OK, I had the same issue with Fallout 3 and never got any real clarification for this. So, I'm hoping some of you fine folks could at least confirm that I'm not completly insane. (I think Tarrant is the NPC/follower guru around here?)

Unless I'm mistaken, there are 2 different types of markers that NPC's will interact with while on a sandbox package: Furniture markers and Idle Markers. Furniture markers obviously include furniture like chairs, beds, bunks and so forth, but they also include markers like push-ups, leaning on a wall, leaning on a rail and tending bar etc. These markers are NOT a piece of furniture but for whatever reason they are still called furniture markers and are listed in the furniture section of objects.

Then there are Idle Markers that are the flat, blue squares that you place on the floor and have a big I in the middle. They are like the Rivet City Museum Idle marker where an NPC will walk up to it and pause for a bit and act like they are looking at the museum displays. There are others you can set to cause an NPC to stop and sweep the floor, smoke a cigarette and even pick their nose, lol.

The issue I'm having is that (just like in FO3) the vanilla companions will NOT interact with the Idle markers no matter what I try. On the other hand, they will hit and idle at EVERY furniture marker I place in the room. My custom NPC's will hit all of them, but for some reason the vanilla companions will NOT use the Idle markers, only the furniture markers.

Does anyone know why and how to fix it? And, yes, everything is checked including idle markers in their sandbox package. The reason this is important to me is that I have a little museum of sorts that I want the vanilla companions to wander around in sometimes and act like they are looking at the displays. The only way I have been able to make them go in there and fart around is by placing furniture markers (like warm up by fire) in there. But they look stupid doing that animation in my display room.

Have you tried a different kind of package, like maybe a patrol package and then tell the companion to do what you want at that marker under the patrol data (length of time and whatever else you control there; I haven't worked with patrols much)? I've never messed with trying to get them to do this, but it occurs to me, that if you don't mind them going through the museum exhibit sequentially that might work. But since with Patrol Packages you can set an NPC to go from marker to marker and you can use Idle Markers in those packages it might be worth a try.

Yeah, I guess I could do that. But to set the vanilla companions up with a set patrol package in a way defeats the purpose of the whole wander/sandbox/tinker with stuff mode. And really, I'm probably more concerned with learning WHY they aren't hitting the Idle Markers, but they ARE hitting every furniture marker, and what makes the two different.

It's just been perplexing to me that I can set up the NPC that I created from scratch with the exact same sandbox settings, and she will hit every Idle Marker in the house, but the vanilla companions with the same exact sandbox settings refuse to hit them. It just don't add up to me and I would really, really like to know why. (Maybe there is something hard-wired in the vanilla companions that I don't see?) I dunno, lol.

I guess another option would be to create a custom Furniture Marker and add your own animations to it, but I've tried figure out if that's even possible and it looks to me like you cannot add, edit or change the animations of a furniture marker at all.

Like I said, it's not so much how to get it to work, but trying to understand why it's NOT working and learn more about this silly GECK.

Are they set as teammates at the time? That overrides various behaviours so they might not be accepting idles.

You can add new furniture marker animations, they're just set up in the idle manager.

My guess would be yes. I made myself a simple plugin that only changes their FollowPlayerWAIT AI Package to Sandbox from Guard. I also increased the wander radius (it's a pretty big layout) and I unchecked eating in their behavior because they eat everything on the shelves if I don't lol. All other behaviors are checked including Idle Markers and Furniture. I'm not certain, but I would assume that their vanilla FollowPlayerWAIT or any FollowPlayer AI package for that matter would set them as a teammate by default, right? You may be on to something there!



Talkie, you might have just become my hero! If I can simply create my own new form using say the warm up by fire marker and add what I want them to do this would work nicely as long as they still hit them! Definitely digging into this, and thanks for the tip!

Teammate status isn't set on the packages, it's set by the script command SetPlayerTeammate, so unless they're dismissed back to the Lucky 38/home they'll be teammates- it hadn't quite clicked to me that you were editing the wait package. In addition the wait package has Enable Fallout Behaviour unchecked, which could possibly account for it- it also has a hand in behaviour that makes the actor temporarily switch package.