that was what i was thinking, should be even harder to play thief in towns,
thank you for looking in to it, gone download and try it right now

Hi, saebel.
I notised an interesting feature with marksmans abnormal susceptibility for char's dislocation during the period since a moment of bow activation in condition if char is detected to a snapshot moment despite of immediate invisibility spell casting. It looks like you are in LOS during the period, and you have leaved it just after shot. So, it's a pretty difficult to avoid experienced marksman's hit.

Hey, remember when I noted that NPCs sneaking around with torches were apprently invisible? Well, they're not - it turns out the bad guys are just ignoring them. I was running around Silver Tooth Cave earlier, and there were a couple adventurers (loners) in different places - standing there, with a torch, and the goblins were ignoring them completely. Likewise, the adventurers weren't attacking the goblins. Obviously it's an AI issue, but not a visibility issue.

That make sense. I was wondering about that. My understanding is that there are faction issues. For instance, if there was a bandit and a maurader in the same spot, they probably would attack each other on sight.

The other thing is that since my mod "short-cuts" the detection system by modifying the detector's skill, the ability for NPCs to detect each other is going to be rather tweaked. Without writing a plugin from scratch to hook the entire detection process, there isn't much I can do about it.

Part of it has to do with getting attacked. When an NPC is hit, they get a huge bonus to detect you, plus you are also in combat, which is another big bonus. So yes, even taking the best precautions, if you are up against a highly skilled marksman, they can still hit you if you aren't cautious and don't use cover to your best advantage.

How are you modifying detector skill? With ModAV? Or buffs/debuffs?

I'm using ModAV. Haven't heard of buffs/debuffs.

The token is constantly checking and tracking what the original skill is, as well as any adjustments due to enchantment items, spells, etc. and then applies SDR adjustments. It also remembers what the prior adjustment was, so it's only tweaking up or down depending on the overall change. Under certain conditions, all SDR adjustments balance out to zero leaving the NPC with their original Sneak Skill plus adjustments due to spells and magic. This happens primarily when the player stops moving and is not in Line Of Sight, the NPC dies, or the NPC is out of range. So overall it is fairly clean, the values stay consistent, and the math and scripts are fairly tight, so I have yet to notice a performance hit, although I haven't played a fully mod-loaded game yet.

What's the buffs/debuffs technique?

Using fortify skill effects. I do believe they accept negative values.

Reason I ask is for compatibility issues. Some leveling mods pay close attention to player skills, so, directly modifying a skill value can lead to conflicts, and odd behavior. (I don't use one, and used the same methods in earlier versions of Crossbows of Cyrodiil, but, wanted to avoid the compatibility issues, and rewrote some of the scripts.....)

SDR only modifies the NPCs Sneak skill. The player's Sneak skill is never altered by SDR under any circumstances. It should be completely compatible with all leveling mods.

I looked at foritifying, but it looked like it was going to be messier, and not much more effective in SDRs case.

That would make a difference.

In that case, there shouldn't be a problem then.

Bookmarked... I hope its gonna make it hardcoe im gonna keep watching this :thumbsup:

Just wanted to shout out a general thanks.

In the last 20 days since it's official release, between Tes Nexus and Planet Elderscrolls, SDR has racked up over 200 downloads. It has ten endorsemants on TES Nexus and one 10 out of 10 rating on Planet Elderscrolls.

I've also started seeing it referred or recommended in other threads (aside from my own self-promoting).

Thanks for all the support. Let me know how it's treating you, what yout preferred settings are, and what you would like to see in future releases.

Is there any plan to make this compatible with Reneer's NPC Realistic sneak or Haldar's mod pack (that contains Reneer's mod)? I would like to try this, but am also really digging how NPCs also vanish if they are good at sneaking...

I think the issue stems from the fact that your mod ups the NPC sneak dynamically, and that coupled with Reneer's mod, makes them invisible as you near them if they are sneaking!

More likely than not, I would have to recreate the effect. I'll look at the mod and check with Reneer about whether or not I can lift his idea.

Well the most refined version of that effect is found in Haldar's mod pack - he really polished the mod further.

If these two were combined it would be damn near perfect sneak mod combining roleplay (character skill) with immersion (player skill).

I'll check out Haldar's mod pack next. I just looked at Reneer's and it would be fairly easy to incorporate what he has into my mod. All it would take is an additional .ini setting or two and some 30 or so lines of code.

I've sent messages to both Reneer and Haldar. I'll report back with an update.

That would be sweet if they let you use that. SDR is awesome.

So Haldar gave me permission. It's definitely a more complex equation than Reneer's. And in all actuality I can't really use either of them out of the box.

In order to provide accurate immersion, essentially I'm going to have to take all of my formula, reverse it, come up with a percentage, and that's how visible the person would be. All the rules that apply to them detecting you would apply to you detecting them, with a few exceptions.

The other factor is: what are the odds that someone / something you meet is actually going to be sneaking? In vanilla oblivion, I think I've only seen NPCs do it once or twice, and usually it's part of a scripted quest. I'd like to come up with a loose formula that calculates a % chance that somone/something decides to start sneaking around, and for how long. For example, the base percentage would be their sneak value (without my detection modifications), and that would be modified by time of day, location (interior/exterior), what faction they belong to, class, etc.

The number of seconds that they continue to sneak would probably be the same number as the percentage. I would also have to check certain factors that would make them stop sneaking, such as fleeing or being in combat.

Also should creatures be allowed to sneak? Technically anything could try to move stealthier, but I'm not sure if there are animations that would work for that. Does anyone know of any mods that already address this?

I don't know that the game will let creatures sneak.....

Some mods alter AI, such that you will see (not see?) sneakers more often.

I would think that any class with stealth as a specialization..... would be more prone to sneaking....... maybe modifiers by specialization??

Glad that you are considering to make these exce3llent mods compatible.

Re: NPCs that sneak. In vanilla:
- Thieves like City-Swimmer in Bravil sneak around. Would be good if they started to use some of their skills to disappear from view.
- Ocheeva of DB likes to sneak attack when practicing in the sanctuary.
In addition, I know of at least 4 mods that add new NPCs in game that are prone to sneaking:
- Tamriel Travelers (these add merchants to game, some of whom are bosmer or dunmer rangers that like to sneak).
- VOILA adds Imperial Legion soldiers patrolling the roads, some of whom are rangers that like to sneak around (this was the mod that made me realize that Haldar/Reneer's mod have a problem with yours, as the rangers started disappearing as they came closer to me).
- lonewolf-kai has made an assassin mod, that used Reneer/Haldar's mod to make stealthy assassins attack you every now and then.
- Integration adds a few Khajiit that like to sneak when stealing food.
- Blood&Mud has a few sneaking NPCs.

saebel, I'll highly appreciate you if you could provide a common deactivation of nps/creatures sneaking system because I'm actually using similar ones from KSE.

Not to mention OOO (or is it MMM?) adds adventurers to dungeons that like to sneak around too, of course, they are carrying torches/lanterns....... Yeah. Not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier.

It looks like I can do it, but it's going to take awhile. There will be two separate options that can be turned on/off in the ini file to reduce conflicts.

1. "Disappearing NPC sneakers" will do the inviso thing. It's pretty straight forward conceptually, but building all the math and subscripts is going to take some time.

2. NPCs sneaking will have the NPCs sneak around. I've never dealt directly with AI behavior before, so this will probably come in a much later release.

By making them both optional, it will provide maximum flexibility.

With Haldar's mod pack, it would be compatible, but you would have to turn off the first mod option. The other four should be perfectly fine as far as I can tell. Actually, most of the NPC sneak mod features have similar features built in to SDR already. The only that SDR is really missing is the fade out feature.

Well the feature that Haldar introduced that I like better than straight up invisible NPCs when they sneak is cloaked/Chameleon NPCs who are opaque in lesser and greater degrees.

I'd imagine setting that up with the stat war kind of thing that is already happening - say they have high sneak and yours is low - then they would be near invisible .... or if you had high and they had low sneak then they would only be slightly opaque.

Thanks for considering these features.