Solved Outpost not upgrading to next level / Temporary happiness modifier

Even though my outpost still didn't upgrade to level 1, i found that the Temporary Adjustments are pretty well documented ingame within the Happyness Report's "Explanation":


In the meanwhile i also got times without a negative modifier and built (and powered and staffed) 3 recreational plots which claim to add over 200 happyness in the meanwhile (two level 3, one level 2), but they somehow don't. But that's the stuff for a different thread.

What's the solution here? I've seen this behavior over and over with Conqueror and have always had to resort to variations of cheating to beat the seemingly completely random and very permanent "temporary" happiness modifiers that I am unable to link to any in-game events whatsoever.

whisp said:

Certainly i had some losses when liberating villages. But even after a few days without fights (and deaths) i still have negative temporary modifiers. I'm not sure what is causing them, respectively how long they will stay.

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The negative modifier comes from 1) settler deaths and/or 2) settlement quests (like someone's been kidnapped, etc.)

In the case of settler deaths, the malus is reduced by 20% each day until the dirt farmers forget about their dearly departed. Getting this gone can take a week or so.

(If an outpost or vassal, building a Conqueror Funeral Pyre/Cemetery plot will help alleviate any death malus.)

In the case of quests, the malus will turn into a bonus once you successfully complete the quest.

whisp said:

In the meanwhile i also got times without a negative modifier and built (and powered and staffed) 3 recreational plots which claim to add over 200 happyness in the meanwhile (two level 3, one level 2), but they somehow don't.

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You have to divide the raw happiness produced by the plots by the your population.

One level 1 Rec plot produces 30 Happiness. If this settlement has just one settler, all 30 happiness is added to the settlement happiness total. If this settlement has 10 settlers, only 3 points are added to the settlement happiness total.

All happiness production works this way: Happiness produced divided by population.

It is much easier to be a benevolent leader in a settlement where 1 settler gets pampered.

It works in reverse as well: an iron mine reduces happiness by 10. In a settlement with just one settler this will be a flat minus 10 to settlement happiness. But with a population of 10, it's only -1 to total settlement happiness.

mnbv99 said:

What's the solution here? I've seen this behavior over and over with Conqueror and have always had to resort to variations of cheating to beat the seemingly completely random and very permanent "temporary" happiness modifiers that I am unable to link to any in-game events whatsoever.

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Keeping your Morale high in a vassal or outpost will help. Morale and happiness are related but they aren't the same. The best way to maintain high Morale is to adhere to the right role ratio: 2 warriors for every other role ratio in an outpost can, in my experience, make a single death mostly inconsequential.

And, as mentioned, building funeral pyres will help alleviate any penalty from settler/recruit deaths at vassals and outposts. If you are blood thirsty raider wiping out settlements to make outposts you will unfortunately get hit with the death penalty. The settlers will be gone, but you will still hear their cries.

Donating booze and chems to the City Plan desk will also help alleviate the death penalty. But the bigger your population the more you will have to donate to see any real effect. (This method stops working once total settlement happiness reaches 90.)

Wow, that's a super helpful write up, couldn't have been easy or quick to come up with and I really appreciate it, definitely getting a bookmark for repeated reference!

Unfortunately, what the OP was describing and what I think I see too as being the "normal" state of affairs is things *not* working according to the docs, that is, outposts seeming to be permanently stuck with very large, negative "temporary" modifiers that seem to have no triggering event and don't seem to fade as they should. According to the docs, an outpost involved in no Conqueror events for an in-game week should have either no modifier (if the 20% comes from original or the max) or a small modifier (if the 20% is recalculated daily after application). Because the whole thing is a completely opaque black box (one made more confusing by the known bugs of different UI elements showing conflicting and incorrect numbers), it's fairly hard to know what I am actually seeing, for example, is this temporary modifier I'm seeing actually half correct because I missed a warrior dying by falling off ledge while I wasn't looking.

mnbv99 said:

Unfortunately, what the OP was describing and what I think I see too as being the "normal" state of affairs is things *not* working according to the docs, that is, outposts seeming to be permanently stuck with very large, negative "temporary" modifiers that seem to have no triggering event and don't seem to fade as they should.

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I guess what I would ask is, in these outposts that seem stuck, what is your Morale like? Is the Morale bar full? Do you have any bonus morale arrows?

It's really very intransparent (like many other things, especially in conqueror). But yes, my outpost finally had enough happiness and upgraded, that's why i marked it solved. Admittedly, at least question 1 hasn't been fully answered. The ingame documentation states, that there's a penalty of 20 at the first day which then goes down "slowly over time". The funeral pyre helped indeed and in the meanwhile the outpost is constantly at high happiness. Thanks for the very good info @bullyrook.

Concerning the UI elements that show different numbers (Sim Settlement UI, Conqueror UI), i had the same problem too, but in the meanwhile it seems to be synchronous. Maybe it's coincidence, but it's synchronous after i solved a problem regarding heavy script-lag. (https://pcgamehaven.com/fallout-4s-stuttering-and-lag-issue-how-to-fix-them-nvidia/)