I love the idea of Living Settlements, having thralls go about their day around my base rather than standing at their workstation all day every day. But for those who like RP or immersion, the current implementation does not work too well. The thralls will either wander all over the base, making free use of their mistress’ bed, the guest rooms, my office and so on. It’s possible to stop them using the furniture, but I’d like to keep them from entering certain rooms or areas. Locking them in a room to keep them there is not a good option either: now my workshop looks completely empty, instead of having workers at their benches. The complete opposite of what Living Settlements was supposed to accomplish.
In addition, their routine seems far too random. It would be nice if they followed a more or less normal routine that follows the sun: sleep, eat, work, take a break, lunch, work some more, dinner, free time, go sleep, etc.
Furthermore: maybe add a few options to add to their routine. Like the “idle markers” in Skyrim; you can drop markers to the floor for a particular idle animation, and NPCs will sandbox to those. Can have markers for dancing, bar duty, sweeping, all manner of chores.
To sum up:
Stop thralls from using certain rooms. Can be done by adding an option to doors: “Thralls will not pass through”
Have thralls eat and sleep at appropriate hours, to add to immersion
Idle markers that thralls can use to perform different animations
That way, thralls can really become an asset to a base, and add some liveliness without becoming a nuisance, or an immersion breaker.
It surprises me the option to disable objects being used in the living settlements is not available for thralls themselves, to toggle off their new AI.
If that could be done and they’d just stay at the bench in the crafting animation, it seems it would fix most of the problems with people who don’t like the new system (apart from them no longer being items) and they could just opt out of it, and the rest of us might find it handy in certain situations too.
Alternatively, I am surprised their wander distance is locked and not a slider like follow/attack/chase distance. That would provide much better control over it.
But I agree their routines feel way too random, they seem to go from one thing to the next each minute. I rather disable it than have that. My smiths won’t stop lollygagging and do their jobs. I use long day/night cycles, it feels totally artificial and not well crafted for them. Oblivion/Skyrim NPC scheduling was a much better system, they did the same things as in this at specific times for specific durations.
