Collision avoidance is great but...

[kenny26]

The new feature of 0.47 where NPCs actually try to walk around an obstacle (including the player) instead of just getting stuck is great. However, the one thing I had hoped would be resolved by this feature was the dreaded imperial guard patrolling a winding stairway. Anytime I try to ascend or descend one of these stairs and I run into one of these guards, I am hopelessly barred from progressing without cheating. No amount of acrobatics can jump past the guard as the ceiling is too low, and when he stops to greet you, he is immediately rooted to the spot, halting all progression and thus any hopes of getting him to bloody move out of the way.

I had hoped that the collision avoidance trick could help me at least nudge said guard backwards to one of those corners where there is in fact room to get past, but he will only ever walk left and right into the walls.

I simply have to open console and hit "ra" to reset actors. Every single time. I don't know if it's been bugging anyone else or if it's even an easy fix, but I wish dearly that something could be changed in the NPC movement scheme to either keep the guards from patrolling those impossibly claustrophobic stairwells (sometimes I encounter TWO guards, stuck on each other and now me as well), or at least compel them to back up when I run head first into them.

[psi29a]

Do you have a location we can coc to or perhaps a save-game, that would to reproduce this and find a suitable workaround.

[LoneWolf]

I've encountered the same issue on several locations, the two where it most frequently occurs are Fort frostmoth and Ebonheart grand council chambers.
The winding stairway at fort frrostmoth looks narrower so is probably easier to check.

Code: Select all

coc "Fort Frostmoth, Imperial Cult Shrine"

turn 90 degrees right, then walk straight to the stairway and go up to the 2nd floor then go down again.
Repeat several times.
Sometimes the colision avoidance works, often it's not enough .

NB :
I play with iGreetDistanceMultiplier set to 2 , so rarely get greetings.

[kenny26]

Correct. Fort Frostmoth and Ebonheart Grand Council Chambers are the worst spots for this.



This literally just happened as I was doing the quest "East Empire Company: Race Against the Clock." The one where I need to hurry back out of the tower to look for Carnius. You'd think he had bribed that guard to body block me, but no, he's always doing that. I went into console and hit 'ra' as always.

This issue has persisted in all iterations of Morrowind I'm afraid. So it's not like I can blame OpenMW for it. I'm just wishing collision avoidance would allow me to actually push that guard out of the way or at least clip through him somehow. I'm not sure what the elegant solution would be here. If I could shove him backwards, I could also abuse this mechanic to shove guards behind doors and shut them in their faces, allowing me to steal things more easily.

I kind of just wish that those specific stairways wouldn't be so incredibly narrow, but they seem to be copy-pasted in every imperial fort. It's just in Ebonheart and Fort Frostmoth that the guards actually patrol those stairwells.