Adds daily routines to 36 named NPCs, and 4 unnamed NPCs across major cities and settlements. Many stores now have business hours, and employ robots to work the night shift.
Broad Overview
36 named characters now have daily schedules
4 unnamed but unique characters now have daily schedules
10 new robots work in various stores, so you can buy stuff when the store owner isn’t there (Styx included)
57 data slates added to various store countertops and NPCs’ personal spaces. Some of these slates are simple notifications of business hours, while others offer you a window into the lives of characters and where you can find them when they aren’t working.
1 of these data slates is an Easter egg for The Expanse
All of this is spread across New Atlantis, Cydonia, Akila City, Neon, Gagarin, HopeTown, and Paradiso.
Specific Details
NPC routines are controlled by custom AI packages that I made from scratch and thoroughly tested in-game. They will physically walk from their store to various locations, and back. All schedules and store hours are based on a planet’s local time. The business directories for the New Atlantis and Akila information kiosks have been updated to show businesses that have hours and/or robots.
I have been very careful not to interfere with vanilla quest progression. Before adding a schedule to an NPC, I looked up every single dialogue scene they were involved in. If someone was required to be in an exact location for a scene, I have either not touched them, or added conditions to ensure their custom packages will not run until the scene is done.
If you find a shopkeeper while they’re away from their store, or sleeping, their normal dialogue tree will not be available and you won’t be able to trade with them. There are a couple of exceptions to this, mainly quest dialogue. If you have to talk to someone to advance or turn in a quest, you will still be able to do that. I have tested this, and you can see examples in the screenshot section.
All robots working in stores are linked to the exact same vendor inventory as their human counterparts, so you won’t miss out on anything by buying from them. There are no conflicts with mods that add items to vendors.
Cell edits have been left to an absolute minimum wherever possible. 90% of additions are either invisible markers for NPCs to path to, or just adding a data slate to a countertop. I have not removed or changed any vanilla items, only added new ones. Example: Belle Rowland now has a bed in her back room, a personal chest, and some food.
There are a 2 restored vanilla dialogue scenes. Antonio Bianchi (UC Surplus in the Well) and Farad Kallob (Eit Clothiers) both have unique greeting scenes that are supposed to play the first time you talk to them, but they were not conditioned correctly and the player would never hear them. I have fixed the conditions, and it applies retroactively, so the next time you talk to them (during business hours, of course) you will hear their unique greeting scenes and get some new dialogue options.
I have added extra dialogue options that allow you to skip some of the longer greeting conversations that Neon vendors give to you the first time you talk to them. You can tell them you aren’t interested in their problems, and this will take you straight to their normal vendor dialogue tree. Their quests will still be available. Personally, I do not consider this an out-of-scope addition, because I had to edit these scenes anyway to condition them to only play when they are in their stores. You can still choose the original vanilla dialogue if you want to. James Newill, Sieghart, Kolman Lang, and Frank Renick are the 4 vendors who have these additions.
Installation and Compatibility
This is a full master. Make sure no light or medium masters load above this.
I have left this as a full master so you can make your own patches with xEdit if needed.
Mods that only change game settings, such as Better NPCs are compatible. This mod does not touch game settings.
Mods that add items or credits to vendor inventories are compatible.
Mods that edit cities are compatible, but be aware of mods with documented navmesh issues, such as Neon Vertigo or Paved Akila, as this may interfere with NPCs’ ability to pathfind.
Q: “Is this compatible with ________?”
A: Don’t take my word for it, use xEdit to see for yourself. That is the reality of using mods that have to override vanilla records to work.
Even if another mod were go in and edit the exact same NPC that I have, and it loaded below my mod, then that NPC would just revert to vanilla behavior. No big deal.
SFBGS008.esm, the vanilla esm that adds city maps, has been included as a master to this, so you won’t lose city maps unless another mod that edits cities and doesn’t include SFBGS008 as a master overrides this one. If that is the case, you can download The Final Patch.
A negligible side effect of including SFBGS008 as a master is that I was unable to revert a few identical-to-master records with xEdit. I am aware of them.
Credits:
FlippingEggs
Download mod
| File | File size |
|---|---|
NPC Routines and Store Schedules-1-0
|
9 MB |
