To those of you having trouble with your companions stopping combat and standing still while raving like lunatics, I have the answer. I'd been experiencing it frequently lately and looked here to see if it had been solved. Finding no answers, I dug deeper into my own game to see what I could find.

It has nothing to do with their personality, as Talkie suggested much earlier in this post. It has nothing to do with their AI settings (aggression, energy, etc.). Instead (at least in my case) it's a problem with the healers. If you have a magic class in your party who has restoration as a major skill, and if you tell them to heal (it doesn't seem to matter which of the two healing options you pick for them), then sometimes, especially in battle against more than one opponent, they stop combat and don't fight or heal. In most cases you can even initiate dialogue with them, though doing so didn't seem to make a difference for me in terms of getting them back into the fight.

I don't know if this is a shortcoming of the scripting or an actual engine limitation. It doesn't seem to matter now anyway since it looks like Talkie is finished supporting this mod. However, there are two workarounds that I found for this, neither of which I like but we seem to have no choice at this point....

1) Don't tell your companions to heal. When your companions are set to heal, they can get confused and stop fighting altogether, usually at the most inopportune time. Just having them fight but not perform any healing functions seems to keep them in the fight longer and/or indefinitely.

2) Allow one companion to heal. Your others (if you have others) will continue to fight as usual. Your healer will get confused and stop fighting at some point. When this happens, use the spell which calls your companions to your location. Once called to your location, the healer will usually get off one quick heal on you before going back to his or her confused state. You can continue to call her to you when you need a new heal.

I tried the above method in a cavern filled with very tough vampires. I've changed all the vamps in my game to be 25 levels higher than me and also gave them an ability which gives them 1200 extra health and many other advantages. They take so long to kill you go through about three weapons in the process. My party of four (including me) was massacred in several test sessions fighting a small handful of these guys at once. You see, I had three healers with me, all set to heal. When they stopped fighting a minute or so into the battle, I had to rely on health potions. When the potions ran out, I was finished.

So I tried again, but this time I used method #2 above, and it worked out much better. You see, when the NPC stops fighting, it has the sole benefit that enemeis no longer attack them (from what I could see). It's almost as if they revert to the one option in the mod where you have them avoid all fights. But since they're not being attacked, they're not getting knocked down every two seconds like the others. Which means they're usually at full health or close to it. Which means, when you need a quick heal, you summon them to your position (you might just be a few feet away---it doesn't matter, the point is casting that spell to "reset" their location). In my test of this, she healed me about 90% of the time when I cast that spell. If she failed to heal me, I'd just cast it again and she's respond properly. Doing this, I was able to defeat the cavern of uber-vamps. It took a while, but I still had health postions left at the end.

I hope this helps some people.

Does CSR have some problem with the moveTo command?

Whenever the player uses a moveTo script command, either by the console or a scripted event, the game would just lock up.

Basically, the loading screen would appear (with correct context to the place I was moving to), then when it was fully loaded, I'd get a black screen, then I'd get another loading screen with an almost full bar... and it doesn't do anything after this. I'd have to reload oblivion.
Occasionally I'd warp to someplace else instead of locking up on the second screen, and if I was warping to somewhere with a map marker (like a city), that marker would appear on the map as if I was there... for a split moment in time.

This only happens if the companion is following me at the time of warp. If I disable the companion, warp, then re-enable, the companion appears at the destination.

...It's just really bizarre and frustrating.

I seem to have this problem whenever I engage in a fight, my NPCs just stand there looking at me, and following me around everywhere. They do nothing to help out in the fight, instead just loiter about while I fight and then loot the bodies, cast some buffs and heal me.

How do I fix this? it's really taking the fun out of this awesome companion mod.

Thanks in advance.

hmm I don't seem to have this issue and I use the mod regularly. I don't use the order key at all. I always set my npc to attack enemies on sight and always make sure to choose one of the combat packages. Works like a charm for me and I've used several npcs.

The friend... topic disappear when I dismiss a npc, do I have to wait for it to pop up again? otherwise this is a great mod, sad that it's not supported anymore.

EDIT: Nvm, got it working. I changed the friend topic to only work for playerfaction, apparently the dismisstoken sets the playerfaction to -1, ie the npc leaves playerfaction. Setting it to 0 made the topic pop up again. Don't know if there are any side effects for doing this.

I'm trying to make my own custom companions and I am having trouble getting them to enter in combat. So I'm wondering how high should Aggression be for them to work properly?

Guys I have a problem, I just come to use CSR and so I dont know if this was aways like this, but after they have joined the party, they dont speak anymore. I mean the audio for general greetings wont play anymore. I'm trying to figure out why, I just tested some other guys version from here: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37586
This one keeps the audio for greetings playing after they joined your party. If anyone knows how to fix that, please do tell me =)

I see this too. I think its because CSR changes their greetings to a basic non-voiced party greeting to replace their normal greeting. Many NPCs don't have a greeting that would make sense for them to be in your party, while custom ones probably do. I haven't learned how to fix it yet though, I might fiddle it though maybe it'll be as simple as deleting the CSR greetings.

Hello,

could you help me please?

A few days ago I updated my wrye bash. Before updating this fantastic mod was working perfectly. But from now the leadership button doesn't work, and I have no access to my companion's equipment. (my dispo is 100). I can give orders, get rumors, my companion fights, anything else remain unchanged.
I've tried the deactivate-cleansave-activate-procedure, doesn't matter. It doesn't work for me.


Thanks in advance.

SkandarGraun

I'm also having problems getting my companions to fight, ever since updating this mod. I made a clean save. It seems it has something to do with their aggression behavior. When I set it to "attack enemies on sight", my companions, at least, start combat. In other words, they look at the enemy, and you can't talk to them, instead of standing around looking at me, which is what they were doing when I had it set to "try and be versatile". Now it seems the only time I can actually get them to attack, is when the enemy is unarmed.

Well, I solved my problem, but I don't know may it is work for you too. By me it works.
I switch out the merge-files. I mean I picked out the file-merging in wrye-bash. I have more .esp thisway, but the mod is working.
If you have any other solution (what files may to merge) I will thank you.

I deactivated the mod, and made a clean save, and it seemed to fix the problem, but then, after playing a while, my companions stopped fighting again. Has anybody else found a better fix? I may have to revert to the old version.

Maybe it has to do with their aggression? With the new version, you can't hire fighters from the fighters guild that are of higher rank than you. Since he wasn't my companion any more, Burz started walking back to Cheydinhal, and I followed him. He wouldn't fight anybody until I changed his agression to 50, using the "sv aggression 50" command, but then he also started attacking innocents.

I have been using version 3.13 and am now getting ready to upgrade to version 3.27

Thanks for the great plugin, but two issues still trouble me. And looking through the fixes from 3.14 - 3.27 readme, I do not see them being addressed.

1. Under the 'Loot' commands, I would like an option for my recruits to not loot at all in some situations. [edit: 'No Looting' added, sweet!, thanks]

2. I take time to share my equipment with recruits to get their inventory loaded out like I want. But when my recruits 'Loot', they end up equipping some of the looted items. And I have to go back and redo their equipment back how I had it. And take out of their inventory the items that I do not want them equipping. Which leaves me carrying the extra goods.

How about a command for recruits to keep from equipping looted items?

Hopefully version 3.27 fixes this, I am going to install and find out.

Edit: But did not see a command for recruits to keep the weapons and armor I loaded out for them, without changing when the recruits are looting fallen enemies.

Two quick questions:

- would you recommend to run this mod on a low-end computer?
- what happens if I recruit an npc who is essential for a certain question, and then he dies?

Then the quest breaks.

Dude I think your mod very good, much better than the "cm". However, when I'm in combat (I'm tank) I retreat (walk backwards) defending, and my companions are following me, walking next to the iniigo, around the enemy, following me, but the back of the enemy .. . Almost protecting the enemy ... And so the fight is horrible, my companions hinder fight time. Had to have an option in the command, which in combat; They stay away. command option (average distance / far / near / side) on the battlefield, not to hinder.