** NPC Friendly Fire v1.0 ** -by Skycaptain

[this mod requires Oblivion Script Extender!]


Overview
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This is a very simple one-script mod that helps to keep NPCs from killing each other without a reason.


Details
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The script checks if any fighting NPC in the loaded are is fighting. If the NPC is fighting another NPC from the same faction as the NPC himself, the fight is stopped.

To keep the fight from starting again, the script also increases the NPCs disposition against the other NPC to the same level as his agression (if lower than aggression).

Optionally, the mod can be configured to add EXTRA disposition, so that the resulting disposition is safely above the aggression value.



Configuration
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This mod has two configurable values

-how often the script runs. default is every 1s, which should be fine but nevertheless can be changed.

-how much extra disposition is added. If the value is other than 0, the script makes sure that the fighting NPCs have disposition equal to their aggression level + extra value, towards each other, unless its already higher.


Notes:
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Many NPCs, even in towns, do not share any factions between each other.

If you want to verify that this mod works, open console, click a guard, memorize the id you see, click another guard, and type startcombat [the id of the other guard].

Similarly, you can verify if two NPCs do not share any faction relations. Just use a console command "samefaction" in a similar manner (1=yes, 0=no).



Install
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1. Make sure to install Oblivion Script Extender (http://obse.silverlock.org/)

Make sure you know how to run Oblivion with it - it has a readme.

2. Put the contents of this mod into your Oblivion\data folder.

3. Enable the mod, and hopefully your NPCs will fight (to death) less the they used to.


Legal
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This mod can be edited and redistributed, if credit for the original work is given.



Credits
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-Obse crew, without them there would exist no mods made by me

-PetrusOctavianus, who′s request thread gave the idea for this mod

-Bethesda for the original game and CS


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-Sky

So will this keep all my "Extended" xxxx city npcs from causing riots in taverns when someone steals something?

I went into the IC market tavern at night and this "Extended Imperial City" mod added like 10-15 npcs that were at dinner. The strange thing is it seems they only started fighting when I entered upon loading the scene twice. I had to resurrect 3 npcs from that fight.

Ok. I figure it is because it is a confined space relative to the number of NPCs these mods add to the city. 10-15 NPCs inside the market tavern is crowded at the dinner hours.
Someone is bound to get hit.

Heh, I must say I had half expected the mod to be called "Hey, I'm on your side!" in the same vein as one of your other mods called "Medic!".

And sometimes it's an NPCs AI Package that sets it all off. Had to uninstall the Beggars from NPCs Alive since they were killed by the guards as soon as their AI Packages had them looking for food and the guards considered it stealing.

So will rage and frenzy spells cause no effect now on creatures/NPCs? I've never been able to cause a riot with my current FCOM game, but IIRC, I can frenzy NPCs into fighting amongst each other. I guess this overrides that behavior, correct?

Frenzy definitely raises the target's aggression, but if their disposition is high enough towards the player, they won't attack the player. I used it in testing the UOPS changes. I wanted Cingor to attack me (we were both in the FG, so his disposition towards "me" was 100). I successfully cast frenzy, but all I got was him to attack everyone in sight, except "me".

To confirm your conclusions on the scan area, yes it's the square. I recently reduced Oblivion XP's scan area when doing getFirstRef (changed to getFirstRef 69 1 from getFirstRef 69 2) to improve performance. So far I haven't had any issues with the NPC (or creature actually) from being detected. I even cast a targetted fire spell from across a valley and the kill was registered with no issues (the reason Oblivion XP is building an array of NPC's and creatures in the first place).

I have only used a frenzy spell once so far vs pirate ghosts, but they couldn't kill each other due to them wielding normal weapons I presume.

Ok, well I guess with such simple mod like this people will have choose between frenzy and this mod - if a complex system were to be built around just managing this borderline issue, then it maybe could be taken out of the equation with faction/disposition/combattarget crosschecks and effect monitoring, but for me the work is done here.

I don′t build arrays either, again felt like an overkill, after all it′s rare that the AI actually even does anything like fighting each other when the area is not loaded (so I′m just looping the loaded area, there′s no performance questions either since the amount of code is so really really few lines, and only once a second).

Yeah, your purpose here is a little different than what Ob XP needs to do! I was just wondering if there was an easy way to test for this. I know you can test for an active effect on a character - maybe that would do it. Just test if frenzy is in effect on the npc and return - don't worry about bumping up their disposition. Just a suggestion. This would require OBSE.

I had some issues with NPC battles in my current game, but it was due to Ulrim's Horses! Turns out Ulrim's adds meat to a horse's inventory so you can loot ingredients if you kill them. This seemed to make NPC's attack them and mayhem broke out. Once I realized what was going on, I removed the meat from the inventory of horses - problem solved.