Duel? Duke Patricks? Skyre? Which makes for the best/most tactical combat??

Duke Patrick's is realistic, but it can be somewhat annoying with same features. They may be realistic, but I'm glad you can turn them off. It gives a very different fighting style
- You have intense "spasms" of fighting, where you use your fatigue a lot
- You have to be very careful to manage your fatigue, it can easily be exhausted
- Blocking is much better
- Skill is rewarded more - dodging is more important for light armour characters, etc

SkyRe is more similar to the Skyrim combat:
- No new (large) features, just changing statistics
- More risky (more damage, less health/armour) combat
- No advanced features (smash of the titans in DP, for example) but that may be preferable
- Rewards skill less than DP's
- Isn't as radical a change, mostly just increased damage.

I haven't used duels

Honestly, ASIS is the best for tactical fighting. All NPCs gain perks, making it hugely more challenging. You have to consider using ranged attacks against melee guys, who will rip your face off in about three seconds up close, and getting close to wizards, who do the opposite.

The biggest thing is, you NEED Ultimate Follower Overhaul, as there is no way to get very far without multiple companions. That said, the game is pretty epic when you've got five followers going up against hordes of fully perked Draugr.

There is Deadly Combat as well..

ASIS doesn't touch the combat mechanisms, so it's not the "best for tactical fighting". It "only" gives a bigger variety of battle types and moves up difficulty by adding spells, potions and perks to npc's. Additional to that the spawning rate is increased. Everything very modular.
Instead of this Duke Patrick's mod totally overhauls the way of combat in Skyrim. Fighting a simple bandit becomes much more harder and different. I advice the thread creator to study the mod descriptions and perhaps to search for a mod video.
For my taste Duke's mod adds a little to much of everything. I kept using http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/2700 in combination with http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10037 and http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/18436. They all work together very well.

Conclusion:
Duke Patrick's: very realistic and well made complete overhaul
Duel: expands the vanilla fighting system with logical elements but without changing the experience drastically
Deadly Combat: in my opinion a mix of the two mods mentioned above. It changes more as Duel but not as radical as Duke's. More action oriented.
SkyRe: doesn't like the mod concept ... I would prefer my combination mentioned above.

Edit: I personally use http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/15524 instead of UFO. In combination with ASIS a little bit more help is always welcome. x)

I guess it depends on what you mean by tactical.

Deadly Combat works very well with ASIS and Locational Damage. That's what I recommend (plus UFO for the reasons above).

Duke Patrick's mod is highly recommended on a clean save file (if you're starting a new game) and if you're -not- running a long list of script intensive mods. It's very demanding and you may get severe script lag if you don't follow the author's instructions. Spooky is constantly updating it with new features and tweaking existing ones, which might enhance but also disrupt your gameplay experience until everything is fine-tuned. If you're not eager to participate on testing, I'd wait for a more final release.

Yep I tried an earlier version in combination with IMCN and Frostfall. Totally messed up the scripts. x)


Aye ... forgot that SkyRe also changes enemies and other things. So sorry ASIS's changes can also counted as"tactical fighting" from the thread creator's pov. I was focused on the changes of combat mods.

Same here, I had to disable it after using it for my first 20 levels. For some reason there are still leftovers from the previous versions in my save file, even though I uninstalled it according to the readme. Now I can't use it again with this character without strange behavior.
I'll wait until he's done with it to start a new character. Despite the issues, it's the best strategic overhaul and I still recommend it for new characters, as long as there are no other realism mods running on the background.

Spooky tries to never implement a combat mechanic unless it extends to NPCs as well.

Also I'm not aware that DP mod addresses skill rates at all. Is this what you all mean by skill reward.

It is more about rewarding player skill but using character skill to accentuate player skill.

I would disagree with ASIS - it doesn't promote more tactical combat necessarily, but promotes more interesting combat. Increased enemies to fight can make more tactics needed, however the combat itself isn't tactical unless you use another mod. They work together, though.

Plutoman, what mod do you think works best with your mod? Duke's or Deadly Combat?

Both. Depends on how much realism you're looking for. Duke's is by far the most realistic - and extremely impressive work - however, it can be 'too' real sometimes if you are used to game mechanics. So honestly I'd give an equal recommendation to both. If you want something really realistic, or if you've played mount and blade, I would say to lean towards Duke's.

I prefer to use Deadly combat. Dukes Combat mod was my #1 for a while, but it was simply too slow for me, and i switched to deadly combat.

SkyRE changes enemy perks and leveling as well (optional, all changes again, are optional).

It's similar (read: near identical) to Duel, but not as drastic as DP's. If you're using SkyRE already you may as well go with the combat, as everything is balanced around that.