathclaws respawn, the Sanctuary is not a non-respawn area, meaning the corpses there are specific corpses and not generic respawning NPCs stuck in a non-respawn area?



Oh, I know those two - one guy and one girl. Both are still lying where they fell months ago, haven't disappeared. Poor guy lost his head and for some reason twitches violently when I first fast-travel to the Fort. I'll try using the two of them too.

Thanks for all the help!