I have a mod that places apple trees in the game. The apples on each tree are not part of the tree mesh; they're vanilla apple objects that I've hand-placed right up close to the branches so that it appears the fruit is growing on the tree when it's really suspended in thin air. This way you can take as many apples as you want from one tree, or you can shoot them out of the tree with a bow.
I've had several people ask me if I'm going to make this mod compatible with Hearthfire's planting system. I'd like to, but I'm not sure it's possible. My original thinking is along the lines of, "at some point in the mechanics, the seed (or whatever you plant) needs to be swapped out and substituted with a tree, which is problematic because in this case "a tree" isn't one object. It's about fifteen -- the tree mesh and each individual apple are all separate items."
So what I'm wondering is whether there's a way to do this at all. I don't want to keep telling people I can't do it just because I don't know enough to be able to.
What I'd need to do is have a way to place a whole bunch of objects -- the tree and the apples -- into the game so that each is at a fixed position relative to the other objects. Is that something possible to do? I'm assuming it's not, but I wanted to ask just in case.
Edit: Wait, let me clarify. I know that I could just plop the tree and apples into the game, disable them, then have the player do something that enables them. But that would mean player wouldn't have a choice about where the trees went. I'm looking for something more along the lines of being able to take your apple seed, drop it somewhere, activate it, and have it turn into a tree with apples. Like how the camping equipment works in myriad mods that allow you to take a pot, place it somewhere and activate it to make a full-size roasting spit appear, which you can then rotate around and higher\lower until it's in the right spot. Except I want to do it with multiple objects that will spring into being at fixed positions.