ACCEPTED Simplest Horses (and other mounts) (by Hackfield)

[DoubleYou]

6 minutes ago, z929669 said:

horse taming isn't necessarily incompatible with the mandate. I like the idea, since it adds a bit of realism and control (assuming that the horse considers itself 'yours' once you go through the work of taming it).

I just don't play with horses much if at all. They get in my way more than they help. Using horses is just one more task to manage, IMO. I don't even use mounts much in DA:I (but they are convenient for the big desert areas)

Quit hating on horses! LOL.

[z929669]

1 minute ago, DoubleYou said:

Quit hating on horses! LOL.

I like horses, you judgemental horse sycophant!

[DoubleYou]

4 minutes ago, TechAngel85 said:

Okay so we're talking about ownership rather than "taming" (domestication of a wild animal). That should be fairly easy to do with a small script. Not sure without a script.

It's not really a big deal. Just an idea. I regularly kill the hunter that has a horse in order to climb up High Hrothgar so I don't have to stop and kill the frost troll at a low level. But, in order to talk to Klimek, I have to dismount the horse. After talking to him, I have to "re-steal" my horse, and I have to wait until the horse is beyond view of the town guards in order to re-mount him, so I don't get a bounty. It's just a pain, seeing as there's no way they could know that the horse was the hunters that I took. And I've been riding the horse for awhile, so why does the horse want to just walk away all the way back into the mountains?

[z929669]

6 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

It's not really a big deal. Just an idea. I regularly kill the hunter that has a horse in order to climb up High Hrothgar so I don't have to stop and kill the frost troll at a low level.

Hmmm ... never tried that. I guess a horse IS handier than I had thought in Skyrim.

6 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

But, in order to talk to Klimek, I have to dismount the horse. After talking to him, I have to "re-steal" my horse, and I have to wait until the horse is beyond view of the town guards in order to re-mount him, so I don't get a bounty. It's just a pain, seeing as there's no way they could know that the horse was the hunters that I took. And I've been riding the horse for awhile, so why does the horse want to just walk away all the way back into the mountains?

Now that's what I'm talking about, what a PITA

[Mousetick]

20 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

Typically horses you don't own do not stay with you. They walk away from you back to where you found them. If you could "tame" the horse, and own it then, that would be an advantage. And it would stop you from just mounting any random horse and immediately running away on it.

Right. I looked at the 'To Tame a Horse' mod plugin and scripts: if you're successful, the tamed horse is added to the Player Horse faction, so you effectively own it, as if you bought it.

[TechAngel85]

2 minutes ago, Mousetick said:

Right. I looked at the 'To Tame a Horse' mod plugin and scripts: if you're successful, the tamed horse is added to the Player Horse faction, so you effectively own it, as if you bought it.

That's what I thought it would take...just a simple change in the faction. Wasn't sure if that would remove the stolen status, though.

[Mousetick]

4 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

Wasn't sure if that would remove the stolen status, though.

It looks like it does:

...
Horse.SetFactionOwner(PlayerFaction)
Horse.SetFactionRank(PlayerHorseFaction, 1)
debug.Notification("You tamed the horse!")
...

If the player becomes the owner, then I guess it means it's no longer stolen.

[Mousetick]

8 hours ago, DoubleYou said:

I wonder if the mechanic used could be employed on random horses.

I had a chance to try 'To Tame a Horse' while testing something else. I stole a horse which owner was MIA, and after many taming attempts (I had no carrots) I succeeded. The horse then became mine (activate prompt became 'Ride' instead of 'Steal') and I could give it commands (wait/follow/saddlebag) with 'Simplest Horses'.

I'd recommend it if you like [stealing] horses. I think it goes well with 'Simplest Horses' for a simple, no-fluff immersive experience.

[Mousetick]

A few observations after much horsing around with both SHaOM and TTaH. If you don't particularly care about horses, you may want to skip.

There are some quirks to be aware of, that I don't think are caused by the mods. They are in the vanilla game, but are made more apparent by the abilities that the mods provide.

• No matter if told to wait or follow, any owned horse will walk back to its "home" as soon as the player mounts another owned horse.
• If the owned horse was "acquired" by taming it with TTaH while wandering in the middle of nowhere in the wilderness, good luck trying to find it again after it went back home.
• A horse found from a random world encounter and "acquired" by taming it will despawn and disappear from the world as soon as the player fast-travels, is teleported or switches between exterior/interior cells, even if told to wait. It will fast-travel with the player to an exterior destination if told to follow however.
• The player should therefore be mindful of what they store in the horse's saddlebag, of where and how they acquire horses, or risk losing the horse's inventory or the horse itself.
• The "home" of a horse acquired from a random world encounter appears to be the first location where it's told to wait, rather than its spawn point.
• The ability to recall the "current" owned horse (provided by SHaOM by holding down the H key) teleports it nearby. Nearby is not really close depending on surroundings, and sometimes it can be hard to find the horse waiting somewhere nearby, deep in the river, hidden behind buildings or landscape, especially in the dark. It's advised to then tell it to follow so it walks and comes to the player.
• In order for a horse to be "registered" with SHaOM as the current horse and issued commands, it needs to be mounted first in the owned state. For a horse acquired by taming with TTaH, that means unmounting it and re-mounting it once tamed.
• Stealing a horse and being seen still incurs a bounty, even if taming with TTaH is successful and it becomes owned. The stolen horse bounty in vanilla is 50 gold, which is ridiculously low compared to the value of the owned horse (1000 gold for sale at a stable), and could be considered an exploit. The TTaH MA suggests increasing the bounty to 500 gold, which I think is fair. This can be done in a custom plugin overriding Skyrim.esm, or by issuing this console command (can be executed automatically with Autorun or SSE FPS Stabilizer): 

  setgs iCrimeGoldStealHorse 1000

  (The value must be the double of the desired bounty amount)

I don't know how all the above compares with Convenient Horses or the other horse mod(s) under consideration, and I have no plans to find out. I have no interest in trying them out.

Meet my new friends, from left to right (the names are assigned by SHaOM):

1. Queen Alfsigr. Bought from the Whiterun stables.
2. Exmoor Pony. Stolen from the 'Nobles [sic] Traveling with Bodyguard' random encounter near Fort Greymoor in Whiterun, and hardly tamed with 0 carrots. Notice the 'Unknown' references in the console, indicating that this horse was spawn out of thin air and will despawn as noted above.
3. Fjord Horse. Stolen from a hunter near Lake Ilinalta in Falkreath, and easily tamed with 100 carrots in my pocket.

[z929669]

Good summary. Lesson learned: never store anything important in your horse's inventory.

In fact, I think it's bad to have a container attached to a horse. much better that a horse increases your own carry capacity wile you are riding it or within x distance of your mount (or x time after dismount).

Many of he quirks stated are why using a horse never caught on for me (disappearing horses, or unable to find horse, or lost items, or wasn't followed, etc.)

That said, I vote for this mod and TTaH (and possibly the horse stamina mod mentioned) IF when combined, these mods do not present the compat issues of Convenient Horses.

[DoubleYou]

I vote to accept this mod. 

[z929669]

I vote to accept as well.

[TechAngel85]

I don't really use horses so I'm fine with the consensus. 

[DoubleYou]

Marked as Accepted. Added to Changelog and dev guide.

[Mousetick]

I've been using this mod in my current playthrough, along with TTaH. Simplest Horses is very good IMHO: no fluff, no specific UI or added spell/power, only a simple but very convenient keyboard shortcut to do everything. No compatibility issues to report, works well with vanilla and custom followers.

I wouldn't recommend including TTaH into the guide. While I like it very much and think it's great, it strays too much from the vanilla game mechanics and requires additional care (described previously in this topic).