I would like to add one or two "lone wanderers" to my game, i.e. NPCs that are a little bit stronger (perhaps even leveling when the PC does) and roam the wastes killing enemies and collecting loot the same way the player character does, so that one might see them with different armor or weapons from time to time.
It would also be nice to make a home base for them to roam from, where perhaps they might offload loot.

Is it at all possible to make something like this?

Possibly, but in order to make this you would have to make a specific package for each place they attacked, and it would take FOREVER and be rather complicated to do. It would probably be incredibly tedious and really not worth it, since you probably would never even see this 'lone wanderer'. If you did you would probably just kill him and move along, making all your complicated systems of packages and scripting go to waste right there.

I just did this in my game last week, but without the home base. I have 3 caravans with 3 NPC's in each, and also 3 individual NPC's, they all cruise just about everywhere on their own. I've ran into them in the subways and DC ruins, also found one of them in Big Town, and one made it all the way to the Pitt (I have a few backdoors to the DLC maps put in so there's no conditions on revisiting the maps after I've beaten them all). All they are is NPCs that have a wander package (set to current location - 4096 radius), and a sandbox package (current location - 4096 radius - schedule of once per day for 8 hours). All have to be persistant referrences or they'll reset or just go missing. The caravans are a little different in that the leader has the above mentioned packages, but the rest of the team has accompany packages set to follow the leader at a reasonable distance, and a sandbox package that kicks in when the leader sandboxes IF they're close enough to the leader. Every time the NPC's get reloaded, wherever they are at that time becomes the new center of their big wander area, so effectively they can go just about anywhere. The only issue is that if the player is higher level like mine, then you gotta give them a weapon big enough to survive with, and by doing that they really dont loot much. Next I plan on bringing some of the DLC NPC's/creatures over and let them loose on the wasteland too. It's pretty cool having NPCs and things that just roam, instead of just hanging around a fixed point by a building or something.

This is interesting, did you add them to an existing faction or create a new one for them? I'd like to do something like this but have it so the roaming NPC's don't attack the player because as a previous poster said doesn't make much sense doing the work if you just have to kill them. Can you add them to the players' faction or did you just leave the faction blank?

EDIT: I've given this a go to see what happens, I added the new NPC to the player faction and gave her the wander radius and the sandbox package you suggested. I placed her around the Big Town area (The Bridge outside Big Town on the way to Germantown) and she is wandering about but only in the Big Town area. Is there a range figure that will make her wander the whole wasteland with Big Town as the starting point? or is 4096 the maximum GECK can handle?

One caravan is in their own custom faction that I made neutral to most of the wasteland critters, neutral to mutants and raiders, and friend to animals. The rest are in the player faction, so they fight anything that would attack the player.

One thing I've noticed when using the wander and sandbox packages like I did is the NPCs do tend to stay in the general area of where they were introduced at first. They have no set destination so they end up doubling back on themselves a lot, and it takes a good amount of time for them to disperse and go their own way.

Another way to get them to travel more is to put 4 xmarkers at each edge of the worldspace map (north, south, east, and west). Then you use 4 travel packages with a script variable condition, and a simple script that randomly picks 1 of 4 numbers and then sets that variable value. You can use a scripted PackDuration, or the packages own schedule settings to alternate between traveling in a random direction for 3 hours, then sandbox for 3 hours, travel for 3, sandbox for 3, etc.. You'll have NPCs crisscrossing the grid like crazy.

I would think the theoretical maximum allowed would be 65535, but I really don't know... I've had it up to 16k before without issue. Using these "dumb" packages they don't have a set destination, so they sometimes go in circles or double back, etc.. It's more of a slow migration than it is a "take off in a specific direction" thing. To do that you can try what I said above, or just set some permenant destinations for them to travel between.

Thanks Bonedog

I'll have to try the extended radius as scripting is beyond me at the moment, I could try the destinations option. Am I right in thinking if I set four xmarker refs and make a wander package for each she will walk to one, then the other and so on?

No, not with a wander package.. those are basically designed to be just something to do when they don't have anywhere else to go. Sandbox is a little more advanced (but still the same) in that they will search out a specific thing (like a furniture or whatever) within the radius and go straight to that and use it, but it's still a "dumb" package. If you just want to make her cruise from one destination to the next one, make 4 travel packages instead (change the package type dropdown box- top right), one for each destination (you can use xmarkers like i said, or skip that and use any persistant referrence object that's already in the game as the destination, like a door or something.. the front gate at Daves in the north, the gate at Tenpenny towers in the south, you get the idea). The easy way to switch through the packages is to set staggered times on the schedules tab. Super simple would be to have 1 set to start at 00 and run for 6 hours, second one start at 06 and run for 6 hours, third at 12 for 6 hours, and 4th one starts at 18 for 6 hours. If you lessen the number of hours so there's spare time between the packages, you can add a sandbox or wander package to the bottom of their list and they'll do that between traveling.

Edit: I'm doing the script driven one right now (been wanting to do it anyway), but I'm having to do it for all 9 NPCs at once so it's taking forever. If you're interested in that I can post it once I've sorted it out.

Hi, thats kind of you thanks, I'd appreciate it if you can post the script. I've just watched the tutorial video about patrols so I can have a go at that aswell

I'm wondering if setting up a giant area patrol using a single package would be possible... I mean, is it possible to link referrences that are multiple cells away from each other? Like more than half the worldspace away? I don't even know, but sounds promising enough that I might try it.

As for the scripted one, I got it all setup ok, but I'm running into issues where the travel packages result scripts aren't firing correctly and I'm a bit stumped at the moment. When at the destination, they do nothing instead of changing to another package. GetCurrentAIPackage = 14 (travel) and GetCurrentAIProcedure = 17 (done), at which point the result script should update and force a new package choice, but it doesn't. I'm starting to think the package itself got botched somehow and might need to be remade.

Yup, it works great. Here's briefly what I did..
1. Cruise around to different cells all over the worldspace and drop an Xmarker in each one. Be sure to write the cell name down, take note of where they are on the big map.
2. Draw a cheezy map and pencil in where the locations are, then figure out how you want to link them all together in a path(any one to any other but gotta use them all only once).
3. Go to an xmarker and add the next one on your path to its linked referrence tab, then go to that one and add the next one after that, etc.. all the way around to each one till you're back where you started.
4. Make a patrol package and add the referrence of one of the xmarkers as the starting point. Make sure the "allow repeat step" or whatever it's called is checked on the patrol tab.
That's it... the dropping and linking of xmarkers is the tedious part, but after that it's gravy. No scripting involved.

Thanks Bonedog

I'll give it a go, I've got a Lone Wanderer in my game at the moment using four travel packages. No idea if she's working yet as I haven't bumped into her yet! I'll make another one using this method.

One cool part of it is once the paths are laid out, you can add as many as you like merely by adding that patrol package to them. I converted all of my original 9 to this way and there hasn't been a single issue yet. I also converted an older caravan of 4 NPCs plus 2 brahmin, but I made a new patrol package for them that just has a different starting point. They don't stick together like they would with a travel package loop. They choose whether or not to repeat a leg of the path on their own so they're all going their own way, except for the ones that're designed to accompany another NPC.

To test the NPC: create an auto-starting quest with the NPC as it's quest target. Then you'll see an arrow on the map where s/he is.

Ok, that's a wickedly helpful tip! Thanks for mentioning that.

Hi

Thanks for all the help so far, I now have a lone wanderer wandering the wasteland but as always for me AI Packages are killing me! I've had help from a modder from The Nexus site with the packages and scripts but they just aren't quite working as planned.

The deal is , Pamela, my lone wanderer is supposed to loot after combat but she doesn't seem to be doing this. I've made 7 travel packages and a travel home package. Originally I made the 7 travel packages to work weekdays and the travel home package to kick in at weekend, at first this worked fine. Saturday came round and she appeared in the house as planned, sandboxed and even slept at the right time. Problem is Monday morning came and she stayed put and didn't start her travel packages again.
I moved the order of the packages around abit and she set off on cue and all seemed well except now she didn't return to the home the following weekend she just kept wandering! Still not looting after combat. The next problem is we set her up to get back to her house and unload all items into the safe (which seems to work fine) except she isn't taking back the items she should be after unloading. The plan was to make sure she unloaded the stuff she looted (ignoring for now the fact that she isn't looting)
This is the script added to the "on end" box in her travel home package

"Short PamelaAmmoCount
Short PamelaStimpakCount
Short PamelaCapsCount

lonewandererpamela01ref.RemoveAllItems pamelawallsaferef
Set PamelaAmmoCount to pamelawallsaferef.GetItemCount Ammo556mm
Set PamelaStimpakCount to pamelawallsaferef.GetItemCount Stimpak
Set PamelaCapsCount to pamelawallsaferef.GetItemCount Caps001
pamelawallsaferef.Removeitem Ammo556mm PamelaAmmoCount
pamelawallsaferef.RemoveItem WeapChineseAssaultRifle 1
pamelawallsaferef.RemoveItem ArmorRaider04 1
pamelawallsaferef.RemoveItem Stimpak PamelaStimpakCount
pamelawallsaferef.RemoveItem Caps001 PamelaCapsCount
lonewandererpamela01ref.AddItem Ammo556mm PamelaAmmoCount
lonewandererpamela01ref.AddItem WeapChineseAssaultRifle 1
lonewandererpamela01ref.AddItem ArmorRaider04 1
lonewandererpamela01ref.AddItem Stimpak PamelaStimpakCount
lonewandererpamela01ref.AddItem Caps001 PamelaCapsCount
lonewandererpamela01ref.AddItem SlaveCollar 1
lonewandererpamela01ref.EquipItem SlaveCollar 1
lonewandererpamela01ref.RemoveItem SlaveCollar 1"

The slave collar lines are to make the NPC reasses her inventory and use the most relevant items. All she is taking back after the script runs is the armor and the Chinese Assault Rifle.

Sorry for the long post, AI packages make my head hurt!

Not sure what would keep packages set to day schedules from switching, other than maybe having "continue if PC near" checked on them and standing too close to the NPC when they were due to change packages.

Might have better luck with the inventory stuff if you put those item swaps in the safes script, not on a package end box. You got the refs all written in already, just throw the main part inside an OnActivate blocktype. The armor and the Chinese Assault Rifle are the only additems you have in that script that aren't using a variable amount (other than the removed collar). My own personal opinion.. variable use in package script boxes svck. Invariably I always have some issues with them of one kind or another, which is why I suggested putting those transactions in the safe script instead.

Thanks Bonedog, frankly the AI packages are frying my brain! She just won't switch between them, she seems to go through the cycle and ends up in her house but now she is just standing on her marker and won't move! I have 4 travel packages set , then a travel home package which takes her to an xmarker in the middle of her house. Then a sandbox package should kick in for the weekend and she should set back to travelpackage1 but she just stands there!

One thing I have noticed is that the in game clock seems fried! for example instead of Friday becoming Saturday at midnight during the wait screen its waiting until 11AM to change day! But to me if a package is supposed to run on the weekdays surely it still should run even if the actual timings are out.

Its hard to explain without you having the esp file in front of you, my AI package order is

travelpackage1 to 4 in order
travelhome (thats the one with the safe script in the on end box)
sandbox
then the four loot packages which also don't seem to kick in after combat as it should according to her script

If I put the safe commands in a safe script instead of the on end box in the package how do I get it to trigger when she reaches her house?

Thanks for help again! You must hate me by now!

EDIT: Just a thought, to trigger the safe script do I link the xmarker in the house to the safe? Would it then trigger when Pamela reaches the marker?
She's driving me crazy! She's reached Megaton now in Moriarty's and is just standing there, she has a sandbox package in her packages but she just stands there! She also isn't leaving, I just can't seem to get NPC's to switch between packages in their package order.

I am a little late to the subject, so forgive me if you've already discussed this. But on your AI packages, do you have unique conditions? Is it possible that your travel home package is continually being selected as the current package, thus causing your NPC to travel to a spot she is already standing at? If you go into the console when this is occuring and click on her, you can use the commands:

http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/GetCurrentAIPackage
http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/GetCurrentAIProcedure

to determine what she is doing.

Thanks pkleiss

I'll try that, I haven't set any conditions in the packages, the latest test seemed to be working , she left Rivet City market place and went to Moriarty's but is now standing still on the same spot instead of sandboxing and won't leave! I'll use your console trick and see what she is doing

EDIT: Ok, not the answer I was expecting really! For AICurrentPackage I got the answer >>14.00
For AICurrentProcedure I got >>11.00

This is when she is standing in Moriarty's and not sandboxing or moving on to the next package which should take her to Old Olney

So that looks like she is stuck on a Travel package. If you are not using conditions, what are you using to differentiate which package should be picked then? When an NPC re-evaluates their packages (about every 15 seconds normally), they start from the top of the list of packages. The very first one that evaluates true will be the one that is picked. My guess is that at least one of your travel packages is always evaluating true such that no packages farther down on the list are ever being picked. Perhaps you should add some control to the packages by adding conditions. You could setup a quest variable (or a variable in a script running on your NPC as well) to do this. For example, define a short variable called 'Task'. Then use increments of task to represent the different stages of your NPCs movement. Package 1 will use a condition that Task == 1, package 2 uses Task == 2, package 3 uses Task == 3, etc... You would use the 'GetScriptVariable' or 'GetQuestVariable' condition functions for this. Then use the 'End' results scripts of each package to set the 'Task' variable to its next value and place an EvalutePackage or evp command after the 'Set Task to X' command. You can also put these commands in other places (scripts, etc...) if it makes more sense to do so.

There are also certain flags that can prevent a package from finishing. Continue if PC Near, Must Reach Location and Must Complete are a few examples.

WOW, thanks for such a full answer, it may be above my GECK skill to put into practice but I'll give it a go, scripting is something I know little about really but your post should help me no end. I've checked the flags and there isn't any of them ticked apart from allow swimming and enable fallout behaviour. I was thinking that order that the packages were listed in the AI Packages tab would be enough. Clearly not!!!

I'll give it a go, thanks again for the help

If you run into problems, I'd be willing to take a look at your mod and figure out what's missing. If you want me to do that, just PM me with a link to the mod and tell me what the NPC's name is and where to go in the game to start following her to test out what she is supposed to do and when. If you don't know how to upload your mod, you can use www.mediafire.com or www.megaupload.com, then pass me the link to your file.

Cheers.

Hi thats really good of you, I've got a website server so I'll upload it there, I really appreciate it. AI packages can sometimes make me want to take my own life!!! Well maybe not quite that far, not yet anyway

If you replace your travel home package with a 'Use Item At' package, she will travel there on her own to use the safe. To create it, just add the cell name and the ref of the safe to the 'item to use: specific referrence' and also to the 'Location: Near Referrence' parts, and give it a radius of like 80 or something. I believe you can use a condition of GetUsedItemActivate == 0 to keep her on that package while she travels home and activates the safe one time, after which the condition will be 1 and she won't attempt to use it a second time and she'll change packages.

As a side note, I don't quite understand those package and procedure results. Package travel is ok but I don't get the procedure follow part.. what would she be following as part of a travel package? I've never seen that one.