Hi guys, this problem's been bugging me for a bit. I thought managed to find a solution once, but I can't find that website anymore.

So basically, I want to periodically select a random actor for my quest. I figure the way to go is to use the radiant system, so I've made a quest that uses the appropriate selection criteria, and it finds the first target fine. Now I need to make it 'reselect' to find another target. Does anyone know how to force it to do so?

The solution I can no longer find suggested that if I made a dummy quest to select the target, and then called Stop() and Start() on it from the real quest, it would reselect a target each time. This isn't working for me. Maybe I just don't understand how to Stop() and Start(), but every time OnInit() is called on the selected alias, it's connected to the same actor as it was the first time.

You could add each actor to a formlist and then have a condition on your alias to check the actor isn't in this AlreadySelected formlist, maybe.

It occurs to me that it must be a limitation in my understanding of how to properly restart a quest. Damn-near every repeatable quest in vanilla Skyrim is radiant, and they clearly reselect their targets each time they are replayed.

@Matthiaswagg
I don't think that would work. The criteria by which an actor is selected are already constructed (and tested) in such a way that the same one shouldn't be rechosen. I think the issue is that it's not even attempting to rechoose.

To have a restartable quest, you have run once unticked, and in your ending stage you have Stop(). Then you simply restart it by SetStage(0) or MyQuest.Start()

Since I am using this dummy quest only to select the alias, it doesn't have any stages. Is this likely to be an issue?

I've been calling Stop() and Start() on it from another quest, basically like a refresh function.

function RefreshAlias()    dummyQuest.Stop()    dummyQuest.Start()endFunction

Technically, that SHOULD work AFAIK. Perhaps stick a Utility.Wait in between those two? Just to test.

Playing around with Wait, nothing changed. I decided to test a bit more extensively than before, and I've just realized that the issue isn't quite what I thought it was. I think it's a slight misunderstanding of the radiant selection criteria. I'll explain what I'm observing here, and hopefully someone can tell me what my mistake is.

My selection criteria are: Find Matching Reference (In loaded area + Closest) > GetIsPlayableRace (true).

So the point is to find the closest playable race actor. I'm beginning to wonder what 'Closest' means. Here's why:

My testing was done in Riverwood. It selected Umbry. I then walked and stood directly next to Alvor, and it continued to periodically select Umbry. This is why I thought it wasn't reselecting (I do believe Umbry was closest at the start).

What I've just now also done is run to Whiterun. It continued to select Umbry for quite some time, until I came up to that Imperial Soldier patrol that is leading away a prisoner at the start of the game. Then it correctly chose one of the guards to be closest.

Any guesses why?

I no longer *need* an answer, since it has enough functionality for me to proceed. I'm always curious to know what went wrong though. Thankyou for your help.