I don't know how much "simpler" that would be, but it is a decent idea as well.

Can the behavior of soul trapping be changed? Can souls be added to a non-full gem by changing how soul trap works?

As far as I know, No to both, it is not at all handled by game settings or scripts. It is probably possible to change the behavior by writing a dedicated OBSE plugin though.

I am really happy that you are going to introduce this in your mod, it solves a truly significant problem for me . I always had a problem with soulgems, and I was always hesitant to use soul trap knowing that I might fill a grand soulgem with a lesser soul thus waste it, now I will finally be able to soultrap everything I encounter with no worries. Thank you!

Ok

I got my version of it as a beta release. I have reusable Crystal Soul Gems, it makes things nice and simple, no more pesky crabs to worry about

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1111587-beta-re-usable-soul-gems-247-trading-ic/

Warning: Dont go mad on buying them, the name of the beta esp file wont be the same as the file in a weeks time when it gets released. A bit easier way to avoid conflicts when it is out of beta

TheNiceOne - Do you have a time frame for when you think the next release of EE will be? Please don't think me impatient or pushy - I merely want to include EE in my mod list, and am trying to determine if I should just go ahead with the current version, or wait until this next one. Thanks again.

Not really, I got tracked off by the idea for an even more hardcoe immersive map marker feature for Map Marker Overhaul (where found markers only show up in the compass, but not on the map - until you get close to a previously known marker, or speak with a NPC who can mark the map for you), but that feature was pretty much completed yesterday, so I'll probably turn back to EE then. So a guesstimate is 1 week or so.

The latest version of Enhanced Economy has now been released, with a feature which prevents soulgems from being held in a non-matching soulgem, as requested in the OP. The more advanced feature of capturing multiple lesser souls to fill a large soulgem is not included for now, as that is more work than I have available for the time being.

Can't be too hard can it? Put a script on all soul gems which is different for each level (petty, grand etc). Continuosly check the soul level in it with OBSE's GetSoulLevel. If it is other than the right level or 0 use SetSoulLevel to set it to zero and empty it, then search through the player inventory for one of the right type and use SetSoulLevel to fill it. Might take a while but it's perfectly doable.

I don't really uderstand what you mean to achieve, since the Oblivion engine automatically puts a captured soul in the right type soulgem if there is any in the inventory...
But there's also the big problem of SetSoulLevel needing a reference, and items in the inventory aren't references. Though OBSEv19's pseudo references will probably help some.

I would actually go even more extreme; Petty 1, Lesser 3, Common 9, Greater 27, Grand 81. That would make each level require 3 (maybe even 4) of the previous level.

But if TheNiceOne ever do this, he will probably make this configurable in a INI.

ITPaladin:
Such storage sack mods are already discussed on page 1. The "problem" with such a mod is that the way it prevents the soulgems in the storage sacks from being filled with a lesser soulgem, is to completely prevent the soulgem from being filled by any soul.

So if you encounter an enemy with a grand soul, you must recognize that before killing it, and remember to open your storage sack and move the soulgem out from the storage sack and into your main inventory - if you don't you will not capture the soul. And if you were wrong, and the creature only had a greater soul, your soulgem didn't get fully filled. This is unlike the new feature in Enhanced Economy where you can just set maxSoulGemWaste to 0 and play.

Awesome. I am looking forward to trying it out tonight. Thanks a ton for your time and effort.

I'd been thinking about putting together something like this, and my first thought was different from what's been proposed here:

1. Add a dummy, non-playable Black Soul Gem to the PC's inventory.
2. Have a script attached to only that dummy soul gem continuously checking its soul level.
3. When a soul gets trapped in the BSG, add a new filled soul gem of the appropriate level to the PC's inventory and remove one unfilled gem of the same level. Replace the BSG with an unfilled version.

I haven't looked into all of the details, so this may not be feasible with an inventory item. Perhaps it would work if the BSG were removed to another container, dropped, and then operated upon?

My idea was actually to work this into an alternative magic system wherein a character's Magicka can only be replenished using soul gems or enchantment (or trapping souls without any gems in inventory), so the application I had in mind was somewhat different.

This is actually very close to the solution I had in mind, so I of course think your idea was very smart

A few problem points though: By using a Black SoulGem, you will get the "Soulgem captured..." message even if you detect that the soul is too large to fit in any of the player's soulgems, but that's no big problem.

Another problem is that even if the script runs every frame, the soulgem isn't really filled until a second or so after the capture (some slowdown in the engine), which means that if the player kills two creatures within that timeframe, the second will go into one of the normal soulgems if available.

A third is that soulgems cannot be set to non-playable (thus invisible), so to get it to work perfectly, you must remove it just before the player's inventory is opened, and add it when gamemode starts again. Since you are only removing an item when the player inventory opens, it may be that it works even after the inventory has been opened though.

A fourth is that if you capture a petty soul while having a greater soulgems in your inventory, the greater and not the black dummy will get filled, as the smallest is used first. This can be overcome by not only adding a black dummy, but one dummy of each capacity. Then, either a normal, matching soulgem gets exactly filled (and you don't need to do anything), or one of yours get filled.

Finally, the question is what you intend to do when your script on the dummy soulgem detects that it is filled. If you only intend to "move" it directly to the best match, you're not doing anything my mod is not already doing, but if you're going to keep count and need, say 5 petty to fill up a larger soulgem, then there's no soulgem to fill yet, but you must instead store the capture in a variable that counts up, but then you must consider how to display this to the player, and what's happening if the player sells/drops/uses this half-filled soulgem.

So as you see, while I think you're on to it, there are some issues. For the record, The first version of my EE soulgem feature did something like that, switching dummy soulgems in and out depending on what other soulgems the player had, and whether he was in gamemode or in an inventory menu - so I have much of the groundwork ready. So if you really want to do it, I could look up the old version.

Anyway, I think I have explained why I just didn't go ahead and implement my idea right away

Couldn't this dummy soulgem function like a container for soulgems, and then fill soulgems in that container?

Any soulgem added to this container could even be replaced with another type of dummy soulgems that could be named to reflect how filled they are, if the player then remove such a soulgem it gets converted to a real soulgem with a level.

I'm waking up this old thread, due to the next implementation of Enhanced Economy's Soulgem Magic feature. As readers of this thread (and users of Enhanced Economy) know, EE already has the capatibility of preventing a large soulgem from being filled with smaller souls, but the next implementation takes it all out.

Now, the Soulgem Magic feature will be able to let you store many souls into the same soulgem, until it gets completely filled. How many souls of a smaller size you need to fill it to the next level is configurable, but I thought a default setting of 4 was suitable. That means that for instance a grand soulgem with a common level, needs 4 more common souls to reach greater level, and then 4 more grand souls (or 16 more common souls, or a combination thereof) to reach grand level. Thus if you start with an empty grand soulgem and go killing rats and crabs, the following will happen:
The three numbers are: Number of additional petty souls needed to reach next level, total number of petty souls, new level

1	1	14	5	216	21	332	53	464	117	5

So after having killed 117 crabs and rats, you will have a completely filled grand soulgem

Note that this works just as well on pre-filled soulgems as on the initially empty ones. When having more than one soulgem in your inventory, the mod needs to make a decision of which soulgem to fill, and there are two options for this (adjustable in the ini): Either always fill largest first (even if you have a smaller that fits exactly), or fill smallest first (but as in vanilla, the soulgem's capacity must be at least as large as the soul).

The soulgem that is partly filled to next level will stack with others of same level, but by installing next version of my Display Stats mod, the popup will inform you that one of the soulgems in the stack is partially filled to next level, and how much. E.g. after having captured 3 petty souls into the grand soulgem above, the popup will tell you that the soulgem is 50% on its way to next level, and after capuring one more, that it is 75% on its way to the next level. When selling/dropping, the partly fileld one will automatically be the last one sold/dropped.


That was the commercial, but I have one question: The first part of the Soulgem Magic feature (that the soulgems you fill gets repriced similar to the pre-filled soulgems of same capacity/level) was well within the natural scope of Enhanced Economy. But the second part (that smaller souls wouldn't stick in a larger soulgem), and even more, the new feature, are morte or less outside EE's natutal scope. So I'm considering three options:

1. To just keep it as part of EE
2. To keep it as part of EE, but create it as a standalone mod too - which is incompatible with EE of course
3. To remove the soulgem magic from EE and just make a single mod of it

So, I'd like to hear your opinions

I'd say this. What you're proposing really has nothing to do with economy, so it would probably be best to keep it on its own. Though personally I think a base value of 4 is a bit high. I would go with something like 2 Petty souls = 1 Lesser one, 2 Lesser souls = 1 Common, and so on. Overall though I think it's a great idea.

I would make it its own mod considering that, like it has been said before, this has nothing to do with the economy.

I would also imagine, knowing how you like configuration, that the player would be able to set the amount of souls need to get to the next level in an ini file. I don't feel that the 4 souls to the next level is too high, because I think it would be to easy to fill up all your grand soul gems otherwise when it should be harder.

I don't know a thing about how to use soulgems really, so it would not be appropriate to have it in EE.