Greetings,

I would like to know how, if possible, to make a companion "invisible" in the sense that they will never attack an enemy, nor will an enemy ever attack them. I've looked through some of the functions on the GECK wiki and none except from

 SetPlayerTeammate

seem to do what I want, but I'd rather not use that function as it technically removes the companion.

Any ideas?

To my knowledge there isn't a simple way to do this. Some NPCs are hostile to everything, too, which means your NPC is an attack candidate. And, any NPC which is attacked will behave as an attackee (either fighting or running).

I see...well even if the method is complicated I'd be willing to give it a go if I knew where to begin!

You know what?

setghost.

http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/SetGhost

And you know what else...

I might try using that that in the passive mode thing I'm putting together for FoNV Phalanx. Scripted carefully, maybe it could work for what I need although be slightly overpowered in some respects.

I'm really glad you came and made me think about that. I have used setghost in the past but not often enough for me to have thought about it now.

Unfortunately SetGhost doesn't seem to work on companions, I've ran a couple of tests, making sure that it was definitely set and it made no difference. The companion attacks and is attacked.

If you can get it to work, then it's something I'm doing that's screwing it up.

SetGhost alone won't keep the Follower from fighting though; at least not in FO3. It took other measures as well.

Edit: although it will prevent them from being attacked if you have prevented them from attacking (in FO3; I've done nothing that fancy in NV yet).

this made me think. can you have child companions? because children cant/dont attack afaik. maybe if you could do to your companions whatever it is that makes children unkillable?

Well,

Seen some interesting things, and maybe a combo which is much like you asked for.

If you want to maintain teammate status but deny combat, it is possible to use setghost, + drop the confidence setting of the follower down to zero. The follower will end up doing cower idles and/or running away instead of fighting, and it does not seem that mobs will aggro on it. The assistance and aggression settings don't seem to make a difference in this case. You get a flee behavior which can include cower idles and associated comments (which can make the thing inappropriate for use on humans, depending on what you want). But on like, Rex, you don't recognize any cower idles for what they are. Flee behavior does not look so cowardly on an animal follower.

What I am seeing with setghost alone is, it does a very good job of preventing mobs from aggroing on the follower. You can take the follower and dump it directly onto any aggressive mob via moveto and as long as the player's own combat state is not involved, nobody cares, and the follower will just run back. However, if 'player teammate' status is live, followers will combat/aggro bigtime on anything which is seeking active combat with the player (IE: you see 'Caution' or worse over your head when you are in sneakstate). It is almost the passive mode I was hoping to make myself, except that the follower does not wait for the player to attack, the follower is doing it based upon the player *being* attacked. This is a key difference.

As far as creating complete pacificity out of a follower with no visual acknowledgement of player combat whatsoever (which btw is what I myself am trying to make as a starting point). One way is to remove teammate status, and then one can lower its assistance to 0, plus use setghost. I know of another way which involves using an ambush package - - which happens to work beautifully in Fallout 3 - - but it's got some freaky caviats which don't seem to obey line of sight and can make very strange things happen now and then. Specifically. When an ambush package has a really small radius to it, the follower seems actually unaware that the player is being attacked if everything is outside of that radius. But if that radius has any size to it to speak of, if something enters the radius, the follower seems to have instant, magical knowledge of where it is and will path halfway across the earth to reach it (for example, maybe the mob was on the other side of a wall). Makes things interesting when that happens.

It is also possible to replace the removal of teammate status + assistance change with using setrestrained on the follower, but you sorta have to do it while the right animation is happening or you have the follower doing an animation and sorta unable to stop (it also goes without saying that it ruins the ability to 'follow'). Kinda not so useful to most follower-related situations I think.

Edit: If the ghost teammate aggro situation happened upon the "DANGER" detected status on the player and not the "CAUTION" one, it would be close enough to the text description I saw in that little brown book to fly as a straightforward passive mode. That would be like a dream come true for follower behavior, actually.



That's true! I've never even examined what they did with children tbh (I don't know if NV put it in, even, never thought to shoot at the kids I saw). I know that I have seen kids cower, though. What I saw out of the kids reminds me actually of the setghost+confidence thing I saw just now. I'll have to check next time I see a kid in game (I don't know if NV made them unkillable but I wouldn't be surprised).

Very informative answer, thank you sir.

When I did a child-follower/teammate for the player in Tranquility lane, it would fight along side the player during the pint-sized slasher killings, just like an advlt, based on it's confidence setting (foolhardy).

I'm playing with this too now. When I saw the Passive\Aggressive thing on the wheel I was like, "Great! They've come up with something like Confidence to 0 without the fleeing!" Only...not so much apparently. Anyway, I've got my new follower all up and running so now I'm testing with him. Tarrant, thanks for sharing what you've tried already.