Oh, alright. I thought you meant for AHA earlier. I remember now. I was wondering why I had two alchemy mods in my archive and forgot the differences. ^^"

Curious to see how many mods will be inspired by the fact that the spell readied stance for the PC will now pretty much only be used for "using" items in the world.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26348

• Swift casting - Ready spell stance is available at quickslot 10. Is this feature done yet?
  
• Game formula corrections - PC/NPC weapon damage can now be controlled by the fDamageStrengthBase/Mult GMSTs.
  
• Alchemy bugs - Potion weight is now ingredients weight / (1 + alembic quality). Ideas please.
  
• Disable put away animation controller unequip weaponready script fixchange - Removes put away weapon state on all unequips and on switches to hand to hand. This will need a lot of testing to see if anything breaks. Check what happens when weapons break, etc.

Well, now I have more detailed suggestion about pickpocket formula. First - some thoughts.

First question is what do we want to steal? It is a pretty short list, actually. This is what I can imagine someone can normally steal from NPC:
1. Gold.
2. Anything small and valuable: jewelry, gems, soulgems, scrolls, instruments, light weapons and ammunition.
3. Keys.
4. Important misc items like letters.

I can't imagine stealing these from someone:
1. Big and/or heavy weapons and armor/clothing. Especially because they are usually equipped.
2. Hammers, big alchemical devices.
3. Heavy books.
4. Big heavy potions.
5. Heavy "ingredients" like scraps of metal or pieces of raw ebony.

Since we need a simple formula to determine whether we can or cannot pickpocket something, it is best to use weight as a main criterion. The price of an item is not good for this because it does not directly influence your ability to steal something. You may say that one would be more alert while carrying around something valuable, but I think that this raises your overall alertness, not just for one item. It may look like forgetting about price may disturb economical balance in the game, but neither Morrowind nor thieves are about economical balance in the first place. Here is an estimate of weight for various groups of items.



Heavy weapons: 4.80+. We don't wanna steal those.
Short blades: 1+ (lightest - silver, chitin, glass, iron, steel daggers). If it isn't equipped - good trophy.
Bows: 2-4 (chitin bow, short bow). I can imagine stealing only lightest and smallest bow. If it's not equipped.
Thrown weapons: 0.1-0.4. If we see a small stack of throwing stars - why not give them a try?
Ammunition: 0.1-0.5. Same as above.

Armor: 1+ (lightest - chitin, leather, fur, glass - mostly gauntlets and pauldrons). We don't usually want to steal armor, but it should be equipped anyway.
Clothing: 1-8. Same as above.
Jewelry: 0.1-1 (with some unique exceptions with weight 3 and 5). Unfortunately, rings and amulets are also usually equipped.

Repair instruments: 2-4. Doesn't seem right to steal hammers. They should be pretty heavy.
Alchemical instruments: 2+. Same as above with most instruments. It's not unthinkable to steal some light mortar, however.
Lockpicks and probes: 0.25-1. We want to steal it the second we see it.

Scrolls: 0.2-1. Good target.
Potions: 0.25-5. Small ones are good. Can't imagine not being able to notice missing a giant bottle, though.
Ingredients: 0.1-2 (very few exceptions: 5-50). Pretty good.
Soulgems: 0.2-2. Good.

Keys: 0 (1 exception with weight 1). Great.
Gold: 0. Great.
Books: 1-10, but mostly 2-4. Hard to imagine stealing a book from someone's pocket.
Misc: mostly 0-5. We normally don't want to steal spoons and baskets, do we? NPCs are not going around often with these things anyway.



Looking at these numbers, I would say that we should draw a line somewhere near weight of 2. This way we could pick gold, keys, jewelry, gems, soulgems, scrolls, lockpicks and probes, very light daggers, small stacks of thrown weapons and ammunition, chitin bow, lightest of repair and alchemical instruments, light potions and books, while armor, clothing and weapons will mostly be blocked by the fact that they are equipped. We couldn't pick big stacks of ammunition/thrown weapons, heavy hammers and alchemical devices, heavy potions and ingredients, heavy books and some random heavy misc items. I think this goes well with the idea of pickpocketing.

Original formula:
ValueTerm = 10 * fPickPocketMod * StackValue.
PC (x) = AGI*0.2 + LUC*0.1 + Sneak.
NPC(y) = AGI*0.2 + LUC*0.1 + Sneak + ValueTerm.
T = 2x + y.
Then determining min/max chance with iPickMinChance and iPickMaxChance.

I suggest this:
ValueTerm = 25 * StackWeight.
T = y + x + x * fPickPocketMod.

This formula may be slightly balanced by modding fPickPocketMod (personally I would prefer also modding fPickPocketMaxChance to ~90 because pickpocketing should be based more on a skill and less on a chance and save/load), but it seems to be pretty fair as it is. I made an xls-table that shows your chances of pickpocketing with current and suggested formula for various distribution of PC/NPC skills/stats. http://FastFreeFileHosting.com/file/52445/PickPocket-rar.html.

This is good stuff, but what probability are you modelling, just the T formula and not the whole mechanic? There's the extra check on exit that will cut total success probability a lot.

Now we have to have some testing scenarios. What can a fresh thief-class character do after arriving in Vvardenfell and reaching level 2, is now slightly familiar with the area? You can't discourage new thieves by punishing all pickpocketing early, or they may not bother trying later. Maybe a success chance of 80% for a few coins or so, but this may have to be repeated to get any real money, raising the chance of being caught. Then consider a mid level thief and limits to mid level stealing etc. Coins may need to have minimum weight of 0.01 (or not) if there is some loot bag NPC walking around.

The whole pickpocketing needs to be checked, becouse even mid level Thiefs have major difficulties with pickpocketing NPCs, almost always gets caught when sneaking or taking goods from inventory. More restrictions and blockades on pickpocketing means that this skill will render unusable.

Yes, pickpocketing was shipped broken. We have to plan a replacement mechanic.

I just tested this with this script:

Begin Mf_WeaponTestIf ( GetPcSneaking == 1 )If ( Player->GetWeaponDrawn == 0 )	Messagebox, "asdfadsfasdfasdfasdf"EndIfEndIfEnd

I crouched then started throwing throwing stars, and once i ran out of throwing stars It didn't return a 0. I tested your script as well and it didn't return a 0 once I ran out of stars.

this was tested with the mcp patch prior to beta 5

Swift Casting : GOOD. Advanced Alchemy v1.3 is again usuable... Thanks.
Alchemy bugs : maybe you can use weight / (1 + (alembic quality) / 2 )

I noticed the discussion on Pickpocketing (and forgive me if this was already mentioned) but as of now, don't items with 0 Value never appear in the Pickpocket window?
This can be very bothersome with some keys and rings.

I realize this was a few pages back, but if it is throwing errors when you are trying to make levelled lists in player inventory (I didn't know you could do that, BTW), then you might just have to place it in a container then transfer the items it comes up with to the player

ST

Thanks. As you said, at the end the exact same check but with ValueTerm = 0 is made. So whatever formula for main check we use, it will still be difficult. Maybe it would be a good idea to remove this last check completely? Pickpocketing is risky even without it. Two checks even with maximum chance of 75% is pretty bad. Moving maximum chance to 90-95% may improve situation, but leaving just one check may be better.
If you check my xls, you will find some estimates on a few sets of skills/stats.
I would describe it like this:
Skill 0, Stat bonus 0. Braindead character, training dummy. Hard to imagine something like this in original game, but it is a start point.
Skill 5, Stat bonus 10. Most clumsy and slow character available from start, something like Chewbacca. Shouldn't be able to pick anything, can be picked easily.
Skill 20, Stat bonus 15. Average starting character. Should be able to pickpocket at least a vegetable, should be able to spot some slow clumsy Chewbacca-thief.
Skill 40, Stat bonus 20. Best thief you can make from start. Has some experience, can pickpocket a merchant, while being able to spot a common thief himself.
Skill 60, Stat bonus 25. Skilled crafty thief. Can pickpocket another thief and spot him easily.
Skill 80, Stat bonus 30. Master-thief. Can steal your beard without you noticing. Extremely difficult to pickpocket by normal means, need some unusually hard ways.
Skill 100, Stat bonus 30. God of all thieves. For him you will pickpocket yourself and then consider him your friend till the end of your life. Need another one like this to pickpocket him.

Distribution of skill seems to be pretty much even across various NPCs. For example, there are plenty of merchants with sneak under 10 and many pawnbrokers with sneak around 40-70. And sneak ~100 seems to be exclusive to some mighty NPCs like Divayth Fyr. So a thief in need will always find himself a target with appropriate stats to pickpocket.

Yup, my bad. I was mixed up with my notes - running out of thrown weapons was one instance where switching from a weapon to hand-to-hand DIDN'T cause the problem. :confused: However, to replicate on anything other than the latest MCP all you need to do is have a weapon drawn and then switch to hand-to-hand. It will return 0 at some point, though the player has never left combat stance. There is a specific warning about this behaviour in MW Scripting for Dummies. The biggest problem this caused me was in a script that automatically equips a slung shield if the player is using two-handed weapons, this should fix it - I'm testing now.

I think its time for me to give the spellcasting a try now. I was putting it off because I was worried about it breaking a few things. I guess I should try it out and report if it does.

edit: oops..double posted. Sorry.

I looked through all the functions (including mwse functions) I could find, but I didn't find any functions that would detect if an object was trapped. =x

I wanted to make a mod for it but is it possible?

Any chance that "Ready magic" can be mapped to a different key? I kind of have 0 and other hotkeys mapped to the same controller button and... well, yeah, this kinda breaks it (even if I try to work around it with a Macro).

Confirmed the change works with a simple test script, GetWeaponDrawn now stays at 1 for all frames when switching from a drawn weapon to fists. Works as advertised against the logic in some pretty long scripts. Thanks!

Can somebody send me a copy of the original Morrowind 1.6 with the expansions? i didn't backup :facepalm:

Why? How does this make it better? You haven't explained anything.



I checked, and in MW+TB+BM there's just one key (key_bolayn) that should be stealable, but has zero value. The rest is quest items, skulls and stuff like that. Maybe you could go over the list and submit to MPP instead?



Okay, but it means people can just examine the contents of other people's pockets without trouble. If the random roll doesn't show items they wanted, they can just close and open it again. Your spreadsheet seems to show a 50-60% chance for a starter thief against a commoner. It's just too low, you can't even expect to pick two people's pockets in one day without being caught. That maximum chance is just a problem.



Can you suggest another keybind (from control options) that can be replaced at all? Punchactivating people is a ... unique style of gameplay. I don't want to have problems with keycodes on international keyboards.



It's not done yet. You have to check if it does anything to NPCs at all, or removes any animations it shouldn't.

I can think of three solutions for this.
1. Live with it and remove the check for visibility completely. Easy mode for thieves.
2. Use another formula for this check, making it based on a skill vs skill + weight instead of sneak vs random. I think that visibility of an item represents not your knowledge about contents of pocket, but your ability to steal it at this exact moment. This should involve NPC skill and overall difficulty of stealing this item. Random should be involved too, but it would return us to the point of many checks again. It is the same T, but with less penalties for fail. It can be used to determine your actual chances - for example, item won't show up as visible if you have <30% chance for stealing it. Or 50%. Or any other number.
3. Slightly adjust final formula, making weight not 0, but -2 for a +50% bonus. This one also seems logical, since getting your hands out of someone's pockets after you already stole something is somewhat easier than the process of stealing. We still would need to raise iPickMaxChance for this to be even remotely reliable.

Well, it is adjustable by modifying just one GMST - and this is great. We need mods for iPickMaxChance for this to work anyway.
Another thing I can think of is altering iPickMinChance role. Instead of using it like it is used now, you can, for example, just add it for the player's side (x). This way formula would be even more flexible. Default value of 5 can hardly make a difference, but with 10-20 it should work nicely.

What do you think of a minimum 0.01 weight per item? Stealing 20 gold is simple, 200 gold is more of a challenge, and hardly affects anything else.

Modifying just one GMST is still a problem. If it requires a mod, then it can't be enabled by default, and less people will do something about it. The iPickMinChance idea is good though.

I like Taddeus idea as it is simple and prevents abuses.
As the player may need lots of different potions while traveling in the wilderness, I'd prefer having light potions, so using a denominator of 4:

(ingredients_weight / 4)

I feel it consistent as a potion can contain up to 4 ingredients, which can be considered as its volume capacity.

Including the quality of some of the alchemy tools is also a good idea.
It could be used to bring the player to make choices on which alchemy tools s/he could use if, for instance, the alembic quality would reduce the weight while the retort would increase it (better effects could come from more matter).
So a formula of that sort:

(ingredients_weight * (1+ retort_quality)) / (4 + alembic_quality)

Sounds great. I've made a random scan through various NPCs, mostly traders and service providers. They almost always seem to have 30-150 gold (or 0). There are few rich people with more money, however, and minimum weight of 0.01 will make their gold untoucheable. Maybe it would be better off as a separate option? I would use it anyway, though.


Well, you can always add another multiplyer like 1.1 or 1.2 before multiplying by fPickPocketMod, but it would make the formula less clear and harder to balance for another mods. Or you can multiply iPickMinChance by 2-4 to have a direct boost from the start.


I forgot to mention two things.
1. I think that weight of 2 should be solid maximum, meaning that you should have an automatic failure if you try to pick something with weight >2.
2. Is it possible to determine not the weight of the whole stack, but the weight of the number of items you are trying to take from it?


What do you think about the 3 solutions mentioned above?

Have you run scenarios with this formula? The alembic has no substantial effect going from apprentice to master, and the retort can make potions more than twice as heavy. Is that your intent?



I don't want to see options on top of options for this feature. Make it work well all the time. The game checks the stack when you click on it, before you see the choose amount window. I'm not sure if the code can be arranged the other way around yet. I seem to like number 3 solution better, along with removing the max chance totally.

Yup, I know. That's all I could manage in one evening. Oh, to be able to test Morrowind on my work PC...
Weapons are fine as far as I could tell, didn't see any missing animations that seemed out of place. I do need to test lockpicks and probes more thoroughly yet.

I'm planning on adding an enchanted item with a Ultimate Weapon Disintegration of Doom ranged spell to my player and going on the rampage, to see what the NPCs do when their weapons unequip. If anything seems out of place I'll be sure to report it.

I agree with Hrnchamd on this, a value of 3 or even 4 would be better and more functionally than 2. Just from past experiences.

Besides that, I wanted to ask if a summon CTD problem is known - maybe other users can confirm, but in my case when leaving an interior when there's a summoned creature in it, almost always caused CTD for me - and this happends all the way I can remember with my Morrowind installation. The second situation is when in combat with more than 2 opponents, when trying to summon the game almost always crashes - besides that game is perfectly stable. I know that this was issue with Pursuit Enchanced (pretty shame that such good and needed mod are so bugged), but I'm not using it. Maybe You can check the summon mechanics, Hrnchamd?