» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:55 pm OBSE 18 or better needed.
Get it here:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29831
Duke Patrick's Combat Archery Mod REV 1.8
OBSE 18 or better needed.
This is an immersion mod based on my older POC project called Duke Patrick’s SCA Combat Archery Mod. This Combat Archery Mod is designed to bring a fun balance to realistically high damage bows to make fighting with a realistically lethal bow in the game less like using a Rifled Musket.
WARNING! READ ALL READ ME FILES OR YOU WILL BE CONFUSED BY WHAT THE MOD IS DOING IN YOUR GAME! Be sure to load the INI file in the same directory as the ESP file.
SCA Combat Archery uses real armor, real bows and real cross bows with real arrows that have wide blunt tips so as to dramatically reduce their ability to kill while still keeping as much of the historical and physical factors as is safe to do so. This allows us to study history and medieval combat by physically recreating it.
You tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDQGvTy-_MM
[youtube]kDQGvTy-_MM[/youtube]
This Youtube move is a more or less fair representation of SCA combat archery. Except that in my local chapter we use 1000 pound draw crossbows...now that will leave a mark on you even in leather armor!
Quick overview of what the mods does:
(Most are from my older SCA Combat Archery mod, but several are NEW and the old ones are revamped.)
-Bows can be player set to do various multiples of the vanilla damage (or of what ever damage is set to the bow in the game by other mods).
-Arrow damage and speed will be calculated based on the materials and craftsmanship used to make the arrow. A bonus is given to magic arrows. This arrow damage feature is optional.
-Duke Patrick’s "Don’t Shoot Me Bro" system helps to prevent NPC from shooting their friends in the back!
-The bow jerks off target after the shot is fired. You will need to re-aim after each shot. However this feature is optional.
-Moving around will make you miss (shoot off the cross hair) a lot. Running or jumping is worst than walking. This is reduced by holding still for a few moments.
-Moving backward has RISK! This is NOT a random event. My mod detects tripping hazards! You may trip over the dead, change in elevations like stairs or large world objects that interfere with your movement such as a chairs!
-The PC strength is now as important as their skill in detraining the damage that a weapon can inflict. Weapon selection strategy will be important by using the right kind of bow for the PC Marksmanship agility and strength!
-Stronger bows will take much longer to draw the arrow then weaker bows depending on your strength. If you try to use a Bow that is stronger than you are it will take a great deal of time to draw the bow.
-Bows eat fatigue no mater what skill level you are. The stronger ones eat more than the weaker ones. So if your bow is stronger than you are your may become exhausted very quickly TRYING to draw the bow!
-If you fire the bow without drawing it all the way your arrow will be drastically reduced in speed AND DAMAGE.
-Slow arrows will bounce off of the armor your target is wearing.
-Arrows that hit Critical locations such as the Head, Solar Plexus or Crotch will cause pain and may multiply damage done by the arrow.
-Weaker bows fire faster and use less fatigue, so if you are a good marksman that can hit the Critical locations more often you may find using a weaker bow is a much better strategy!
-Shield men will now be the archer's worst night mare! NPC will Shield Charge and sprint at you to knock you and your bow to the ground. (Kill them before they get too close!)
-Bows are not m?l?e weapons! You will not be able to draw your bow if you are being crowded by your opponent (they are too close to you). If the NPC hits you as you are drawing the bow it will be knocked off target.
-Better NPC AI! Your target will side step or block the arrow if they see you fire at them and have the agility, speed and skill to do so.
-Npc will run up inclines to get you now. (no more perching on top of rocks!)
-Aim your bow straight down to the ground to denock it!
-Arrows that are stuck in the NPC have a chance of being dislodged and dropped to the ground in combat.
You should also use "Duke Patrick's Actor Can Miss Now" mod with this mod.
IN DEPTH explanations of features:
Realistic Damage
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My Archery Combat mod has realistically deadly bows when you use my default settings. Only a handful of shots kill. But bows can be player set to do various multiples of the vanilla damage (or of what ever damage is set to the bow in the game by other mods). The default is 8 but you can set this to what you want. The script does this on the fly in game NOT by changing the bows via the CS.
PLEASE NOTE!!!!!
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The script will take time to eventually get ALL the bows in the game but any bow you put on the ground and put your cross hair on will change immediately. The value (cost in gold coins) of the bows are determined by how long the bow will last in battle and NOT how much damage the bow can do. So you may see bows in the game that do less damage but may cost more than bows that can do more damage but will fail in battle sooner and more often. My mod adds this {} symbol to all the arrows and bows that have been adjusted by my script.
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Your marksman skill is set to zero as you pull the bow string, then set to normal once the bow is fully drawn. This as well as other factors would make the damage you see in the menu (or elsewhere) fluctuate. I am still trying to find ways to make this invisible to the player, but especially with mods that add hotkeys and new hud info this may not be worth the time to try to cover it all! The damage shown in the menu is very misleading even in a vanilla build of the game with no mods. NO PLAYER hardly EVER inflicts the damage you see in the menu. There are dozens of reasons for this, but I can see how this is hard for most players to understand. That is why the damage of the bow is now settable (up to the player). If you want to set it WAY DOWN to single and double digits, then, well...its your funeral.
Look for the {} symbol in the name of the bow (or arrow). If it is NOT in the name the bow has yet to be processed by my script. Also, enchanting the bow will strip out the {} in the name, so be sure to put the {} symbol in your player enchanted weapon or it may get processed a second time and crank up the damage more than intended.
And because of the way OBSE works, each RELOAD means many of the weapons in the present cell must be reprocessed. Eventually you will get them all (except for new weapons from mods that you add later) and this will not be an issue for the rest of your game until (IF) you unload and then reload the mod for some reason.
Missed Shots
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Now hitting the mark is not as easy as pointing a gun and shooting. Your PC accuracy will depend a little more on your marksmanship skill and agility now. This will result in a lot of missed shots at far range and a few at close range for low level marksmen! Running decreases your accuracy as well.
Note that Marksmanship, Agility and Luck are used in the formulas for missed shots.
Moving around will make you miss (shoot off the cross hair) a lot. Running or jumping is worst than walking. This is reduced by holding still for a few moments. However momentum is a factor. You must wait a moment for the momentum to stop affecting you. If you use Duke Patrick’s Actor Can Miss Now mod this same formulas are used against the NPC as well.
The longer you wait the less the movement penalty will affect you after you stop moving around. Only a moment is needed to fully stabilize, but even fractions of a second in combat mean a lot! Crouching will give you the best stability resulting in the most accurate shot. Movement will play the biggest part, but a PC with high attributes across the board will only minimally be affected by movement.
The bow jerks off target after the shot is fired. You will need to re-aim after each shot. However this feature is optional
NPC Now Try Not To Shoot Their Friends
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New for rev 1.8
However if their friends jump in the way of an on coming arrow (such as in side stepping) or if the NPC is a very bad shot and their arrows veer off more than they intended friends may still be hit by arrows! However the NPC now have a very special AI system to help them avoid dishing out friendly fire.
Locational Critical Hits
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Arrows that hit Critical locations such as the Head, Solar Plexus or Crotch will cause pain and may multiply damage done by the arrow. Lower Leg shots will trip your opponents to the ground. The nose, throat, solar plexus and groin are the FOUR basic critical shots in most martial arts. They are the soft targets that return the most effect relative to the effort needed. The eyes and brain are included as they are especially vulnerable to arrows.
The lower legs are only included because of the way you put your body weight on them.
A sudden blow to the lower leg can easily trip your opponent because we only have two legs. Remember this is not exactly intended to be fatal shots either, they are incapacitating shots or to knock the wind out of the NPC temporarily. Only intended to replace the very “silly" paralyze perk for archers. There are of course more, but this is the basic Critical hits for arrows that can give you immediate results in battle. Other "pressure points" like under the base of the jaw, under the first (lowest) rib, ears, armpits (and so on) cannot be detected with the way this "simple" script works. Other wise you would be seeing a Duke Patrick Location Damage mod or an update to my very old mod "Combat Geometry." (Ha!...simple, yes it is a small script, but it took me over 20 man hours to fine tune it!)
Armor can stop arrows
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Slow arrows will bounce off of the armor your target is wearing.
(This is locational, if you shoot their head and they are not wearing a helmet the arrow will not bounce.) The script is not pixel by pixel, it may on some occasions not work 100 percent accurately, but I doubt you will notice this in game play all that much!
Critical hits on the player and slow Arrows can bounce off of the player's armor. Set to 1 in the INI file to prevent critical hits on the Player AND to turn off the bounce of slow arrows off the player's armor.
More than 75 percent of the arrows speed and force comes from the last 25 percent of drawing the bow! A player new to this concept may let lose an arrow too soon in the heat of combat. Wait until the bow stops drifting upward and you no longer hear the creaking sounds of the bow flexing before you let loose an arrow! Otherwise you could end up seeing a lot of arrows bounce off the armor of your opponents.
Even the slowest arrows after my mod adjusts them (iron) do not travel under 800 unless they are fired from a bow that has not been drawn all the way. So there is a player setting that will bounce arrows off armor if the arrow speed is below this number.
However, this player setting cannot be set below 800. The script will raise it up to 800 if you try to set it too low. This way the minimum is still used so the that the mod will work properly, but if you so chose you may pick a higher cut off point. Iron arrows for example are a speed of 1000 once the mod changes them. If you set it to 1000 all the IRON arrows will not penetrate armor if it hits a location on the player or NPC wearing armor. This location system however is still subject to limitations as described in this read me file.
And I do not have the time to test very arrow in Oblivion to find their speeds, so you will have to do some fishing around on your own or just use the Iron setting of 1000 or the default 800.
And please keep in mind that this is "Oblivion arrow speed" units NOT FEET PER SECOND. 800 speed for example is about how fast you can throw an object.
Bows Are Not Melee Weapons
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If you allow your opponents to get to close to you as you try to nock an arrow your PC will get battered around making it extremely hard to take aim or even hold the arrow to the bow. The worst thing in the world for an archer is to have the opponent on top of them throwing attacks at them while they are trying to nock an arrow. In fact is it darn near impossible, which is why SCA archers would switch to another weapon if the range is too close or most archers would turn and run like the devil was after them to keep the distance! If you have a thief like PC, then try to sneak into a good sniper location and start killing the NPC before they can overrun you. Its as much fun as a shooting gallery where if you do not shot the ducks, they pounce on you and EAT you!
Shield men will now be the archer's worst night mare!
NPC will Shield Charge and sprint at you to knock you and your bow to the ground. (Kill them before they get too close!) These Shield charge is not a "canned" scripted event, the results are calculated on the fly using real life factors such as vector speed. This means you can use REAL LIFE tactics to sidestep the charging NPC so they miss you or to force them to ver off from a straight line attack. Forcing them to CURVE their running path to reach you can throw their momentum out of their shield charge. Also if you brace yourself (blocking) this adds a little bonus to your ability to counter the NPC shield charging you. Another little trick is to CHARGE forward yourself, this reduces the amount of room the attacker has to pick up speed, this can save you!
I try very hard to keep physics a fundamental mechanic in my mods so that tricks like avoiding the shield charge can be used even if I do not know about them myself! I really wish ALL game dev would do this instead of canning script events, this practice would create AWESOME combat games!
If the player has a shield they can shield charge the NPC archer! You must run STRAIGHT at the archer for more than .7 of a second and do not veer off or turn. Once you get within 2 feet of the archer press your block button (while still moving forward) to shield bash them to the ground. But be careful, if the archer is bigger and stronger than you or has more fatigue you may be knocked to the ground as well. The calculations for this are the exactly same as when the NPC try to do this to the player archer.
Both the NPC and the Player can "crowd" the bow so that it cannot be properly nocked and fired. If an archer is up very close to their opponent the bow will be bumped to the side and the arrow will disengage from the bow. Do not try crowd the archer for too long however, you will take a big chance of the archer attacking you hand to hand knocking you to the ground. This is calculated using their hand to hand, strength and fatigue plus luck against your hand to hand, strength and fatigue plus luck.
The player gets a bonus in that the NPC will not be able to use this special H2H attack while the player is attacking, only when you are not attacking. However the player also will lose fatigue as they crowd and struggle with the NPC up close. This is for technical reasons, as the NPC will never stop trying to draw their bow and would otherwise stand there forever getting crowded unlike the player who will quickly retreat or slide to the side to get out of the crowding. The formula for this fatigue consumption is based on a comparison of the players strength and the NPC strength. Struggling with a weak opponent will do little, but struggling with a stronger opponent will fatigue you quickly. I have added to the NPC AI recently (rev 1.8) to encourage them to move away from the player when crowded. But this AI is still not as good as the player as slipping away from the crowding.
Immersion Style Denock Arrows
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Aim your bow straight down to the ground to denock it! Use the GRAB KEY to override this for those RARE times when you need to shoot straight down. I have NEVER needed to do this however.
Less Arrow Pin Cushions
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Arrows that are stuck in the NPC have a chance of being dislodged and dropped to the ground in combat. This is triggered by any sound of NPC blocking and attacking at this time. So you will see the arrow get knock to the ground at the appropriate moments in combat.
Note: This was taken out, as of rev 1.8, and will return in a later revision.
Rate Of Fire and Bow Fatigue
----------------------------
Bows eat Fatigue no mater what skill level you are. This consumption rate is calculated by a comparison of your PC strength and the strength of the bow. If you use a reasonable strength bow relative to your PC strength you will receive much less of this Fatigue consumption. It will be very difficult to try to use a ridiculously strong bow relative to your PC strength.
Now the heaver bows that do, more damage take longer to fire! However this time is reduced depending on your PC strength! If you are weak do not try to use a large powerful bow no mater how agile you are or how high your Marksman skill is! So depending on your strength, using slightly less powerful bows (that do less damage) will increase your Rate Of Fire now. Marksmanship and agility can make up for this with my critical hit system.
Moving backward has RISK!
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This is NOT a random event. My mod detects tripping hazards! You may trip over the dead, change in elevations like stairs or large world objects that interfere with your movement such as a chairs! See the Moving backward has RISK Read me File that came with this mod.
Better NPC AI
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Your target will side step or block the arrow if they see you fire at them and have the agility, speed and skill to do so. The most powerful bows have a chance to penetrate shields when the NPC try to block the arrows. This will be a result of the power of the bow and skill of the NPC (modified by their fatigue) blocking the arrow.
Npc will run up inclines to get you now. (no more perching on top of rocks!) Sometimes they may be able to climb up even sheer cliffs to get to you, but that will only happen on some rare occasions depending on the circumstance. This is optional as the script is not 100 percent flawless. So decide for yourself if you like it or not.
If you allow it in the INI file, NPC will sometimes aim under your shield at your lower legs to try to get a critical hit.
As of Rev 1.8 If the player holds up a shield (active block) and they sit in the crouch position (sneak mode) and they neither move forward or backward or left or right, the NPC will find it almost impossible to hit your legs.
Compatibility with Crossbows
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I have added compatibility with Crossbow mods as long as they either use the word crossbow in the bow name or the 3d model file pathway.
ARROW STATS
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THIS IS AN OPTIONAL FEATURE!
With medieval weapons there is always a binding relationship between speed, power and range. This is directly a result of physics as covered by the laws of mass and motion.
ARROW damage, encumbrance and speed will equal the materials used to make the arrow times craftsmanship. Materials and craftsmanship was determined by the data shown in the CS or inferred from the games lore.
The Arrow Damage, weight and speed are bound together in a physics based formula related to Sir Isaac Newton's laws. Remember we are not talking about bullet time speeds. Historical arrows were in the range of 100 to 200 feet per second not 4000 to 6000 feet per second. So damage is more a result of momentum and the quality of the arrowhead and NOT the Kinetic Energy as it is with bullets.
PLEASE NOTE!
Iron arrows are VERY HEAVY AND SLOW. In real life the heavy slow arrows are easy to side step if you see them coming. Actually with ANY arrow, the only way to kill someone at farther than short distance is to aim to the side of them and hit them as they sidestep or hit them when they are not looking at you directly or not paying attention. Remember these are NOT modern arrows or bullets from a gun, they are slow medieval arrows. However once you have lighter and/or better arrows fired at you (such as bone arrows or steel arrows) they will be MUCH faster than iron arrows.
The formulas are not so much what actual arrows would do, but is a way to take the encumbrance, the materials and craftsmanship (the quality) data that is already in the game and calculate damage for the arrows in a consistent manner while maintaining a physical balance between the encumbrance (the size and weight) of the weapons and the speed and damage the weapon can dish out.
Rust on an arrow is only a cosmetic problem (skin deep) and thus will only reduce the quality by 10 percent. A completely rusted iron arrow (not skin deep) would break as you tried to fire it.
Materials (steel, glass, bone so on) determine how sharp the arrowhead can be while still being durable and not brittle. Bone for example will be the best for speed but is so brittle it will not retain its cutting ability as it hits other bones in the target.
25Bone x 0.05ENC x 2speed = 2.5 (the game rounds that up to 3)
This is then further modified by the game including factors such as strength and marksmanship.
And keep in mind that even though the bone arrows only hit with 1/4 damage of steel arrows they will fire twice as fast as steel arrows, this helps to improve fire rate and accuracy!
ES lore (from The Elder Scrolls Treasury III: TES3 Encyclopedia
"Silver: High-quality steel is plated or filigreed with silver because of the arcane effects of the precious metal on the flesh of magical and supernatural creatures. Well-heeded aristocrats and bravos also sport such weapons for their distinctive elegance."
"Amber: a colorful resin formed from hardened sap. Much like skin bleeds and scabs over to protect a wound, the Root System tunnels "bleed" a sap that congeals and hardens into Amber deposits. Even still, the walls of the roots are very resilient; swinging a sword at the wall is not enough to puncture it. The large fissures that cause the appearance of Amber are the result of the massive pressures and frictional forces encountered by the giant roots as they push through tons of rock and dirt." In recent years there have been rumors of smiths that are able to use the amber sap extracted from Gnarl to make sturdy armor and weapons. As of yet, this gossip has not been confirmed."
"Ebony: (Raw Ebony) Raw ebony is one of the most precious substances in the Empire, and most of the continent's deposits are here on Vvardenfell. Raw ebony itself is an extremely hard, durable, black glass-like substance, said to be the crystallized blood of the gods. Raw ebony is protected by Imperial Law, and may not be mined or exported without an Imperial charter. (Ebony weapons) Ebony weapons are made from a rare form of volcanic glass found almost exclusively in the buried deposits and surface lava flows of Vvardenfell's Red Mountain. 'Ebony' refers to the lustrous, black, glassy surface of ebony weapons."
"Glass: (Raw Glass) Raw glass is similar to raw ebony, but less well-known. Ebony is jet black, while glass is a milky translucent green. Less durable, but much lighter and more flexible than ebony, glass is used primarily to make the distinctive, elegant glass armors and weapons of High Elven design. (Glass Weapons) The light and elegant Glass weapons of High Elven design feature extravagant use of rare metals and cutting edges made from rare crystalline materials.
"Steel: Imperial steel weapons are standard issue for the elite units of the Legions. Nobles, merchant- traders, and professional mercenaries prefer the higher quality materials and craftsmanship of Imperial steel. Various other weapons of exotic design (in particular, the tantos and katanas made in the Akaviri style) are also made of high-quality steel."
"Daedric Weapons: are made from raw ebony which has been refined using the craft and magical substances of the lesser minions of Oblivion. The process is not a pleasant one for the Daedra involved, and the weapons retain echoes of preternaturally prolonged suffering endured during manufacture. Daedric weapons are the most rare and expensive weapons known in Tamriel."
According to the Oblivion Wikia: http://oblivion.wikia.com/wiki/Dremora_weapons: "Dremora weapons, though as heavy as their daedric counterparts and visually identical, are vastly inferior. Items of this material are generally retrieved from Dremora Lords and other daedra in the Oblivion plane"
Dwarves are the Dwemer race. From the Elder Scrolls Treasury on Dwemer weapons: "These refined and elegant weapons resist corrosion and retain their edge in spite of hard use, and are notable among the distinctive relics of the extinct Dwemer race.
My explanation of the lore with historical and real life data to fill the gaps.
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Goblins and Grummite would often craft weapons from bone and wood, they just would not be skillfully made and thus would make the good materials into a lesser weapons in the end.
The CS defiantly indicates that all the Dwarven arrows are made from IRON.
All the Dwarven arrow art and models (the Nifs) are from a folder call IRON.
This is conundrum, as basic raw Iron is a soft metal easily rusted and with none of the properties attributed to Dwarves weapons as described by the lore. Iron was only used in the real world early on to make weapons because it was abundant and easy to smelt.
So after some metallurgy research from the real world I found the solution to the puzzle.
REAL HISTORICAL DATA:
______Start_______
Damascus swords were of legendary sharpness and strength, and were apocryphally claimed to be able to cut through lesser quality European swords and even rock.
The technique used to create original Damascus blades is now a matter of historical conjecture. Many raw materials, and the metal smiths recipes, are no longer available.
One explanation of the legendary properties of the Damascus metal is that the pattern consists of alternating bands of very hard but brittle iron carbide or cementite and softer more flexible iron.
______End_______
The Dwarven arrows were a type of Damascus metal. The Dwarven Masters liked to use a version of this process to produce weapons made from the inferior (but abundant in mines) RAW IRON material. The process produced arrow tips that were almost as good (at causing wounds) as the silver arrows made by the Eleven masters even as it was made from the softer raw Iron. However this did produce arrows that were much heaver and slower.
PLAYING THE MOD
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Risk is what makes it feel like you really won the fight. I play all my mods at the same time and I die in the game several times an hour when in a combat heavy session.
Sometimes it needs to not be such a challenge, sometimes the player must feel like they totally outclass their opponent, but if a fight in the game is intended to be a challenge, no mater what level you are any "challenge" you win you should only win by the skin of your teeth.
That FEELING of realistic combat (based on my years of fighting in the SCA) is what I am going for in all my mods.
I want you to FEEL the combat, and struggle to survive with realistic game mechanics BUT ALSO WIN, win by learning and using real tactics from real life combat, but win by the skin of your teeth!
A real fighter is not really looking at your arrow (many are a little too fast to visually track easily) they are looking at the archers bow and arms shake as they let loose an arrow. Then they side step or block the assumed trajectory! This can make it a little more difficult to do at longer range, and I factored this into the game mod.
In fact a real Combat Archery trick is to deliberately shoot off center at your target, the arrow stands a decent chance to hit the fighter who is side stepping!
Another one of my favorites tricks is to fire at a guy who is standing in front of another fighter, he will side step and the guy behind him (who could not see what is going on)
Sometimes will get plugged with the arrow!
When you do not have a Shield to block arrows, side stepping arrows that you can see were shot at you is not difficult but it will slow down your movement as you are trying to run down an archer.
Those with out shields but have expert blocking skills will sometimes elect to parry arrows (instead of side step them) with their one or 2 handed weapons. This would normally be a stupid thing to do as side stepping is much safer. However a high level fighter may do this to gain the movement advantage.
I (and my play testers) felt it should be a NPC skill level of 75 and up.
NOT BECAUSE IT IS ALL THAT DIFFICULT TO DO, you would be surprised how "easy" it is to do "most of the time" even for lower skilled fighters as long as they can see the archer fire the arrow.
BUT it is difficult enough that in general you would not risk your life (when sidestepping is so much safer) unless you were VERY VERY good at doing this.
Many sword blows travel just as fast as the arrows do, (SCA researchers have clocked tip speeds from 55 to 75 miles per hour with a 3 pound 3 foot long sword) blocking arrows is not any more difficult with a larger weapon than blocking a sword moving 75 MPH.
In fact if you point your weapon toward the archer, the LONGER the weapon is the better. This is because you get more time to react as the arrow travels down the length of the weapon. In real life SCA combat I have seen advanced level pole weapon fighters do this easily. But Daggers are so short that there is too big of a risk the arrow deflection
will slice across your arm. I prevent daggers from being used by the NPC to parry arrows.
Remember arrows travel relatively slow, they are not bullets!
Real arrows are much easier to dodge than you might guess AS LONG AS you see the archer fire the shot. Most arrows in this era travel at a rate around 100 feet per second.
Some were much faster but at a general 100 feet per second you would have 1/2 second to react at only 50 feet.
This gives you lots of time to move out of the way of the trajectory. Remember you are not watching the arrow fly at you are only moving a little from where you are when you see the archer fire the bow.
Reaction time is the primary thing that hinders you.
Most people with good reflexes can react and start to move in less than 1/3 of a second, fighters and other athletes are even faster.
I based this reaction time for the NPC on their agility and skill. If they have only a little skill and agility they will not be able to side step in time.
Up close it is not so easy, and if you wait for the NPC to get very close you will hit them most of the time unless they have a shield.
If now you find it is too HARD to kill the NPC I did include a player adjustable factor to make the NPC fail to side step the arrow. It adds fractions of seconds to their reaction time to prevent them from moving in time to miss the arrow.) However I am worried players will set this out of balance with the bow damage and then complain it is too easy to kill NPC.
The Side stepping arrow dodge for the NPC has two components.
The reaction time is based on the NPC agility and skill level.
The speed of the side step animation is based on the NPC speed attribute.
There is a player adjusted setting in the INI file for the "quickness" of the speed of the animation of the side step dodge.
Where the ? is a number from 1 to 10.
Normal default setting is 2.
Lower numbers mean faster sidestepping, higher numbers mean slower side stepping.
If the default is too fast for your taste try a setting of 4 first. But remember that the slower you make the side stepping the more likely you are not going to like the realistically high damage of the bows.
Every NPC will have a slightly different speed based on their stats.
It may be so slight you may not see the difference, as it will be in hundreds of a second.
But it will mean that some will side step in time to miss the arrows and others will not.
In Melee weapons combat there are tricks advanced fighters use to run backwards and still keep a very fast pace and at the same time keep the chance to trip down to an acceptable low rate.
But some of these tricks are not very effective with archery.
I hate FORCING tactics on players (such as automatic slow down or automatic tripping after a preset number of seconds.)
I believe players should be allowed to do what ever they want to and then suffer
the pros and cons realistically depending on HOW they did what they did.
For example, there is a technique called backwards circling. Instead of running backwards in a straight line you run in various diameter circles.
This allows you to see where you are going as you run backwards.
This way if you use the circling trick to see where you are going and you avoid bumping into something while running backwards you are fine. But if you bump into something while running backwards you take a great risk of falling to the ground and a small risk
if running on uneven or rocky ground.
Read the other read me file Duke Patrick’s Running Backwards RISK for all information on using this feature.
Keep in mind that when I say miss you may still hit them, all a miss means for this mod is that the arrow will not hit where the cross hair is pointed at. So even with a 100 percent chance to miss you still have a great chance to hit your opponent by accident while running such as if he sidesteps into it or if he is very close.
REQUIREMENTS
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Be sure to load the INI file in the same directory as the ESP file.
OBSE 18 or better needed.
If you have used any Duke Patrick Archery mod before YOU MUST DO A CLEAN INSTALL on this mod. Do NOT use any “Duke Patrick” BOW and ARROW compatibility patches with this mod. All bows and arrows from other mods are automatically adjusted on the fly.
I also strongly suggest you also use my Duke Patrick’s Actor Can Miss Now mod.
Get it here:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17706
BONUS SPELL
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Bow BASE gold value comes from the bow's health not the damage.
Weapon Health stats are not shown in the game.
All you see is the percentage of health.
So two bows can show 100% in the game but one bow will have a 300 health stat and the other may have something like a 1200 health stat.
The best thing to do is to purchase a high damage bow that is also good quality and will last longer in battle. Unfortunately players will need to read this read me file to know this as the game will not show the health stat.
I have added in a BOW APPRAISAL spell to allow the player to see the health stat on their Bow.
IMPORTANT Uninstall Directions
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As of rev 1.8, if you want to reset your gold value prices on bows and arrows before you unstill the mod, you must set aaDPSCABOWSWAYquest.NoPriceChange to 1 in the ini file.
Then you load your save game, and wait/play for at least 10 seconds. Then save and uninstall the mod. If you uninstall without first saving with NoPriceChange set to 1, the price changes made by this mod will be stuck in your saved games.
You can very well have this mod installed and in use with this set to 1. That will just prevent any changes to bow/arrow prices, and to the bows' health. Setting it to 1 after having had it at zero for some time, will make all bow/arrow prices revert to what they were when you installed this.
Known Issues
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If you notice the bows heath raise past 100 percent this is a know issue but it also will disappear once you repair the weapon. Auto repair of the weapons (not the same as HEALTH SET commands) via script commands cannot be done (yet) or I would do this for you in the script.
This is because if the bow is 100 percent health, then is reset for durability by the script, the game is not made to understand this so it shows in the menu to be over 100 % health. Again just wear it down and repair with a hammer and then after that you should not see this on he same bow ever again.
PLEASE NOTE: This Duke Patrick Combat Archery mod is a stand alone mod, it does not require any other mod to run! However if you see strange lights or hear strange sounds you many need to use Duke Patrick’s Basic Script Effect Silencer.
Get it here:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15677
My MOD Team for the original SCA combat archery POC project:
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from http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums
Arwen (Lore Research, Concept Contributor and Play Tester.)
“Arwen is a non-traditional (as in older) college student at Roger Williams University, where she will be a senior this fall – attempting to complete a dual major while being a varsity athlete (sailing team). She admits to being rather obsessive when it comes to realism and immersion in RPGs. Her first real RPG was ES-III Morrowind and she recorded her misadventures in her Morrowind Journal at
http://amito.freehostia.com/mw/MW.htm
called “Trials of a Clueless Wood Elf.” She is now writing the sequel in her Oblivion
Journal at
http://amito.freehostia.com/Oblivion/OB.htm ,
which also contains a long list of her recommended MODs. She also has her own forums called Arwen’s Realm at http://arwen.freeforums.org/portal.php.”
When I starting using the SCA combat mod I was really bothered to find out how overpowered the archery was. My level one, untrained little Bosmer could basically clean out most dungeons on her own. The SCA archery weapons were just too powerful to fit in very well with the rest of the game. Part of the trouble was that I rarely missed.
As much as I liked the SCA mod, the all-powerful-bows were really wrecking it for me. They make the game way too easy for anyone who knows how to use bows effectively.
(Now with this ARCHERY MOD...)
I'm enjoying this mod very much and I'm personally having a great deal of fun with it. But I'm a bit obsessive about role-playing and realism, so I'm not sure that everyone would have as much fun with this as I am.
Katnap ( Bug Slayer, Concept Contributor and Play Tester.)
I've been playing pc games for a while now, have a husband and kids who have at times taken second place to the pc.
When archery was being discussed in Delte's thread, by Spooky and Arwen. Spooky said "And I want NPC to negate (block or dodge) the arrows easily once they see you shooting at them (as it is in the SCA)." I thought this is something I've got to see in the game. Playtesting the mod was fun, it was worth the time with the changes it has brought to the game in Archery. I am hoping mods like these will give game developers the idea we want something more out of our future games npc's.
Leandro Conde ( Moral Suport, Concept Contributor and Play Tester.)
From the very beginning archery was my favorite part in oblivion, at first it seemed very well implemented, but after a bit of play time one can find that it becomes very boring easily. Since you can shoot at anything from miles of distance and always hit. It became very disappointing after a time, so much was so, that I started to play blade oriented characters, and nearly stopped using the bow from some time.
So I always wanted a mod that overhauled archery in oblivion, and that made fighting as archer interesting. All the archery rebalance out there (even the one from FCOM) were only tweaking weapon and ammo stats only.
I've became interested in this mod after reading the post exchange between Arwen and spookyfx about it on Delte's thread. What catched my interest, was that I was aware of the mods made by Spooky, and even when I was not using them at the moment, all of them were very interesting and excellent mods to me, and I was wanting to try them as soon as I could. This mod was one of the last things missing from the combat changing mods made by him, so it was very exciting that he started to work on it!
In my opinion, this is THE archery mod. During play testing it worked great from the beginning. The fights became very interesting since archer NPCs are able to sidestep most of your arrows so it's very difficult to hit them, but it's also difficult for them to hit you also! Also, no more pincushion-like NPCs, since at most 3 shots kills anything, but you must work very hard to gain those shots in the first place! It's normal to waste several arrows until you can hit your enemy, and also is very easy to sidestep the arrows she/he shots at you.
And beware of those shots, since they can kill you in two shots also!
This a excellent mod by itself, but playing with also Missed Shots alerts enemies, and with SCA Realistic Combat mod, is changing the way oblivion feels to a more realistic experience. And a very enjoyable experience altogether! But be prepared to die if you don't play realistically!!
Legal
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I worked very hard on this mod. But this mod is a product more of creativity, sweat and tears than script writing talent.
DO NOT distribute or use any of my 3d models, resources or scripts. You should only find this mod distributed from TesNexus! If any other web site is distributing this work they are doing so illegitimately.
You MAY (with conditions) use my scripts and my other resources for making a mod only as long as it has NOTHING to do with tripping in backward movement and nothing to do with archery combat. I.E do not make a disguised knock off!
And you must credit me fully and include my "legal" as shown above.
THANKS TO
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TheNiceOne (He wrote the code in this mod that handles the arrays. This was to fix the gold value getting stuck in the save game issue).
Psymon
Smoke Eater
The OBSE team
and...
All the people that write the Wiki
and the active members on the Oblivion CS forums for feedback!
Last but not least of course Bethesda for allowing all of us to shape and personalize our own virtual playgrounds!
For the most advanced SCA combat with sword and shield:
http://www.spookyfx.com/book/tromp.html
