This is a bit of a long story...

I set up a schedule for an NPC to patrol at a set time. The patrol was to start in an office, travel between a few idle markers and return. The NPC was duly at the start point at the right time, idled on the starting marker for the correct time then took a couple of steps and stopped.

I assumed it was a navmesh problem and re-did the whole navmesh for the office. No effect.

I then removed one of the idle markers from the patrol. This time the NPC took a few more steps before stopping. I removed more idle markers from the patrol and the NPC actually made it out of the office.

After further faffing around with X markers instead of idle markers and getting nowhere, I gave up and started the patrol in a completely different location. Again, the NPC is there at the right time but refuses to move. Even with a simple patrol of two x markers he will not budge.

Can anyone make any sense of this idiocy?

Did you link the npc to the first X marker? Ran into that myself...

Yes, the starting location is the marker, radius zero, and the package lists the markers to be visited.

Get FO3MasterUpdate and use it to internally convert your file into an .esm, and see if the problem persists.

Doing this may save you hours and hours of trouble.

The symptom this fixes is that mobs will at first seem able to use patrol/travel/wander packages in player-made areas, and then, suddenly they won't any more. Follow packages however can still semi-function because follow does not appear to use the navmesh when the following mob is close-ish to the followed target.

Didn't make any difference.

You sure you did it right?

Try this. Give the NPC a melee weapon ONLY, set its confidence to 4, and start a fight with it from a bit of a distance away. See if it can run to you, or, if it gets stuck and maybe teleports around. Testing this with a range weapon on the NPC is useless, only melee.

Ok, now we get into twilight territory. Giving him a sledgehammer has allowed him to patrol. That's all I did - removed his gun from his inventory and gave him the sledgehammer!

Hey, try this.

Give him that ranged weapon back. Get him stuck again. Select him in the console and do:

sa

and hit enter.

What does the line say about "wants weapon drawn" ? the whole line.

Well, he got stuck again, with the sledgehammer, when I changed the x markers back to idle markers.

The line states "Wants Weapon Drawn 0, Weapon Drawn 0".

Since you can now get him stuck with the sledgehammer, see what combat looks like. see if he can get to you from a distance away.

Also.

I bet that your patrol package is directing the NPC to have his weapon equipped?

After seeing what happens above, you could try unselecting any flags related to equipping, or non-equipping a weapon, and see if he continues to get stuck.

I placed a dog in the same place, connected to two x markers, and it was patrolling OK, so it's definitely not a navmesh issue. Replaced the dog with my NPC (sledgehammer) and he was again stuck. When attacked, he was able to get to me, but he took a long time to decide to move.

The package has no flags set at all (other than 'enable fallout behavior').

Based on your description, and if all of this behaves the same way with the file .esm-ified, I am going to guess that this is a problem with the .exe, or several problems within the .exe which stack up into the NPC being stuck in place.

But the esm-ification deal is important, because it causes this sort of thing if it's not done.

I wonder if what you are seeing affects travel, sandbox, and wander packages as well. Although be aware that with sandbox packages, I've seen NPCs use idle markers which made them seem to be pathing, although in that case they were not. It sounds like you're going to be doing a workaround instead of having this work the way you wanted.

I have another NPC whose schedule appears to be OK. He goes to his room at the appropriate time, sandboxes, goes to other rooms when required, etc. But he has no patrol package.

Removing all packages from my NPC and simply linking him to the x-markers does... nothing! He still stands there - yet a dog in the same circumstances will patrol correctly.

Removing all packages? that's not what I would have done naturally. I woulda expected to use a patrol package and get it working.

I have working patrols in an interior area using robots and they use a patrol package. I've never done one with an NPC. Not sure what the differences are.

I have several NPCs that use patrol packages to patrol between idle markers. I have included a http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy80/HupOranje/patrolpkg.jpg of some of the details of the package. I can't really understand why your would not be working after reading all of the things you have tried. Is your time/duration so short, that the packages is ending? Do you have conditions that limit its use other than schedule? Are their other packages in the NPCs list that might be taking over after a short time? What you are experiencing sure sounds like the ESM (or lack there of) bug. But you've said that you made your file into an ESM and it still happened. Are you using a dirty save?

Thanks for that final suggestion! :foodndrink: I was just about to give up on this, but went back to a much earlier save and found my NPC would, at last, do something! It seems that every time I change the patrol I have to go back to that earlier save for some reason, but at least it seems to be working now. Thanks again!

Ok so it sounds like he's saying that, maybe - - if you change configurations on a patrol (or a patrol package) but the patrol has already started in a savegame, the old patrol configuration tends to stay persistant in that savegame? And in his case he had some broken parameters originally?

This does not explain why the mob apparently could not path to the player for combat, I don't think. hmmm.

Well, the save I was using was from before I had entered the cell, so in theory nothing should have started until I COC'ed into it, so that is a bit odd too, for sure.

The NPC was able to get to me for combat, I think you may have misunderstood that; the only odd thing there was that he seemed to take a long time to make up his mind before attacking me; once he did, though, he just ran over to me without any issues.

Of course, initial problem made no sense. I had been happily adding NPCs and packages without having to worry about broken savegames. What I hadn't mentioned was that when I first set up my patrol, my other NPCs started doing odd things. For example, one who's supposed to be asleep at that time suddenly decided to start wandering about, whilst my doctor, who was supposed to be sandboxing, stayed stuck in his room. Only after I started messing about with the patrol did they go back to doing what they should be doing - just as removing bits of the patrol caused my patrolling NPC to walk a few steps further each time. It's all very odd.

Was his name colored red as he was making up his mind or was it still green? Did he move properly the moment he turned red to you?

He went red straight away and then just stood there for several seconds.