Faction fix SE

Tired of gangsters chasing deer instead of fighting you? Me too!

Picture this: you arrive at a bandit fortress with your weapons, the bandits pour out, you close for a fight... Suddenly the protagonist bandit decides that the deer on a distant hillside must die. immediately. He ran off, yelling at the deer. Sometimes the rest of the bandits join in and we form a happy Benny Hill conga line across the tundra. It's funny/annoying and I'm tired of it. It takes an epic moment and turns it into a farce.

These things happen because Bethesda made the hatred slider on bandits and other enemies in general "very aggressive" rather than bothering with the faction system the game has. This makes the NPC want to murder anything that isn't directly connected to their faction, and from there it's what the AI ​​actually decides to target. Anyway, that's my theory.

If you set the hatred slider to something less murderous, the result is enemy NPCs just standing there because their AI has no idea who their enemy is. They need factions now. So let's solve this problem. And break other things. interesting!

MOD goals:

The different factions in Skyrim are largely the same as they were in vanilla (minimal changes), minus a lot of random animal slaughter.

What this MOD does:

Made 14 edits to the factions, in a nutshell:

Bandits: Hate all other major factions and are hated by all.

Vampires: Hate all other major factions and all but a few animals.

Warlock + Necromancer: Ally with each other and nothing else.

Forsworn + Hagraven: Allied to each other and not the other. Hate spriggans, love goats.

Vigilante: Be more aggressive against monsters and looters while defending civilians.

Dawnguard: Mainly busy fighting vampires, but not much more than a small monster to hunt down.

Cultist: Very little changed from vanilla at the moment. Task testing is required.

Civil War (Sons + Empire): Will kill the bad guys, but is generally really busy with that war.

Companions: Will take on any monsters and protect citizens.

Vigilance: Primarily interested in suffocating Daedra and Dremora, but will destroy evil wherever it finds it.

Thalmor: Very little changed from vanilla, requires more mission testing with current settings.

For all vanilla bandits, vampires, warlocks, necromancers, reapers, hagvins and cultists encountering NPC "aggression", resets the NPC's recorded hatred baseline. This will cause those factions to attack enemy factions and ignore neutral factions (which are the default faction states).

Since NPCs are no longer blinded by murderous rage, their "Confidence" setting comes into play (think of it as "Courage"). Most of the bad guys in the aforementioned factions are still the same "die to death" lunatics you know and love killing people. But some will recognize a stronger opponent and try to escape the fight, and some will flee when the tide turns. Bandits can be cowards, and different confidence settings have been applied to reflect the game.

What this MOD doesn't do:

This mod won't solve all the "wrong target" issues with fighting bad guys. Two examples:

• Some bad guys have an 'aggro radius', which means they will threaten first and only fight if you get too close. If some unlucky animal breaks that radius, it dies, and since the bandits are all partners, the rest of the bandits get involved too. This is normal. But because the Deer are a neutral faction and you, the player, are annoying, they will switch targets faster and generally stay focused on the fight better if you engage. Not perfect. better. interesting!
• There is some (intentional) faction asymmetry - imagine faction A is allied with faction B but hates faction C. Faction B likes faction C. What happens when they all meet? interesting!

While they have a large presence in Skyrim, the factions won't change at all with this mod:

• Factions of the undead/dragons/etc. who hate all life and don't have the same thought processes and goals as living mortals.
• A degenerate who hates a …