DROPPED Convenient Horses (by mitchalek)

[TechAngel85]

Discussion topic:

Convenient Horses by mitchalek

Wiki Link

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Compare against:

• Simplest Horses
• Simple Horse SE

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Dropped in v2.0.0

[SaintBourbon]

Is there a reason for why this mod is included in the STEP guide? It seems to completely conflict with the STEP Mandate.
 
Edit: I don't want to pile on criticisms of this mod because they have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, but just a few things I noticed that would seem to conflict with the STEP Mandate:

• After riding your horse around for some time, you are automatically given a quest that at first is a tutorial of the mods features and ends up a long, repetitive gag involving your horse continuously running away and having to chase him down.
• The only way to skip this tedious tutorial quest is by giving 500 gold to your horse.
• If you do not have the 500 gold, your horse becomes unusable until it is paid, so you must leave it at wherever the quest was triggered (even in the middle of the wilderness) and come back when you have enough.
• The dialogue in this tutorial quest is, to put politely, significantly immersion-breaking.
• Regardless of if you finish or skip the tutorial, you are automatically given several new abilities that range from actual conveniences to outright cheats.
• One such power seems to automatically materialize your horse in front of you from anywhere. An item is automatically put into your inventory for you to use this power. This item uses 5 of your carry weight and cannot be removed from your inventory whether you want to use the power or not. It cannot be dropped, sold, or stored anywhere as it is marked as required for the main quest.
• This might be a matter of opinion but I personally find it frustrating that mounting your horse now requires a dialogue menu every time.
• While some people may enjoy them, I believe most of the equipment and abilities that are added by this mod are far beyond the scope of "vanilla". This is all the more frustrating when none of it seems optional, given the automatically triggered quest, the gold requirement to skip it, the automatic addition of spells, and items that are forced into your inventory and cannot be removed.

Edited April 6, 2020 by SaintBourbon

[wojsku]

In my opinion it is  best 'horse whistle' mod available hence why it is included in the guide. however, the mod comes with few extras which may not be in everyone's taste. I like the mod and been using it for many years but whether it stays close to the mandate is highly questionable. however, the guide has mods like CACO or CCOR which for me completely change vanilla gameplay experience so convenient horses would not be the first one to assess for mandate compliance in my opinion.

[SaintBourbon]

Seems a high price to pay for a 'horse whistle'.

 

I can see what you mean about CACO and CCOR but at the very least those mods do not permanently add weighted items to your inventory that cannot be removed. Nor do they force you to pay gold to skip the inappropriate jokes written into an unnecessarily long tutorial quest.

 

And both CACO and CCOR have extensive MCM options to disable most of their features (should you not like them). Convenient Horses, on the other hand, forces you to choose between not using horses at all or having your inventory and spellbook filled with unnecessary quest items and cheats.

[TechAngel85]

 

Is there a reason for why this mod is included in the STEP guide? It seems to completely conflict with the STEP Mandate.

 

Edit: I don't want to pile on criticisms of this mod because they have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, but just a few things I noticed that would seem to conflict with the STEP Mandate:

• After riding your horse around for some time, you are automatically given a quest that at first is a tutorial of the mods features and ends up a long, repetitive gag involving your horse continuously running away and having to chase him down.
• The only way to skip this tedious tutorial quest is by giving 500 gold to your horse.
• If you do not have the 500 gold, your horse becomes unusable until it is paid, so you must leave it at wherever the quest was triggered (even in the middle of the wilderness) and come back when you have enough.
• The dialogue in this tutorial quest is, to put politely, significantly immersion-breaking.
• Regardless of if you finish or skip the tutorial, you are automatically given several new abilities that range from actual conveniences to outright cheats.
• One such power seems to automatically materialize your horse in front of you from anywhere. An item is automatically put into your inventory for you to use this power. This item uses 5 of your carry weight and cannot be removed from your inventory whether you want to use the power or not. It cannot be dropped, sold, or stored anywhere as it is marked as required for the main quest.
• This might be a matter of opinion but I personally find it frustrating that mounting your horse now requires a dialogue menu every time.
• While some people may enjoy them, I believe most of the equipment and abilities that are added by this mod are far beyond the scope of "vanilla". This is all the more frustrating when none of it seems optional, given the automatically triggered quest, the gold requirement to skip it, the automatic addition of spells, and items that are forced into your inventory and cannot be removed.

 

 

 

In my opinion it is  best 'horse whistle' mod available hence why it is included in the guide. however, the mod comes with few extras which may not be in everyone's taste. I like the mod and been using it for many years but whether it stays close to the mandate is highly questionable. however, the guide has mods like CACO or CCOR which for me completely change vanilla gameplay experience so convenient horses would not be the first one to assess for mandate compliance in my opinion.

 

 

Seems a high price to pay for a 'horse whistle'.

 

I can see what you mean about CACO and CCOR but at the very least those mods do not permanently add weighted items to your inventory that cannot be removed. Nor do they force you to pay gold to skip the inappropriate jokes written into an unnecessarily long tutorial quest.

 

And both CACO and CCOR have extensive MCM options to disable most of their features (should you not like them). Convenient Horses, on the other hand, forces you to choose between not using horses at all or having your inventory and spellbook filled with unnecessary quest items and cheats.

I, personally, don't use horses when I'm playing. This mod has been in STEP for years. It's last major version came with many changes from the previous versions, which may not fit well into the Mandate. However, I do know that it's the only "all-in-one" horse mod in regards to its features. Other horse mods I've seen require third-party mods for some of their features. For example, follower horses on most of the other horse mods require a follower framework to be installed and those frameworks require other mods that aren't in STEP, as well. Not only will switching to another mod cause more mods to be loaded in the end, but these frameworks are intentionally left out of STEP due to Mandate and objectivity. Therefore, those most horse mods are automatically eliminated from potentially being in STEP. This mod doesn't require such things for its features to work.

 

I think it's inclusion is all or nothing.

 

As for CACO and CCOR, combined with WACCF and Trade & Barter, these mods balance out a very unbalance game in terms of consistency. So much so that we really consider them fixes to game balance and enhanced to seriously lacking features of the game. All these mods being from the same author means they complement one another. Each layer adds more balance to another area of the game (economy, weapons, alchemy, harvesting, etc etc etc). Anyone who has played with them active for a period of time would find a drastic reduction in breathe with them removed from their game. 

[alphaniner]

 

• ... This item uses 5 of your carry weight and cannot be removed from your inventory whether you want to use the power or not. It cannot be dropped, sold, or stored anywhere as it is marked as required for the main quest.

 

FWIW, quest items should consume no inventory space even if they have non-zero weight.

[SaintBourbon]

I, personally, don't use horses when I'm playing. This mod has been in STEP for years. It's last major version came with many changes from the previous versions, which may not fit well into the Mandate. However, I do know that it's the only "all-in-one" horse mod in regards to its features. Other horse mods I've seen require third-party mods for some of their features. For example, follower horses on most of the other horse mods require a follower framework to be installed and those frameworks require other mods that aren't in STEP, as well. Not only will switching to another mod cause more mods to be loaded in the end, but these frameworks are intentionally left out of STEP due to Mandate and objectivity. Therefore, those most horse mods are automatically eliminated from potentially being in STEP. This mod doesn't require such things for its features to work.

After trying nearly every horse mod I could find on the Nexus, I ended up replacing Convenient Horses with Simple Horse for my current playthrough and have so far been very happy with it. It does not have all of the features of Convenient Horses, but the features it does have work simply and flawlessly:

• Horse Whistle
• Follower Mounts
• Fast Dismount
• Horses Avoid Fighting

No additional mods are required for it to work and every feature can be disabled/enabled within the MCM. I highly recommend trying it out.

[TechAngel85]

After trying nearly every horse mod I could find on the Nexus, I ended up replacing Convenient Horses with Simple Horse for my current playthrough and have so far been very happy with it. It does not have all of the features of Convenient Horses, but the features it does have work simply and flawlessly:

• Horse Whistle
• Follower Mounts
• Fast Dismount
• Horses Avoid Fighting

No additional mods are required for it to work and every feature can be disabled/enabled within the MCM. I highly recommend trying it out.

Thanks! I'll look into it as I'm wanting to replace Convenient Horses. It's a nightmare with mod integration due to the way the author implemented things like the horseback harvesting. I'm not going to add anything else the Patches as it's far too much work for a simple CR Patch.

[sa547]

A bit late to the discussion, but due to the utter lack of official support for new lands after Mitch did the last for Wyrmstooth, I had to modify extensively the CH scripts so as to make that mod usable, I mean, allow my steed to run on other worldspaces. The scripts and how I described the process of recompiling them, is here and free for further modification:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/99374

Edited September 29, 2020 by sa547

[kabepo]

I don't think Convenient Horses needs to be in the STEP Guide. There are a number of horse management mods available, and each one has it's own fans. Which one you use is a personal choice.

 

I'm also not very keen on the horseback harvesting feature. I intend to install a more general auto-loot mod, and Convenient Horses horseback harvesting will conflict with it.

[TechAngel85]

I would like to discuss the possibly of dropping this mod. It's not really compatible with the Guide in the that it isn't incorporated with other mods in the Guide. This mod isn't built with compatibility in mind. It uses formlists for things like what can be harvested from horseback. These lists have to be patched for any mod that adds additional items or version of items, like CACO. Using keywords would have been a better way of doing this for compatibility.

In any case, there are lighter weight alternatives (see discussion above). I really don't have too much to say past that. I don't use horses (gameworld simply doesn't feel big enough to need one). My only perspective is that from working in xEdit and knowing the mod isn't well integrated into the Guide (and never has been).

[z929669]

2 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

I would like to discuss the possibly of dropping this mod. It's not really compatible with the Guide in the that it isn't incorporated with other mods in the Guide. This mod isn't built with compatibility in mind. It uses formlists for things like what can be harvested from horseback. These lists have to be patched for any mod that adds additional items or version of items, like CACO. Using keywords would have been a better way of doing this for compatibility.

In any case, there are lighter weight alternatives (see discussion above). I really don't have too much to say past that. I don't use horses (gameworld simply doesn't feel big enough to need one). My only perspective is that from working in xEdit and knowing the mod isn't well integrated into the Guide (and never has been).

I agree on all points (including that I don't use horses). An alternative that adheres to best practice is preferable for those that do use horses.

Drop seconded.

[DoubleYou]

I use and enjoy this mod, but I hear you. I probably haven't used it enough to really see the incompatibilities you mention. The main thing I like from this mod is the ability to whistle for my horse and the fast dismount. Everything else I don't really use tbh. 

[TechAngel85]

18 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

I use and enjoy this mod, but I hear you. I probably haven't used it enough to really see the incompatibilities you mention. The main thing I like from this mod is the ability to whistle for my horse and the fast dismount. Everything else I don't really use tbh. 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12650

[z929669]

19 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

I use and enjoy this mod, but I hear you. I probably haven't used it enough to really see the incompatibilities you mention. The main thing I like from this mod is the ability to whistle for my horse and the fast dismount. Everything else I don't really use tbh. 

It's compatible, but we constantly need to patch around it due to the way the mod implements.