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December 2018 Specifics

kinggath

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28 through the 28th

Starting with the December contest, I'll be announcing the next settlements on the last day of the previous contest. Which will give you a full month to work on each build!

The Contest mod with the updated Check my Settlement Tool for the latest rules will go up on the 29th (want to ensure everyone wrapping up on the 28th still has the correct ruleset in place in the mod).


Settlement Options


-Finch Farm
-Graygarden


Prizes

Prizes will continue! With t-shirts for top 3 and gog/steam games to the winner!

For future contests, I've also opened up the possibility of people donating directly to the prize pool, so we can continue to offer more interesting things to you folks for all of your effort.


Special Requirements

Each round, we'll have some requirements of your City Plan. Sometimes it will be specific items, special rules, or even themes, see below for current special requirements.

- Must have at least 15 plots. They can be any combination of types and classes.
- Must have at least one of each plot type. The types are: Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, Martial, Recreational, and Residential. (Advanced Industrial is considered a class of Industrial so it counts!)
- Must support at least 11 settlers, but no more than 15. That means a job and bed for each settler (from plots or otherwise)
- **Use the Highway** - Special new feature for December! Each of these settlements has a highway running through it - make use of it somehow and ensure your settlers have a path to get up there.


General Requirements

The following requirements will likely apply to every month's contest.

- Must have a Recruitment Beacon in each level.
- Must have a City Planner's Desk in each level.
- Can only use items from the base game, Sim Settlements, or those unlocked by the Project Blueprint mod from the City Planner's Toolkit.




Pick your settlement from the list above and GO GO GO!
 
- Must support at least 11 settlers, but no more than 15. That means a job and bed for each settler (from plots or otherwise)
I have some concerns with regards to this rule and Graygarden.

Graygarden comes with six robots, and while they can technically be assigned to agriculture plots, they continue to run their default farm package. They are very happy to continue trimming plants that no longer exist.

It would be unwise to remove the robots from those jobs, regardless of how inefficient it is for food production. (31 produced food, vs an optimal 36, or 72 from plots)

A bigger concern is that they simply don't use beds. The game only requires me to add 7 beds to the settlement to be happy with 15 total settlers (6 robots + 7 blow-ins). Do you require beds for the robots?

- **Use the Highway** - Special new feature for December! Each of these settlements has a highway running through it - make use of it somehow and ensure your settlers have a path to get up there.

Without DLC many, many settlers are going to fall off stairs, and some of the ugliest, jankiest, pathways are going to be build up to them. "Hey how are y..." settler falls and breaks a leg.
 
Beds are not needed for robots. The plot requirement is total plots, you do not have to have 2 plots per settler. The goal of the plot requirement is just to ensure a reasonable number of plots appear in the design so that it feels like a Sim Settlements City.

There are many stairs in the Project Blueprint mod, they are all navmeshed.
 
Graygarden comes with six robots, and while they can technically be assigned to agriculture plots, they continue to run their default farm package. They are very happy to continue trimming plants that no longer exist.
Isn't the plant trimming, the Mr Handys using sandbox markers? There are a few settlements with invisible markers like that which it would be really nice to be able to delete.
I like to keep Graygarden as an all robot settlement, seems right with other settlers going on about it being 'run by robots'. Although it would probably be really tricky though to create a reliable city plan just for robots, without requiring some settings tinkering by the player.
 
Isn't the plant trimming, the Mr Handys using sandbox markers? There are a few settlements with invisible markers like that which it would be really nice to be able to delete.
Yes, yes it would. I should investigate and see if those markers are picked up by a transfer settlements export.

I like to keep Graygarden as an all robot settlement, seems right with other settlers going on about it being 'run by robots'. Although it would probably be really tricky though to create a reliable city plan just for robots, without requiring some settings tinkering by the player.
The hardest part of that is managing happiness needed to upgrade, if needs are on. WSFW has a perfect solution to it, and Industrial City has plots to help with the robot happiness, and production. However given that the city plan contest targets the lowest common denominator, ie XBox 1 + no DLC + no mods, we need to take into account human settlers for the contest.

We are free to try an all robot plan outside of the competition, and that would make a fun intellectual challenge.
 
Yes, yes it would. I should investigate and see if those markers are picked up by a transfer settlements export.
To follow up on this. These are IDLE in game, not FURN like with human NPC. So, to remove them I would have to edit the settlement, either linking them to a scrapable object, or simply deleting them. Either way, it would not be suitable for the contest.
 
Maybe throw in a few shrubs or potted plants, so their idle thing, looks like they're actually doing something immersive?
 
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