My first Suggestion: Change the Bodyguard functionality of Companions so that it increases Bodyguard potential based on Leadership skill increases.

More Details: I don't know how the Bodyguard system currently works in this mod, but over the course of a full play through with this mod enabled, you go from an increasing amount of Companions that follow you into town/village to protect you against ambushes, the drunk in the bar, etc. At first it's just one, and it is the Companion listed highest up in your group order, and later in game there are two companions, and then 3 at the most by end game (unknown if you can bring 4 or more?). However it is coded now, I think it would be preferred if those bodyguard Companions were more understood as to "why" it happens, why there are only 1 or 3, and I think that could be done with the Leadership Skill. I would recommend that Leader is the core metric, with potentially a scaling up for every 2 levels of the skill. So it would look like this:
Leader 2: One Companion bodyguard.
Leader 4: Two Companions.
Leader 6: Three Companions. (and perhaps that is it for stacking, nothing further needed)

i think we should protect the military structure in the native. we should be able to collect custom characters only from the castles, if possible, only from the capital.

There are some items in the cheatmenu such as black armor that are not available for the custom troops. I suggest that you make everything in the files available

Originally posted by Myll:

My first Suggestion: Change the Bodyguard functionality of Companions so that it increases Bodyguard potential based on Leadership skill increases.

More Details: I don't know how the Bodyguard system currently works in this mod, but over the course of a full play through with this mod enabled, you go from an increasing amount of Companions that follow you into town/village to protect you against ambushes, the drunk in the bar, etc. At first it's just one, and it is the Companion listed highest up in your group order, and later in game there are two companions, and then 3 at the most by end game (unknown if you can bring 4 or more?). However it is coded now, I think it would be preferred if those bodyguard Companions were more understood as to "why" it happens, why there are only 1 or 3, and I think that could be done with the Leadership Skill. I would recommend that Leader is the core metric, with potentially a scaling up for every 2 levels of the skill. So it would look like this:
Leader 2: One Companion bodyguard.
Leader 4: Two Companions.
Leader 6: Three Companions. (and perhaps that is it for stacking, nothing further needed)

The bodyguard system integrated in Diplomacy is from Caba`drin. Here is a quote about it:
"As coded, the number of bodyguards available to a player is governed by their renown and leadership skill: 1 bodyguard per 3 levels of leadership or 400 points of renown up to a maximum of 4 bodyguards. The guards are taken from the non-wounded NPC/heroes/companions that player has in their party, in the order they appear in the party list...just as they would be taken for a bandit raid mission or some such." - Caba`drin
As you can see. Your recommendation is not very far-off from how it's originally coded. While I can understand the reasoning why Leadership, renown and a combination of the two seem to be fitting for such a feature, I personally like the idea of the core metric being Tactics. If for anything, the description of Tactics seems the most appropriate: "Every two levels of this skill increases your starting battle advantage by 1". Leadership is already a useful skill while Tactics needs better utilization. And using Tactics for bodyguards is a step in a direction, I feel, that would encourage it's usage in character builds. To me, it just makes more sense to use Tactics. The amount of bodyguards would increase by 1 for every 2 Tactics up to 10 which would allow for 5 bodyguards maximum.
I'm addressing this suggestion because I'm in the process of making this specific feature modular. Meaning that I'm disintegrating the feature from the base source and creating a modmerged version of it that can be applied to any new source without directly altering any source. This change mostly has meaning for modders because it will make it better organized which makes it easier to debug and easier to alter.

Originally posted by Wulf:

Originally posted by Myll:

My first Suggestion: Change the Bodyguard functionality of Companions so that it increases Bodyguard potential based on Leadership skill increases.

More Details: I don't know how the Bodyguard system currently works in this mod, but over the course of a full play through with this mod enabled, you go from an increasing amount of Companions that follow you into town/village to protect you against ambushes, the drunk in the bar, etc. At first it's just one, and it is the Companion listed highest up in your group order, and later in game there are two companions, and then 3 at the most by end game (unknown if you can bring 4 or more?). However it is coded now, I think it would be preferred if those bodyguard Companions were more understood as to "why" it happens, why there are only 1 or 3, and I think that could be done with the Leadership Skill. I would recommend that Leader is the core metric, with potentially a scaling up for every 2 levels of the skill. So it would look like this:
Leader 2: One Companion bodyguard.
Leader 4: Two Companions.
Leader 6: Three Companions. (and perhaps that is it for stacking, nothing further needed)

The bodyguard system integrated in Diplomacy is from Caba`drin. Here is a quote about it:
"As coded, the number of bodyguards available to a player is governed by their renown and leadership skill: 1 bodyguard per 3 levels of leadership or 400 points of renown up to a maximum of 4 bodyguards. The guards are taken from the non-wounded NPC/heroes/companions that player has in their party, in the order they appear in the party list...just as they would be taken for a bandit raid mission or some such." - Caba`drin
As you can see. Your recommendation is not very far-off from how it's originally coded. While I can understand the reasoning why Leadership, renown and a combination of the two seem to be fitting for such a feature, I personally like the idea of the core metric being Tactics. If for anything, the description of Tactics seems the most appropriate: "Every two levels of this skill increases your starting battle advantage by 1". Leadership is already a useful skill while Tactics needs better utilization. And using Tactics for bodyguards is a step in a direction, I feel, that would encourage it's usage in character builds. To me, it just makes more sense to use Tactics. The amount of bodyguards would increase by 1 for every 2 Tactics up to 10 which would allow for 5 bodyguards maximum.
I'm addressing this suggestion because I'm in the process of making this specific feature modular. Meaning that I'm disintegrating the feature from the base source and creating a modmerged version of it that can be applied to any new source without directly altering any source. This change mostly has meaning for modders because it will make it better organized which makes it easier to debug and easier to alter.

Your explanation and path to change seems logical.