Working with levelled lists. Help needed!

[ButchDiavolo]

As the title suggests, I am considering a project which most likely requires adjusting levelled NPCs, specifically vampires. It (only) took me until now to notices that basically ALL lower level vampire NPCs are female and ALL higher level vampire NPCs are male. Checking the levelled lists for Skyrim and Dawnguard, this is exactly true. This just seems odd to me. So I want to change this and make it more balanced/ "democratic".

Only drawback is: I kinda know how levelled lists work, but not enough to be confident about messing with them. So if a kind soul could enlighten me about them, it would be very much appreciated.

The way I think how it works is this:

Both Skyrim and Dawnguard have a levelled list "LCharVampire01". This list is populated with respectively 5 (Skyrim) and 8 (Dawnguard) varieties of female (DLC1)EncVampire01. So when needed, the game will look on this list and pick one (or more) of this specific vampire NPC. Then look for the template in the Non-Player Character (actor) list for the look and behaviour of this NPC, which will then show up in the game and do her thing.

Now, if I wanted to make, for example, a 50/50 spread of vampires by gender, I would have to make a patch with xEdit and "copy as overwrite (spawn rate plugin)" the levelled list that I want to manipulate. I then have to create the, now non-existent, templates for male varieties of EncVampire01 in the NPC list (i.e. EncVampire01MBreton), copied/based on the template for the females. And then change one (or more) entries on the levelled list to this new template.

Please let me know if I have this part correct.

Some general questions about levelled lists:

Do the adjusted levelled lists have to have the same number of entries? In this example either 5 or 8?

Do/ can empty levelled lists work for NPCs or will this (as I imagine) cause CTD and weirdness in game?

I hope someone can help me and explain a bit. I tried looking for this online, but couldn't find specific information about this.

Thanks in advance for any information you can give me.

 

[Mousetick]

1 hour ago, ButchDiavolo said:

Now, if I wanted to make, for example, a 50/50 spread of vampires by gender, I would have to make a patch with xEdit and "copy as overwrite (spawn rate plugin)" the levelled list that I want to manipulate.

Yes.

1 hour ago, ButchDiavolo said:

I then have to create the, now non-existent, templates for male varieties of EncVampire01 in the NPC list (i.e. EncVampire01MBreton), copied/based on the template for the females.

In this case you'll use "copy as new record (spawn rate plugin)". But if you do that and simply remove the female flag on the copy you'll end up with male vampires with the appearance and voice of females. So it's a little more complicated than that. You need to keep the stats and equipment but change the voice and appearance (head, hair, etc.) and possibly outfit to a male version. You then need to generate facegen data for these new NPCs otherwise they'll have a black face.

You may also need to make a male version of the NPC template's template (e.g. EncVampire01Template for EncVampire01) to cover all the bases.

1 hour ago, ButchDiavolo said:

And then change one (or more) entries on the levelled list to this new template.

You can just add the male entries to the levelled list rather than replacing existing ones. If there are as many female entries as males, you should have a 50/50 chance on average to spawn either sex.

1 hour ago, ButchDiavolo said:

Do/ can empty levelled lists work for NPCs or will this (as I imagine) cause CTD and weirdness in game?

What would be the purpose?

[Mousetick]

Levelled lists are used for many different things throughout the game. There are cases where an empty levelled list is possible and valid. Such cases where the game expects zero or more "things" out of the list. An example would be loot placed in chests: you could remove all loot by emptying the relevant lists.

Levelled lists also have an optional 'LVLD - Chance None' property. If present, this is the probability the levelled list returns nothing even if it's not empty. This is used mostly for loot. In levelled NPC lists, it is always 0.

In the case of levelled NPCs where the game expects exactly one "thing" out of the levelled list, I don't know what would happen. We can look at LvlVampire [NPC_:0002F9E1] for example. It uses LCharVampire [LVLN:00033973] as its template. If that template levelled list is empty, two things could happen:

• The game crashes/freezes because the LvlVampire NPC has a null template and the NPC requires the template (see 'Template Flags' under ACBS - Configuration).
• The game goes ahead and instantiate LvlVampire without a template which would result in a level 1 character of race FoxRace.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Mousetick

[ButchDiavolo]

Thanks for replying. I am glad to see it pretty much works as I thought it would, just needing a little extra work, like adding templates and facegen.

As for the empty levelled lists: that is just a question for me wanting to be lazy. When I first thought up this, I thought I could just deleted all the entries in the female levelled lists, leaving them empty. But then I saw all lowered level vampires are female, so no fledglings etc would spawn.

But I am still curious if emptying an NPC level list, for example emptying a male list, but leaving the female one in tact, would cause issues. I couldn't find any information about it.

[ButchDiavolo]

Thanks so much. That explains everything nicely. And I am glad I didn't go with the "Just empty the levelled lists" lazy option now.