Striding Steeds – A Rideable Horse Race – 【Kenshi】

“The horses have been the companions of humanity for as long as the dirt has been dry.”
-a very old and wise person

This mod adds riding to Kenshi. You can buy mounts from three locations. New buildings, new riding-related items, new interior and exterior objects.
There is a quest you can do to become a horse thief. Yes, you can make some annoyed faction leaders!

Experience Kenshi like never before*, with the wind in your hair!

THE MOST REAL RIDING IN KENSHI since Sage Bulls

You can travel a lot faster, carry heavier loads and your loyal mount can even do martial arts!
DO NOTE: the riding speed depends on the athletics of the horse. They DO need to train that so you can ride faster.

HOW TO
1) Acquire a mount (or use a start with a mount)
2) Select the mount
3) Right click the rider-to-be and pick up

You do not need a saddle to ride, but it looks better with one.

NOTE NOTE NOTE
Recommend to have RE_Kenshi installed
Download RE_Kenshi here

If you move the rag manually to data/ragdoll, then you need to also change the link in the race’s FCS file to point to my ragdoll. With RE_Kenshi you do not need to do either. But you may, if you want to or cannot use RE_Kenshi for some reason.

This mod DOES NOT change the FCS vanilla ragdoll links.

You can obviously opt to NOT use the special ragdoll/Re_Kenshi, which means the rider’s hands will flail uncontrollably.

INFO
Special horse related buildings and objects are in the CBT Striding Steeds category,
storage items are under vanilla Storage.

Horse market locations:
Border Zone: east from The Hub, near ruins on top of a hill.
Vain: a new town Serenity, the southmost tip of Vain
Okran’s Pride: Okran’s Blessing right outside Blister Hill, south side

LOAD ORDER, IMPORT AND CONFLICTS
Import or a new game required.

Load animation patch mods after this mod. See discussion for known conflicts. Many idle pose mods may conflict.

Correct Loading Order:
Striding Steeds – A Rideable Horse Race
Many CBT Animations to Multiple Species Patch
Any custom modded Race that is included in the MAMSP

I have added one or two small shacks to many cities, for the purpose of spawning cavalry squads etc. It IS naturally possible you may get doubled buildings, if you do, please report it here in Bug Reports discussion. Thank you.

Will conflict with any other vechicle or rideable animal mod. You can kinda use many, if they all work with the same riding pose, but your last enabled riding mod’s riding/carrying pose will override all the previous ones. A PLAYER CAN ONLY HAVE ONE CARRYING/RIDING POSE ACTIVE DURING ONE GAME SESSION.

CUSTOM RACES
This mod adds several new animations. Mostly fluff, like brushing the horses. The main animation/pose is the riding pose you will need to assign to the custom race yourself (if the race is not included in the animations patch I made). Without it you still can ‘ride’, the vanilla pose just is crookedineverwhichway. See discussions for the list of already made patches.

Multispecies animation patch available: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3380056396
Includes races from couple hundred popular race mods, hundreds of individual humanoid races.

KNOWN ISSUES
[FIXED]
[x] – The rider’s hands flap uncontrollably while riding A CUSTOM RAGDOLL INCLUDED for Re_Kenshi users
[x] – The horses have a portrait image
[x] – The horse husk DOES NOT appear in the background or on top of some of the squad members, or buildable menu
[x] – The horse cart wheels rotate
[x] – Game does not crash when NPCs talk to a horse

[UNFIXABLE]
– Riding pose is the exact same pose as the shoulder carry (unfixable, this is a Kenshi limitation)
– An unconscious character is carried by a mount sitting up (see above)
– Some of the horses animations are rough, it turns out this is a limitation of keyframes run by Kenshi’s engine
– Short characters ride too high, tall ones too low (unfixable)
– Underwear shows through some pants when riding. You’ll need an invisibility body part map, like the community part map. Did not include one, because a race can have only one of these active.
– Characters riding cannot fight (this is a game engine limitation)

[WARNINGS]
– The game crashes when a mount pick ups an animal character UNFIXABLE requires a custom ragdoll for EVERY vanilla AND modded animal. It just cannot be done to include every other creature there is and will be. It would be too complicated to maintain a list of animal races I have made a new ragdoll for. It is just easier to say ‘do not pick up animals’.
– If you prospect with a mount it crashes your game. I was hoping this would be fixed with the portrait issue, but alas that was not. It might just be all the non-vanilla bones I added. If, then this is unfixable. I will continue to investigate this.
-Some mod conflicts can crash the game, see discussions.

[NOT SURE WHAT I SHOULD DO]
-The horses have so low skill on robotics, they will end up killing your robots. Do not recommend giving the horse any repair kits XD

MODDERS
The horse mesh is copyrighted, I do not own it. Everything else is made by me and available to use for modding.
Modders resource for horse accessories available: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3376324330

Q&A;

Q: Why did you not make the riders to be able to fight while riding?
A: Not my choice. By the game engine mechanics a person being carried is unconscious. It does not matter if a human or a horse does the carrying.

Q: The horse does not fall down or start to crawl when both front legs are amputated. Why?
A: This is because in game mechanics the front legs are considered arms

Q: What? Horses eat meat and fish? Unrealistic!
A: Even tho horses are classically categorized as herbivores, they -can- eat meat and fish protein as a supplement, and they actually need some if the paddlock does not grow certain plants, I am 100% sure those do not grow in Kenshi’s arid landscape. Plus preventing them from eating meat, would inevitably lead to all modded races not being able to eat meat, because Kenshi’s system does not allow one race from being excluded from eating an item. It allows only restricting everyone, and then allowing said food for each race one by one. So, if I restrict the meat, all modded races would stop eating meat as well.

Q: What? Horses talk now? Unrealistic!
A: No they don’t. But you need to use some suspension of disbelief and imagine any humanoid present speaking on the behalf of the horse in certain situations.
I have made it so a horse cannot initialize a conversation, but some NPCs still want/need to target horses. Fe. dust bandits and gate guards.

And as the player probably is having all their humanoids ride, the bandits have to target the horses, or else riding a horse would give you plot armor against bandits. I contemplated several options how to make them more immersive, but came to the conclusion it would not give anything more to the player by adding ‘horse says neiiigh on all of the options… like how would you know which is a ‘go ahead and check’ and which is offering a bribe? Especially if they have a rider, who would naturally be the one speaking.

DO NOTE, that horses do not partake into any biome arrival conversations, so if ya wanna hear your characters speak, you need to have people walking on region crossings.