I have a new creature made from the vanilla skeletons. It has a big head I scaled in NifSkope and then I changed the scale in the creatures tab to 0.7 to make it look like a child's skeleton.

They have attached object scripts and a custom combat style.

Here is my issue, all of the sudden after a few days I am not getting an error message when I start the CS that says they "need to be persistent but they are not".

I so far have justed ignored this error message, but it is staring to bug me...what up with this?

I had this pop up when I placed a Horse classified creature that was not persistent.

You are referencing the objects; listed in a script via the Reference Editor ID name; and have not checked the 'Persistant Reference' checkbox on the objects.

They ARE marked as persistent, but I did not check the persistent box myself, and yet the box checked and is grayed out as well. Some kind of auto setting by the CS. Could this be because I have object script attached to them?

I deleted all of them and then re inserted new ones, I will see if that changes anything.

One other questions about these guys, I am having a HELL of a time getting them to fire arrows across a 200 foot (about 4000 units) wide lava pit. I forced them into combat with me using startcombat commands, but they just stare at me untill I get closer.

I have the range combat settings MAX out very high in the combat styles 80,000 units for ranges stand off distance for example. I have their sneak up to 100 to be sure that they can acquire me.

The "combat points" are up to 75, Hell I Max just about every setting but they will just not fire arrows until I get about 2000 units (about 100 feet) close to them!

With the number of years (hundreds of hours) of combat modding I have under my belt I would have thought I could solve this...but it is kicking my butt...

ok....deleting them and then re-inserting them did the trick. No more error message.

I wonder if the Bethesda dev/employees had days like this?

Is the 'no low level processing' box checked on them? If not they will automatically be persistent since actors with low level processing need to be persistent due to their AI being processed while they're not in the loaded area. If you don't need low level processing (mostly used for unique actors that need to go through load doors, perform AI packages in different cells etc - townsfolk, quest characters, but not regular enemies that just wander around in a single cell) then disable it as it will save performance.

Can't help with the bow thing, but when I made a small battlefield mod I had severe problems with archer behavior over long distances as well. They don't like that for some reason...maybe they have problems with their eyes.

The Issue is trying to get the NPC archers to fire arrows over a very long distance (such as the player would try at over 200 feet.)

The ways I have tried and failed :

Maxed out the settings in the combat styles for range of the archers.

Maxed the game settings such as the limits for an NPC to acquire a target.

Maxed out the NPC abilities such as sneak and combat skills.

All kinds of "forced combat on player" combinations.

Used a marker and AI package (like the kind used to make an NPC practice archery on hay bails.)

Moved the player close to the attackers (to start fire) then back to original position in a few frames so the player would not know this happen.

Set up an invisible creature and moved it to the attackers, force combat on this decoy and then moved it to the player to draw fire.

In all cases the NPC will only STARE at the player until the player gets "close enough" for th AI to finaly start firing arrows at the player.

Nothing works...this is crazy....Bethesda you are killing me!
I give up on legalment combat.

Now I will try to fake the combat. I will have animations of the archers fire arrows and then using player recoil animations and sound effects and mod actor value health to simulate arrow attacks. I do not like this but it is the only way left.

:dead:

If you don't really care where the arrows go, you could probably have them shoot at an invisible marker in front of and above them that was close. The arrow would then go through that target and continue flying downrange, perhaps in the players direction.

Thank you for tryiing to help, but one problem with that I found is that combat interrupts the AI package.

I did discovered a big part of the issue but I do not know WHY it is. For what ever reason Getlos call by the creatures is reporting 0 when the player is past a particular (far) distance.

I have used GETLOS from many many times the distance. I made a "look at the sunset to reduce stress" mod that used this to check if the player could see the sun and this was from ANYWHERE in Tamriel .
But only per the player not by creatures or npc.

Anyway I worked around the issue with faking arrows using spells that drag arrows thru the air toward the target. Fortunately I had already worked all the issues out on this trick in my Double Arrow Knock mod.