Friendly Enemy-Faction NPCs

[Comply]

Greetings, first just wanted to say how awesome this community is -- the dedication and effort put into these guides is greatly appreciated.

So I've been occasionally encountering enemy faction NPCs that are friendly in instances that almost without a doubt shouldn't be possible. From my brief observations, these instances don't seem to be consistent with faction alignment, as I've encountered both hostile and non-hostile NPC's of the same faction. Admittedly, I'm probably being dumb and messed something up, but was wondering if y'all had any insight in what may be the cause.

Notable details:

1. Modding profile is primarily Step SkyrimSE2.1.0 with minor deviations, primarily, 1.6.640 SKSE script updates. Opted out of Post-Processing ModGroup.
2. Playthrough is very early on (a few hours in) -- PC is not a part of any major faction.
3. Occurred in Lost Knife Hideout (bandits), Abandoned Prison (ghosts) & random open world encounters.
4. Could essentially run through and loot both dungeons without fighting anyone.
5. I'm assuming it may be related Faction Fixes SE, but unfortunately, there seems to be little documentation from the author and their forum thread is closed on Nexus.

I've provided a few screenshots and load order. Will likely update the post with more information when I have time. If there's any info y'all need, please let me know. Thank you for your time!

modlist.txt loadorder.txt

[Mousetick]

This is most likely caused by NPCs being put in the wrong faction, or by NPCs being given insufficient or too much aggressiveness, or by incorrect inter-faction relationships, or any combination thereof. But it's not Faction Fixes by itself. This mod has been used in the guide for a long time and if it were that broken it would have noticed a long time ago. It could be a conflict between Faction Fixes and another mod, though.

Start by playing the game without any deviation from the guide. It should behave as expected.

You can also disable/enable Faction Fixes at any time for testing purposes. It's safe to do so and I don't think any of its changes are "baked" into a save game, so their effects or lack thereof should be effective immediately, even in an ongoing game. It's not an essential mod by any means, as the majority of Skyrim players play the game fine without it. It improves the behavior of generic enemies by making them focus on the player (and its allies) in combat, rather than by attacking anything on sight indiscriminately (e.g. wildlife). But its various changes are designed to work as a cohesive set. If something else (i.e. another mod) modifies one parameter without adjusting the other parameters, the cohesion is disturbed.

For example, I was recently playing with a mod that changed Anise's aggressiveness from 'Unaggressive' to 'Aggressive'. This change alone is not a problem, but combined with Faction Fixes' other changes, it made her attack the player on sight, which is not supposed to happen in vanilla nor in the mod I was playing with.

So if you use mods that change any of the aforementioned parameters, and you can't create compatibility patches on your own to make it work well together with Faction Fixes, my advice would be to remove Faction Fixes.

[Comply]

Finally had some time to look into this. Yep, I goofed. I used NARC Remade instead of Critters Ain't Snitches. At some point during setup, I came to the ill-conceived conclusion that it was more feature complete and covered a wider range of animals. What I didn't see was that it also affected some non-animal factions, including bandits.

So I imagine this would be baked into the save? After some initial testing, disabling the mod doesn't seem to effect the existing save -- bandits were still friendly. After creating a new character with the same parameters as before, excluding NARC, bandits behaved as expected. Also tested several new saves with NARC enabled to ensure it couldn't have been anything else and was able to reliably reproduce the issue.

Would there be an easy way to fix this on an existing save? Not very knowledgeable about the inner working of how any of that is handled. Appreciate the help and insight!

[Mousetick]

Yes it makes sense. I actually use both Faction Fixes and NARC Remade, they indeed conflict on the Bandit and Hagraven factions, and I had to merge them in a patch.

Unfortunately I was partly wrong: upon examining my save, some faction data gets written to the game save. Not all factions, only a few of them (including Bandits, in my case, and it sounds like they are too in your case). I don't know exactly what causes them to be saved, probably some changes applied via script, not from those mods. So it may not be possible to revert your broken bandits in your current save, I'm afraid.

That said, I'd suggest you try disabling NARC and Faction Fixes in your current game, then travel to a new place with bandits, not one you have visited before, or wait until the locations you have visited before reset. If the bandits are now hostile, you can try adding Faction Fixes back, and NARC or Critters Ain't Snitches.

In any case, whether you manage to fix your current save or have to restart anew, you can still use NARC Remade with Faction Fixes without a patch. You just need to sort NARC Remade before Faction Fixes in your load order. Bandits and hagravens will still report crimes in that case, but they'll be hostile and attack on sight. I agree NARC Remade is better and more complete than Critters Ain't Snitches - it doesn't make any sense that draugrs or dragons can report crimes, for instance.