How are we to put scripts on ALL the actors in combat around the player now?

In Oblivion I originally used AOE spells then moved to tokens that were placed on actors in a cell with OBSE commands.

Is there a new way to do this now?

My first goal is to give the arrow deflection perk to EVERYONE.

So far, I haven't yet found a way to do it. I'm sure it's possible, but it's proving to either be very complex, or not yet well documented in the Wiki.

Maybe via explosion, at least until SKSE adds in ref walking?

I'm sure that would work, it just seems like yet another workaround for a new system that should, in theory, be able to do it in a much more controlled way. But yeah, AOE stuff might still be necessary.

The game class has a "FindClosestActor" function, and various similar functions. It'd be nice if there were a "FindNearbyActors" function that returned an array of actors, it'd probably be less computationally intensive (no need to perform distance checks.)

wow... not sure why but I am feeling very discouraged about all this. I knew Oblivion was EASY to work with compared to other games, but I really hoped Skyrim CK was going to be better than Oblivion because of the way they were talking about it and putting it on Steam as a toy for the masses.

The way the scripting is now is very different (it is playing "kick me" with my Dyslexia).

I am a little worried I will struggle with this for 2 years before I get to be proficient enough to make the same mods I already made for Oblivion.
And in the end all I am going to do is the same thing I did in Oblivion. Maybe I should just concentrate on my animation classes (I only have 3 years to learn 3dmax before my student licence runs out ) ....and leave Skyrim to the programmers.

I hear you. I too am disappointed (in what, not sure) about all this. It seems like many of the gains we all respectfully made in Oblivion scripting have been pretty much done away with.

Scripting just feels more complicated (which it is considering the language change) and at the same time there is still a lot of hard-coded stuff. As an example, there is an Event that gets fired every time a "Story Manager" Crime is detected... but there is no way (that I can see right now) to get at that information without jacking into the Story Manager itself, and even then it is limited.

YES! more is hard coded huh? It seems at first like like less is hardcoded when you look at all the settings in the CK, but then once you get to trying to do something there are dead ends. I made a post elsewhere about the combat styles (I think is why I got suddenly discouraged.) as the the combat style options were cut in half!

Now it is impossible to make the actors change their tactics based on their opponents actions as you could in Oblivion,

Like if the player starts attacking a lot the actor blocks more, but if the player is backing up and not attacking the actor attacks more...that kind of thing....

and that is the heart of most of my mods.

The way it is now you get an aggressive (attack more ) or a defensive (block more) actor but not one that can change its tactics based on what the player is doing as it was in Oblivion.

Well, I am sure I will feel better after some sleep, thanks for the help!