I was wondering if I am the only one with this problem. I think I've suffered from it ever since I play Oblivion, but it didn't bother me until now.
Basically, when I get into melee range of a goblin who is shooting me with a bow, he briefly switches to his weapon and shield, but immediately after these seem to disappear and he attacks me with only his hands. The weapon and shield are still in his inventory after I kill him, he just seems unable to equip them.
Anyone else is having this problem? It may be a bad script in my game setup, but I don't really think so since as I've said I remember this bug being always present. And I suspect it would happen to any creature with bow and melee, archer goblins are the only ones with both in vanilla but probably a skeleton archer would have the same problem if her were given a melee weapon (In vanilla he will just keep shooting you at point blank range. Annoying bastards never give up until you remove the 'un-' from their '-death'...)

I suppose I could fix it with a script iterating through the goblin's inventory and equipping the first weapon and shield it finds when the goblin has none equipped. So, anyone else has this bug?

Aren't these things governed by their Combat Style?
Do they use vanilla Combat Style?

Are you using MMM and, if so, which version? This was an issue with previous releases of MMM - but it seems to have been fixed in the latest releases. At least I haven't noticed it with MMM 3.7b3PR3.

I get it all the time too, but I've just figured it was because they did more damage with their fists then the melee weapon they were assigned. Most of the goblins I face have daggers, yet they could use swords instead.
Some have blunt weapons, and they use them. Rather odd, but then again, I tend to not complain unless it's a game breaker.

I'm not using any of the overhaul, though I did make a tiny one of my own with just their tweaks to vanilla. Aside from them doing more damage with their nails than with a weapon, what could cause this behavior?

I would prefer not needing to make a whole OBSE mod and adding more strain to my game just for this petty issue, but once I find any insignificant quirk in this game, i have the irresistible urge to fix it... maybe due to some RL frustration? :wacko:

Their combat style. Within a certain radius that can be set they will switch from ranged to melee. I actually gave some of my vamps in SVVR a very short melee radius, so they would not switch to melee but kept shooting even from a short distance.

They do switch to melee as expected, they just unequip their weapon immediatly after and attack with claws. Besides, this doesn't happen to other goblins who don't use bows, those will always use their equipped melee weapon normally, and they have the same unarmed damage as the archer ones. But what you are saying does apply to skeleton archers then (which makes sense, as they are supposed to be quite mindless I guess)

If MMM does fix this, I'm curious as to how it does it. Are its goblins scripted?

Any chance the goblins who equipped their melee weapons ended up breaking them right away?

Ah sorry, I misread. I indeed noticed that as well, but when looking in the CS I don't see any reason why they wouldn't use their weapon. Never gave it any thought before, but it is a bit strange indeed.

Yes:

scriptname CSGoblinMissileshort bScaledshort sRandomfloat fScalefloat fstatbegin OnLoad	if bScaled == 0		set sRandom to GetRandomPercent		if zMMMScaleActors			set fScale to (sRandom / 275) + 0.80			SetScale fScale		endif		set fStat to ((sRandom / 100) - 0.5) * (GetAV health)		ModAV health fStat		set fStat to ((sRandom / 100) - 0.5) * (GetAV fatigue)		ModAV fatigue fStat		set fStat to ((sRandom / 100) - 0.5) * (GetAV magicka)		ModAV magicka fStat		set fStat to (sRandom / 5) - 10		ModAV strength fStat		set fStat to (sRandom / 5) - 10		ModAV intelligence fStat		set fStat to (sRandom / 5) - 10		ModAV willpower fStat		set fStat to (sRandom / 5) - 10		ModAV agility fStat		set fStat to (sRandom - 50) / 4		ModAV speed fStat		if GetAV speed < 9			ForceAV Speed 9		endif		set sRandom to GetRandomPercent		set fStat to (sRandom - 50) / 2		ModAV confidence fStat		set sRandom to GetRandomPercent		set fStat to (sRandom - 99) / 3		ModAV aggression fStat		if GetItemCount zMMMBPWGToken == 0			AddItem zMMMBPWGToken 1		endif		if GetItemCount zMMMFleeToken == 0			AddItem zMMMFleeToken 1		endif		set bScaled to 1	endifend

@Arthmoor: not really, their weapons and shield are at 100% when I check their corpses

@Petrus: Sorry, I forgot I had the MMM plgins in my /hidden folder for modding purposes. I checked the scripts, and the scripts on those tokens, and I couldn't see anything dealing with weapons. Besides, AFAIK without knowing the exact weapon to equip through script, one needs OBSE to equip a weapon on a NPC by OBSE-checking his inventory, and MMM is OBSE-free.

I'll test if the same can happen to a skeleton with the goblin combat style in vanilla setup. Then to a goblin with no combat style. If both happen, maybe I will incorporate some sort of fix in my creature damage fix mod, but any talented scripter is welcome to develop this idea, I'm no great scripter I'm afraid.

Just as I guessed. I made a new game, only Oblivion.esm and my testing .esp loaded. I made two new archer goblins, one with his combat style and another with the default one (none), and a skeleton guardian with both a bow and arrows, weapon and shield, and the skeleton archer combat style.

Upon spawning, the goblin has his melee weapon equipped. If I get to the 'switch to ranged' distance from him, he pulls out his bow. If I get near him again, he tries to switch to his weapon, but the next moment he has his bow, and the next one he has resorted to his hands. And he won't pull out his bow again, no matter how far I get from him he will just chase me. And exactly the same happens with the goblin with default combat style and the skeleton. There was nothing in the vanilla skeleton archer combat style forcing him to always use his bow, he simply had no melee weapons and thus never resorted to melee even at point blank, which doesn't seem too right either (a punch from a spiky bony fist should hurt quite a bit, and skeletons actually have quite a fast HtH attack)

So I guess this is a bug that happens only if a creature tries to switch weapons more than twice. It seems goblin archers spawn with their melee equipped, and when they first see the player or an enemy they immediately switch to their bow. if the player gets close, they try to switch again, and the bug kicks in.

Try this

Change the Switch Distance in DefaultGoblinArcher so that range is lower than melee.

Switch distance (melee, range) 500, 0 ,
Set Range Stand off Distance to 0

See what that does..that should make them always equip bow even is standing up close and personal.

I don't want them to always try to shoot me even at point blank, that seems suicidal, and besides, if you get REALLY close to an archer in the game, the arrow fires behind you and doesn't even touch you. You can even gloat 'good shot dude, you actually managed to fire the bow over my shoulder!' before turning him to pulp. Just to force them to switch weapons correctly. Seems I'll need some OBSE scripting for this... to the CS-mobile!

I investigated this a while ago, when it was reported as a problem with the MMM-added goblins. After investigation, I came to the conclusion that this is a bug with the goblin animations. I don't know enough about animations to confirm this empirically, let alone fix it, however. My investigations indicated that the goblin animations for drawing weapons not working correctly. The goblins that only have melee weapons don't need to play either animation, and so they attack you with their weapons. The ones with bows have to sheath their bow and draw their melee weapon, and the latter fails for some reason, so they end up using their fists. Similarly, when they try to go back to their bow, the animation for drawing that doesn't work, so they stick with their fists. If you set up a skeleton (creature) with exactly the same stats and the same weapons and combat style, you will notice that it switches between melee and ranged correctly. This is why I think it's something specific to the goblin's animations.

(Note: I could be talking complete rubbish. Like I said, I know very little about animations)

Eloise

I did set up a skeleton with both melee and ranged weapon, and he had the very same problems than goblins had. It may be an animation problem general to the interaction between creatures and bows then possibly having more to do with bows themselves than the creatures.
However, I also had at least one case where everything was working correctly, one of the goblins I spawned did switch between melee and bow with no problems. Quite a exception in my game though.

I'm trying to fix this by checking the creature's inventory through a script on a token item, problem is: I'm trying to use an array_var assigned to the GetItems 33 function (33 is for weapons, right?). I don't know a thing about arrays sadly, so once I have the array, how do I equip something from there? And do arrays actually work when declared in Object scripts?