baronaatista

Hey man wondering if you've been following the whole Animal Tweaks/SkyTEST thing with SRLE Extended... I've been playing with AT a bit, but I'm really mostly using it for the very lite behavior mechanics - I find with Immersive Creatures and ASIS, running around in the wilderness can often feel like a wolf/bear slaughterfest more than anything else, so I really appreciate having at least some creatures non-aggressive. However my game is already quite difficult and the difficulty part of that mod is mostly unwanted for me. I haven't played much with SkyTEST, but I know you were using it and then dropped it for AT... I'm not really sure what to do here, any thoughts? Also wondering if you plan on incorporating Wildcat? I'm considering dropping Vigor and Combat Evolved for it personally.

Id like to add that the ethical way to influence the community is simply to promote the cathedral view and ideally provide examples of it's benefits - such as was being discussed.

I'm probably not qualified to be a part of this conversation, and I certainly don't want to steer it back in a 'negative' direction but I feel I have something valid to contribute; You cannot discount the idea that the community - and the world as a whole would be better for all with more openness, sharing and less possessiveness. This is not some philosophical abstract but a genuine change that is possible, and perhaps inevitable (as technology improves and resources become less centralized). The cathedral view is the morally superior view as I see it - we can make this change, in small ways by enacting these sorts of principles - as artists, as scientists, mathemeticians, philosphers and so on. Until we can stand on the shoulders of giants that we have built together, and see for miles. I would argue that it was wrong of the author of Wyrmstooth to take the mod down when they departed the community. However. It is also morally wrong to take a persons creation and do things with it they have explicitly stated they do not want you to do. We do live in a world currently where property rights, intellectual and otherwise do matter and can impact peoples lives, jobs, and so on. I completely agree actually with Synthetik when he says that you shouldn't just acquiesce to laws or principles that you don't agree with. Smoking weed is illegal but I think that the entire basis of it being illegal is complete bunk, and I'm not harming anyone but myself in doing it (if even that), so I don't give a flying frog what the law says, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. Key point there is 'not harming anyone but myself' though. The golden rule. When you steal a mod authors mod, you are harming that person. You can call them a baby if you like, because you disagree. Perhaps they are being a bit of a baby. They are a productive baby though - one that is making valid contributions to the community. Stealing from them makes them feel disrespected and disenfranchised. They are less likely to continue to contribute, and then you have harmed the community. Now I don't want to spread any hatred towards this Synthetik character, as that too is morally wrong. I think his intentions are good, but he is misguided. I think Kryptopyr was trying to get across a pretty important point though that did seem to be brushed under the rug a bit. He absolutely was - hypothetical or not - advocating the stealing and distribution of abandoned mods. Again I'm not trying to crucify the guy here. I have no reason to believe that he himself had any intention of doing so, and that he was merely arguing an idealogical standpoint. However. This is not exactly ambiguous. Everybody pretty much stated that they don't agree with him, but a lot of the vibe was sort of 'everybody has a right to an opinion'. Sure, free speech, yadda yadda. Of course I agree. However I'm not sure it was really properly acknowledged just how toxic these ideas are to just about everyone involved, and especially the community as a whole. This is not cool, and it is not a productive way to shape or change the community, and it's important to be clear about that.

I was just tossing out some general ideas, not trying to be specific... Does seem like we're not exactly on the same page, but there is some common ground there. I just hope there are some people thinking about this stuff, most of the mods coming out seem to be pushing in the other direction - making everything more simplified

Kesta, I'm wondering your thoughts on Settlements in Fallout 4; This is a general kind of question, not necessarily related to the guide, though perhaps it might impact how you intend to develop that section of your guide? Anyway my problem with the settlements in Fallout 4 is that they feel so disconnected from the rest of the game and world. I realize Bethesda did this intentionally so that players who were uninterested in developing settlements didn't feel that they had to, however this results in that whole system really feeling like just a building mini-game and nothing else. I'm really hoping the modding community will revamp settlement management in such a way as to have some actual consequences for mismanagement, and a more in - depth settlement needs system (ie. breaking 'happiness' into 'entertainment' 'sanitation' 'health care' & 'satisfaction'). Ideally additional interactions with plot/questlines as well (faction assets in settlement build menu is a really basic one). The problem is that this all really needs to be integrated into the settlement crafting system with more resources, rebalancing, added functionality to certain things, etc. It's quite a huge task, and one that I think would be difficult to achieve in a piecemeal effect with a bunch of smaller mods... I suppose my question is what do you see as the issues with settlements in Fallout 4 and how far do you intend to go in your guide addressing said issues?

It was mostly the crows and the brahmin from that mod that interest me, though after looking at it again, both of them do look a little clean. I'm holding off on playing again until the modding / dlc landscape has settled down a bit so I haven't been able to actually look at these in-game yet. I noted your comments earlier about the quality of mods / textures for Fallout 4 thus far, and got a little excited - the textures in that Creatures mod are quite good (imo) I might agree though I don't love the stylistic take for almost any of them. Also the guide is a great jump-off point for anyone starting out modding Fallout 4, I say forget about it until the landscape has settled a bit - make mods! (or play, or live your life y'know...)

Hey Kesta wondering if you'd taken a look at; https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/13488/? https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/14726/?

I'm truly hoping that at the very least we get a 64bit Skyrim with DX11 support, so I can more fully utilize my rig. Honestly, I'd be really happy if they spent some serious time re-doing textures, lighting, weather, maybe animations and added in a survival mode similar to Fallout 4, with Campfire/Frostfall/Hunterborn elements. The only reason I say this is that I'm a little concerned about just what might be coming next... I can't shake the feeling they're going to try something really different with TESVI, that could just destroy my ability to enjoy it - like turning it into one of these online games like Destiny or the Division. I realize that specifically is not likely to be true, as they are continuing to build on TESO. Its this Pete Hines quote that sticks with me “We actually have three kind of longer term projects we’re doing that are all – we’ll talk about them at a future date – but they’re different than anything we’ve done before, while also being a Bethesda-style game….Big and crazy, but in many ways different than things we’ve done before. It’s an exciting time.†If we can get something that can at least utilize more modern hardware, then the community can develop more content with modern fidelity. Hopefully such a conversion of Skyrim wouldn't force projects like Skywind and Beyond Skyrim to completely redo everything in order to use it as the base?

I wonder if... at the time I was using a slightly older version of Alternate Start? I realized after the error and installed the current version, not sure if that has anything to do with anything. I was able to build the merge just fine so I suppose everything is hunky-dory then. Thanks!

Hey Dread, recently downloaded your modular patches from the 16-05-24 update, not sure if anything changed there with the alternate start patches? When I tried to merge, Merge Plugins tossed up this error; Checking for errors in SRLE__Alternate start.esp [iNFO:000EA261] ('They say Helgen got hit by a dragon. One of those horrors comes here, we'll be ready.' in GRUP Topic Children of [DIAL:0002BDDD]) INFO \ Conditions \ Condition \ CTDA - \ Parameter #1 -> [0329847F] < Error: Could not be resolved > this is what that entry looks like in xEdit. I also included the other entry in the same category... When Merge Plugins tossed the error, for whatever reason I decided it was a good idea to experiment and hit 'fix errors' - which it said it did, but being nervous I then hit 'don't save changes'... I'm getting more and more comfortable with xEdit but I can't tell if this looks right or not... I looked through a lot of the other entries in the patch and everything seemed okay, and I could even make sense of which records were being carried forward and why (for the most part). Lost here though.

Lol you're a bold man attempting SRLE/Extended in your first week of modding Skyrim. People around here tend to be pretty helpful and nice, just remember to read everything carefully - a big thing that hurt me early on was feeling like I just wanted to be 'done', so I tried to rush through some parts. It didn't help much. I'm now finishing a huge install I've been working on for about a month continuously now - remember that just finishing the guide is really only the first part. If you really want to be sure everything is working right, you will have to do some testing, and depending on how that goes, you may have to go between testing and tweaking a bit before everything is resolved. Patience is key.

Really like the look of that ENB and super excited to see that MO2 is apparently useable. Perhaps its time to start playing/modding Fallout 4 again... soon. I have a feeling E3 will shake things up again a bit.

To throw it out there, there's really no need to create a separate profile for your bash patch, DynDOLOD, etc. The best idea is to include those in your STEP profile (they are part of STEP after all) You will then want to create a new bashed patch, Dual Sheath Redux Patch (depending if you add weapons/armors) and possibly a new DynDOLOD (depending on what you add - ETaC would almost certainly require re-generating DynDOLOD) for your STEP Expansion profile(s). That way when you switch profiles the old ones are deactivated and the new ones are activated. Easy peasy.

Well the question is what is your end goal.... If you really like the look of STEP: Extended, Kelmych seems to be saying ETaC works for it, and for the rest of what you said you wanted you could likely use Dreadflopps packs + patches to sort out any issues. In that case, definitely install STEP: Extended and make sure everything is working correctly first, then proceed to tweak - and as others have mentioned, create a new profile in MO for your additions (yes by copying your STEP profile). That would have saved me many a headache in the beginning. However SRLE/SRLE Extended are their own separate guides from STEP, which are thoroughly tested and maintained by their authors and the community, and thus are quite stable to use as well. If they look appealing, you would essentially have to do a completely separate install from STEP. Unless of course you're crazy like me and want to essentially pick and choose what you want from it all (more or less) and toss some more on top - this is the Dreadflopps' install. To keep it simple, STEP:Extended + few small mods is a great way to go. *sorry I keep saying Extended, you seem to be planning to install STEP:Core only. I'm sure that works just as well - the Dreadflopps patches I mentioned have variations for STEP: Core, Extended, and SRLE. *to clarify - if you think you might be installing a LOT of mods on top of STEP:Core, using one of the larger guides is probably the best idea. A couple small additions is mostly easy to manage, but larger installs can become quite tricky. *also, I had the same thinking when I was first going through STEP - I'll save some time, just install Core. As I went along though, I kept realizing the value of more of the Extended mods, and wound up having to go back and install more mods. That really is a solid, vetted list of excellent mods that all work together quite well - most which you will also find in SRLE/Extended.

you also might want to take a look at SRLE/Extended https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Neovalen/Skyrim_Revisited_-_Legendary_Edition - SRLE by Neovalen https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Darth_mathias/SRLE_Extended - SRLE Extended by Darth Mathias/Lexy SRLE Extended has pretty much everything you're talking about and more (except it uses Arthmoor's city mods rather than ETaC) In my experience, unless you really know what you're doing, following a guide for all this stuff is the best way. My first couple encounters with STEP were - I built my STEP profile, and then would proceed to just jam the extra gameplay mods I wanted on top, trying to find patches where I could. To say the very least, this is not a great way to do it. Your game may even load up and play in such a setup, but I wouldn't count on much more than that. Many others have come before you and through trial and error have come to certain paths. That's not say others don't exist, they're just not easy to find (again, unless you really know what you're doing). To throw it out there, my setup is based off Dreadflopps' packs and install; https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Dreadflopp/Dreadflopps_Modular_patches It combines STEP Extended (most of) with most of SRLE, parts of SRLE Extended, and SRLE Explorers, with a few additions of his own. All of these guides have conflict resolution patches available that you can either make yourself, or in the case of SRLE/Extended, available for download. Dreadflopps' conflict resolution has to be merged in Merge Plugins. Also I've played with SPERG and wasn't a fan. I'd recommend Ordinator or TTRSO I'm playing with Ordinator right now and loving it, there's just tons of potential for builds in it. Really well done, yet still simplistic perk overhaul. That being said, my previous install was SSR with SPO, CACO, EA, and TTRSO to fill in the rest. Result being a really close to vanilla (other than enchanting awakened) perk overhaul with much more versatility.

Don't know if this has any bearing, but I've had issues running LOOT in MO before, with that same behavior... The problem for me was always that if I had run LOOT on another game, but not set the MO arguments up properly, or had switched around settings with LOOT and multiple games. The solution was to delete the LOOT folder in C/Users/'username'/AppData/Local... this will also dump any user created metadata though I believe, so beware.

Some of the sounds in that 'pickup sounds' mod seem a little overdone, but I love the concept and will almost certainly add it... whenever I get around to doing another play of FNV, lol.

Just to throw it out there, I currently use the Combat Evolved Stealth module, have used SSR in the past, and can say that while not as fully-featured, it is lightweight and does increase the overall stealth difficulty in the game noticeably, and is definitely compatible with Ordinator.

lots of diversity on this thread, an eclectic bunch for sure. I used to be obsessed with discovering and listening to new music, just can't seem to find the time lately. here's a couple ... that Tal Wilkenfeld is one badass bassist....

Mod Organizer will frequently tell you that you have problems in your Install order, and is wrong most of the time as far as I understand it. There is an option under Settings&Workarounds--Plugins--Basic Diagnosis Plugin that you can set so it doesn't tell you anymore.

...If your punches are slow in a brawl with WAA on, then there is an issue, no? If people just decide to stop fighting in the middle of a brawl with Vigor activated, that sounds like an issue to me. That's the kind of stuff I would want to figure out - like, the kind of stuff that, when left to 'i can ignore it for now' winds up making games explode down the line... also there is an "attack fix cleanup" option in the MCM for disparity, suggesting to me that the attack fix leaves traces in your savegame, or at least can.... I don't use Vigor, so I can't comment on how that functions normally with brawls, but I do use Disparity, WAA, ESF Companions and Brawl Bugs with EBT textures and I have no issues with brawls.

If your punches are super slow when using the WAA speedfix, you probably shouldn't be using it. I'd guess you're using Disparity also, which includes the speedfix. With Vigor, they completely stop fighting? Or just run out of stamina? Again, if you are using Brawl Bugs and a regular brawl - not with the Companions, where you have the magic fix from ESF companions for them - is making people attack you, then your Brawl Bugs is not working. This is likely the case if you had to use the magic fix from ESF Companions in order to spar with them. *my point is that those other things ARE problems, whereas likely your issue with the Companions and training, is not. *I'm also still fairly certain there are options in the ESF MCM for when they will offer training.

I'm fairly certain there are options in the MCM for at which stage in the questline companions will offer training? I'd also suggest that you probably have an issue with your Brawl Bugs patch - you should not have to disable mods in order to brawl. I'm not sure that it's even a good idea to disable and re-enable mods in a playthrough, and you should probably sort that out if you don't want your game to explode as you seem to have had troubles with in the past.... ?

Ah yes. I knew that. When I stopped using the plugin from EBT I had to use it. I suppose our friend cstarkey then has likely decided not to use EBT, or is also only using it's textures.

I don't think I ever noticed before, you guys don't use Brawl Bugs? The MCM option for the Companions will fix training with them, but as far as I'm aware there will still be issues with any attempted fist fight or brawl in the game due to cloak spells? I'm sure Neo/Darth have a solution for this, I just don't know what it is. And I'm sure mr. ZombieSlayer you can see the issues with keeping a mod in the guide that users aren't able to access, yes? It's difficult to have Wyrmstooth and patches in the guide when Wyrmstooth isn't available anymore.