Well, I suppose experiencing Vanilla first helps you to appreciate what modders do, but then, all you really learn is that vanilla svcks. The first computer I ever ran modded Oblivion on was mind blowingly rubbish in more ways than can be imagined, but I'd become so exhausted by vanilla that just being able to run around Brena Ravine and The Lost Coast could keep me entertained for hours.

I wouldn't worry about ImpeREAL Districts blowing framerates, its far softer on the game engine than Better Cities. I ran it on an ATX 300 (no joke) relatively well (relatively was about 12 frames a second on that old system).

See, I've actually enjoyed the vanilla game so far. Keep in mind when I say "true vanilla experience" I'm referring to the balance and general mechanics of advancing in the game. I've installed a huge amount of stuff that improves the game aesthetically and adds to immersion, but I'm not going to touch something like FCOM, or even probably TIE, until I do another playthrough. Which may happen right after I get bored with my current game, but I'm advancing at such a glacial pace that I'll be sticking with it for a while still. I got the game, like, 9 months ago now, and my character's at level 16 (with maxed endurance woo). I've literally put more time into mod-related stuff than playing at this point, haha.

I'm thinking when I installed the Unique Districts I was trying settings out that were killing my framerate anyway, so it was already dipping down to framerates in the teens before I installed it and I kind of interpreted that as being the mod's fault. Upon uninstalling it and seeing my framerate was still terrible I fixed things, but haven't had a chance to try it out again. I've got a few other mods I want to try that beautify cities, since I'm not doing Better Cities this game, and right now the most I've done is installed the mod that adds morning glories to the walls of Anvil. Also improved wayshrines, which isn't a city, but all this stuff falls under Expansion->Environment on my mod website I intend to hype exhaustively until I finally launch it, haha.

Well I've done the true vanilla experience already. I might be one of the few people who thought the vanilla game was actually quite good and stood up well on its own. I played the entirety of my first character on vanilla except for picking up Open Cities in its original form not long before the MQ was over. That character explored vast portions of the map, and kept busy with DLCs, KOTN, and SI as well. I didn't even use the UOP at all until after that character retired for the most part. Not out of fear or anything, I just never noticed it even existed. Strangely enough, the game ran just fine and I didn't notice the supposed swarm of game-breaking bugs because my game never broke. I even did part of my second character entirely in vanilla.

Of course there's no way I'd go back to vanilla now after everything I've seen, installed, played through, and built myself. There's just too much cool stuff that makes the game into a whole new experience. Which is of course why it's still alive and being played today when everything else I had 5 years ago is long since forgotten.

I had my true vanilla experience when I owned the game for my Xbox (that copy has now been passed on to the next generation of gamers). Did just about everything there was to do there. The only bug I recall having to deal with was Shum Gro-Yarug's ill-fated foray into base-jumping. In all, I felt the game was perfectly capable of standing up on its own two legs. I even went out and purchased all the DLC, which I do not do that unless I really like the game. I got it on PC so I could enhance my experience. I really didn't have any problems with the cities being closed hence my choice of Better Cities over Open Cities (besides, BBC can be just as resource hungry as OCR, just look at the Waterfront), probably because I played this game before I played Morrowind. Now I am here after barely 6 months of tinkering, an experienced user and player who knows all the ins and outs of installing and playing with mods, and never once did I need to make a "help me!" thread. Well, maybe just one, but since it was a stumper it doesn't count. :biggrin:

Modding Oblivion really is the ultimate time-sink. I spend just as much time playing as I do battling for stability. :brokencomputer: And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Unique Forts may be small, but it is absolutely essential to me, because one look at this mod had me asking myself "why in Oblivion didn't Bethesda do this?!"

I've have that sentiment too. In fact, I've probably spent twice as much time playing Vanilla on PS3 than I have played a modded game on computer. No bugs, no problems. Scaled leveling didn't even bother me that much.

But then I found out about Unique Landscapes, was blown away by what the modding community had done, switched platforms and didn't look back.

It's funny, I tried Open Cities and while the resource hit bothered me, what caused me to uninstall it was the fact it's incompatible with Illumination Within. Yes, I love the real light sources it adds to windows that much. But the performance hit probably would have caused me to uninstall it eventually. I played Morrowind back when it first came out and the switch to "closed" cities didn't really bother me at all. So long as NPCs can move in and out just like the player I don't mind having to wait a few seconds for the city to load. And stuff like levitation spells, well, have you seen the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfNbPQJ5Fdc on YouTube of someone finishing Morrowind in 15 minutes? Levitation ruins everything! Ha

EDIT: Of all the things I'm delaying installing, I'm looking forward to Unique Landscapes the most probably. Well, I've been delaying playing the KotN content and venturing into the Shivering Isles, basically seeing how long I can go before I give in to the curiosity, and it's pretty much the same with UL. Just a few more levels of exploring Cyrodiil extensively and I'll do it...

I know it's not the same thing, but have you given AWLS a try? The window lighting may be fake, but it still works really well. You get smoking chimneys, too!

The only closed city that really bothers me is Bruma, simply because having 15th Century fortified stone walls with crenelations, murder holes, and portcullises seems to be rather at odds with the city's viking styling. Maybe Bravil, too, but Better Cities solved that for me. All the other towns, though, I can perfectly understand having huge fortifications.

Yep, I tried AWLS immediately after installing Open Cities and discovering IW didn't work. I can be really picky about things, and apparently windows lit up at night is one of them. So I accept the performance hit it causes so I can end up with scenes like http://i51.tinypic.com/2r3au4j.jpg. AWLS is close, but it's just not the same. All of this motivated me to make plans to do an IW expansion for SI, which then morphed into a real light expansion for AWLS. I'm going to guess that it won't ever be completed, but it's possible when I get around to trying it it'll be easier than I think it is right now.

At least someone made a stand-alone smoking chimneys mod, though! The only issue is that the base of the smoke coming out is kind of orange and looks weird under certain conditions, I don't know if AWLS has that issue.

I'm sure I've said this so many times people are irritated by it, but the supposed performance hit from Open Cities is a myth. A legendary one, but a myth just the same. Given you're an IW fan, I'll guarantee any issues that came up with OC were not actually OC's fault.

Anyway, we appear to be horribly straying from the purpose of this thread

Well, I remember some particular moment after installing it, outside of Chorrol, that made me think "definitely lower framerate" at the time, and of course there's just the natural assumption that a mod like that would cause a performance hit. But you'd know way better than I, and I trust your opinion much more than a single fuzzy memory in this case. Either way it wouldn't have mattered because I needed those sweet, sweet light sources on windows. Of course even though there's a definite visual improvement with light sources it's kind of crazy to take such a performance hit just for a small feature like that. And I'm probably crazy, haha

Also yes it just occurred to me I helped totally derail a thread once again and need to stop adding whatever thoughts like it's an anything-goes conversation. It's probably because I've used IRC for so long or something I treat forum posts like (sometimes very large) lines in an ongoing chat, and I'm totally mucking up threads that should have clear, easy-to-browse-for-someone-looking-for-answers contents with random [censored] that comes to me at the time. A mod thread is not a conversation, it's a useful conversation!

So sorry, [Wipz] ImpeREAL Empire-Unique Forts, I have defiled you. Maybe you can talk about it with the All Natural and OBGE threads (also a million others--my first post was asking for a good name for my website in the AN thread!)

@Palidoo; I'm not annoyed. Its not like this thread gets too much use anyway. Since we've mentioned resource hits from OC, I'll add that I do get a small (but not better cities sized) resource hit from having OCR installed, but definitely nothing remotely close to being crippling.

My reason for saying resource hungry is because I had a bit of an ugly experience in Chorrol with OCR. However, I might have figured out what the heck was going on with that, so I might try OCR again on a different character. I'm staying on Better Cities for my current character because I want to maintain continuity above anything else.

And now to sway the topic back to Unique Forts: We really need a new fort to be constructed in the Cheydinhal area. there you go, I'm not completely off-topic now. :toughninja: :whistling:

I would've originally put one in there, but since there wasn't a road between Cheydinhal and Bruma I opted to go on the other side of the mountain range. I would be cool if there was a fort right around Rolling Hills, but getting compatibility is probably a more than a little bit tricky in that region. Patches could of course fix that, but one of SilentResisdent's design concepts was maximum compatibility without the need for patches, and I'd like to try and keep things that way. Going closer to Cheydinhal isn't really a winner IMO because I like a bit of distance between cities and forts. Potentially I could go down onto the Red Ring Road, but personally I don't greatly like the idea of having a fort out on fairly open ground so close to the Imperial City (plus it is a key area for compatibility problems). The only other option is to have something out in the wilderness which isn't greatly preferred either. :brokencomputer:

So yeah, there's the main reason I haven't been planning on making such a fort.

Something I thought of that's closer to the main topic--

http://i55.tinypic.com/23sf2aq.jpg kind of sums up what I think an "appropriate" Imperial presence in the narrative of the game. Thinking about it, even though the main quest emphasizes how there's an ongoing invasion from Oblivion, in the game's overall simulation there's nothing really going on. Why aren't Daedra always moving in on cities? Why are there only Legion soldiers patrolling the roads and not doing something about the gates popping up all over the place? Enhanced Daedric Invasion solves a lot of these problems, of course (and I'd really love to take it further and have a scenario where you "lose the game" and all the cities get overwhelmed). So when you have a gate right next to a city, like in that screenshot, you might expect to find a couple of soldiers posted nearby. It makes sense in the game's narrative and adds to the overall atmosphere of the game. You might expect Bethesda to have included something like this if they had another year to work on the game. (oh man writing down new mod website name idea "oblivion+1" though that sounds kind of weak dammit this is so hard)

With the Unique Forts though, I think there might be an opportunity to integrate it in with the Oblivion crisis the same way EDI integrates the cities. I'm just curious if you've thought of doing an add-on that accomplishes this, or why it's a bad idea. Maybe EDI already covers that well enough, though it's configurable, and there are probably more options to work with than soldiers just running back and forth if you think about it for a while. It'd just be nice to see the forts more "functional" I guess, if you're looking for ways to expand on it.

Hmm...maybe I should check EDI out then. But you're right; why isn't there more of an Imperial Legion presence in vanilla with the whole Oblivion crisis? Ocato gives this 'they're needed to protect the provinces' excuse (yes, apparently Mehrunes Dagon is less important than protecting the provinces), but, I mean, really.

As for the concept of incorporating stuff to do with the main quest into ImpeREAL forts, that's not entirely impossible. The Fort Ordeal quest (when i make it) will have a perquisite of you having at least being the hero of Kvatch, which I suppose is a start, and then, we'll see what happens I suppose.

Cool screenie btw

Well, what EDI does is add soldiers to cities that run to nearby Oblivion gates to fight the Daedra there (both the ones spawned by the vanilla game and customizable numbers added by EDI). EDI spawns soldiers at that gate as well, I believe, but I'm thinking the Unique Forts integration would be similar to the soldiers added to cities. They'd spend whatever amount of time at the forts, then head out to nearby Oblivion gates to fight there. So if you have EDI installed as well, you've got some soldiers coming from the cities and some soldiers coming from the forts, which would make sense I guess. I know it's possible to do because EDI does it, just no idea how difficult it is to implement. Then you could have quests that involve the player character maybe helping to equip better stuff on the soldiers that go fight at the gates, or something, I don't know. There's a lot of stuff you could do with it if you get to thinking about it for a while.

Hmm, well that would probably need some sort of script to direct the soldiers to an Oblivion the gate. From what I can gather though, EDI only does it for the gates around the city, with a 100% chance of spawning. Other gates in the wilderness aren't guaranteed to spawn, so if I wanted them to go to some more isolated gates there would be some very fancy scripting involved to say the least (which would probably be beyond me).

Of course, they could send their men to gates that are guaranteed to spawn though (like Fort Sutch or the cities to join their EDI counterparts). It probably wouldn't even be that hard to implement if I take that option.

Keep in mind, Ocato told you that because other provinces are being invaded too, and from the urgency of rumors, it's going a lot worse in places like Morrowind and Skyrim. Plus you have to keep in mind the provinces were supposed to already being showing sings of unrest, and the death of the Emperor couldn't have helped the situation. So a lot of what seems odd on the surface has perfectly good explanations if you listen to what the folks are saying

True. It still seems odd though that they specifically put a bunch of legion soldiers at Sutch though, prior to cutting the city. Seems like the place gets special protection. :intergalactic:

You know, I'm actually making a bunch of assumptions, because my level 16 character is only at the point in the main quest where they set up shop at Cloud Ruler Temple. I have no idea what I've been doing for like the past 8 levels (which is why I love Elder Scrolls games, but that's another topic). I just started http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_Path_of_Dawn quest, and only because I was in the Imperial City looking around and ran into the guy you meet there. So it's entirely possible the whole army starts running around killing Daedra at some point later and I just don't know it yet :whistling:

I think if you have EDI set to spawn 10 soldiers at the gates, then throw in another half dozen coming from the Forts, it's way too much and unrealistic at the opposite extreme. But a couple soldiers coming from each seems totally reasonable. It just seems a natural expansion, if the Forts are adding to the Imperial presence that already exists in the cities, then they'd be sending soldiers to help out like the cities do with EDI.

Also, I thought that enough gates had guaranteed spawn points, like after a certain point in the main quest, that there would be plenty of gates all over to send them that aren't random ones, but I'm not entirely aware of the mechanics of how the gates spawn and when.

Its certainly not a bad idea to try to work into the mod. btw, the army doesn't turn up for open conflict in the main quest, sadly, which is why EDI sounds to me like such a good idea, even if, as Arthmoor pointed out, there were valid reasons for the bulk of the empires armies being elsewhere.

I mean, if I was a Daedric god-lord and I wanted to invade from my burning hellscape, I'd do it when the enemy's best means of defense was spread out elsewhere. So it makes even more sense there wouldn't be a huge presence! But what comes with the vanilla game is dropping the ball, in my opinion, because I can't imagine it would have been too hard for them to script some soldiers the way EDI does. Just a few, like I'm suggesting with EDI+Forts, not an entire army that svcks all danger out of the wilderness. Even now I only run into the EDI soldiers out in the wilderness very rarely, not counting the ones spawning at the gates I mostly just see them hanging out then taking off from the towns, though the soldiers on the roads added by VOILA have made roads somewhat less dangerous.

I'll have to do some thinking though, because there's probably a lot you can do that goes beyond the back-and-forth from Forts to gates that wouldn't be too hard to implement. Must.. make... brain... work...

Okay, in terms of mod ideas I have floating around my head, you could kill two of those birds with one stone. I had this clutter overhaul idea that would add a million new pieces of clutter to the game, but part of it involved NPCs that would have a list of clutter for you to collect every week. The thought behind the added clutter was to give interiors more diverse "personalities," but the NPC fetch quests came from wanting to make clutter useful in some way. So you could have the soldiers at the fort complaining of a lack of support from higher up, shoddy equipment, etc. who ask you to go out every week and collect [vanilla] clutter--three of this, ten of that, that they make use of to craft new weapons for themselves or whatever. Maybe the next week they give you a bunch of ingredients that come from Daedra, because they're more effective in battle now. I thought the "clutter fetching" idea was just a cool little extra thing you could do, but not overdo or get sick of, because it'd just be once a week a new set of items to collect. So it'd be a continuous thing but at a reaonable pace. Anyway I thought I'd share the idea, since I thought about it a while ago and will probably never get to actually implement it.

Thanks for relaesing v2.01

Was it intentional to change the name of the ESP file, which now contains a trailing space?

Edit:

Thinkling about BOSS and the compatibility patches, I am assuming this was noit intentional and have renamed the ESP on my installation - do let me know if this was a bad assumption.

It'd just be about working out the AI's properly. Which can be a [censored], but is nice when it sorts itself out. You could do an elaborate weekly schedule or something to get the feel of guards moving around and keeping the peace. Its time consuming and tedious, but the ultimate effect can be pretty good.