PANPC (PACK ATTACK NPC EDITION) Official Manual

Gangs With Group Combat Tactics in Fallout 4

by Greslin

latest release v2.0.12, 3/17/23

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Please note that this manual is ONLY accurate for the version of PANPC listed above.

This version of the PANPC manual refers only to the latest incremental release, available only to Citizen role users on the GreslinGames Discord.

THIS IS NOT A BETA RELEASE.  PANPC beta releases are shipped privately to a group of playtesters and are not publicly available.  This manual refers to the latest available stable release.

I generally give out Citizen to anyone who asks and can behave themselves. If you want the latest version of PANPC, drop by and ask in the #role-requests channel. You will then be able to get the latest package in the PANPC #releases-latest channel.

I am currently in the process of updating this manual and have a process in place on the GreslinGames Discord for soliciting feedback. If you have specific questions that are not covered here, please visit and check the #panpc-docs channel and I will do my best to accommodate.  Thanks.

PANPC (Pack Attack NPC Edition) is a unique scripted AI management system for Fallout 4.  Rather than treating each enemy as an individual proximity-based reaction agent (basically, a mine with a gun), this system generates social feedback between NPCs belonging to the same or allied factions.  

Enemies factor the overhaul health and success of their “team” into their tactical decisions, adjusting their strategies based on their social and threat awareness. As a result, they will switch between ranged, melee, defensive, and offensive tactics based on their perceptions of team advantage and individual risk.

NEWS

To keep up with the latest GreslinGames news, visit our Discord or stay tuned to my Patreon page for news updates.

PATREON

While PANPC is (and will remain) free for anyone to download from the GreslinGames Discord, I do maintain a Patreon page for people who wish to support my efforts to maintain PANPC and to build a thriving modding community. Your support makes a real difference, and I appreciate it.

CHANGELOG

The official PANPC changelog can be found in its entirety here.

WHERE TO GET IT

This mod is currently and freely available for download only on the GreslinGames Discord.  

The v2.0 public release was deprecated in December 2022 and is no longer available.

The latest incremental releases of PANPC are more advanced and significantly better optimized, and are available to Citizen role users in the PANPC #releases-latest channel. I generally give Citizen access to anyone who asks, so just introduce yourself in #role-requests.

Versions of PANPC other than the latest incremental release are no longer available, and will not be made available.  

If you find a copy of a PANPC version anywhere else, it is a pirated copy and I will not support it.  It may have been altered, it is probably buggy, and I won’t be responsible for what it may do to your game. So get it where it lives, on the GG Discord: after all, I’m giving it away for the asking.

Please read the #read-this-first channel when you join!

TRY IT OUT

If you want to test out PANPC for yourself, to see if the AI is to your taste, you can now do so without altering anything else in your game.  Just try out the new Arena Mode.

Arena Mode is a combat minigame that pits you against a team of enemies using PANPC AI. If you then turn off NPC Registration in the Debug section of the PANPC MCM menu, ONLY the Arena enemies will be enabled with PANPC’s AI system. You can then use Arena as a test drive, or as a combat trainer.

WHAT PANPC IS

PANPC (Pack Attack: NPC Edition) is basically an NPC behavior and combat director for Fallout 4, similar in concept to the Director system in Left 4 Dead. This mod exploits the Bethesda AI system in order to create more complex, difficult, and varied combat situations that dynamically adapt to the player’s gameplay.

PANPC makes major changes to how supported NPC groups fight. Rather than simply rushing you in the open as a group, these NPCs will break and cover, retreat and flank, run and hide, and even lie in wait. They're more likely to ambush, less likely to engage in suicidal charges, and more certain to switch to hand-to-hand combat if you get too close and they like their odds. In short, PANPC completely overhauls and upgrades the combat AI for all supported NPC groups.

And they will attempt to make these tactical decisions based on what is happening around them.

Each NPC gathers information from their experiences, coordinates information with their teammates, and even learns to a limited degree. This leads to fights that are never the same twice, that actively require you to consider the risks versus rewards of a particular assault or combat approach.

In addition, PANPC contains several features for dynamic enemy spawning, non-combat AI, and upgrades/new abilities for individual NPC groups. All in all, this project has now evolved into a general NPC upgrade for the entirety of the Fallout 4 experience.

HOW PANPC DIFFERS FROM OTHER AI MODS

There are many fine AI overhaul mods available for Fallout 4. They all basically do the same things: adjust the global game settings and update the combat style definitions.  A few AI mods now rotate combat styles (similar to PANPC) to add behavioral variation.

What PANPC does differently is this: it makes NPCs coordinate their decisions with each other. When an NPC takes damage, that directly affects the decisions that their allies make. They may choose to move differently - drive forward, retreat, flank - or they may shift up how they choose to attack.

Any other AI mod may add more complex behaviors to your individual enemies, but PANPC adds complex behaviors to groups.

IS PANPC WORTH IT?

Honestly? If all you want is to fight enemies that move around a little differently, or with a bit more variation than vanilla, PANPC is probably way overkill.

AI is a costly business, and the game engine is limited. Smarter enemy teams mean a lot more computing overhead, which in turn means that something has to give somewhere else. PANPC is fairly expensive in terms of computing resources, and I believe that it is worth the cost.  However, you should be aware of how it differs from other, lighter, AI mods, and you should make the decisions that best fit your preferred mod build.

For the most part, what these AI mods do is take some of the guardrails off of the vanilla AI, but they don’t substantially change the vanilla AI system itself.  It’s still the vanilla system, only more sensitive and with somewhat different behavioral thresholds for specific actions.  They add behavioral variation rather than making the enemies smarter. But if that is all you want or need, then use them instead.

What PANPC does - social combat - really can’t be done without a complicated scripted system. Every NPC driven by PANPC AI has a fairly large script attached to it, constantly evaluating its environment, calculating behavior decisions, and coordinating that data with its allies.  So if you’re running a large mod build with lots of scripts already going at once, be aware that PANPC will substantially add to that, possibly creating latency and generalized problems.   (See Performance and Optimization section, below.)

Important note: many AI mods, such as Arbitration and Search and Destroy, "improve" NPC attack behavior by making the vanilla system overall much more sensitive. PANPC doesn't need the help. Using them together will have unintended consequences. (See “Any Other AI Mod”, below.)

WHICH AI IS FOR YOU?

There is no perfect AI game mod.  They all have benefits and drawbacks, and they each represent a set of design tradeoffs and decisions that you will need to make.  Some AI mods are lightweight but lack new systems; PANPC, on the other hand, implements many new systems but is anything but lightweight.  

I designed PANPC to fit a survival gameplay experience, one in which the Commonwealth is sparsely populated by cynical, grizzled veterans who know better than to engage you in a fair fight.  Think Walking Dead rather than Borderlands.  If survival immersion is your jam, and you don’t plan to load up your combat sessions full of lots of extra NPCs, PANPC could be exactly what you are looking for.  It was designed with you in mind.

Where PANPC doesn’t always fit is in the Borderlands-type FPS shooter experience.  It will still usually do well, but social feedback and coordination are major parts of the PANPC design.  In large numbers, NPCs using social AI will begin to “flock”: basically, turn into a mob.  The actual impact of individual AI decisions will count for a lot less, at least until the local population is knocked back down again and you’re back down to individuals.  

So if you want an action experience with a hundred enemies all doing their thing, PANPC still may do well, but you’re burning a lot of script cycles and not getting much out of it.  In these types of gameplay builds, using 4estGimp’s AI Edit, BLD AI, or some other lighter AI edit may be a better option for you.

Again: not saying it won’t work, or that it won’t work well.  Just saying that PANPC is probably a bit of overkill if all you want to do is murder a lot of things quickly.

BEWARE AI SNAKE OIL

At the time of this writing, in 2023, calling something “AI” has become the latest marketing gimmick, dragging eyeballs into yet another set of buzzword bingo, wild promises, and undelivered value. Unfortunately the game modding scene is not immune to that, and the Nexus system in many ways incentivizes these clickbait tactics.

Some recent mods that claim to be “AI mods” - and no, I’m not naming names here - are directly lying to their users about what they do and are capable of, claiming “innovative AI” when in truth they’re just repackaging a lot of old technique and making up the rest from whole cloth.

Before you fall for those cons, ask around among more experienced folks and try to stick to the work of reputable, reliable modders. If it seems a little too good to be true, and it hasn’t been out long enough to establish its own track record, be skeptical - you could well be dealing with snake oil, and authors trying to clickbait their way to donation points and cash grabs.

“MAKING THE GAME HARDER”

Understanding how PANPC works - and how to best use it to create the gameplay experience you want - requires an understanding of a single core design principle.  I have been asked many, many times how to configure PANPC to “make the game harder”, as though I were intentionally hobbling the AI in some way to not already do that.

Here’s the thing: it’s not my job to make the game harder.  Difficulty is NOT a design goal of PANPC, and except maybe in its very earliest iterations, it never really has been one.  I don’t care about making the game hard for the player, not as an AI priority anyway.

Why?  Because in realistic conditions, the NPCs wouldn’t care.  Some raider in Corvega isn’t at all concerned about whether you are enjoying your time, or finding it challenging.  He or she cares about their own survival and how to preserve it.  They care about their own role in the local group.  They care about taking advantage and reducing their risks.  

Here’s an illustration of the point: Star Trek TNG: Data can win without winning.

So that’s what I care about, and what PANPC is about.  If that happens to translate to a more enjoyable, more difficult gameplay experience, I’m happy about that.  When an NPC quietly sneaks up behind you and hits you point blank with a shotgun round to the head because you’re being sloppy, however, that’s what really makes me smile. Next time, watch your back.

HOW IT WORKS

IMPORTANT POINT: The Fallout 4 engine is designed to allow for the influence of combat behavior, but not the control of combat behavior (with a few exceptions). All this or any other mod can do is coax an actor into a certain level of aggression and combat behavior. So expect some strange behavior - once the combat starts, the NPCs are making their own decisions, and they may not always be the brightest ones.

This mod had its genesis in its predecessor mod, "Pack Attack". Pack Attack upgraded the Commonwealth's canines, emulating basic pack behavior and social awareness in combat situations. When a PA-enabled Mongrel is loaded into the game, it does an immediate scan for other dogs, and acts more confidently and aggressively when it has company.

In the vanilla game, an Actor (you, me, dogs, robots, etc.) has an Aggression stat (how likely it is to attack), a Confidence stat (cowardly/brave/foolhardy), and a general Combat Style (which specifies combat behavior in more detail). Normally these stats are hardwired into Actors, including dogs. If an Actor is a coward, they're usually - but not always - a coward forever. But those stats can be changed on the fly. "Pack Attack" constantly adjusted those settings for each dog as its fortunes changed in combat.

PANPC adopted that same basic idea and expanded it significantly for use with NPC gang enemies. When a PANPC actor is active, he (or she) will perform regular scans of the local environment and assess the local relative strength of his gang. If he finds other faction-friendly teammates in the area, he will act more confidently and aggressively. If he's alone and hurt, he's more likely to run and hide.

In addition, PANPC actors consider:

* High ground advantage: "Am I fairly safe up on this freeway or rooftop?"

* Visible weapon comparisons: "Am I bringing a knife to a gunfight?"

* Power Armor advantage: "Am I wearing power armor? Is my target?"

* Outnumbering advantage: "Am I feeling pretty good about our numbers here?"

* Group aggression: "Does it feel like we're winning this battle?"

* Target distance: "Is my target close enough to warrant a shift to hand-to-hand or melee combat?"

* Self preservation: "Is the smartest move here to run away and fight another day?"

* Radiation exposure: "Am I currently taking radiation damage?"

.. and much more.

PANPC uses more combat styles than the original Pack Attack did, and each NPC will shift styles as necessary between ranged, melee, and evasion tactics. As the gang dwindles in size, it will lose battle cohesion. If, on the other hand, the gang is winning, they will become bolder and more direct in their fire tactics.

THE VANILLA LAYER

PANPC implements a new logical system on top of the Fallout 4 vanilla AI layer, but it doesn’t interfere much with the vanilla layer itself.  PANPC is an NPC management system that governs AI activity in the player’s current cell only, and it sits atop the normal vanilla system activity.

If you’re using other AI mods, be aware that they all generally alter the operating parameters of the vanilla layer: expanding search distances, making NPCs more sensitive, etc.  In practice, these are all settings that factor in times and situations where PANPC isn’t controlling the NPC.  This is why you can easily end up with a compounding effect when you expand the vanilla search ranges while using PANPC, which implements its own search-and-ambush system.

The activation range of PANPC is roughly 4000 units around the player.  Any eligible NPC in this area is automatically located and assigned an AI script.  

As of v2.0.5, there is an additional activation range that extends to around 8000-9000 units, which only monitors if NPCs in this area have been hit by a player attack.  If so, and if the player is using a scoped weapon with a long barrel (i.e., a sniper weapon), they will activate with a PANPC AI script and alert nearby NPCs, which will also activate.

Note: Prior to this, I have erroneously stated that NPCs outside of the player’s current cell were not under PANPC control. This is not true - coverage is purely limited to range.

Changes made by other AI mods to the vanilla Combat Style records are generally ignored by PANPC for the NPCs it controls, because PANPC dynamically implements its own styles.

RELATIVE AWARENESS

PANPC AIs are constantly trying to assemble an accurate sense of what is happening around them and how they can use that information to survive.  However, their awareness is always relative and subject to their own circumstances.  Because of this, no two combat sessions will ever be exactly alike, because no two sessions will ever play the same and the AIs are working to adapt to what they actually experience.

SCOPE OF CONTROL

In the past, I have stated that PANPC’s control was limited to NPCs loaded in the same current cell as the player. This is incorrect: it’s limited to a specific distance range.

PANPC attempts to control the AIs of any NPCs currently loaded into memory and located within a given radius (about 4000 units) of the player’s location.  When an NPC passes out of that area, or has been killed, the AI script is unloaded. When there is no PANPC AI script attached to an NPC, they are entirely under the control of the normal vanilla system.

The exceptions to this are Arena enemies, which are AI-driven within a player range of 8000u and are governed by their own sets of rules. And, obviously, if you have certain profiles turned off in MCM or NPCs disabled via the PANPC_KW_NoEnable keyword, those NPCs will not be affected by PANPC at all.

AUTO ALERTING

In vanilla Fallout 4, NPCs generally go into “alert” state when an enemy has entered their awareness area or they have been triggered by a generated detection event. This state does NOT mean that they are hostile and now in combat with the player.  It means that they are now prepared to enter combat, are searching the area for trouble, and are more sensitive to detection events.

In the vanilla game, NPCs enter this heightened alert state only on a passive basis, when they are triggered by something in the vicinity.

In PANPC, however, they occasionally will enter alert state on their own.  The Wasteland is a very dangerous place, many of these NPCs are on drugs of some kind, sleep is probably a luxury, and it pays to be paranoid.  This means that you will see HUD elements (such as the red dots on the compass) indicate alerted NPCs well before they actually “see” you.

This causes some confusion for PANPC players who are accustomed to the “Caution/Danger” HUD element that triggers when NPC alert states change.  (See “The Danger HUD”)

I strongly recommend adjusting the HUD (using a mod like FallUI) to eliminate these elements and avoid tactical confusion. However, if you prefer the vanilla system, you can also turn off PANPC’s Auto Alert feature in MCM.

LIGHT AND DARK

Note: as of 2.0.8.1, this system can now be configured via patch.

PANPC’s detection system uses the FO4 engine’s “lightlevel” value to determine the current engine-reported light available at a given NPC or object.  It then uses the differences between light levels at the subject and the target to decide how easily one can “see” the other.

If the target is in a well-lit area and the subject is in the dark, the subject will very easily see the target, and the target will have a very difficult time seeing the subject. If they are in roughly the same light conditions, neither will be at an advantage and may see each other reasonably well (since both are adapted to the same light state).  Night vision also impacts this: NPCs equipped with night vision will negate their disadvantages against darkness, but will also be more vulnerable to temporary blindness in the case of bright light flashes.

There are two caveats to this system that you need to be aware of.  First, if you’re using ENB or lighting mods that massage light conditions through image spaces and other “fake” lights, those effects are not reported by the engine.  PANPC has no idea what they are: the NPCs do NOT see those light conditions.  So you can use them if you want, but they will complicate your tactical awareness because they will lead you to think shadows exist where they actually don’t.

The other caveat to the light reporting is that some Pipboy “flashlight” mods cast a light beam out to a target but do not illuminate the player at all.  PANPC has no way of determining that this is happening, and so if you use a flashlight mod, NPCs will generally not react as though the player is lit up.  They’re not smart enough to track the beam back to the source.

THE [ DANGER ] HUD

There appears to be a lot of confusion about what the “red dots” and the Hidden/Caution/Danger HUD indicator actually mean in the vanilla Fallout 4 game.  I get a regular parade of complaints from new users who insist that they have been impossibly detected by enemies, mainly due to what that HUD status display is telling them. This is due to a fundamental change that PANPC makes.

In PANPC, the [ Danger ] HUD indicator in particular is a useless and misleading toy.  I strongly recommend using a UI mod (such as FallUI) to remove it from the screen. Just get rid of it.

Technically, the [ Danger ] element does NOT indicate whether local NPCs have detected the player, but rather whether any NPCs now have their “Alert flag” set.  When they do, an NPC is more likely to search out detection events and look for trouble - it unlocks a different behavior set.  Likewise, [ HIDDEN ] only means that they are not currently Alerted.

In the vanilla game, the Alert flag is most commonly set when the NPC already encounters a detection event, the player, or a hostile situation.  The indicator does not directly indicate hostility or awareness - that is simply the most likely cause.  

In PANPC, however, NPCs will go into Alert periodically on their own, because the Wasteland is a dangerous place and it pays to be paranoid.  However, this does also mean that these alerts will turn up on the HUD, giving you the impression that they have already detected you, or are hostile, when in fact that’s not yet the case.  

Additionally, PANPC implements its own dynamic search and patrol patterns that are not dependent on the Alert state, and so will not be reflected by these HUD indicators.  In other words, [ DANGER ] will happen when you are not in danger, and [ HIDDEN ] will happen when you are not, in fact, safely hidden.

My recommendation is to use a UI customization mod (such as FallUI or DEF_UI) to remove the Hidden/Caution/Danger indicator altogether, and probably the red dots as well.  Instead, rely on environmental sounds, shadows, etc. to determine when an enemy is nearby, and what they are doing.  Your PANPC combat experience will make a lot more sense.

If you absolutely cannot live without this HUD element and wish instead for PANPC to not mess with alert states like this, you can turn off Auto Alerting in MCM. This will revert the HUD behavior to vanilla. (It will still say you’re hidden even though enemies are closing in on your location, however.)

COURAGE AND SELF PRESERVATION

A PANPC AI agent is generally governed by two internal, constantly changing values: Courage and Self-Preservation.  These values are continuously recalculated as circumstances happen to the NPC and as their perception of their overall team health changes.

Each NPC, when first enabled in PANPC, is assigned a random value within a faction-specified range that represents their natural courage. This value will rise and fall as the NPC gains experience and faces combat events. In general, a higher courage NPC is more likely to be confident and aggressive, as well as more willing to make command decisions. A lower courage NPC will be a follower more than a leader, be more apt to run and evade than charge and fight, and will more prefer fighting at a distance to up-close-and-personal slugfests.

The rest of this mod is based around this Courage value, which remains as long as the NPC reference is alive. In a very simple but very real way, they "learn" and individualize as they gain experience.

Countering the NPC's Courage stat is their Self Preservation stat. While not nearly as important to their decisions as is Courage, the NPC's SP stat will generally lower when they make kills or participate in command actions. It will rise as they take damage and when they flee. Self Preservation generally works against Courage, as the NPC attempts to decide whether to boldly attack, retreat, flank, or run for the hills.

GANG EVALUATION

The heart of PANPC is the gang assessment system.  This AI decision core attempts to get a general sense of how well their local “gang” is doing and how reliably they can lean on their allies in a crunch.  This assessment plays a giant role in determining their Courage level.

Each active NPC constantly searches within a dynamic radius for other faction friends and enemies. When it finds another friendly NPC, it evaluates that NPC's base health in comparison to its own, using that data to get a rough (and relative) collective estimate of the gang strength.

Here is how it works. Imagine we're talking about two raiders: Tiny Tim and Big Bubba.

Tiny Tim has a base health of 50HP. Big Bubba, on the other hand, is a much bigger guy: 150HP base health. Tim is going to look at Bubba and think, "Wow, that guy is three times my size and he's on OUR side. We can't lose!" and be more reckless as a result. Bubba, meanwhile, is more likely to look down at Tiny Tim and think, "I'm surrounded by guys a third of my size, and I'm going to have to do all the work here. This is not a great situation for me." He will be more likely to hang back and fight conservatively.

They both are making decisions based on their own relative situation appraisals.

Each NPC makes this assessment with each allied or friendly NPC in their scan radius, using the sum of those judgments as a base to assess the overall strength of the gang - from their own point of view. There is no "objective" pack strength. It's all relative, each NPC making imperfect decisions based on their own individual perspective.

Each NPC has a random bravery/anxiety factor that will make it a bit more anxious or bold than the others (to avoid duplicating behavior), and utilizes various other data points - wounded enemies (blood scent), its own health, and its most recent combat experience - to decide whether to attack, run away, be cautious, or go completely bloodthirsty insane. That base "courage" value goes up and down as the NPC gets hit, or makes kills. It is then used as the base for future evaluation calculations.

In general, as each NPC senses a weaker and more damaged pack, it will become more and more likely to retreat, evade, and hide. Likewise, if another allied NPC enters the fray, the other NPCs will react to the gang's suddenly improved fortunes and become more aggressive.

FIGHT/FLIGHT

PANPC actors operate in two basic modes: proactive and reactive. A proactive decision is a measured appraisal of the gang dynamics and tactical situation, followed by a random timeout period of up to 30 seconds before reconsidering their decision.

During the timeout period, the NPC is in reactive mode. Their decision making process is much simpler, more fight/flight. In this mode, the enemy NPC is much more likely to do something stupid, more likely to aggressively defend themselves, and more likely to run in panic. They will continue in this reactive decision mode until the timeout expires, at which point they'll make another proactive tactical decision.

Each proactive decision changes the NPC's aggression and confidence stats, as well as their combat style. There are melee and ranged, offensive and defensive fighting styles.

VISIBILITY AND AWARENESS

In PANPC, it is 100% impossible to be 100% invisible. No matter what you do, no matter what stealth equipment you use, you are always leaving a trail of some kind that sufficiently interested enemies will eventually pick up on and use against you. If you are shooting for the Metal Gear Solid-esque super ninja gameplay experience, PANPC may not be the mod for you.

The PANPC AI uses a complex system of scanners and keyword markers to create a battlefield map, relative to the NPC.  Technically, PANPC enemies know exactly where everything and everyone is and what is happening at all times.

However, not all of this data is actually available for use by the NPC.  Blind spots are created in the scanner results, representing information points that shouldn’t be fairly available to the NPC under the existing environmental conditions.  These can include the local light levels, stealth conditions, sound, line of sight, proximity, and many other factors.  The AIs then selectively censor and forget that information based on their individual interest levels.

Things also get tricky if you choose to use energy weapons. While they have accuracy benefits, firing an energy weapon also draws a direct line to your current location.  PANPC simulates this by applying a temporary visibility penalty that makes you much easier to see and target.    

See Light and Dark, above, for more information about the light system.

PRIORITIZED MANEUVER

PANPC uses a prioritized movement system (the PANPC GoThere system) that can direct the NPC to move to an exact location in the loaded cell, at specific angles and distances relative to a given location.  This can be an elevated position, or somewhere in hiding, or even a point intentionally chosen outside of their adversary’s (or the player’s) field of vision.  Whatever you thought you knew about where NPCs were located in Fallout 4, just forget all that now.  Not even I know where they will be.

Movements are prioritized, differentiating a critical movement (such as an in-combat GTFO retreat) from a noncritical one (go catch a smoke in that idle spot over there).  Depending on the NPC’s situation, they may be bored or highly stressed, and their maneuvers will reflect their state.  High priority maneuvers are never interrupted by low priority ones.    

STORY MEMORY

Story Memory is a PANPC feature designed to reflect the evolving state of the current combat session.  In the (fairly short) lifespan of an enemy NPC, they will experience a certain list of “first times”: first time in combat, first time seeing the player, first time alerted, first time wounded, etc.  The general idea is that once an NPC has been shot, that’s going to make an impression that isn’t likely to be soon forgotten.

Each of these events represents a permanent logic gate in the AI that alters specific decision parameters, such as scanning ranges and search probabilities.  As the NPC gains situational experience, their specific combat and maneuver decisions will change accordingly.

MENACE

In an enclosed interior location, it is natural to expect that the inhabitants are going to become increasingly concerned when their friends go missing or are found dead. This effect is modeled using the PANPC Menace system.

Menace is used in interior cells (like Corvega) to reflect the dramatic arc of a combat session.  As the dead bodies pile up, PANPC Manager will adjust all local enemy AIs to reflect a growing generalized sense of stress.  Survivors will all become more cautious and sensitive to things that they might otherwise ignore.  As the survivors reach the conclusion that they’re on their own, they will each revert to more paranoid and careful tactics in an attempt to kill you and survive.

If you are using PANPC clones, Menace will also quietly relocate not-yet-encountered clones as the number of living enemies goes down.  They may be moved to areas that the player has already cleared, reflecting the possibility that a raider has returned from a Wasteland scavving run only to find that Corvega is in full combat alert.  This relocation feature only applies to PANPC clones.

REAL TIME RESPONSE

Introduced in 2.0.12, the Real Time Response (RTR) subsystem replaces much of the legacy PANPC combat reaction system with a new process that converts PANPC internal triggers into vanilla events that can immediately be detected and utilized.

In general, the legacy system (depending on script lag conditions) could take as long as 5-10 seconds to detect a situation, decide on a solution, and implement it. With the RTR upgrade, this now usually takes less than a second.

This makes it now possible for PANPC actors to react to grenade and mine explosions, avoid car explosions, react in real time to allied deaths or attacks on teammates, and react immediately to stealth traps (monkey cymbals, hanging cans, etc.).

FEATURES AND SYSTEMS

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

PANPC actors will only count faction-friendly NPCs as part of their gang. This means in certain situations, it's entirely possible to have multiple NPC gangs slugging it out using PANPC tactic sets.  (Most of my own PANPC testing, in fact, involves NPC-to-NPC war games.)

Also, and this is important: the PANPC AI will only consider other PANPC AI-driven NPCs (“members”) for purposes of gang assessment, ambushing, and most tactical assessments.  The system is designed to work as a whole.  So if you are selectively enabling certain NPCs or groups, the selected PANPC AIs will only be particularly interested in the other NPCs that you have enabled.

The player is always considered a PANPC member.

STEALTH, LOW LIGHT, DETECTION

The PANPC stealth/detection system is basically a competition between how stealthy you are and how interested the enemy NPC is. NPC interest is dynamic and is mainly based on what else has been happening lately in their environment. If an enemy is more interested than you are stealthy, they WILL find you.

There is no way around this. In PANPC, it is 100% impossible to be 100% invisible.  (If that isn’t your bag, then you’re using the wrong mod.)

Basically the PANPC stealth principle is this: there is a big difference between being well hidden and not being there at all.  No matter what you are doing to hide yourself, you are still disturbing your environment. Minor objects are being moved.  Sounds are being created.  Subtle shifts in air pressure are happening. Even with a Stealth Boy, there’s a slight but noticeable visual distortion.  And while your enemies may not be directly conscious of your presence, they may instinctively feel “off” about their environment as they unconsciously notice that something is out of place.  You can be hidden, but you can’t be not there.

That said, there’s a lot that you can do to tilt the odds in your favor.  PANPC actors make decisions based on what they can see and hear. LOS (Line of Sight) between NPCs is a big deal, and LOS is mitigated by a variety of factors, first and foremost low light. Staying in shadows, moving at night, and generally not making a good target of yourself are all tactics that play larger roles in PANPC than they do in the vanilla game.  

See Light and Dark, above, for more information about the PANPC light detection system.

Crouch-sneaking, using stealth gear, Sneak perks, high AGL, and avoiding LOS are all excellent tools for avoiding unprepared-for combat situations.

Likewise, NPCs are MUCH more aware of their environments than are their vanilla counterparts. They will investigate noise, set ambushes, and will tend to be quieter (fewer "barks") when they are alone or relatively isolated. So be careful, because your enemies are going to be careful, too.

Finally, NPC interest levels fluctuate. In interior areas, interest levels generally increase as dead bodies start to pile up (see Menace, above). The detection system also includes a “gut check” factor, where enemies will occasionally exhibit an interest spike in the name of “something just doesn’t feel right” paranoia.  

BARK CONTROL

PANPC will generally attempt to curtail “barks”: the aggressive taunts made by NPCs during combat.  If an NPC is alone or has reason to try to remain silent while he or she executes a tactical plan, their barks will be muted and they will be quiet.  Instead, listen for environmental noises that indicate nearby NPCs.  (Bark control can be turned off in MCM.)

Note: Bark Control is done by muting the sound playback, but subtitles are unaffected.  If you want the full Bark Control experience, turn off subtitles.  

AMBUSHING

Most NPC groups will work to set up ambushes.  If they have sufficient team cohesion and individual courage, and they become aware of a vulnerable enemy in the area, they will maneuver to establish an advantageous attack position.  When they get close enough, they will attack their target.

STAND DOWNS

Most NPC types, when not engaged in combat, will periodically engage in “stand down” behaviors, interacting with the world around them in various ways.  Some will approach idle spots, cook food, or get a smoke.  Others will take a moment to go investigate a dead body, or check out sounds of nearby faction combat, and get themselves into trouble.

So be aware that your actions will draw the interest of nearby enemies, and they will also attract each other into hostile situations.  This will often create unique scenarios and social situations as combinations of NPCs meet each other in various circumstances.

FLANKING

Because each NPC AI calculates its behavior independently, PANPC enemies will each attempt to find their own path to attack a target.  This often means flanking and surround behavior, or situations where an NPC lays in wait while their teammates rush in for a full assault.  They will also move from cover to cover as they deem necessary.

BATTLE BUDDIES

Each PANPC AI is constantly keeping track of the weakest and the strongest teammate that they can find nearby, and in specific conditions will maneuver nearer to these teammates as their own combat circumstances change.  

If an AI is particularly hurt or in need of assistance, they will send a signal to teammates to come help them.  This may in fact attract enemies instead.

UNIQUE FACTION BEHAVIORS

PANPC adds optional features and behaviors to certain NPC types and factions, all configurable in MCM.  Synths, for example, can be set to create pulse explosions on death.  Super mutants regenerate their health and have higher resistances than in vanilla.  Feral ghouls are very sensitive to each other (hive mind behavior), will easily alert when a fellow feral is alerted, and occasionally they will crouch and eat a fallen enemy.

Again, these features can all be configured or disabled in MCM.

WEAPON REACTIONS

PANPC AI agents will generally react in specialized ways to being assaulted by certain weapon types and in certain ways.  If they are shot from a long distance, for example, the AI will send a signal to other allied PANPC AIs in the area to inform them that a sniper is taking shots at the group.  They will then tend to break and seek cover.

Grenades and other similar explosive weapons will produce a similar effect, though in a more panicked way, basically a warning that someone is throwing explosives around.

Finally, certain weapons are classified by PANPC as “terror” weapons: miniguns, flamers, rocket launchers.  When certain AI classes (humanoids: raiders, Gunners, etc.) are hit by one of these weapons, they will experience a sharper Courage drop than usual, to reflect panic from knowing that one of these weapons have entered the field.

WEAPON TACTICS

PANPC AIs adapt to the weapons they are using.  If they are using a “terror” weapon - flamers, miniguns, that sort of thing - they will generally seek midfield suppression opportunities.  Snipers will seek range and elevation, and will try to provide support to their close-range teammates.  Shotgunners will try to angle for a close up, sneaky kill where a shotgun blast makes the difference.  Energy weapon users will employ fire-and-maneuver tactics, as the weapon’s beam gives away their position.

COMMAND (FOCUSED FIRE)

Certain factions - Gunners, Minutemen, Brotherhood, and Synths - have what I call the Command ability. When a member of one of these factions gains a kill or two and raises their courage, the script will sometimes assign them a Command token that they can then spend on a high profile target (such as an enemy in power armor, or someone exposed on high ground).

When they spend that token, the target is marked as a Command target, and nearby teammates will prioritize their fire focus on that target. The NPC that makes the kill gets a substantial courage bonus.

FLASH AND DAZZLE

PANPC actors can be rendered temporarily (3-5 seconds) blind to the PANPC scanning systems. During this period, they will take minor Perception damage, their aim will be severely degraded, and a large portion of their attempts to visually identify both targets and allies will fail. They will take a minor courage hit, and if they are already having courage issues, they will be more prone to panic and retreat.

(Flash blindness only affects the additional data and capabilities offered by PANPC’s scanner routines.  It does not at all impact NPC detection and aggression on the vanilla level.)

This effect will naturally trigger from time to time in the regular game when NPCs are exposed to sudden increases in light brightness.

For players who prefer a more reliable method for dazzling their enemies, PANPC adds PANPC-enabled flash grenades and flash mines to the game. They're adapted from their pulse cousins, do very little damage, explode with 1/10 of the force, and have about 50% more range. NPCs caught in the explosion radius have a 50% chance of being dazzled (33% if the NPC is equipped with optics).

PANPC flash weapons should start appearing in loot and vendor lists at around level 10, and I'm not doing injector lists, so you'll need to reconcile the lists in FO4Edit if you have other mods statically adding grenades and mines to those lists.

DISTRACTION

PANPC Distraction grenades are cheaply made devices that make a small rattling noise.  If an NPC isn’t on a heightened combat footing and isn’t expecting trouble, throwing a Distractor may cause the NPC to go investigate the strange sound.  

Note: this (intentionally) isn’t a reliable combat tool, because once they realize that there’s an enemy skulking around, they’re not likely to be fooled again.  At best you may have one or two opportunities in a combat session to use a Distractor, so make them count.

Distractors do not initiate combat.

RAD GRENADES

PANPC Rad Grenades are similar to Distractors, except that rather than attract an NPC to a location, they repel them.  A Rad Grenade sets off a mostly harmless radiation pulse that triggers an NPC to quickly move to a safe (and random) nearby location.  These grenades are good for situations where you need to knock an enemy off a search path or location without alerting them.

Rad Grenades do not initiate combat.

SNIPER (ELEVATION)

PANPC actors that are spawned armed with a ballistic weapon equipped with a long range mod (such as long barrel) will adopt an extended set of fire tactics, in addition to their normal actions. These "Snipers" will crouch when they fire (for an aim bonus), will prefer ranged attacks from held, fixed positions, and will attempt to fight from the rear of groups while their comrades lead frontal assaults.

If a Sniper also has a scope mod on their weapon, they will get an additional 20% aim bonus, stacking with whatever other aim bonuses they currently have. Finally, they will also have a 50% better view of the battlefield than their teammates.

Synths and super mutants do not use Sniper actions, no matter what weapon they are using.

PANPC AIs using the Sniper tactics set will also seek elevated attack positions, such a church bell tower or a roof position, where they can wait and rain death from above.

LONG DISTANCE ATTACK

New to v2.0.5, PANPC now supports player-initiated long distance ranged attack (i.e., sniping).

This is a little tricky to do, because the average sniper opportunity is often well outside of the activation range of PANPC’s AI systems.  The distance from the Corvega overpass to the high catwalk raiders, for example, is roughly 6000 units; the PANPC AI activation range is 4000u, and so normally you would be sniping at vanilla NPCs. Simply extending the activation range to, say, 8000u would exponentially increase the number of AI scripts loaded at any given time and would prove to be a serious performance drag.

This new feature deals with this by establishing a second activation range at 8000u, only monitoring those long distance NPCs for player hits. If one of these NPCs are attacked and hit by the player with a sniper weapon, they will boot up with a full PANPC AI and will begin to react.  In addition, that NPC will send an activation pulse to any other NPCs in a 1000u radius, and they likewise will boot into PANPC AI.

This system is ONLY in operation if the player is currently equipped with a weapon with a scope and a long barrel attachment (a mod with the dn_HasBarrel_Long keyword).  Any other weapon configuration will not remotely activate AIs at long distance.

Note: While these barrel mods are normally named as “Long Barrel” or something similar, there are instances where they are not.  The Gauss Rifle standard barrel, for example, is a long barrel.  So is the SMG standard, and the Deep Dish attachment on the Gamma Gun.  So check the keyword reference list in FO4Edit for the full coverages.

If you are using a noise suppressor on your weapon, the 1000u local activation pulse is reduced to a 500 unit radius, reducing the number of additional NPCs to get an AI bootup as a result of your attack.

WEATHER VISIBILITY

In 2.0.8, I added functionality to deal with situations where the local weather conditions should be limiting visibility. In rain or a radstorm, or in a FROST snow whiteout, your enemies should be dealing with the same bad sighting range as you and not be able to pick you off a mile away.

This is handled by the PANPC_WeatherVisibility formlists in PANPC.esm.  There are three of them, each corresponding to an overall reduced scan range (25, 50, 75) if one of the weathers in the list is in effect. If the current weather state is in the 25 list, for example, all PANPC actors have their scan ranges cut to 25% normal, severely limiting their awareness and tactical abilities.  (At 25%, this usually translates to an effective scan range of about 600u - you’d almost have to be right on top of them before they would notice you.)

Unpatched, PANPC handles weathers as they exist in the vanilla base game.  Any weather mods or overhauls that alter weather will likely need a patch to make those weathers work with this system. (The official FROST/PANPC patch includes the necessary patches for FROST weathers.)

CLONES (EXTRA SPAWNS)

Disabled by default, this feature allows you to automatically spawn in additional enemies when a PA-enabled NPC is loaded into game memory for the first time. The new enemies will be spawned from that NPC's leveled list, each with its own equipment and configuration.

The cloning system is configured in MCM, with separate settings for interior and exterior cell areas.  The configuration options are:

Enable additional hostile NPC spawning:  Turning this on tells PANPC to pass every AI-activated NPC through a cloning pass (except of course for the clones themselves).  Cloning does not happen for NPCs whose profiles are turned off in MCM.

Remove dead NPC clones on cell unload:  If this is turned on, PANPC will attempt to despawn dead clones when you leave the cell, in order to reduce save file cluttering and burden on the engine.

Base odds of extra spawning, per clone:  When a PANPC AI system begins executing on an NPC, and it reaches the cloning pass, this is the base probability that the NPC will generate clones.  The spawn RNG roll happens per clone - if the NPC is attempting to spawn three clones, for example, it will roll this three times and spawn the clones that beat the odds.

Base odds of clones matching parent aggression: This is the base probability that the newly created clones will be spawned with the same aggression level as their parent.  Otherwise, they will be spawned with the aggression level defined in their NPC record.

Maximum number of random clones per actor: If the NPC runs a cloning pass, it will attempt to generate this number of clones.  Each spawn gets its own spawn odds roll.

Scale extra spawn odds up to set player level:  This feature exists in order to gradually scale up cloning to match player achievement.  The base spawn odds value (above) will be incrementally scaled, starting from zero, until the player reaches this level (at which point the spawn odds will be the full base value).

Boss spawning.  These probability settings (boss, higher, slightly tougher, weaker) exist to create variation in cloned enemies.  When a new clone is created, the new clone may spawn as a lower or higher level enemy than the parent.  These settings determine the chances of each happening, starting with the “boss” roll and ending with the “weaker” one.

RAIDING PARTIES

Much like the extra spawns/clones, the Raiding Parties option (also enabled via MCM) occasionally sets a small group of enemies against you. The type of enemy generally depends on the dominant gang in the area, and you can adjust the time interval and makeup of the groups in MCM. They may come right at you, but they will most likely sneak up on and ambush you from a relatively safe spot.

You can adjust the time interval as a matter of game hours: every hour, two hours, etc. But this is only a general time, and a new raiding party will spawn into your vicinity at any point between 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after the set interval. If you have the interval set to 2 hours, for example, the script will spawn a new raiding party anywhere between 1.5 hours and 2.5 hours since the last one.

If Raiding Parties and Extra Spawns are both enabled, the party will split up and each member will lead their own band of clones against your position.

If you are in an interior cell, Raiding Parties will spawn at an entranceway, usually the one you yourself came through.  They will then begin moving through the dungeon in search of trouble.

ARENA MODE

Please note: This refers to PANPC v2.0.5 or better.  If you are still using a pre-2.0.5 version, please upgrade.

Arena Mode is a reasonably self-contained combat game, allowing you to spawn multiple waves of Boss and Legendary-level enemies somewhere near your general location.  Once spawned, they will enable with PANPC AI, including custom search/hunt actions unique only to Arena actors, and they will begin searching for you. When one sights you, it will summon the rest of the team.

Unlike normal PANPC AIs, Arena actors are specifically focused on you.  They are already aware of your general location, and are already intent on fighting.  They will hunt you down and they will find you - unless you manage to find them first.

To use Arena, select the Arena Spawning section of the PANPC MCM menu, or use the PANPC Arena holotape. Select the number of attack waves you want, and then click one of the listed teams.

Each wave will consist of the same team, but as each wave progresses, the enemies will be increasingly likely to spawn as higher level and tougher versions of themselves.

Once you close out your Pip Boy, you will get an onscreen notification stating that Arena is now in session.  A brief delay will happen as the spawner finds a decent location, and then you will get another notification and a bell ring. This indicates that the wave has been spawned and is now starting an approach.

When all existing Arena enemies are dead or missing (i.e., they have left the cell for some reason), the wave is complete and the next one will launch with tougher enemies.  When all waves are complete, you will get a notification and a sound cue that the Arena session is over.

Some other important rules:

1. The Arena session is limited to an 8000u radius of the player position when you started. If you leave the combat range, the remaining waves are aborted, the Arena session ends, and any remaining living Arena enemies are despawned.

2. Arena enemies do not consider themselves as being in the same “pack” as their faction-friendly peers, and vice versa. They will engage in combat with faction-unfriendly NPCs as normal, should they encounter them. (Arena combat shouldn’t impact main game faction relationships. If it does, please let me know so that I can fix it. Thanks.)

3. Until the player has made visual contact with an Arena enemy, they may be periodically moved to better initiate contact.  The spawner doesn’t always find a great location to spawn that allows a direct path to the player, and this can end up with enemies locked in rooms or in otherwise inaccessible spots.  To deal with this, Arena periodically checks to see which enemies the player has not seen yet, and from time to time will move them to new locations that may offer better approach options.
   
4. Arena enemies are not affected by LPM or by the NPC Registration switch in MCM. They boot into AI immediately on spawn, and will use PANPC AI even if you have NPC Registration turned off in MCM. In fact, if you have registration turned off, they will be the ONLY actors in your game that use PANPC AI.

HOLOTAPES

Two holotapes get placed into the player’s inventory when PANPC is installed.  The first is a very stripped down version of the MCM menu, and the second is a holotape version of the Arena controller.  They both exist for players who can’t or prefer not to use MCM.  (Personally I find the holotape Arena controller more handy than the MCM equivalent, but that’s a matter of taste.)

USING PANPC

INSTALLATION/UNINSTALLATION

PANPC is a self-contained mod that requires the base Fallout 4 game, DLCs, and a properly installed F4SE.  

MCM (Mod Compatibility Menu) is highly recommended but not technically required.  To use any of the configuration options (which play large roles in getting PANPC working smoothly), however, you will need it.

To install PANPC, use the “Install from file” option in your preferred mod manager.  If you do not know how to do this, see this video for MO2 or this video for Vortex.

If you are using PANPC’s Auto Alert feature (the default), I strongly recommend using a mod such as FallUI to disable the stealth HUD (caution/danger etc.) indicator, as it will lie to you about whether or not you have been detected.  Read here for a full explanation.

To uninstall PANPC, you must first ensure that all of the PANPC AI scripts have unloaded, or else you may end up with a corrupted save file.  

As of v2.0.5.1, this is an automated process. Look in the PANPC Debug MCM menu for the ‘force unload of AI scripts’ switch. Turn this on and the activation cloaks will turn off, any Arena enemies will despawn, and any running PANPC AI scripts will immediately shut down.  When you get an onscreen notification saying that this is complete, you should be able to safely save, uninstall PANPC and update it.  

To uninstall versions prior to v2.0.5.1, use the “Root Cellar” method.  Dismiss any companions and move into an interior cell with NO NPCS AT ALL, such as the Sanctuary Root Cellar.  This will force an unload of all PANPC AI scripts.  Save, uninstall, reload, then resave.  At this point your save should be completely PANPC-free.  You can update PANPC at this point, if you want.

Please note: if you are uninstalling PANPC or updating it, it is critical that all remnants of the prior install are completely removed.  If there is any doubt, check your save in Fallrim Resaver and make sure that any script starting with the PANPC prefix has been deleted.

OPTIONAL PLUGINS

PANPC now has additional optional plugin ESPs (Explosion Responses and Trap Alerts). These enable RTR functionality for most explosions and traps in the vanilla game, allowing NPCs to react to these events (dodging grenades, running to escape a car explosion, etc.). They are packaged as separate ESPs because they modify base game records.

If you want this functionality, load these ESPs low in your load order, below anything else that modifies explosions or traps. You may have to reconcile conflicts in FO4Edit.

If you are playing FROST and are using the latest FROST/PANPC patch, you do not need to use these ESPs. The changes are already integrated in the FROST patch and reconciled with FROST’s changes.

SUPPORT

Official support for PANPC is provided through the GreslinGames Discord server.  Jump in the #pack-attack channel and ask away.  I’m usually around, but if I’m not, we have a thriving community of helpful people who can also get you back on the road.

MCM DOESN’T WORK?

If your PANPC MCM settings don’t seem to be saving, or are all reverting to zero, you probably have a problem with your F4SE installation.  Almost certainly, you didn’t copy over the Data folder from the install package.  You only copied the EXE and DLLs.

It doesn’t matter that the DLL seems to work, or that you see the correct version number, or that your F4SE plugins seem to work.  That Data folder must be correctly copied over in order to use MCM or any script-based mods that depend on F4SE.  

If you are absolutely sure that you have installed F4SE properly, make sure that you have loose files enabled in your fallout4custom.ini file:



If you are using Mod Organizer 2 and are using profile-specific INIs, you will have to change the settings there as well.

PERFORMANCE AND OPTIMIZATION

PANPC is pretty well optimized at this point, though I’m always looking for ways to improve performance and reliability.  The ultimate responsibility for performance, however, falls to you and your willingness to make choices about how you split up a limited resource budget among your preferred mods.  If you simply download and install every cool mod you see, without any consideration of bang-versus-buck, you’re going to royally mess up your game.

Fallout 4 is designed to prevent script activity from killing FPS by scaling script run speed (latency) with rising overhead.  Basically, the more script activity is happening at the time, the more slowly they all will run.  Script latency is always going to be your main PANPC-related performance concern.

PANPC contains several systems that give you the power to scale its influence and operation to fit your particular build.  If you think that performance is going to be a problem on your game, consider tuning the system with these options.

• ABOUT FPS/LATENCY

This question comes up often, so I decided to just address it in the manual.  PANPC will not impact FPS.  If you are experiencing FPS drops, then you have something else going on (or you’ve used another mod to screw up how Fallout 4 processes script latency).

Important note: Don’t expect a Bethesda RPG (Fallout, Skyrim, etc.) to ever work reliably at framerates above 60 FPS.  They won’t.  If you can, pin the process at 60 FPS in your graphic card configuration and don’t concern yourself with higher numbers.

Back in Fallout 3 and New Vegas days, scripts could be pinned to game rendering frames.  You could literally run your script on every single frame render, if you wanted.  This meant that, depending on how much script traffic had to be processed, individual frame cycles would take more time to process.  The end result of that was frame rate drops, stutter, and sometimes freezing.

        Fallout 4 (and Skyrim) are entirely different worlds.  Bethesda prioritized console gameplay over                 everything, which meant prioritizing FPS over everything.  You can no longer pin script runs on                frames.  Instead, when the game engine detects that Papyrus activity is impacting FPS, the engine        starts slowing down script activity.  This is generally referred to as script latency.

        PANPC is entirely script-based.  Unless you have done unwise surgery on your INIs (and, so,                 screwed up the system Bethesda put in place), PANPC can’t impact FPS. It can slow down script        operation, and it can reveal problems latent in other mods, but it is not responsible for your FPS                drops, stutters, or freezes.

There are a million different things that can be causing FPS drops, starting with screwing up your        precombines and previs records with other worldspace mods.

        To help deal with script slowdowns, PANPC has a feature called Throttle, which automatically                 scales back PANPC script activity when it detects sharply increasing script overhead.

        If you are using the Baka MaxPapyrusOps mod, please see this compatibility note.

• HOW TO KILL YOUR GAME

If you want to use PANPC to absolutely murder your game build, there are several reliable ways to        go about doing that.  I don’t personally recommend any of them, but my personal policy has always         been that it is none of my business how you choose to break your game.

First, the easiest way to overload your game with PANPC is by adding high volumes of NPCs into the game world at one time.  This can easily happen with any NPC spawning mod, or even PANPC’s own cloning and raiding party systems.  If you have tons of new enemies going at once, and they all have PANPC AI scripts operating, that’s going to hit your game with a metric ton of concurrent script activity.  This won’t kill your FPS or cause engine-level problems, such as stutter, freezing or CTDs, but it will generally wreck script-based game features.

The next thing you can do is install lots of custom weapon mods that you don’t actually need. Many of these mods have flaws: they were quickly put together, they weren’t built using the same software that Bethesda used (AutoDesk 3DS Max 2013), and/or they weren’t properly debugged and have bugs in their meshes. These problems won’t necessarily appear often when the player is the only one using the gun, or when the animations aren’t often triggered.

In PANPC, however, those animations and meshes are triggered a LOT.  So any bugs in those weapons are going to hit the jackpot a lot sooner, simply because you’re rolling the dice a lot more often.  So ease up on those massive COD weapon packs, and instead be discriminating and prioritize pre-2019 mods by well known modders who have taken the time to update their work.  Don’t use weapon mods that were initially released on Nexus and then never touched again. (NPC animations in general are also risks in this regard.)

There are many more ways to kill your game, but those are the basics in regards to PANPC.  If you are getting CTDs and believe that PANPC is to blame, please understand that it isn’t. There are very few ways to directly cause a CTD with a Papyrus script, and PANPC has checks on checks to prevent that from happening.  

What PANPC will do, however, is stress test the hell out of your mod build.  Mods in general aren’t created to professional standards, because they are all amateur works.  If you have shaky mods in your build, there’s a good chance that running PANPC will make you very aware of it.

• ON JENGA TOWERS

It’s a very strange badge of honor among some modding YouTubers to brag about the number of mods they’ve managed to cram into their build (“600 mods! No, 700 mods!”). It’s a terrible modding strategy and unless you really, really know what you’re doing - and even then, it’s an unwise idea - all you’re going to create is an unholy mess. We’ve all done it.

On GG, we call them Jenga Towers: tall, unstable constructions that work great until you get unlucky. Then the whole thing collapses, leaving the tower builder usually to blame the last mod they put on the tower, when in reality it was their fault for building the tower to start with. It was always going to collapse, because they created a mod build too complex to debug.

I could write an entire manual just about Jenga Towers. But for the purposes of this manual, my main concern here are AI mods. Combining AI mods does not mean that you now have the combined functionality of those mods. If PANPC is missing a feature you want, for example, and you install another AI mod that promises that feature, you’re likely not going to get it. Instead, now you’ve compromised the design of both mods and have just created a more unstable game.

Most successful game modding is about avoiding Jenga Towers. So don’t simply choose your game mods from a feature collecting standpoint. Research them carefully with the understanding that, especially when dealing with AI, you’re going to have to make choices and can’t have it all.

• HARDWARE WON’T HELP

The last general point I want to make about performance is that throwing money at the problem isn’t going to help. Fallout 4 was primarily designed for consoles, and while a nice graphics card will help you get those nice high res renders happening, your cutting edge CPU and screaming fast memory aren’t going to do much other than reduce some loading times and smooth out some rendering. While that admittedly is a very good thing, it’s not going to increase your ability to run lots of scripts or to fundamentally change the limited design of the Fallout 4 game engine.

If you have the hardware to comfortably run Fallout 4 as Bethesda shipped it in 2015, you’re basically done. Most of the limitations you’re dealing with now are the limitations of the game engine (and your particular mod build), not of your PC, and for the most part you’re not going to fix the engine limitations by buying a new computer.

• MCM PROFILES

You probably don’t need PANPC to attach its full AI system onto every NPC in your game.  Some players use PANPC only for certain classes - Raiders, for instance, or Gunners - in order to save some script overhead, while allowing the vanilla AI system to handle less critical NPC types.

Your first option for limiting activated NPCs is to simply turn off entire classes of NPC in PANPC’s MCM configuration menu.  Go into the Profiles section and switch off anything you don’t want, and PANPC will not even attempt to apply scripts to those NPC types.

Note that turning off profiles COMPLETELY removes that NPC class from the PANPC system, including the cloning system and basic maneuver control. The only PANPC subsystem not affected by MCM profile selection is Arena.

(Please note that PANPC in 2023 is far more optimized and sophisticated than PANPC in 2018, and you probably don’t need to disable whole classes of NPC just to save script cycles.)

• OPT-OUT KEYWORDS

Sometimes you want to deactivate specific NPCs rather than entire groups.  You’ll need FO4Edit to do this, but you can create an ESP patch (with PANPC.esm as a master) and simply add the PANPC_KW_NoEnable keyword to that NPC’s record.  

For more about how to create PANPC compatibility patches, read this guide.

• LOW POWER MODE (LPM)

For NPCs using PANPC AI, not all of them really need immediate, real time processing.  If an enemy is well outside of the player’s proximity, where the AI isn’t likely to make any difference to gameplay, there’s no point in wasting unnecessary script cycles on it.

Low Power Mode (LPM) is a dormant state, where the AI script is attached to the NPC but is only active enough to handle the most basic operations, mainly involving cloning.  If an enemy is in LPM - usually because they’re far away - the AI script sits and waits for a boot up order from PANPC Manager.  When it gets the order, it enables itself into full AI operation.

In MCM, there are the following LPM configuration settings:

LPM Max Number of Active AIs (def: 20). This limits the number of fully operational PANPC AI scripts that can be in service at any given time. NPCs in excess of this number will have the script, but it will be in a dormant/nearly nonfunctional state, waiting for the start order. As NPC scripts are unloaded (as enemies are killed, etc.) new ones will activate, up to this number.

LPM Staggered Activation Interval (def: 2.0). If all the NPCs in a cell were activated in PANPC simultaneously, it would produce a sudden and large spike in script activity that would result in script crashing and other problems. LPM staggers the activations instead, powering them up one at a time, starting with those nearest the player. This setting is the number of seconds between LPM activation attempts.

Force PANPC Low Power Mode for all exterior cell NPCs? (def: OFF). This will force all PANPC AI scripts to remain in Low Power Mode in exterior worldspaces, allowing only cloning operations.

Force PANPC Low Power Mode for all interior cell NPCs? (def: OFF). This will force all PANPC AI scripts to remain in Low Power Mode in interior cells, allowing only cloning operations.

• LIMITED CLONE AI

As of v2.0.12, PANPC clones by default do not use PANPC AI. They spawn as their vanilla counterparts, using whatever AI functionality has been given to them by the vanilla system and by any other AI mods you have installed.

The reason for this is twofold. First, running clones at their maximum settings and then running PANPC scripts on all of them will almost certainly overload the script engine. This has always been true, and I have always warned against it, but people still do it. So rather than remove the cloning system altogether, I’ve chosen instead to restrict the AI use and to keep them vanilla by default.

The other reason is because the extra AI doesn’t help in a mob. If you’re fighting two or three enemies, each individual AI decision makes a big difference, but if you’re fighting a hundred of them, you’re just shooting targets at that point. You’re wasting script cycles and ruining your game.

If you want to active PANPC AI on clones, there is now a setting in the Performance MCM menu: “Clones Max Number of Active AIs”. It defaults to zero. But this will allow you to enable the AI on a limited number of active clones. As a clone dies and shuts down their AI, PANPC Manager will enable another one, up to the limit you set. The maximum number is 40.

• THROTTLE

Throttle is intended for enemies with active PANPC AI scripts (i.e., not in LPM).  PANPC is constantly monitoring your game’s script latency level, and the AI scripts attempt to scale their operations to compensate for high overhead states and spikes.  

As overall latency increases, the PANPC AI scripts slow down, making fewer decisions with slower reaction time.  When latency eases, the AIs scale back to normal operation.  (This is in addition to the normal latency effect created by the FO4 script scheduler.)

Throttle puts a thumb on this process.  The higher the Throttle setting, the more quickly PANPC will respond to overhead spikes and the more severely it will scale down the AI.  This is done exponentially, so the difference between 1.0 and 2.0 is much, much greater than between 0.0 and 1.0.  So be careful with it, because while higher values will help compensate for high script burdens, they will do so by effectively lobotomizing the AI.  Test on your build and only increase Throttle as much as absolutely necessary to maintain a stable game.

Since v2.0.10, there have been two significant changes to the Throttle system. First, you can now set different Throttle settings for interior and exterior cells, which often have very different performance needs during real gameplay.

Second, as of 2.0.12, you can now set negative Throttle values, which will exponentially decrease timer intervals rather than increase them. Note that this is a relatively dangerous thing to do, as negative Throttle values will dramatically increase your rate of stack dumps and other performance-related problems. However, the basic math of Throttle was designed for a much, much heavier iteration of PANPC, and so now probably errs on the side of caution when it comes to script overload. Negative values allow you to play with that. Just be sure to watch your Papyrus logs and ease up when you start seeing stack dumping.

MOD COMPATIBILITY NOTES

Mod compatibility is a primary PANPC design priority. For officially sanctioned compatibility patches, please visit the GreslinGames Compatibility Patch Repository. Any patches not in the repo (including those found on Nexus) were created by third parties and may or may not work properly. I only directly support the patches found in the Repository.

I put in a lot of effort to try to make PANPC work smoothly with other popular mods, whether that involves native features, compatibility patching, or integrated support.  Mods listed here warrant particular note and have some level of official integrated support in PANPC.

• PACE (Pack Attack Companion Edition), by Greslin

PANPC’s sister mod, PACE applies PANPC-type tactics and systems to the Fallout 4 companion framework.  The two mods are designed to work together. The only reason why they are separate mods is because they require entirely different activation systems in order to work.

My own mods are all PANPC compatible, and many of them have some form of built in support.

• FROST (Below Zero Guide)

PANPC and the FROST dev team are closely aligned, and while PANPC does not contain native support for FROST, it is compatible and I maintain a comprehensive PANPC-FROST compatibility patch.  Some PANPC features were also added specifically for FROST availability.

The official PANPC-FROST compatibility patch can be found here.

Please note that PANPC compatibility for FROST exists specifically for the official Below Zero installation guide (of which the Stay Frosty Wabbajack is an implementation).  Other FROST configurations will probably work fine with PANPC, but I do not provide support for any other FROST mod configuration or for any FROST-related Nexus Collection.

Seriously: if you’re playing FROST, please stick to Below Zero.  They know what they’re doing.

• WEST TEK OPTICS, by fadingsignal

PANPC officially supports fadingsignal’s "West Tek Tactical Optics" as its preferred night/thermal vision option.  If you have WTTO installed, NPCs with WTTO optics gear in their inventories will automatically equip them in low light.  NPCs with optics will not suffer from low light LOS (line of sight) penalties, and they will receive an aim bonus and greater team cohesion abilities.  (The player does not receive any special bonuses in PANPC from West Tek Optics.)

• AI EDIT AND COMPLEX SORTER NPC SCALING, by 4estGimp

        To date, this is the ONLY other AI mod that I can recommend for use with PANPC. As of this

        writing, it does not conflict with anything PANPC does, nor does it disable PANPC activation on any

        NPC groups. It only makes some very carefully considered changes to various game settings, and

        alters vanilla behaviors for NPCs not under PANPC control. The author knows what he’s doing.

• BAKA SCRAPHEAP/MAXPAPYRUSOPS

        ScrapHeap is fine. People use it with PANPC all the time.

        MaxPapyrusOps can get you into trouble if you’re not smart about using it. Fallout 4 is designed

        to not allow script activity to impact FPS, by slowing down all script processing as script overhead

        builds (script latency). MPO alters the game engine configuration to make this system more liberal,

        accepting some FPS impact risk in return for allowing more simultaneous script activity.

        This isn’t automatically a bad thing. Used in moderation, it’ll probably actually make PANPC run

        better, as its scripts will run more quickly and so AI decisions will be more timely.

        However, you first have to use it in moderation, and then you have to resist the urge to pile on

        even more script activity. If you are using MPO and suddenly start having FPS problems, start

        with the assumption that you’ve pushed your luck and stop adding things to your game.

• PIRAD (Plausible and Immersive Radiation) and Damn Apocalypse, by payl0ad

If you have PIRAD or DA’s rads module installed, PANPC will treat Gamma Guns and

Radium Rifles as terror weapons.  Payl0ad (aka Theodore E. Bearington) also provides support

for their mods on the GreslinGames Discord server, in the #bearington-labs channel.

• POINT LOOKOUT, by the Capital Wasteland Project

I’ve created and am maintaining a basic patch for the Point Lookout mod.  While many F4:PL enemies (feral ghouls, dogs, Far Harbor enemies, etc.) should already work by default, you will need this patch to enable Tribals, Swamp Folk, and other PL-only human enemies.  They should all start up with the standard PANPC Raider AI system.    

You can find the PANPC Point Lookout patch here.

• HORIZON

I do not directly support Horizon and have no plans for doing so in the future.  

Please refer all Horizon support questions to the Horizon Nexus page or to the Horizon Discord.

• SIM SETTLEMENTS

Running the original Sim Settlements and PANPC together is challenging, as they are both very script-heavy and will generally tax your game to the maximum.  However, with patches and some hard decisions, it can be done.

By most reports, SS2 and modern PANPC are much easier to make work and shouldn’t require nearly the same heroic measures.

GreslinGames member and moderator Terragone maintains a set of guides and patches for SS/PANPC integration, which you can find here. You can also find more information in the pinned comments in the #sim-settlements channel.

Direct links to Terragone’s guides:  SS1/SSC Guide, SS2 Guide.

• WAR OF THE COMMONWEALTH

        Don’t.  Just don’t.

The old school Bethesda mod method of “making the game harder” has always been to place a ton of static enemy spawn points all over the map.  This is a really outdated and stupid way of making the game more challenging. If you’re using PANPC, you will also quickly overload your scripts and fry your game. So again, just don’t.

If you want more enemies on the field, use dynamic spawners (such as PANPC’s cloning and Raiding Party systems, or SKK’s spawn mods) that clean up after themselves and at least attempt to respect the technical limitations of the game.

• ARBITRATION

        At this point I do not recommend using Arbitration. It hasn’t been updated since 2016 and shows

        no indication that it will be. There are much better alternatives today, such as AI Edit by 4estGimp.

• SKK MODS

SKK does some very fine mods, including SKK Combat Stalkers, SKK Random Encounters, and the like. In general, PANPC will do its best to stay out of SKK’s way. SKK’s spawns are exempted from the cloning system, and PANPC won’t attempt to override an NPC’s movement AI if it detects an SKK AI package already in place for that NPC. PANPC will, however, attempt to acquire those NPCs for purposes of combat style cycling, and will assume control as soon as SKK releases it.

The only area of caution here is about spawning too many NPCs into memory at once. That is not an SKK problem. If you are using SKK’s spawn mods along with PANPC’s cloning and Raiding Party systems, plus other NPC additive mods, you may end up with PANPC attempting to drive more NPCs than the game engine is capable of handling. As long as you keep an eye on that, you should be fine using PANPC with any of SKK’s work.

See Limited Clone AI.

• ANY OTHER AI MOD

I still regularly get questions about whether PANPC is compatible with this or that other AI-related mod, and my stock answer is this: PANPC is designed to work with the vanilla game as Bethesda shipped it. Anything else is up to you.  

That said, any other AI mod is likely to be incompatible with PANPC or is likely to create strange behavioral interactions in NPCs that PANPC drives. If you want to use other AI mods alongside PANPC, I do not recommend doing so until you are pretty sure of what you are doing.  It will require patching of some kind, at the very least.  DON’T just throw them together because they sounded good - you WILL break something, and probably in a way that corrupts your save game.

My general advice here is that if you don’t yet know enough to be able to intelligently review a mod in FO4Edit to determine exactly what it does, you shouldn’t mix PANPC with other AI mods.

Finally, watch out for snake oil. Clickbaiting “AI” has become popular recently, and Nexus is no

exception to that - do your research, ask experienced people for recommendations, and if something sounds just a little too razzle-dazzle, be skeptical. There are some AI mod descriptions out there that are outright lying about what they do and are capable of.

CREATING PATCHES

I regularly receive requests for compatibility patches.  Generally, I prefer to leave that to others, while I add the various features into PANPC necessary to support patching.  If you are looking for a patch for FROST, Sim Settlements, Horizon, or any other mod, please first check the GreslinGames Compatibility Patch Repository.  Very likely, someone already created one.

If you don’t see a patch there, one may not be necessary.  If you think that you are encountering a compatibility issue that may require a patch, I recommend asking in the #compatibility channels on the GreslinGames Discord.

If you want to create a compatibility patch of your own, I’ve written a separate document explaining all the different compatibility features available in PANPC. You can find that guide here.

DEBUG LOGGING

PANPC has a debug logging mode that I use in testing. This is mainly for my own use, so logging messages will vary from one release to the next, but if you’re struggling to track down specific issues the log might be able to help.

To use the PANPC debug feature, first you need to enable trace logging in the INIs: https://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=Enable_Debug_Logging 

Then turn on debug logging in the Debug screen of PANPC's MCM menu.  The debug log will appear in your Documents\My Games\Fallout4\Logs\Script\User directory.

DO NOT simply turn on debug logging and leave it on.  Disk writes are latent (meaning that the game engine will stop what it’s doing for a write to complete), and PANPC writes a lot of traffic to its logs.  Constantly running the debug log WILL degrade performance.  If you use the debug log, use it only in test situations and only for diagnosing spot problems.

THANKS

Thanks to my wife (Greslin’s Wife, Borderlands Assist Queen, fellow gamer, console girl, and partner in life and crime) for tolerating my Fallout fandom and helping me mod my Discord.

Thanks to everyone on the GreslinGames Discord for years of dedicated fandom, tons of ideas, endless hours of testing, and the occasional reminder that I screwed up somewhere.  None of this would have happened without you, and I mean that wholeheartedly.

Thanks to everyone who has downloaded, enjoyed, and perhaps even endorsed any of my mods for Fallout 4, New Vegas, and Fallout 3. I write these weird little mods for myself, to try things out that hopefully keep the game interesting for me a little while longer, and it's nice to know that some of you good folks enjoy them, too. I appreciate the kind words, support, and occasional gamer angst.

Thanks to Nexus for providing a home for my mods for such a long time, and Discord for providing a home now that Nexus and I had to part ways.

I have no intention of porting any of my mods to consoles. I'm a PC player, and diving into the Bethesda.net pool doesn't interest me in the least.  Likewise, I will not be returning to Nexus.

This mod is still in regular development, and I am always interested to hear about your adventures, suggestions, comments, and even criticisms.  I’m regularly available on the GreslinGames Discord, and if I’m not, plenty of other knowledgeable people are.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/greslin

Come visit the GreslinGames Discord!