I created my first dungeon, and I can load it using "coc MyDungeon" from the game menu screen. The only problem is, all the tutorials seem to imply that you can just drop enemies or NPCs in and they show up, but this is not working for me. Despite dragging lvlWarlocks, lvlbandits, sabercats, antronochs, and everything else in, none of the charectors appear when I load the cell.

Help?

OK, I figured it out... You can't have NPCs show up unless you create a navmesh first.

Find out what happens if you drop in a chair or a chest or something not an actor. If it shows up in your cell in game than this eliminates a lot of other possibilities.

Lets say dropping the chest in your cell works (you see it in the game) then your actors may be:

Not enabled (they are disabled by default, check this in your actros reference).

Walking away form the dungeon (give them an ai package that holds them in one place).

Game is confused because you did not set up a proper NAMESH.

Navmesh is the series of triangles (mesh) that helps actors "navigate" thru your cell. I am clueless on NAVMESH except for what I just told you as I have not worked with them.

(I understand why they changed from Oblivions navigation system but man it was sure simple to place edit and manipulate the old navigation matrix back when it was just a lot of simple "connect the dots".)

Edit: DOH! ninja'd by the OP...

Thanks, that was still helpful becuase after I added a few charectors, one of them still refused to show up. Truns out it had an AI package that put it somewhere else. Afterter deleting the ais on the refrence, the charector then apperaed in the right spot. I'm still confsed on these AI packages though- everyone i've tried results in the charector standing there staring of into space and not moving at all. I tried giving a bandit base type with enherit AI turned on, but they still just stare into space.

I believe the enherit AI only allows your Lvl actor to use the traits of the template you are using. If you uncheck use packages then your actor will have no AI package attached to them and will "just stare into space". Unless you give them a package most Lvl actors use the DefaultMasterPackage.

Here is a very good tutorial on how to setup basic packages http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2136819-ai-packaging-problem/

I think I watched that video amoung several others. Its mostly about creating routines that NPCs follow throughout the day.

I was trying to create an encounter where the player enters a shack and finds a kid fighting a skeever. I thought it would be a simple project for learning how to set up different scenarios. After about 10 hours, I've only been able to do one of the following:

1. With a vanilla kid, the kid runs around while the skeever chases him.

2. By setting the kid to "brave", he just stands there saying, "is that the best you've got?" while the skeever keeps attacking.

3. Trying to base the kid instance on an lvlbandit results in him being stuck in place, talking, but not moving while the skeever attacks him.

4. Cloning the nord race and trying to change the skin results in a floating kid's head with no body, but it does attack the skeever.

I've tried so many variations I can't even remember them all, but they all resulted in something like the above. I thought this would be easier.

Nothing is as easy as it seems. Sorry I couldn't help.

Children are hardcoded not to fight in Skyrim. (Via the 'child race' checkbox in their race properties)

I decided to get a bit more scientific in my testing. I had modified so many things it was hard to keep track of what was what. So I started with a fresh mod based on the master file, and did the following:

1. Duplicated "Erinth" (Brenton girl) to a new object, "Erinth2".

2. Set "Erinth2" to "Aggressive", "Brave", and removed the eating and playoutside AI packeges so she would only apper in the test cell.
3. Duplicated the "BrentonRaceChild" to "BrentonRaceChild2".

4. Unticked "child" in "BrentonChildRace2".

5. Assigned "Erinth2" to the race "BrentonRaceChild2".

This resulted in a floating "Erinth" head (body mesh missing?), that attacked the player on sight. Which is not quite what we want.

Leaving all of the above in place, I simple re-checked the "child" flag on "BrentonRaceChild2".

This still resulted in a floating head, but this time it ran away, which is the normal combat behavior for kids.

So I'm thinking that the problem I'm having is with duplicating races- the body mesh/texture isn't being duplicated properly but the head is?

Next, I assigned "Erinth2" back to the default "BrentonRaceChild".

The body was back like it should be, but even though the NPC was derived from a race with the child flag on, she still attacked me with an axe.

So I don't think it's the child flag that sets if they will attack or not, I'm thinking it's either "aggressive" or "brave" that does it. I'm guising "Agressive vs Passive" controls if the charector is an enemy by default (ie a drauger) or only an enemy if provoked (like a merchant). Where the "Cowardly / Brave" field controls if they run during combat or try to attack any enemies. I'll test that next.

Ultimately, I'd like to be able to take adopted children out to hunt for deer, etc. Which I imagine will require scripting of some kind. I haven't really done anything with factions yet, but it seems like you should be able to put animals in a "game animal" faction, and conditionally set children to be aggressive toward that faction, with a "lets go hunting" dialog option that puts them in "hunting mode" and, "let's go home" that un-sets it"?

But I think the first step is figuring out which flags do what in order to know what settings can be scripted.

You would think it would not be so hard to determine if an actor would attack the player on sight or not...

I have a mod that runs all the actors in a cell thru a list of filters to try to determine just that by testing various combinations of

Aggression

Confidence

Factions relationships

And there was one other factor in this list but I don't remember off hand. Anyway all this work and testing I did to pin it down and I still could not catch all of the actors that would attack the player on DETECTION (this is sound as well!).