Hey, I've got a question for ya'll. Do any of you know of a good AI mod for companions? Originally, I used CBO, and liked it, but the seeming DLC incompatibility annoyed me; I had to deactivate the mod whenever I did OA, for example, or face random crashes. The straw that broke the camel's back was (and this may be my fault) when I disabled CBO with Charon in my party. Even with it disabled, Charon still has the Ghoul Mask effect, so all Ferals are friendly. I realize that this is actually a benefit, but it feels a bit unfair to the Ghoulies, as well as making them a lot less creepy.

I'm now playing a more stealthy character, and have taken Jericho as a companion; yes, he's noisy, but he's got personality, a good weapon, and makes a good pack mule.

However, he seems to be as dumb as a rock. He unloaded a full clip into my back at one point in the Super-Duper Mart in response to an enemy; apparently his AI doesn't calculate if there are friendlies in his line of fire?

Several other times, he attacked a Raider that was coming toward me. This wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't set a Bottlecap Mine in the area... I must have reloaded at least five times.

Finally, in what I have dubbed "The Deathclaw Incident," Jerry was perfectly happy to get beat on by a Deathclaw... Admittedly, there wasn't too much I could do in that situation, but still...

I'm a bit saddened that it seems that every follower will probably act like this, so I think I need some mod help. I'm not looking for much, just an AI mod that makes it so the followers are decent (currently, they have all the calculating power of an abacus) or gives me more control.

Any help would be appreciated.

Just give FWE (Fallout Wanderer?s Edition) a try, it?s so configurable (even in game!) that I?m sure that even if you have been afraid to make big changes to your game you make it so that you like it.



FWE has very good follower support, among other things. I personally use Jericho, and he?s absolutely perfect in every way. Never gets in the way, and never shoots me. I can hardly remember how the companions were like in Vanilla, but I think you?ll be in for quite a treat...

+1! I was going to suggest the same thing! I give Charon the M60 and he just pwns with it! Tell them to stay back and try to flank the enemy.

There are individual NPC makeovers on FO3Nexus, just search with the names of default NPCs in game. Tarrant's Phalanx is an NPC companion overhaul system that seems quite popular.

This sounds like you want Phalanx IMO. It's got functions specific to sneak characters. The current version is 1.08.

The next version, 1.09, will have even better support for sneak characters but it is still in alpha, can't really be released quite yet. But the function "Hide here, and stay out of the fight if you can" works perfectly in 1.08 to prevent followers from charging and breaking up a sniper session. In 1.09, all of the sneak type group commands will work as well as that one.



Followers do not do that with an assault rifle. Missles/tesla cannon sometimes, but not assault rifle.




In Phalanx he would have been likely to equip more of a ranged sort of weapon instead of charging, if that helps the situation, there. Just be sure he has weapons for varying distance (such as a hunting rifle or sniper rifle for long range, and something mid-range like an assault rifle, which he also comes with).




In Phalanx you can stim a follower who is in trouble like that. And then, if you get into trouble, they stim you, which makes the whole thing make sense. Make sure he has stims on him.




Followers don't have to act like what you've been seeing. Phalanx repairs a lot of garbage. Don't assume that reasonable-behaving followers are impossible until you've tried Phalanx k?!?!? That or wait for FOOK's next version which will have the bleeding-edge 1.09 version embedded.

Wow, forum is back up. I hope the guy sees my earlier post.

I think I'm going to have to rewrite Phalanx' RELz thread when I put 1.09 standalone out. I think that it may not be clear how much Phalanx fixes. Pretty much all of the poster's complaints about followers are mitigated by Phalanx (and they are serious, common complaints) but that information doesn't seem to be clear in general.

Yep, I saw the posts, Tarrant. I was refreshing the forums religiously till they came back.

As far as Jericho charging into the mine, it should be mentioned that I put the mine in a chokepoint; specifically, the hallway to the pharmacy area. I told Jericho to stay in an area where he'd be safe, but his AI detected an enemy, and, well... you can guess the rest. Does Phalanx have a "Hold position, no matter what" option?

Also, there was no chance for Jericho to survive against that Deathclaw... I was level 2 when I encountered it... :blink:

One more thing. Is it compatible with Arwen's Tweaks? That's the overhaul mod I've been using.

Yes.

"Hide here, and stay out of the fight if you can" is the most powerful right now.

"Hold position here, and shoot at any enemies you can see" could have worked there as well. They are not 100% true to holding one spot but it's generally functional.



I had one person report that Arwen's Tweaks does something that freaks out the followers' weapon selection abilities. Phalanx followers select weapons from their inventories based upon distance from the target, and something may have been interfering with that system on the follower. You would have to try it and see because it's only one report. If the follower keeps re-equipping its weapon instead of fighting, you would try unloading that mod to see if it changes. At least then, you would know.

Deathclaw:

If you had stims, you may have been able to stim him through it. Or, you could run your ass off. Jericho is battle-hardened and knows how to survive near-death encounters.

I think I had stims... but my mind was a bit too focused on "Holy ****, there's a Deathclaw," to have used them effectively. Sad thing is, there was a group of BoS Outcasts nearby (the whole thing was a special random encounter, BTW); my best option would have probably been to run away, letting the Outcasts whittle it down, and eventually engaging it myself. However, there was another Deathclaw nearby, according to the wiki, so...

Once you get used to the tool of being able to stim followers to keep them up, the thought to do so occurs to you in a more natural sort of way. At level 2 it wouldn't have been very economical though. Sounds like Jericho was set to go down in that fight, but it would have worked out. Followers do not usually up-and-die permanently, but it's done in a tasteful way.

Follower deaths at level 13 and lower can happen kinda easily, as you saw with the deathclaw. So, when you are level 13 and lower, the follower recovers from the near-death but is unwilling to fight. Its name says like "Jericho (disabled)" when they are in this state. You have a special dialogue option that makes the follower willing to fight again and then the "disabled" tag disappears.

Level 14 and higher, however, I expect you to keep your followers up in fights. So, the follower recovers from the near-death but now the dialogue option is gone. You instead come to own several camp sites (and eventually a military base), and you can "dismiss" your followers there for a required time period to recover from the near-death. If you dismiss the follower along with a non-disabled one, the recovery takes 5 in-game days, but alone it takes 7. If you really want you can use the in-game wait to wait through the time. You can also reload your game after the fight that didn't go so well and try again (heh).

It is possible, but rare, for an enemy with an energy weapon to kill your follower with a critical hit - by turning it into a pile of goo/ash. When that happens, I actually force a real follower death. Code-wise I'm able to make the follower behave as "battle-hardened" as usual, but, it looks stupid to see a follower turn into an ash/goo pile and then suddenly they are just "disabled". So if that ever happens and you really want to keep the follower, you'll be loading a save. This can be avoided by not allowing followers to get low on health when fighting energy-weapon-bearing enemies.

So they're pretty much essential, aside from a select few cases? That's nice.

Also, I figured I'd share more on the Deathclaw encounter, or at least, what I was thinking at the time. My thoughts basically went from:

"Come on, Jericho, let's go to the Super-Duper Mart,"
(I just got Jericho; there was no way I was going to get through the Mart alone, not with my build)

to "Hmm... The Outcasts don't usually patrol out here,"

to "Oh! It's a baby Deathclaw! ,"(I use MMM as well, so I mistook the advlt for a baby at a distance)

to finally, "OH DEAR GOD! RUN!"

Then again, it could have been worse... it could have been a Matriarch... :blink: