Not sure if "smarter" is the correct term, but many mods claim (Such as the two difficulty mods posted here) to improve the AI - they won't stand around dumbfounded when you blow off the head of the guy standing right next to them, will actually try to find you when hidden, won't get stuck in walls, etc. But all of them come bundled with tons of other things that I don't want. Is there any mod that only improves the AI, and if not, would it be possible for anyone who's working on a larger mod with this included to release a standalone with only the AI improvement? Thank you!

Bump

Off hand I dont know of any mods that do this. I have always been kind of cautious when dealing with things that alter the ai. Had weird issues with AI's spazzing out every now and then.

That being said,perhaps try fnv edit and remove anything you dont want? Might take some time, but worth a shot.

These are the two I mentioned:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1137132-arwens-nv-realism-tweaks-thread-3/


http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1132530-relz-hardercore/


What I'd like is a mod that does JUST something along these lines.

I would also like to see this - have you pm'd or messaged Arwen and asked her to make it modular?

I posted in her thread about it, but apparently there's some drama going on so I don't want to bother her with it.

IMPOSSIBLE!!!!

oh wait nevermind.

btw - - - maybe one day I will do something like this. It's been in the back of my mind for a bit now but, I am usually tied up with something else. A number of mods out there which deal with this seem to primarily deal in combat style changes, and I feel that these sorts of changes are not entirely within that realm. I think that a maximized enemy AI would be a combination of specific cover and navmesh placement (you can direct movement using high priority navmesh triangles) plus some process/insight management via script.

From what I've seen - NPCs kinda do this now. But their detection radius isn't always that big (or it falls the other way and they have godlike perceptive powers).

One-shot kills still seem to be buggy. I've been testing out EMP weapon effects in my DENV mod on the poor securitrons at The Strip entrance and if I can sneak-attack one of them and one-shot it, the other Securitrons never wake up. OTOH, the Powder Gangers east of Goodsprings are pretty good about seeing their buddy lying dead in the road and will go investigate. The fiends are moderately successful as well, given their drug-induced haziness.

The "getting stuck in walls" is only an issue because Obsidian was lazy or screwed-up when they NavMeshed. Fix the navmeshes and suddenly NPCs won't be getting stuck on things. Looks like they put down navmesh, then broke the cardinal rule and added in items that block NPC progress. (You're supposed to do big clutter first, then navmesh around it.)

The biggest reason why I never used the improved AI mod in FO:3, it was too easy to abuse. Shoot the ground or a single enemy, watch all the NPCs come cluster around the impact point. Then toss a single grenade and finish them all off at the same time. So there needs to be more randomness and self-preservation going on.

You sure? That stuff is pretty situational and sometimes it can be weird. One time I feel sure that I saw where navmesh must have been put under a large rock (I did not check it in the editor, just saw in-game) but, I think that one must examine each case to see what's gone wrong.

It's pretty common to find radscorpions under rocks in the wasteland, so I really wouldn't be surprised.

If I had a cap for every time I had that bug with radscoprions I'd be able to buy New Vegas (the city) and have enough caps to pave the streets with them.

AI is somewhat busted in this game. I had several instances where I had to use ResetAI to get NPCs to behave normally.

Yes, take a look at the NavMesh east of Helios One around the "Big Ranch" billboard.

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/images/36146-1-1288895408.jpg
http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/images/36146-1-1288895278.jpg

Just to give you an idea of how screwed up NavMesh can get.

That's not pretty.

One thing which helps test this sort of navmesh is this. Followers do not actually process the navmesh in a powerful way while they are following and are close to the player, but they do when they are farther back. I've found that a good way to test navmesh in huge landscape-type areas which were maybe auto-generated is to hire a [censored] - ton of followers and run around with them. The ones who are farther back and in the middle of the chain are seriously pathing to you the whole time and, if they get stuck somewhere, that's where you open the editor and look at the navmesh. In this circumstance it's always been obvious to me where a navmesh catastrophe had happened.

Yep, I've noticed that once I had both ED-E *and* Veronica at the same time, spots where navmesh looked okay, suddenly went wonky because they were jostling for position.

(Which reminds me, I need to fix the fence mesh in Goodsprings Basics. It's apparently not wide enough when you have multiple followers and Veronica & ED-E are running the long way around.)