Idea for AI.

Who's to say they don't have families? I i've always assumed that they were kin to the other towns folk and by joining the guard they get to get out of their houses and live on their own with other guards, u know for the experience.  Or maybe by joining the guard that just have too, for safety.  That's why each house only has 1 or 2 people in it, because the kids or other members live in the barrack. :)

I think this is a great ideas. Having almost every NPC in Morrowind really gives people (and bandits!) real weight. So having actual towns people at guards would be great. Their deaths would actually mean something if it came to that.

I kinda like it. One thing unique about Morrowind is that a lot of the bandits were named so that could apply to those too.

About the Imperial Guards though - I'd assume their families were left in Cyrodiil. Those guys would join the Legion and then get sent to Morrowind for a year or two living in the forts/barracks, far from home.

This would work however with native Dunmer guards (Hlaalu, Redoran). Yeah, the overwhelming numbers of idle robot guards do break the immersion quite a bit.

In Oblivion the guards would rotate around and hang out with each other in the barracks, sleep, and eat

Right now the problem with this is that many of the guards are the same actor file. So they would all use the same AI package. I did make a small patrol package for the single guard in Dagon Fel but that is just for him to walk around. It wouldn't be hard to give him a full daily routine. But then no one is outside guarding the town while he is asleep.

As for other guards, they would need to become individual actor files. Or at least small batches of the same actor so some stay outdoors while others are inside resting.

it's a cool idea but the fact is it would take allot of time to make it a reality, and in the priority of things, I'd say that this belongs in a later patch instead of giving it priority for v1.0

what do you guys think?

If what the OP is suggesting is that we take prexisting NPC's and replace them with guards -- I do not agree with that. Let's not make these towns feel smaller than they already are.

What if we named each guard? We can amass common surnames for imperials and dunmers. Maybe we could even look at local surnames (in Vivec or Ebonheard for example) and create a fictional family member.

Zaianos

Hi, newbie here (first time posting), not sure if this has been covered already but I read a post earlier where it hadn't. 

In TES, I've always noticed (and been a little bugged by) the lack of Guard's families, with the over population of guards. Especially since, taking "an arrow to the knee", means to get married, yet they live their life, patrolling, eating, or at the barracks, with no families, and such. Maybe, with this masterpiece, you could trial different things? Possibly change pointless NPCs to guards with routines, like, leave home at 8am, patrol town/paths etc, 1pm lunch time at the barracks or tavern, then back to patrol at 2pm, til 6pm where they return home for dinner, and family time, and swap wit night shift guards, or something like that.? Something to consider, anyway.

Let me know what you think.

 

Edit: I understand this would make Guard's 'limited', but there are always ways around this, etc.  Discuss (:

~ Zai

Your idea would add to immersion, however think that if you wanted to implement this you would have to literally change every city in which guards are present. Give them a barrack, a home, family NPCs, AI packages to make-up for the change... It would demand dozens of hours in CK to make it happen. As you can imagine, Skywind is already an extremely ambitious project. Unless someone takes a keen interest in your idea, it isn't likely that someone will just do it. The best way to make something happen is to start learning the tools and work on it yourself since we have a great deal of ideas and very few people to work on them.