I suggest animals that behave realistically and are realistic to fight. Virtually all wild animals, except large predatory cats, will run away if approached and do not attack humans unless pursued or starving. For example, wolves in this game are treated like low-level monsters that attack you on sight when one should really expect them to keep their distance and growl for a while first, then attack once and run away if injured. Furthermore, most predatory animals are actually rather strong and formidable when finally pissed off and they dont just stand there and hit you; they try to overwhelm you. 70-pound German Shepherds (police dogs) can bring down a 300-pound man and I'm pretty sure a bite from a >130-pound wolf would be crippling to anyone not wearing plate-mail. Basically, I think predatory animals should be both much harder to provoke AND much more dangerous when provoked. An 800 pound grizzly should be more than capable of standing its ground against a troll but much less willing to do so.

How I suggest doing it, even though I can't really script:

To make them harder to provoke, I'd assume one could write a behavior that queries how long a hostile entity has been inside the animal's personal space and set the allowed time-before-attack to some random value between 2 and 10 seconds. Additional layers of realism would be provided by a second script that simply makes the animal flee when any attack it sustains does more than 25% damage, or if it was in a group but is now alone. This way, you can run right past an animal and it will not tirelessly chase you to the ends of the earth like you just slapped its mom.

To make them more dangerous, I say all that really needs to be added is a knockdown chance to their power -ttack (or a special ability?). I believe that alone would much more accurately simulate what it is to be attacked by a predator like a big cat, bear or wolf. In wolf packs, if it's at all possible, only one wolf -we'll obviously call it the alpha- should have a knockdown chance to avoid said packs being unstoppable. I'm fairly certain all of this is possible and, once the editor is released, I will begin failing to implement these changes. If anyone is awesome and can do this stuff already, then thank you for reading my post, John Carmack.

Yay/nay?

I would download it.

I'm working on documenting different parts for a big 'realism' mod that I want to do and this would definitely fit in. If its scriptable, I would definitely love to work on it.

Not sure what this will be like in Skyrim. In Morrowind there were Fight/Flee settings, although that also didn't work optimally. There was a mod that altered the characteristics of many animals in a way similar to what you are describing. Most animals were fairly docile unless provoked, but even then many would flee rather than fight. A script also checked health and made creatures more likely to flee, even aggressive ones, if they were wounded. It's doable, but I'm not sure how much work would be involved. If there are just a bunch of generic monster IDs you can attach scripts to, then you'd just need to attach the script to the object IDs, and make separate scripts for each of your desired behavioral patterns.

This is a good idea if it can be scripted correctly.

It does look like there may be some ability here, although I'm not entirely certain how.

While playing the game I did notice that SOME wolf packs won't attack immediately, but will growl until you get too close. The game also keys you in to their location by having them howl when you get close enough. This might be played with to make it more noticeable or work on other animals, but I'm just not sure until we see what's in the CK.

yeah i was hoping for better animal behaviour which Beth said they improved but seems nearly the same to me

I think they DID improve some of the animal behaviors.

For example, when you shoot a deer and don't immediately kill it, it doesn't run 10 yards and then stop the second you're out of its detection range. It also doesn't stand there stupidly while you shoot it repeatedly while hidden. Wolves will not attack you dead-on, they will try and do hit-and-run attacks and circle behind you. While they are easy to kill, the behavior change is noticeable and very appreciateable.

I would like to see wolves back off if you prove too much for them, with the exception of wolves attacking in a large pack.

But then, I would love to see rams, deer, and elk gather and bump heads for rut seasons (maybe stretch reality a bit and have them do it twice a year) and then have the females (particularly the deer) become more outright aggressive during fawning seasons (oh yeah, and include fawns and seasonal nests where they hide!). But if I were to go that far, I'd also add appropriate behaviors for hunting bears and their cubs, wolf pups (and that idea gives me the horrible desire to allow you to steal them, sell them, or raise one), and other forest creatures. I also want to be able to collect hawk eggs (they already have nests) and watch them attempt to swoop towards the ground at random and "catch" mice and attack rabbits. Killing a rabbit would make the hawk land and try to peck at it.

If someone wanted to work on it, I'd be giddy to add other animals, too: owls, badgers, raccoons (if anyone felt them appropriate), lots of more fish and cold-water aquatics, lynx, and more insects.

Personally I did notice the behavior with the wolves- They do sometimes try to sneak up on you. With that said, I would like to see more realistic behavior with wolves. Retreating unless they have numbers, retreating after a few of them have been killed, etc...

More fauna is never a bad thing, I guess we'll see what's possible once the CK gets released and the new NIF format is decoded.

This, in most cases they shouldn't even attack you unless their numbers are large enough

Only Badgers fight to the death...