I'm having trouble whilst setting up a 'fight club' type thing in one of my mods. The idea is that NPCs go to a marker and use an AI package set to "Use Item At", and the target being "Weapons: NONE", thus they should fight hand-to-hand. The problem is this: the NPCs go to the Heading Markers where they should be, but sometimes, after getting there, they just stand there without actually doing puching animations. It almost seems random whether or not they do it, for example one of the two 'combatants' may be doing the punching correctly whilst the other just stands there. The same problem randomly occurs when I make them do a similar AI package in other places (e.g in their homes against, for example, a wooden dummy or whatever), again, it seems random whether they do it or not.
Any reasons why this might be? Any solutions?

EDIT: By the way, opening the console, clicking on them and typing resurrect makes them do the animation correctly, however obviously this isn't viable for a decent mod.

Why not have them actually start combat with each other?

Set them to a custom faction, mark it with special combat. Reduce their hand2hand to zero and they won't even be able to hurt each other.

Cheers, but I'm not sure that would really work, since they only fight for a few hours then go back to normal (i.e. its a fight club, they're not actually fighting because they dislike each other. Perhaps with some scripting I could make them temporaily be put in a faction then removed at the end. But that could get quite complex.

By the way, it seems there are problems with just basic changes in AI packages when related to using AI simulated combat. For example once i've console 'resurrected' them and they start doing it properly, once that package is over and they are supposed to move to the side a do a cheering package, they just keep fighting, once again, I need to 'resurrect' them to get them to do the correct thing.
Also it seems like when left normally, they barely ever do the animations, they just stand there doing nothing.

I just remembered something that may be important.

An Xmarker has a "X target data" tab. I think you have to make each Xmarker target the other Xmarker (or perhaps make the target the opposing NPC), so that they have something to "aim" toward in order to do the animation.

This will also make them appear to be fighting each other.

I had a similar problem with archers using their bow until I marked the hay target in the Xmarker's target tab.

Thank you VERY much, that sounds promising, I deffinately hadn't done that. I'll go and try it out

Okayy... it still doesn't seem to be wroking, though I havn't tested it out with the sparrers yet, the problem is still occuring with when they train on dummies and stuff, so I imagine that the same will happen with the sparrers.
Noticed two things that might be helpfull:

1) It seems to only be hand-to-hand (i.e. "Use Item At:" "Weapins: NONE) which causes the problem, the problem didn't happen when they were doing it with weapons (i.e. "Weapons: Blunt"/"Weapons: Blade"). So maybe you have to do something different with "Weapons: NONE"

2) I havn't tested this enough times to be sure, but it seems like the problem only occurs if you are IN the cell at the time when their AI package changes to the "Use Item At: Weapons: NONE" package. For example when I came in when he should have been half way through the package (i.e. around 34 game minutes after the start of a one hour package) he did the punching against the punch bag fine, but when I came in later when he was nearing the end of a blade training package (e.g. using a "Weapons: Blade" package on a dummy) and waited in the same cell as he changed to doing a Hand-To-Hand package the normal problem occurred.

Any more help?

Putting the sparring partners permanently in a "Special combat" faction only affects the way they interact with each other and does not affect how they fight with others, including any other factions with the same setting. I.e. there is no damage done only if the two combatants are in the same "special combat" faction.

So you don't need to add/remove them with a script, or anything complex. Just have them go to the same place and StartCombat.

Cheers, but I would need to add/remove them from the faction with script as I only want them fighting at a certain time in the day, the rest of the time theyy should just have normal reactions to each other, thus it would be a lot simpler to do that with a "Use Item At" script.

Any insights onto the problem taking into account the points I derscribed in the last post, anyone?
If not, I guess I'll try making them fight with weapons, as those packages seem to work properly.