Chronic Issue with assigning/moving settlers

Hello Sim Settlements forum!

First time poster, long time follower of the mod.

I've run into an issue with the game and have read and done what I can to fix it based on what I've read. I'd consider myself at least average in terms of programming and fixing the technical side of things, so I may need a bit more "every day person" translation.

So, here's the issue:

Both in Sanctuary (33 settlers) and Red Rocket (12), I'm running into an issue with settlers not wanting to be assigned to objects or be moved to other settlements. I admit I messed around with "scrap everything" but removed that when I saw it can be problematic. Despite seeing all of the items I deleted return, it did not seem to fix anything. Unless it's a Sim Settlements plot, they may or may not do anything.

I have attempted the following fixes:
1) Run the "tai" console command to relieve script issues. Nothing resolved.
2) Messed with the papyrus command--- it only seemed to mess things up and still is causing issues in Fallrim.
3) Cleaned unattached instances in Fallrim numerous times. I have 41 script instances running, so I assume that's high based on what I've read in the wiki, but I admit my lack of technical knowledge doesn't help understanding this.
4) Removed any conflicting mods that I think may be causing issues. The only one I'm keeping is "Tidy Settlers", and I'm thinking that could cause similar issues to "scrap everything" as they are similar in their purpose.
5) Deleted several plots in hopes that would reduce the scripts running. No change.


I am also dealing with the game randomly crashing at certain points after fast traveling. It just freezes and crashes.

Can anyone help? I'm trying other fixes but not having the greatest luck...

First some basics
Removing mods mid game can be problematic in it self, so removing Scrap Everything might well cause new problems in it self. I play with SE myself and it seem to work. Maybe I leave it our on my next playthrough, but I won't remove it mid game. As you noted, you'd want to limit the number of mods that edit the same resource, i.e. the settlement cell. I've never used Tidy Settlers myself, I understand that you need to do some ini-hack to make it work, and that ini-hack might cause problem.

The basic problem here is that no one has the resources (time) to really test all the billions of combinations all the mods cause. So we're all left to trail and error. If you install and uninstall a lot of mods, that can cause crashes. If you remove a mod, you should revert back to a save made before you installed the mod. Even that might not help, there may be residue in the game files (altered/missing data) from the removal of a mod. Playing around with the load order can solve some stability issues. This could be worth a read: FO4 mod list and load order guide

Sim Settlement
With Fallrim you should take care before "cleaning" unattached instances in FO4 saves. The FO4 engine behaves a bit different than Skyrim in regards of unattached stuff.
You really shouldn't have more than 0-7 active scripts in your savefile. Myself I ran up 78 before deleting those saves and starting over from one that had a low number of active scripts (6). Building slower, giving the scripts more time to complete, sorted that out for me. I've spoken to Kinggath about this, and he's had a look through my saves, and I know that this is being looked at. Hopeful we'll get some optimised script handling in 3.x.x.

Btw, deleting plots require new scripts to run so that won't help much...


Edit - maybe my advise wasn't all that clear, it's this: use Fallrim to find your last save with a manageable amount of active scripts (<8), and start over from that save.

Thanks for the reply.

So there's really no way to preserve my current game progress? I will have to start over from an earlier point?

I'm not entirely against starting over as I assumed it would have to be something I did if the game "broke" again, just didn't want to repeat a whole bunch.

By what you've described, even just turning off mods may not help much at this point.

You can try waiting, i.e. not building stuff, or changing plots, for a long period of time, say 30+ minutes, hoping that the script build up clears it self up (it should be on a "none Fallrim cleared" save though). But the game can't be paused for the scripts to run, so no "wait" on stool or beds and no pip-boy or menus open. Running around for that time doing meaningless stuff, as you might need to discard it there's no use progressing the game, can be a bit much. And might not resolve the script build up anyhow. It sure didn't for me. I don't know, do some lengthy in-game geography scouting.
If you save after running around for a bit, you can always use Fallrim to check if the active script count is going down.

I'll try running around. I went through a few of my saves, found one where I went a bit nuts on the Sim Settlements had 300+ scripts. The only other one had 12, as it had 4 houses and two agriculture plots.

What do you mean by "none fallrim cleared" save?

A save that hasn't been cleaned with Fallrim. I'm afraid that using Fallrim to clean FO4 saves might actually brake 'em. But I'm no expert on that. Ther's little info out there on how Fallrim and FO4 work together. Sure you can open up a FO4 save and look through it, but the tools in Fallrim are for Skyrim. As far as I'm been able to find out. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

@Joshua Flood please tell us how you fare. Would be of interest to know if one can get out of the backed up script hole by waiting them out. For me 60-80 didn't work, all my other saves had less than 8, and they worked. We don't know where the point of no return is. Also of interest would be which active scripts you have, and how many of each.

Thanks for all the info @NikVilKok I will continue to try a few fixes. A few settlements are tragically bad. Right now I'm just touring the commonwealth with "Tai" in the console command. I'll save and run it through fallrim to see if this scripts decreased.

I was shocked when I saw one of them had over 300. I don't think I've heard kinggath mention the possibility of the settler issue in videos before, but I've only caught about 75% of them. Maybe it'll be addressed in this new update?

@NikVilKok I downloaded the LOOT app to try to figure out if my load order could be adjusted. I'm still learning how to use it, but found a few instances like this:

DLCRobot.esm FO4Edit found 45 ITM records, 38 deleted references and 1 deleted navmesh. A cleaning guide is available here.

While it may not be connected to my Sim Settlements issue (or it may be?), could that explain why my game would crash when I was using the robot editor?

I strongly recommend not cleaning Core or DLC files.

So I have tried a few random fixes...aaaaaaaand I cannot get any settlers at any settlement to respond to any sort of assignment. They will not move to a new settlement, become provisioners, or start a new job.

They're like me when I graduated college.

Any ideas?

Better pay???

Have you reverted back to one of your "12 or less active scripts" saves and tried it from there?

I'd load that puppy up in fallrim tools and see how many scripts are active.

I'm interested in this as well, I'm having the same problem on this playthrough. I've completed the main quest, plus FH and Nuka. A couple observations...since I started, there have been half a dozen game updates from Beth. So any mod with a version dependency like F4SE, looksmenu...etc needed updates. Plus updates for SS and add on mods get updated as issued. My guess is that there is something baked into the savegame that is causing it.

parrotheada1a said:

I'm having the same problem

Click to expand...

Have you checked your active scripts count?

NikVilKok said:

Better pay???

Have you reverted back to one of your "12 or less active scripts" saves and tried it from there?

Click to expand...

@NikVilKok Yes, so I do have that one saved if I want to entirely restart. Everything works fine on that one. I just have had a particularly enjoyable experience on this current run through, and would be sad to lose it. I've found settlements and random events that I didn't get on my first play through. Granted I can find them again, but this would be the second time I've had to restart this current character. Granted, I'm a bit wiser now and would build a lot less.

Sadly, I'm concerned about whether or not I should use Sim Settlements to even a minor capacity. My save that has 12 scripts in it only has about 10 plots or so. That seems high just for one settlement and I'm still at the beginning of that game.

10 isn't many at all. If I'm not mistaken there is one that has over 100 plots in one settlement. Or am I remembering wrong now @NikVilKok

So, now I'm trying to see if there's been progress. I go to use Fallrim just to see if there's been improvements in the script, and I'm getting this:

I have literally no idea what this means. I think I may have modified the Papyrus section as a fix once, but I reinstalled my game last night after getting an additional glitch--- I think it's one on Bethesda's end. I'm trying to set up a recruitment beacon at Kingsport Lighthouse and it is not recognizing that I have done so.

So... I'm unsure of what to do. Looks like starting over is the way to go?

NikVilKok said:

Have you checked your active scripts count?

Click to expand...

Never did. Point me in the right direction please?

parrotheada1a said:

Never did. Point me in the right direction please?

Click to expand...

You'll need the Fallrim tool (it's on Nexus). Open up your save with that and look for active scripts.

(Please beware that most tips for Fallrim are for Skyrim. Do not use the clean tools, as an example.)