I notice that In the Nexus theres some CM Companion mods. What does the CM mean in it?

Eh... Damn, I forget. But when I looked at the CM Companions page(which you need to use those foo's), I saw that the username for the creator is cutthroat mods.

CM is a mod, other people use it to create their own companions. Basically you need to download the base CM mod, then you can add in any companions you want. However, I have not seen any CM with quests/dialog added in. I think CM stands for companion mod, however that'd be a guess.

LOL< I asked the same question yesterday and got about the same answer, lol. But whatever it means, it's a pretty good mod so far. I just installed it last night with all the extra NPC's and so far its pretty cool. I'm looking forward to recruiting me a posse for my Blades Character tonight!

Ya, I would think the same thing as well. Famous for his Partner mod, but Blackie also did a handful of different kinds of mods for Morrowind/Oblivion as well.

I would say that the "CM" part of the name of the mod just helps categorize and recognize that the partner mod uses and requires Blackie's CM Partners.

You should also look into the "CM Partner Hotkeys" mod and the "Companion Master" mod (both on TES Nexus). They make communicating with CM Partners easier and the hotkeys makes it more immersive.

I've played with CM Partners for quite some time, and there are few issues that you should be aware of.

If you have several companions following you when you go through a door into another cell, some of the companions may not make it through. If some are lagging too far behind you they will not go through the door and simply wait outside. The way I handle this is to tell the companions that made it through to wait, go back through the door, and then get the stragglers to follow you back through the door again. In a similar vein, when exiting a building with several companions, sometimes one will get stuck in the wall or door of the building. This will frequently happen if there isn't a lot of room in front of the building for the companions to appear in. In this case, I find that simply telling all companions to "wait" and then "summon" them. This will cause the stuck companions to warp to you. The bottom line here is to remember to check your companions after going through a door into another cell.

Sometimes a companion will unequip its weapon. If a fight ensures, it will use its fists. Before entering a dangerous area, I always check my companions by facing them and drawing my weapon (which causes them to draw theirs). If any raises fists instead of its weapon, simply access its inventory and then exit the inventory. This will cause the companion to re-equip its weapon and armor.

Companions cannot repair broken armor. They can fix anything so long as it's not broken. Make sure you frequently tell your companions to repair their armor. If one does wind up with broken armor, take the broken piece from them, repair it yourself just enough so that it's no longer broken, give it back to the companion, then tell the companion to repair armor. This will bring it back to full health.

I have had the game occassionally freeze when sharing inventory or asking a companion to repair armor when there is more than one companion actively following me. I've never had this happen when using Companion Master to share, however. Nevertheless, I've made it a habit to quicksave before sharing with a companion or telling it to repair armor.

I have had a couple of cases recently where companions simple "fall over". They are not dead, nor is their posture like that of a dead NPC. They are simply lying horizontally on the ground. You can still interact with them, but they will not follow you. I have not been able to determine what causes this or how to fix it. I have to load an earlier save. There is one set of companions that actually installs one in this state (I think it's the "5 CM partners" mod that adds 5 companions to the abandoned shack on the waterfront. The Mage falls over.)

Sometimes a companion will simply get lost and you cannot locate it, even using the "Companion Tracker" feature of the Companion Master mod. I've taken to using the console to determine and write down the Hex ID of each companion that I really like. Then if it gets lost, I use the console commands "prid " and "moveto player" to force it to appear next to me.

Lastly, I've had one occasion when two companions started fighting each other. All CM partners should be of the same faction so this shouldn't happen. I think it was caused by companions getting in each other's way while fighting, causing them to hit one another. Eventually it caused them to get angry and fight each other. If the companions are Essential, the fighting never stops because as soon as one regains consciousness, the fight resumes. The way that I handled this was to wait until one was unconscious and then used the console to issue a "stopcombat" command on the fighters.

By and large though, The CM Partners are a lot of fun.

You should not have tons of companions traveling with you at once. In fact, the number that you can have is limited by the game. You can change the limit with Wrye Bash. However, since having all of their AI packages constantly processed and following you around, it is taxing on the CPU regardless. Using more than two companions at a time is can be quite a load for a good machine plus many other mods. Sure, if you have a quest that adds companions for a while, you can suffer lower performance, but when out and about doing normal adventuring, be conservative. I definitely think most setups should keep the number under five. I prefer limiting the number to two, but I want to have a pet Guar now, so we will see if that self-rule stays.

I just ran into this exact situation over the weekend. Did a number of searches, but this post seemed to describe it best. Very strange, and certainly unsettling. My companion even appeared protruding from a wall near the ceiling at one point. Could interact, but that's it, just as described.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot on this, at least as far as a cause. CM Partners is something new for me, and I'm really kind of on the fence right now. Although, I did just see the new http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1088245-rel-skin-toned-mannequins/ mod, which requires CM Partners. That's something I had been hoping would get done, and sure enough here it is. So maybe I'll hang onto it for that reason alone.

There is http://cutthroatmods.yuku.com/directory at Cutthroat Mods, but there is very little activity there, and nothing on this issue. I looked for a dedicated thread for CM Partners here, but didn't see one? Could totally be me looking over it... it is Mondy, after all. Ha!

So I guess I'd say use with caution? Especially if you're going to give your companion something you might want back at some point.

The NPCs falling over issue, if you use OSR, can be resolved by changing one of the INI settings. I cannot remember which...

Here is the relevant section from the OSR readme on that:



I have two reasons not to mess with this right now, though. For one thing, this reads like a general NPC problem, not just a companion problem. I have not seen this with any NPCs other than the one companion, and so I am not certain that this is the same issue. Second, the companions involved in this issue aren't "dead"... they're just immobile and, most often, horizontal (so, they may as well be dead, ha ha!) But you can still interact with them as normal. They'll give you all of the same dialog options and respond correctly... and then just lay there! Anyway, until I see this behavior in a non-companion NPC, I think I am going to leave it set to the default 1. Besides, allowing OSR to manage time-flow is one of its big advantages.

I'll definitely keep this in mind if I see NPCs dropping dead, though! Thanks for the suggestion.

I tried three at one time, but it got annoying trying to get through a door, so I went to two,... that was fine for quite awhile, until my Night blade"Randi" went Brain dead, she started flopping around like a fish, getting stuck in walls, and floating senslessly..., I pretty much abandoned her for awhile, (I had more Important issues) but I did notice her Stats (Fatigue in paticular)where skewered, she'd show up every now and then, but I havrn't seen her in at least a week now. Bree's starting to get a little funky too now, but I've put this Savegame through things that shouldn't evem be thought about...

I think you should try it because it will not break anything, and I am pretty sure I remember someone using that fix in a case where the problem was not related to "dead" people, haha. You've got nothing to lose there. Albertine is sailing in smooth FPS, and that setting is set to 0 for him.

Ahh, OK, well that does make a difference. Besides some (er, a lot of) additional beef, my system does share some resemblance with his, so that's helpful. I'll give it a try and see if it makes a difference. If it does, and things stay pretty smooth and stable, I'll be sure to update it over in the optimization thread.

Thanks again!

EDIT:
OK, gave it a try last night, and unfortunately it's not going to be an option on my machine. With this setting set to 0, I got back into the painfully slow, under 10 FPS range again when lots of NPCs were around. At one point I literally had to just stop trying to move at all and wait for the video display to "catch up"... which it never did. So for me, I need this setting to be on in OSR. Still, it may be helpful for someone else.