Ok I found the key and made it into the fort and kept dying. I'm starting over since both the Nord and redguard died getting to the fort, and the archer doesn't do well indoors. At least I know where the key is now and won't waste time searching corpses again.

i gave the new beta a quick play, i like the attention to detail and balance. my only gripe is sometimes the companions freeze up and forget to follow. i have to order them to follow again.

I have a solution for that in the next update. It'll keep the mercenaries from 'spacing out' sometimes after combat. ^_^

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Any issues or feedback?

I've rewritten the mercenary scripts, they should work a lot better now. The mercenaries should no longer stall after combat, they will sheath their weapon after a few seconds and follow the player, should the conditions ever arise. The anti-blocking movement is now limited to outside of combat, so the mercenaries won't go into wander mode during combat if the player is very close. I've also set the mercenaries to 'noattack' so they no longer use attack voices, which could cause issues with slower systems having three or more attack voices playing at the same time, and also becomes tiresome after awhile (in my opinion anyways).

just tried it out, and the companions haven't froze up yet throughout the whole exterior. looks like the problem is solved!

Here's the progress I've made so far:

I've added a dock at the base of the hill leading to the guard towers, since Firemoth Fort was suppose to be a stronghold guarding the Inner Sea, and it really doesn't make much sense that there is no accessible dock. It fits with the lore I've included that Firemoth Fort was originally built to deal with piracy and smuggling around the Bitter Coast. Once the expedition makes it to the fort, the sailor can then dock the boat at the fort dock instead of the far end of the island. This makes it a lot more accessible to resupply at Seyda Neen if the expedition needs. ^_^

The mercenaries will now attack the foes on their own initiative, rather than waiting until the player or they themeselves are attacked. Adds a lot to their usefulness. ^_^

Nearly done, I'm finishing up some of the extra content I've added. Things like notes and extra bits of dialogue.

Update: http://www.sendspace.com/file/0m5lqd

Firemoth Fort now has a dock, which fits the role of the fort being a strongpoint in the Inner Sea. The expedition can now land at this dock once the expedition has cleared a way to the fort.

The mercenaries had their scripts rewritten, and the mercenaries now will attack on their own initiative.

Lots of general improvements.

One thing to mention, in some instances, if the player kills a target of the mercenaries where the mercenaries don't have a line of sight with the target (usually in small corridors), they will get stuck in combat mode and won't follow the player. I've somewhat fixed this where if the player speaks with any mercenary, or if the player 'activates' their anti-blocking scripting by walking right up to them, this will 'stopcombat' and the mercenaries will follow/run to the player like normal. I'm still working on a way to implement this automatically like how the mercenaries sheath their weapons through startcombat.

I'm still figuring out the AI for the archer, since the archer likes to run off after combat to their previous location before combat started. While it doesn't cause an issue per se, it can become annoying in the exteriors.

I've toned down the direct spell damage in-game from the spellcasters. The spells now do damage over time rather than instant damage. This is so the spellcasters will switch attack spells more often. This does mean that while the spells do less damage as a whole, the elements will stack, and can do more damage in total.

Wow, do want. It sounds like you're doing some really cool things with this.

And your avatar is from Commander Keen! I approve of this.

Anyone try this version out? I'm looking for feedback about the mercenaries' functionality, overall scripting, and also any suggestions.

For example, I'm wondering if it's even worthwhile to add warping and leveling to the mercenaries, or if I need to adjust the overall difficulty. I'd also like someone to review the scripting for the mercenaries, in case I missed something obvious since I'm still somewhat a novice with companion scripting concepts.

Thanks! ^_^

I would request that you do not add warping, nor levelling to the mercs (or have it optional). By doing so, you make the mercs behave really different to any other companions you might meet in the game. It also means you don't have to keep track of them, when really they are supposed to be expendable. Levelling seems like something that just makes them unnecessarily complicated.

But that is just my 2c

Any feedback?

Any update on this one? I'm looking forward to it

I've postponed it as I was waiting for feedback with the new mercenary and enemy scripting on what to improve or change. I tried some new things out, and wasn't sure of the lasting implications. :shrug:

I'll feed the feed-bag fior you hehehe

(OK, I know it's a bad joke, but whatever....I'm quite good at betatesting and that's all that matters >) ).

Damn, installed this, but forgot to try it out. *chuckle* I'll try and get on that ASAP - I really enjoyed the earlier beta.

Hey Quorn. Just wanted to ask if by "cleaned" you meant got rid of the stuff in the original offical plugin that made "changes" to other "stuff". Namely, I think the original offical plugin was the source of many strange werewolf stats somehow.

Yep, I cleaned up all of the dirty reference changes. For some odd reason the original plug-in modified cells and objects that had no relation to the quest at all. GMST are no longer an issue since this update is dependant on the expansions. Along with cleaning up all the texture seams, floating statics, and the like.

There's still a few issues, one being that there's still a local ref issue regarding the Census and Excise gates, so I need to think of a new way around that. The other change is that I may just make this MCP-optimized, being that the newest MCP release lets NPC drink potions responsibly, even magicka potions, so I'll reinstate the battlemage (before, scripting his magicka potion use caused more issues than was worthwhile). ^_^

The main things I need to do for the official release is give the mercenaries a little more personality, include more background into the expedition, and decide on the difficulty for this expedition. Development sort of stalled since I was waiting for feedback, mostly about the stability of the scripts, with the mercenaries and enemies, as well as the expedition advancement.

If anything, I may just scale back my original intentions and just make this closer to the original expedition.

It certainly sounds cool so far. Did you give some love to that Khajiit in the mushroom patch? He was only carrying steel equipment, which is ineffective against undead. Poor guy. Never stood a chance in the original release.

And thanks for cleaning those weird references that messed up Bloodmoon!

Yes, I did at least change his class from archer to knight, and calc'd his skills accordingly. He also has companion share enabled, so the player can outfit him with extra armor found at the fort. He'll eventually have some dialogue about the events that took place at Firemoth Fort. With the last release, he'll be your companion after the mission if you want, if he survives.

I did expand on Firemoth lore a bit too, as the fort was primarily built to fight piracy and smuggling. The islands themselves had signifigant meaning to the Dunmer too.

I still have this, I have the skull for one of my characters. I just been waiting for an update.

What I always wanted from Firemoth is after you complete the quest, you could go through the steps of rebuilding and re-populating the fort.

That'd be neat, not sure if it will really fall inside the scope of what Quorn is doing or not, but definitely an awesome idea.



I'd been holding off on this until I retired my current character, but now that I've got a clean install elsewhere on the drive I will give this a go today or tomorrow.

Also, if you kill all the skeletons, the Captain guy back in Seyda Neen shouldn't go "Thanks for this lame shield, and for avenging the legion's honour. Too bad the fort belongs to the undead now." You should at least tell him that it is safe to reclaim if you kill maybe x skeletons and defeat that lich guy.