ACCEPTED Realistic AI Detection SE (by OlivierDoorenbos)

[Mousetick]

I think the issue may lie in the fact that this mod was in the 1.0 guide, and it remains in the 2.0 guide with the same Medium / Medium setup, which may not be adequately balanced when used with the L&W mods. Medium / Medium was probably fine with vanilla lighting in STEP 1.0, however it may have been insufficiently tested in STEP 2.0 with the additional lighting mods (and possibly ENB).

@steeleb is mentioning "Cathedral" several times so I'm assuming he/she's referring to Cathedral Weathers, which would mean following the STEP 2.0 guide and using all the mods in the L&W group.

This mod's MA specifically recommends using Light Ext. with Catheral Weathers, and Medium Int. with Luminosity. It's unclear what should be used when ENB is combined on top. It's worth noting that both Cathedral Weathers and Luminosity are rated badly for detection balance and consistency by the MA in their evaluation.

1 hour ago, steeleb said:

It is terrific guide, but this mod, needed to be reverted, since I feel it really broke the game for me, and kinda ruined my vanilla experience.

If you're not having fun throughout, you can uninstall this mod, or try the Lite version. Fortunately this is one very simple mod which can be installed and uninstalled at will without breaking your game. If you're having trouble with just this specific quest, try an invisibility potion or spell maybe?

[TechAngel85]

My goodness what is all the fuss and blaming about?
The mod isn't even a master of the Patches so you can switch in and out to whatever works for your setup. 

It should be noted that the weather mod is only going to determine how it works in exteriors. Interiors is going to be determined by your lighting mods.

[DoubleYou]

I've tested with this mod installed, and yes it makes sneak harder. I don't really see a problem with this, and I feel this is more realistic. NPCs have a far greater possibility of seeing me if I am in front of them instead of behind them. It makes sense that a guard who's only job is to keep a lookout for people skulking about would have a heightened awareness to my sneaking about, so I have to ensure I'm tactful and have a backup plan if I am detected.

We could note, I suppose, that this mod makes sneaking harder. But I would have thought that this fact was obvious.

[steeleb]

9 hours ago, Mousetick said:

I think the issue may lie in the fact that this mod was in the 1.0 guide, and it remains in the 2.0 guide with the same Medium / Medium setup, which may not be adequately balanced when used with the L&W mods. Medium / Medium was probably fine with vanilla lighting in STEP 1.0, however it may have been insufficiently tested in STEP 2.0 with the additional lighting mods (and possibly ENB).

@steeleb is mentioning "Cathedral" several times so I'm assuming he/she's referring to Cathedral Weathers, which would mean following the STEP 2.0 guide and using all the mods in the L&W group.

This mod's MA specifically recommends using Light Ext. with Catheral Weathers, and Medium Int. with Luminosity. It's unclear what should be used when ENB is combined on top. It's worth noting that both Cathedral Weathers and Luminosity are rated badly for detection balance and consistency by the MA in their evaluation.

If you're not having fun throughout, you can uninstall this mod, or try the Lite version. Fortunately this is one very simple mod which can be installed and uninstalled at will without breaking your game. If you're having trouble with just this specific quest, try an invisibility potion or spell maybe?

I did not know the history of this mod, but that makes sense. I just picked up Skyrim SE, and I recall using a similar mod, and STEP before, and definitely noticed a difference.  I do believe my game used a mod that made things significantly darker.  That said, what I ended up doing was loading lite, and making my Medium ESP values similar to lite, and in some instances favoring skill more.  I believe the intent behind lite gets rid of some of the problems with guards staring right out you, but I continued to tweak to make it so skill was more relevant, being a RPG purist.

[steeleb]

2 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

I've tested with this mod installed, and yes it makes sneak harder. I don't really see a problem with this, and I feel this is more realistic. NPCs have a far greater possibility of seeing me if I am in front of them instead of behind them. It makes sense that a guard who's only job is to keep a lookout for people skulking about would have a heightened awareness to my sneaking about, so I have to ensure I'm tactful and have a backup plan if I am detected.

We could note, I suppose, that this mod makes sneaking harder. But I would have thought that this fact was obvious.

Having just completed the thieves guild play through with Thief armor here is my thoughts, with detection tweaking, but no adjusting to AI or behavior, or quest for that matter. Again the mod is very light weight.

1) The mod gets rid of the problems with guards staring right at you, and not seeing you.  This is great.

2) There are instances in vanilla quest, where I try to hide in areas that I believe the developers designed to be hide spots for guards  on patrol, where you will get detected.  This IMO breaks the game (just my opinion)

3) There are instances were guards can hear me (it's a small tweak, and I alert the whole team). I guess this is just play style but I don't want to walk the whole length of a dungeon because I don't remember where every guard is placed and I don't want to alert the whole team.

Again not really asking to be removed, to each their own, if this is what you like great.  For those who follow the guide blindly (like me), it might be worth noting the lite is more forgiving option.

[z929669]

12 hours ago, Mousetick said:

I think the issue may lie in the fact that this mod was in the 1.0 guide, and it remains in the 2.0 guide with the same Medium / Medium setup, which may not be adequately balanced when used with the L&W mods. Medium / Medium was probably fine with vanilla lighting in STEP 1.0, however it may have been insufficiently tested in STEP 2.0 with the additional lighting mods (and possibly ENB).

@steeleb is mentioning "Cathedral" several times so I'm assuming he/she's referring to Cathedral Weathers, which would mean following the STEP 2.0 guide and using all the mods in the L&W group.

This mod's MA specifically recommends using Light Ext. with Catheral Weathers, and Medium Int. with Luminosity. It's unclear what should be used when ENB is combined on top. It's worth noting that both Cathedral Weathers and Luminosity are rated badly for detection balance and consistency by the MA in their evaluation.

If you're not having fun throughout, you can uninstall this mod, or try the Lite version. Fortunately this is one very simple mod which can be installed and uninstalled at will without breaking your game. If you're having trouble with just this specific quest, try an invisibility potion or spell maybe?

Just to be clear: the 2.0.0 guide is still a WIP, so n/a to this conversation.

The 1.0.0 guide also uses Cathedral Weathers, so same instructions would apply.

Lastly, ENB has no impact on lighting detected by mods. It's post processing, so only affects the user's perception, not the 'perception' of any mod or plugin.

12 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

My goodness what is all the fuss and blaming about?
The mod isn't even a master of the Patches so you can switch in and out to whatever works for your setup. 

It should be noted that the weather mod is only going to determine how it works in exteriors. Interiors is going to be determined by your lighting mods.

According to the MA, many weather mods/vanilla impact interiors as well, even if it's not apparent to the user visually. CW interiors are apparently not relevant though, so use the vanilla reference for interiors:

According to the MAs testing (and, in this case, the MA is the 'expert' IMO), Step should be recommending the Lite version if Lighting & Weather ModGroup is installed. Otherwise, it's up to the user to choose based on their  lighting setup.

steeleb is only suggesting that we add some context to the mod recommendations, so I think it's prudent to do so for the sake of guide followers that may not have the wherewithal to comprehend this mod's mechanics fully and within context of all relevant factors (or those that don't want to figure it all out for themselves). We do try to simplify things a bit for the novice, right?

[TechAngel85]

12 minutes ago, z929669 said:

According to the MA, many weather mods/vanilla impact interiors as well, even if it's not apparent to the user visually.

steeleb is only suggesting that we add some context to the mod recommendations, so I think it's prudent to do so for the sake of guide followers that may not have the wherewithal to comprehend this mod's mechanics fully and within context of all relevant factors (or those that don't want to figure it all out for themselves). We do try to simplify things a bit for the novice, right?

Only when "Show Sky" is ticked does the weather affect interiors.

We do, however, the slope is slippy. If we do it for this mod, we'll have to do it for every mod that anyone has issue with and wants notes on. It's y'alls Guide now and you all can do what you want, but that is just clutter and unnecessary, imo. The context to recommendations, if any, should be in each of the forums anyway. If something isn't clear, the forums are here to ask.

[z929669]

15 minutes ago, TechAngel85 said:

Only when "Show Sky" is ticked does the weather affect interiors.

We do, however, the slope is slippy. If we do it for this mod, we'll have to do it for every mod that anyone has issue with and wants notes on. It's y'alls Guide now and you all can do what you want, but that is just clutter and unnecessary, imo. The context to recommendations, if any, should be in each of the forums anyway. If something isn't clear, the forums are here to ask.

I think this mod may be a special case, since it's so dependent on the lighting and weather setup. Most of our other mods aren't as unintuitive as this one, so I don't think opens the flood gates on adding context to other mod descriptions.

[DoubleYou]

Boy, I was wondering why I had never heard of the author's "RAID Weathers" before, but now I see it was just released today!

[z929669]

19 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

Boy, I was wondering why I had never heard of the author's "RAID Weathers" before, but now I see it was just released today!

That weather mod may be worth a look

[TechAngel85]

6 hours ago, z929669 said:

That weather mod may be worth a look

I agree. The video looks quite promising, though users will complain about the dark nights. Cathedral is horrible as far as the detection balance due to the trade for visuals.

[DoubleYou]

Big update:

Version 3.0

• Summary: extensive fine-tuning update, using 4 years worth of user feedback (and a lot of additional playtesting by me), to address the most common problems users had. Difficulty is generally slightly lower for interiors now, which should improve how the vanilla Thieves Guild sneak quests play. NPCs should feel more responsive when you are out of sneak mode, and should have slightly less difficulty finding other NPCs (if hit by frenzy spells etc). Difficulty scaling has been improved between vanilla, RAID Lite, RAID Medium, and RAID High versions.
• Reduced interior detection distances (a bit closer to vanilla values), significantly for RAID Lite, and slightly for RAID medium, and very slightly for RAID high. This mitigates problems users had with excessive sneak difficulty (both visual and sound), particularly for the Thieves Guild sneak quests, which were designed with vanilla detection distances in mind.
• Increased the detection ability bonus NPCs get while searching in RAID Lite to the same level as RAID med/high, to slightly improve NPC responsiveness when searching (this makes it a bit easier for enemies hit by "frenzy" type illusion spells to acquire targets in the dark).
• Made NPCs react faster to you or other NPCs running into them OUT OF sneak mode, particularly for RAID Lite. They will now be more likely to skip the "search" mode in well lit environments and go straight to combat mode (closer to vanilla behaviour).
• Slightly lowered the speed NPCs can detect you while sneaking outside in RAID Lite, particularly during pleasant weather, partly to compensate for the above reaction speed increase, and just to lower the general daytime sneak difficulty slightly.
• Increased overall NPC hearing ability, particularly for RAID Lite, to compensate for the above reduced interior detection distances (which also nerfs hearing), and partly to slightly improve NPC ability to find other NPCs via sound detection in dark environments.
• Reduced the amount of additional noise running makes compared to walking for all RAID versions (closer to vanilla levels), to prevent a significant increase in difficulty due to the above "fSneakSoundsMult" edit (while still retaining the boost to NPC-on-NPC search performance, as that seems to be considered "walking" instead of "running" by the game).
• Increased how well enemies can hear action sounds (melee, spells, arrow impacts, etc), particularly for RAID Lite, partly because it was a bit on the low side, and partly to compensate for the newly reduced interior detection distances. Compared to the previous version of RAID Lite, distances are now slightly lower for interiors, but slightly higher for exteriors. However, the sneak eye indicator will tend to open a bit more, at closer distances (but still far less than in vanilla).
• Increased the minimum movement noise the player or NPCs make (when not wearing any armor etc), while slightly lowering the effect of heavy gear weight on movement noise (to compensate), after I realised a higher minimum value would slightly mitigate RAID's problems with un-armored NPCs struggling to find each other in dark environments (as they now make more noise for each other to hear). This only has a small effect on player sneak difficulty when wearing no armor.
• Increased the effect walking (as opposed to running) has on visual detection particularly for RAID Lite, as the old value was a bit too forgiving, and to slightly help NPCs search for each other (NPCs technically walk during searches, even though the animation looks like slow running). This also gives standing still, walking, and running, a slightly smoother progression in terms of how easily you are detected for each.
• Slightly lowered the overall large difficulty jump from RAID Lite to RAID medium.
• Very slightly increased the ability of NPCs to see in dark outdoor environments in RAID Lite, to be more consistent with interior sneaking difficulty in similarly dark places.
• Very slightly increased the difference standing or crouching (sneak mode) has on detection.
• Crime response range of city guards has been further reduced slightly for RAID Lite.
• Reduced the time an enemy stares at the location of a detection event (where a spell was cast, or a projectile impact) from 4sec to 3.5sec before starting a search.
• Detection range of dead bodies was reduced slightly for RAID Lite (to remain consistent with the reduced interior detection ranges).
• The GMST Datasheet optional download has had some minor description/wording update

[z929669]

Mod name changed so added a note to replace previous version to avoid installing two instances.

EDIT: I decided not to add a note. It should install using whatever name the user give the previous version. It's just that the version is in the name, which is a bit messy for people like me.

[LittleGuy]

This mods instructions are out of date.


Should we still use medium interiors/exteriors now that Luminosity is dropped?

[z929669]

2 hours ago, LittleGuy said:

This mods instructions are out of date.


Should we still use medium interiors/exteriors now that Luminosity is dropped?

Instructions updated. The same file is recommended (and performs even better) for Ambiance. Ideally, we would use Medium Interior/Lite Exterior, but that option doesn't exist.