So I've got a few ideas I was tossing around with my bro earlier today and thought I'd share in case someone might like to take the ideas and run with them.

This is basically what I'd do if I had the time to make such a mod and I found that everything was possible. Just wanted to get some ideas flowing. This way even if I never find the time to begin work on such a mod myself at least someone else could use this to get off to a nice start.

I was thinking that it would be cool if the mod consisted of a new constellation in the shape of the Steed along with a few perks based on mount interactions. This perk tree would be for the player himself of course (not the horse ).

By simply riding your horse more you level up the skill tree.

Misc. Mount Based Enhancements - These go without any sort of requirement other than gold for the extra equipment/training cost.
1. Mounted Combat
2. Purchasable Saddlebags ( for carrying your loot )
3. Purchasable Horse Armor
4. Wild Horses
5. Horse Leveling System - The more you ride it, the stronger/faster it gets.
6. Horse Trainers placed at Stables. - These trainers could possibly train you in the new perk tree just like the originals as well as teach your horses new skills (based on the new perks) for various sums of gold if your character is not able to teach the horses himself/herself yet.

Now in addition to the trainers teaching your horse I figure these perks could also be taught by you to your horse via a menu, possibly similar to the way a trainer teaches the player. The menu can be brought up by activating the horse and then it shows you the available options you have to use based on the perks that you have unlocked. Whenever you teach a horse something the screen goes dark for a few seconds, in-game time goes by for a few hours, then it fades back in and the horse learns whatever it was supposed to learn.

Perk Ideas for the Player's Use (Placement hasn't been thought of yet):
1. Equestrianism 0/3 - Each point slightly increases the damage output of your swings when doing mounted combat, your armor rating, and horse's speed. (Basically anything related to horse-back riding gets increased by a little )

2. Horse Taming - Allows you to tame a wild horse if you have a saddle in your inventory.
3. Whistling - Allows you to teach your horse to come to you when you whistle if they are nearby.
4. Fearlessness - Allows you to teach your horse to conquer its fears so that it will jump even while sprinting.
5. Horse Trampling - Allows you to teach your horse how to plow through enemies while sprinting to knock them to the ground.

That's pretty much it for now. Any other things you'd like to see in a horse enhancement mod?

Normally I pass over these kind of threads, but it's Wolvman himself, so it's bound to be interesting. Are you suggesting the player has another perk tree? Or the horse has its own perk tree? It'd be cool to have it bound to the player, but I'm not sure I would spend player perks to do it. If you got the horse perks like you would "challenge" perks in say, Fallout 3/NV, then most definitely. If you're going for utmost lofty goals, maybe a tameability perk that lets you ride exotic things (so a super amount of work), like the final perk lets you ride a dragon, halfway gets you sabretooth tigers and bears. Even a ridable deer would be interesting. But I feel like horses are too often overlooked because they're either trapped outside the dungeon where 90% of the fighting takes place, or uselessly fighting along side the player (although mounted combat fixes that). /exhausted rambling

Haha, sorry, I meant for the new perk tree to be for the player of course and I see what you are saying about spending the points in such a skill tree. Mounts to me do feel like they are underused, at least for what they could be used for with the help of mods. Now I was really wanting to go into adding other types of mounts (such as dragons) when I typed this out but I figured that that would probably be best if kept as a separate mod just to be as lore friendly as possible. Maybe an expansion mod that could follow this one up could contain such content?

Yes the things I and others posted in this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1279638-req-mounted-combat-barding/