There is (or appears to be) something strange in regards to the Yuan-Ti mages. I
constantly read "casts death spells", and the targets seem to be his own allies,
e. g. "Yuan-Ti mage casts death spell on Umber Hulk" or
"Yuan-Ti mage casts death spell on Greater Yuan-Ti". Not sure if that
has any effect (or perhaps just resisted), and I welcome even enemies who support
my party killing monsters - but it seems a bit odd to see the summoned monsters
seem to fight one another, at the least in regards to spell-choosing (e. g. the target
of the spells). This seems to only happen with the death spell, or at the least so far
that I could observe it.
Also, for some reason in a recent play-through test-run, there are bandits at
night (which I actually like, those fights seem to be at a good challenge, e. g.
bandits choosing better options during the fight), normally there is a cut scene
where this Reivik or whatever his name was, shows up - the one the party can
carry to the Harper building. For some reason that cut scene never showed up
this time. I am not sure if this is due to bandits showing up or not, so it may be
a false positive; just reporting it anyway. (I actually changed mod installation
order too; now I am down to 50 mods, but on the good side, I have had zero
issues in general, e. g. no overwriting of random Strings. I suspect that some
mods, probably one other item mod, is causing weird problems. I haven't
narrowed it down yet, but in my current list of 50 mods, issues I had when
I installed ~80 mods, don't show up.)
Tried out the lite version of the Irenicus fight just to test things out, very enjoyable. I remember hating the original years back because of the item steal and shatter magic, despite the potential the encounter had, this slightly toned-down version is really nice.
I'll make a fresh full install of your encounters and rule changes in the coming days, but I have a question about mixing some of them with SCS. The yuan-ti component especially, I play with SCS and increased enemy caster levels by 40% in stratagems.ini so yuan-ti mages have access to level 9 spells and I'm quite tempted by your 40% MR and poison immunity addition to spice them up even further, since I often drown them in cloudkills in the early game.
Should your "Tougher Yuan-ti" component be installed before or after SCS if I want to benefit from both your improvements and SCS caster levels or would those be incompatible for that purpose ?
Tried out the lite version of the Irenicus fight just to test things out, very enjoyable. I remember hating the original years back because of the item steal and shatter magic, despite the potential the encounter had, this slightly toned-down version is really nice.
I'll make a fresh full install of your encounters and rule changes in the coming days, but I have a question about mixing some of them with SCS. The yuan-ti component especially, I play with SCS and increased enemy caster levels by 40% in stratagems.ini so yuan-ti mages have access to level 9 spells and I'm quite tempted by your 40% MR and poison immunity addition to spice them up even further, since I often drown them in cloudkills in the early game.
Should your "Tougher Yuan-ti" component be installed before or after SCS if I want to benefit from both your improvements and SCS caster levels or would those be incompatible for that purpose ?
Very happy you enjoyed the toned down version of Irenicus, and I agree with your points (especially the item steal). Any tactical or ai components from SCS will not work with Tactics Remix. Choose one or the other.
alright, thanks, I'm gonna make an install with all your new components anyway
One other question: did you implement the Athkatla city guard+cowled wizards fights that spawn in the Slums, Docks, Bridge and Waukeen's promenade for very low reputation parties? Or am I misremembering and this isn't actually in Tactics at all? I'm still using some components of the old EEtactics mod in my current install and I think those encounters come from the core component?
Anyway, thanks for your work!
I updated the components that came with the base game, but I can't remember that one. I did update random in-city encounters, but that does not include rep based attacks.
Ah yes I thought they were changed by Gebhard Blucher's Random City Encounters but checking the original readme they're actually left untouched by Tactics, my bad
I had a fairly strange fight with the Demi-Lich in the Basement of Morandin (Region of Terror mod) lately. I believe Tactics Remix may be largely responsible for the changed fight, as I did not encounter the problem before.
So the Demi-Lich there casts dispel as well as those teleporting field (which seems new)- the spell where you keep on getting shifted about in the area. Interestingly the Demi-Lich does not attack at all (ever) now, and I can not harm him (lack the proper weapons but also reaching the demi-lich was slow; guess I could have tried for ranged weapons). This leads to some kind of infinite battle where nobody does any damage.
I am not sure why the Demi-Lich does not attack; perhaps some routine makes him constantly do strange spells instead. I am almost 100% certain that the Demi-Lich behaviour there changed, because in prior run-throughs the Demi-Lich was even harder than Kangaxx from what I remember (though Dusk can sometimes one shot him if he has his final weapons).
I had a fairly strange fight with the Demi-Lich in the Basement of Morandin (Region of Terror mod) lately. I believe Tactics Remix may be largely responsible for the changed fight, as I did not encounter the problem before.
So the Demi-Lich there casts dispel as well as those teleporting field (which seems new)- the spell where you keep on getting shifted about in the area. Interestingly the Demi-Lich does not attack at all (ever) now, and I can not harm him (lack the proper weapons but also reaching the demi-lich was slow; guess I could have tried for ranged weapons). This leads to some kind of infinite battle where nobody does any damage.
I am not sure why the Demi-Lich does not attack; perhaps some routine makes him constantly do strange spells instead. I am almost 100% certain that the Demi-Lich behaviour there changed, because in prior run-throughs the Demi-Lich was even harder than Kangaxx from what I remember (though Dusk can sometimes one shot him if he has his final weapons).
No idea. Per your prior messages you do custom modifications and such to your installs and fail to provide logs as to what you're running (wouldn't help as again you modify them).
So I am slowly progressing (even managed to kill a planetaar finally \o/), but I found another oddity,
recently. The gnome called Valtor Darkspell is hiding in that house. I killed his two flying bodyguards,
then went down. Now, interestingly, every time I go back upstairs, a new project image (or whatever
is that clones Valtor), is showing up.
I now managed to spawn 8 of him! They all cutely surround the main Valtor (who is actually invisible
so I can not see him.)
These project images don't seem to be doing anything, not even moving, but I found that strange
altogether. It is probably absolutely harmless (I am not quite strong enough to kill Valtor actually),
so I am not sure I could call this a bug, but nonetheless it is a bit strange, as it would mean that
Valtor has the power to clone an infinite amount of project images, which I think is weird. If it is
not too much work or bother, perhaps the code could be changed, either to a check how many
of those project images were created or are nearby, or to simply limit the number of such project
images that can be used, like 3 per day or whatever else the limit is, whatever seems easier to do.
(In older versions of tactics remix this was not the case; if I recall correctly there was always only
one of those project images of Valtor. He now seems to be using that teleport field, though,
which seems different to the old behaviour as well. Actually, that teleport field seems to confuse
some of the AI, or change it at the least, but I haven't yet tested this sufficiently. I first noticed
this with the demi-lich, and now Valtor also seems to behave differently; before he seemed more
eager to chase, now he kind of seems to prefer spells? But as said, I am not yet sure about that.)
Newest update to Tactics Remix covers sirines, so I no longer recommend using PnP Fey from aTweaks. The Tactics Remix version updates sirines added by some other mods that aTweaks does not cover.
I have not tested everything and elected to not use some of the new changes, such as improved planetars and a few more things. I did, however had, test the "lite" variant of Ilyich in the first dungeon this time.
I am not saying it was necessarily easy, but it was definitely much easier to prevail in, than the prior variant with the stun-using or mass-confuse-using demon (and the stone golem; the small clay golems were actually easier in the lite variant. I don't know how much the golem mod changes in regards to the difficulty slider).
I had to kite Ilyich and the others quite a bit, in particular the ranged sniper kept on being a troublemaker (I would pull back injured NPCs too slowly usually).
There were two small clay golems as mentioned (I also used Argent77's mod for golems) - they were faster than the other duergar, but actually that worked against them in that they outran most of the other duergar and were somewhat easier to kill once isolated (for instance, I killed them when they were in the middle of the first level dungeon). I also had the Region of Terror mod, and Bruenor was quite effective in dealing out damage here. So, overall I would say the Lite part is ok-balanced - it provides a challenge without being almost impossible (this is also highly dependent on weapons available; in later parts of the game this becomes easier, in early parts it can be much harder). I would not necessarily call it "lite" by itself, but compared to the nightmare-mode it was definitely easier.
There is one thing that appears to have changed or I may not have paid attention to this before. Many humanoid-like enemies drink a potion, e. g. the bandits that ambush at night (there may also be another mod that increases ambushes). Is the potion a real object in their inventory though? It seems as if it provides an explanation to their buffs ("drinks an oil of speed potion", or something like that), but I was not sure whether it really was an item they kept. One can say that they have only one potion, and use that one potion at the beginning of the fight, but there are trigger-conditions where they could not tell that the fight starts (e. g. invisibility and then use horror when sneaking up on enemies, and all targets that fail the saving throw will run away in panic, then you kill these panicked units before the fear-effect runs out - but, even when you do that, no potion ever seems to "appear" in the corpse.) Here I think it may be better to have a real potion in the inventory, in part because it could then be looted too (e. g.
when they failed to drink it before, due to horror/fear used before and then a quick kill or possibly a stun-effect or anything similar int his regard), but more importantly than that, because I think all game-messages should be represented by tangible in-game "logic" as well. In other words: if a message appears by the game engine for the player to read, that message should be based on truthful and factual observation. I remember in an old text-based MUD, where one admin there "engineered" text messages in PvP to make one overpowered guild where he had his alt account play and PvP/PK-nuke down other players, change to appear that all members of this guild are more "harmless" in PvP than they really are. Their features soaked up a LOT of damage in PvP, due to hardened skin/damage reduction that was never explained to the other players directly, other than sneakily swallowing information, without giving players any means to understand what is going on directly. In other words: the game engine there swallowed information from the players. Back then I came to the conclusion that any game engine should be truthful at all times about everything, as long as there can be an in-game discernable observation of it. Evidently if players can not discern something then it should not be displayed either, but e. g. "drinks a potion" should derive from having a potion. By the way, I actually think an empty vial is more logical than the potion just disappearing - in the guarded compound, we can even see that, e. g. if you kill them, they have empty vials or empty bottles. That is more logical than an empty potion just disappearing without any explanation about why that container vanished. I am not sure why the original developers did not do so consistently.
I did test a few more things (once on the surface) and in general it seems that the changes made more sense now, compared to the prior release, but I have not tested everything yet, so my feedback is very incomplete in this regard.
On a recent BG1 Run with Tactics installed, it happened to me that Tarnesh was insta killed by Arrows of Charname and Imoen when he turned hostile, just before his scripts could kick in.
Is there a way to prevent this? Maybe if casters would be turned invulnerable for a short time until their scripts are fully executed?
On a recent BG1 Run with Tactics installed, it happened to me that Tarnesh was insta killed by Arrows of Charname and Imoen when he turned hostile, just before his scripts could kick in.
Is there a way to prevent this? Maybe if casters would be turned invulnerable for a short time until their scripts are fully executed?
I need to think on how I'd want to approach this. Couple different options.
I found another small issue on an EET Setup, regarding custom encounters;
Any idea what might cause this warnings and what's to be expected if I keep it installed this way?
Didn't include any SCS AI or Tactics Parts this time, WeiDu Log attached.
It looks like you have another mod altering the following files: ar0041.bcs, ar0045.bcs, and ar0046.bcs.
On an unrelated note to your posted issue, your install order has some problems. UI mods, like Dragonspear UI++ need to come near the beginning, not at the end. You are also splitting Tactics Remix up both before and after SCS, don't do this. Install all of Tactics Remix after SCS or those encounters will not use IWD spells. Also, why are you installing the Tactics City and Wilderness encounters out of order with Forgotten Armament before them?
Because I remembered both of them causing issues on my last EET Setup, so I left them out at first. Wilderness encounters seems to be installed fine this time.
Splitting new encounters between SCS and the other parts was suggested for version 0.8 of tactics remix. I‘m still used to it in some way, I guess. Will keep that in mind next time.
I left the city encounters out this time. Just wanted to let you know, that there might be mod conflicts somehow.
Splitting new encounters between SCS and the other parts was suggested for version 0.8 of tactics remix. I‘m still used to it in some way, I guess. Will keep that in mind next time.
It is likely to lead to issues now or unoptimal performance as some of the spell changes will not be applied to those fights due to the order of your install. Similarly, those fights will not use IWD spells since they are installed before IWD spells.
I was quoting the readme in the Mod files. It‘s written there under the part „content“.
Its a .md file that is a front page to a now-defunct github page. If you look at it, its missing all of my new components as I'm not keeping the git active. Please refer to my web page for all compatibility and mod install descriptions as that is up-to-date.
Looking closer, this seems to be the component causing the issue:
~SETUP-D0QUESTPACK.TP2~ #2 #4 // Verschiedene Verbesserungen -> With Additional Random Encounters: v3.5
You also installed ~SETUP-D0QUESTPACK.TP2~ #2 #0 // Generelle KI-Verbesserungen: v3.5 which will also likely cause issues. Speculation on my part as I haven't tested to confirm.
Comments
constantly read "casts death spells", and the targets seem to be his own allies,
e. g. "Yuan-Ti mage casts death spell on Umber Hulk" or
"Yuan-Ti mage casts death spell on Greater Yuan-Ti". Not sure if that
has any effect (or perhaps just resisted), and I welcome even enemies who support
my party killing monsters - but it seems a bit odd to see the summoned monsters
seem to fight one another, at the least in regards to spell-choosing (e. g. the target
of the spells). This seems to only happen with the death spell, or at the least so far
that I could observe it.
Also, for some reason in a recent play-through test-run, there are bandits at
night (which I actually like, those fights seem to be at a good challenge, e. g.
bandits choosing better options during the fight), normally there is a cut scene
where this Reivik or whatever his name was, shows up - the one the party can
carry to the Harper building. For some reason that cut scene never showed up
this time. I am not sure if this is due to bandits showing up or not, so it may be
a false positive; just reporting it anyway. (I actually changed mod installation
order too; now I am down to 50 mods, but on the good side, I have had zero
issues in general, e. g. no overwriting of random Strings. I suspect that some
mods, probably one other item mod, is causing weird problems. I haven't
narrowed it down yet, but in my current list of 50 mods, issues I had when
I installed ~80 mods, don't show up.)
I'll make a fresh full install of your encounters and rule changes in the coming days, but I have a question about mixing some of them with SCS. The yuan-ti component especially, I play with SCS and increased enemy caster levels by 40% in stratagems.ini so yuan-ti mages have access to level 9 spells and I'm quite tempted by your 40% MR and poison immunity addition to spice them up even further, since I often drown them in cloudkills in the early game.
Should your "Tougher Yuan-ti" component be installed before or after SCS if I want to benefit from both your improvements and SCS caster levels or would those be incompatible for that purpose ?
Very happy you enjoyed the toned down version of Irenicus, and I agree with your points (especially the item steal). Any tactical or ai components from SCS will not work with Tactics Remix. Choose one or the other.
One other question: did you implement the Athkatla city guard+cowled wizards fights that spawn in the Slums, Docks, Bridge and Waukeen's promenade for very low reputation parties? Or am I misremembering and this isn't actually in Tactics at all? I'm still using some components of the old EEtactics mod in my current install and I think those encounters come from the core component?
Anyway, thanks for your work!
So the Demi-Lich there casts dispel as well as those teleporting field (which seems new)- the spell where you keep on getting shifted about in the area. Interestingly the Demi-Lich does not attack at all (ever) now, and I can not harm him (lack the proper weapons but also reaching the demi-lich was slow; guess I could have tried for ranged weapons). This leads to some kind of infinite battle where nobody does any damage.
I am not sure why the Demi-Lich does not attack; perhaps some routine makes him constantly do strange spells instead. I am almost 100% certain that the Demi-Lich behaviour there changed, because in prior run-throughs the Demi-Lich was even harder than Kangaxx from what I remember (though Dusk can sometimes one shot him if he has his final weapons).
No idea. Per your prior messages you do custom modifications and such to your installs and fail to provide logs as to what you're running (wouldn't help as again you modify them).
recently. The gnome called Valtor Darkspell is hiding in that house. I killed his two flying bodyguards,
then went down. Now, interestingly, every time I go back upstairs, a new project image (or whatever
is that clones Valtor), is showing up.
I now managed to spawn 8 of him! They all cutely surround the main Valtor (who is actually invisible
so I can not see him.)
These project images don't seem to be doing anything, not even moving, but I found that strange
altogether. It is probably absolutely harmless (I am not quite strong enough to kill Valtor actually),
so I am not sure I could call this a bug, but nonetheless it is a bit strange, as it would mean that
Valtor has the power to clone an infinite amount of project images, which I think is weird. If it is
not too much work or bother, perhaps the code could be changed, either to a check how many
of those project images were created or are nearby, or to simply limit the number of such project
images that can be used, like 3 per day or whatever else the limit is, whatever seems easier to do.
(In older versions of tactics remix this was not the case; if I recall correctly there was always only
one of those project images of Valtor. He now seems to be using that teleport field, though,
which seems different to the old behaviour as well. Actually, that teleport field seems to confuse
some of the AI, or change it at the least, but I haven't yet tested this sufficiently. I first noticed
this with the demi-lich, and now Valtor also seems to behave differently; before he seemed more
eager to chase, now he kind of seems to prefer spells? But as said, I am not yet sure about that.)
I have not tested everything and elected to not use some of the new changes, such as improved planetars and a few more things. I did, however had, test the "lite" variant of Ilyich in the first dungeon this time.
I am not saying it was necessarily easy, but it was definitely much easier to prevail in, than the prior variant with the stun-using or mass-confuse-using demon (and the stone golem; the small clay golems were actually easier in the lite variant. I don't know how much the golem mod changes in regards to the difficulty slider).
I had to kite Ilyich and the others quite a bit, in particular the ranged sniper kept on being a troublemaker (I would pull back injured NPCs too slowly usually).
There were two small clay golems as mentioned (I also used Argent77's mod for golems) - they were faster than the other duergar, but actually that worked against them in that they outran most of the other duergar and were somewhat easier to kill once isolated (for instance, I killed them when they were in the middle of the first level dungeon). I also had the Region of Terror mod, and Bruenor was quite effective in dealing out damage here. So, overall I would say the Lite part is ok-balanced - it provides a challenge without being almost impossible (this is also highly dependent on weapons available; in later parts of the game this becomes easier, in early parts it can be much harder). I would not necessarily call it "lite" by itself, but compared to the nightmare-mode it was definitely easier.
There is one thing that appears to have changed or I may not have paid attention to this before. Many humanoid-like enemies drink a potion, e. g. the bandits that ambush at night (there may also be another mod that increases ambushes). Is the potion a real object in their inventory though? It seems as if it provides an explanation to their buffs ("drinks an oil of speed potion", or something like that), but I was not sure whether it really was an item they kept. One can say that they have only one potion, and use that one potion at the beginning of the fight, but there are trigger-conditions where they could not tell that the fight starts (e. g. invisibility and then use horror when sneaking up on enemies, and all targets that fail the saving throw will run away in panic, then you kill these panicked units before the fear-effect runs out - but, even when you do that, no potion ever seems to "appear" in the corpse.) Here I think it may be better to have a real potion in the inventory, in part because it could then be looted too (e. g.
when they failed to drink it before, due to horror/fear used before and then a quick kill or possibly a stun-effect or anything similar int his regard), but more importantly than that, because I think all game-messages should be represented by tangible in-game "logic" as well. In other words: if a message appears by the game engine for the player to read, that message should be based on truthful and factual observation. I remember in an old text-based MUD, where one admin there "engineered" text messages in PvP to make one overpowered guild where he had his alt account play and PvP/PK-nuke down other players, change to appear that all members of this guild are more "harmless" in PvP than they really are. Their features soaked up a LOT of damage in PvP, due to hardened skin/damage reduction that was never explained to the other players directly, other than sneakily swallowing information, without giving players any means to understand what is going on directly. In other words: the game engine there swallowed information from the players. Back then I came to the conclusion that any game engine should be truthful at all times about everything, as long as there can be an in-game discernable observation of it. Evidently if players can not discern something then it should not be displayed either, but e. g. "drinks a potion" should derive from having a potion. By the way, I actually think an empty vial is more logical than the potion just disappearing - in the guarded compound, we can even see that, e. g. if you kill them, they have empty vials or empty bottles. That is more logical than an empty potion just disappearing without any explanation about why that container vanished. I am not sure why the original developers did not do so consistently.
I did test a few more things (once on the surface) and in general it seems that the changes made more sense now, compared to the prior release, but I have not tested everything yet, so my feedback is very incomplete in this regard.
Is there a way to prevent this? Maybe if casters would be turned invulnerable for a short time until their scripts are fully executed?
I need to think on how I'd want to approach this. Couple different options.
Any idea what might cause this warnings and what's to be expected if I keep it installed this way?
Didn't include any SCS AI or Tactics Parts this time, WeiDu Log attached.
It looks like you have another mod altering the following files: ar0041.bcs, ar0045.bcs, and ar0046.bcs.
On an unrelated note to your posted issue, your install order has some problems. UI mods, like Dragonspear UI++ need to come near the beginning, not at the end. You are also splitting Tactics Remix up both before and after SCS, don't do this. Install all of Tactics Remix after SCS or those encounters will not use IWD spells. Also, why are you installing the Tactics City and Wilderness encounters out of order with Forgotten Armament before them?
Splitting new encounters between SCS and the other parts was suggested for version 0.8 of tactics remix. I‘m still used to it in some way, I guess. Will keep that in mind next time.
I left the city encounters out this time. Just wanted to let you know, that there might be mod conflicts somehow.
Tactics readme still says the following:
„New encounters should be installed prior to SCS while updates to existing encounters should be installed after SCS…“
It is likely to lead to issues now or unoptimal performance as some of the spell changes will not be applied to those fights due to the order of your install. Similarly, those fights will not use IWD spells since they are installed before IWD spells.
The readme, located here, does not say that. https://www.morpheus-mart.com/tactics-remix
Its possible you are looking at old/outdated files to an inactive github buried in the files, but the readme, link above, does not make that claim.
Its a .md file that is a front page to a now-defunct github page. If you look at it, its missing all of my new components as I'm not keeping the git active. Please refer to my web page for all compatibility and mod install descriptions as that is up-to-date.
~SETUP-D0QUESTPACK.TP2~ #2 #4 // Verschiedene Verbesserungen -> With Additional Random Encounters: v3.5
You also installed ~SETUP-D0QUESTPACK.TP2~ #2 #0 // Generelle KI-Verbesserungen: v3.5 which will also likely cause issues. Speculation on my part as I haven't tested to confirm.
I will leave it as is for now, but take it into consideration, next time I do an EET Setup, and do some further testings on my own.