Orc Hearthfire, Help me with the story part Options

[ghastley]

I have most of the pieces for adding an Orc Stronghold to the homes the player can build in Hearthfire. It's going to take some time to connect it all up - especially linking all the pieces to the their enable parents, and making the lists of components that drive the scripts, but everything is figured out. The bit that's missing (apart from some of the partial building meshes) is the quest that allows the player to use the plot of land.

In the DLC, the player is granted the right to purchase the land by the Jarl of a hold that has no ready-made home. The only one that doesn't already provide a plot or a house is Winterhold, and that's all heavy snow and ice. The Orc Longhouse comes in regular and light-snow variants, and I didn't feel like adding to the load by making another, so a grant from Winterhold was ruled out. That left me with putting the plot in one of the others, and the need for a different story.

I found a suitable location at the northern side of the central plain, near to Greenspring Hollow. It has iron veins (6) and corundum (2) in reasonable reach, plus 2 clay, and I've found a good spot to add a stone quarry. That puts it in Whiterun's area, and the Jarl there already lets you buy Breezehome. So I need another way for you to get the grant to the Greenspring Longhouse plot.

One idea I have is for the Orc chieftains collectively to reward the player if he/she has done favours for each of the four existing strongholds. The chief of Largashbur gets replaced by the Malacath quest, but that's no different from the Civil War replacing Jarls, and can be accomodated by an appropriate alias. None of them would step down, and let him/her replace them, but letting the player build a new stronghold would advance the Orcish cause in general. This only makes sense for an Orc player character, but I suspect that's what the human playing the game would expect.

The questions remaining are:
Who to pay for the land? It's easier to use the existing scripts if I can keep this part of the process. I'm thinking Whiterun Steward, as it's in their territory.
Adoption? The longhouse is smaller than the other three houses, but you can fit child beds into it. The code allows adopted kids to move to a house that has those, plus their own chest. The counter-argument is that there's no Orc orphans without another mod. On the gripping hand, you don't have to adopt kids of your own race. Since I can control what's put into the house, I can turn adoption on or off by the making of the kids' beds and chest(s).
Should the longhouse recruit other Orcs? DLC houses can add bard and carriage driver, and convert a follower to steward. It may be possible to re-purpose those slots to more Orcish-stronghold "jobs", like shaman or smith.
Multiple marriage? Orc chieftains can have more than one wife. Should building the longhouse give the player the right to extra wives? And what if the PC is female? I'm not sure if this would mean new script, or if "hunts-wife" could just be a replacement for "bard".

This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 27 2014, 04:14 PM

[ghastley]

Jytte had better be in 0.3, or you have an unlicensed time machine!

That dead wolf reminds me about one small adjustment I've been considering: you need a single leather strip as a bootstrap for the tanning process. The vanilla Hearthfires DLC does this by including a tanning rack (which normally needs a leather strip) in the build of the animal pen (which doesn't), so you can start making leather and strips from pelts, which you don't have to "make". At the Stronghold you need to make a strip before you can make a Tanning Rack, which you need to make a strip.

The other bootstrap item is the smelter. It takes ingots to make it, you need one to make ingots. DLC lets you make a smelter after the small house goes up, and I may change the recipe to let you build that before the longhouse. I also need to make sure the other dependencies make sense. Stockade should require forge, as there would be a gap without it. Garden already requires stockade. Should armorer bench, grindstone and storehouse require forge? Should guard tower require stockade?

I may just include one leather strip in the starter kit chest in 0.4 this weekend. I've changed the content of that a couple of times already, so you'd need to mine clay and stone for the longhouse. Standard DLC content was enough for small house, and enough clay for the hall, but not the wings. I reduced the clay, so you get only a couple of units left after the cut. That was supposed to allow you to make a smelter, and then need more for the longhouse, but I made them build in the wrong order.

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The only other thing I know of, that needs work, is the inability to cut your own lumber. I still haven't found a way around the DLC coding that ties it to the three standard sites. The BYOS dialog provides identical topic alternatives for the lumber vendors, so they'll sell to you, but the "Can I cut my own" part doesn't work. If you chop firewood and become their friend, they'll let you use the mill, but you won't get any lumber unless you're building DLC homes. I might be able to suppress that option if it won't work, but I'd prefer to get cut-it-yourself working, if I can.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Mar 19 2015, 02:56 PM

[Grits]

Jytte had better be in 0.3, or you have an unlicensed time machine!

Unlicensed! You’re right of course, 0.4 is the hours of sleep I’ve been getting.

I think that allowing the smelter and tanning rack to be built before the longhouse is a great idea. That way you could come straight back to the site after raiding the nearby bandits for ore (and loot to melt down for those who are using a mod that allows it) rather than hauling it all back to Whiterun. Putting a leather strip in the chest for the tanning rack to be built is another good idea. I think I used the tanning rack at Greenspring Hollow at least once, and luckily I have a mod-added smelter in Riverwood where I went to buy lumber. With the crafting options available before the longhouse a person could live in the small hut for a time while gathering supplies and saving up for a filled grand soul gem.

The tanning rack would look a little isolated without the other smithing stations, so I’d say it would be best to allow the outside stuff to be built as soon as the hut goes up. The guard tower, stockade, and garden would be the exception since they need the longhouse and outbuildings for part of the wall. I’ve considered having some characters not build the guard tower and stockade at all (which would mean no garden) to keep the open view across the plains.

Another thing that I’ve been pondering is a horse marker, maybe with a hay bale and a trough nearby. The only place I could see to put it is up where the big rock is by the smithing area. And I don’t know if there’s something ugly under that rock. Argh, but then that stuff would just be sitting there if you didn’t have a horse.

One tiny thing I noticed, I’d rotate the fast travel spot so that you land facing the stronghold as if you’d come in the gate.

A dragon flew over while I was paying attention to the fast travel situation, but there was no fight. Good thing Jytte doesn’t need its bones for anything!

I never tried to cut lumber, since it has never worked for me in the regular Hearthfire sites. Or maybe I just gave up on cutting my own so long ago I didn’t realize it had been fixed.

[ghastley]

One tiny thing I noticed, I’d rotate the fast travel spot so that you land facing the stronghold as if you’d come in the gate.

The current setting faces the home-building benches, which seemed appropriate for that stage. Maybe the compromise is just inside the south-east gate, so you face both benches and longhouse.