Thanks all! Been tinkering with this all day following the Neeher tutorial, and managed to turn Bedford into a functional settlement - was able to scrap, build, and send settlers to it. The first pass through was a test and I think some of the other links given will refine my understanding; once I get something a bit more than functional I'll probably upload it to Nexus as my first mod. Really appreciate all the help!
Before publishing I make sure to use
xEdit to QuickAutoClean, make sure that
Precombine/PreVis are not broken by overrides to vanilla/DLC REFRs,
Compact FormIDs to offer the settlement as an ESL flagged ESP. I think this is important because it saves an ESP slot for everybody, ensures FormIDs remain consistent for everyone(Important when/if City Plans enter the mix) and also because users will inevitably do it anyways on their end, likely causing issues. Compacting after install on a live game will break all functionality and will actually corrupt the settlement index for them breaking functionality everywhere, renaming to Settlement.esl can break functionality that can just work for Settlement.esp flagged as light, City Plans made for the uncompacted version won't work because of changed FormIDs/different versions in the mix, etc. I try to make sure big changes won't need to happen after publishing. This avoids a lot of "false positive" bug reports on your settlement, City Plan mods made for your settlement and possibly also on Sim Settlements.
My test process for settlements:
- Using PBP, doing cqf kgpbp settlers 5. It will pop up with an error if there are certain problems with the settlement such as no assigned Location. Can settlers be moved to another settlement, and can settlers be moved to the new one?
- Try building several plots. Certain mistakes will cause plots to be stuck in perpetual construction. Seeing if the settlement numbers look correct if I put a generator and build an Ag plot. Can settlers navigate to the plot?
- Try raiding it with Conqueror
If there are quests in the chosen area, can you still do the quests while the settlement is installed and some stuff having been built there? This can be a variable amount of time depending on how much is going on in the chosen area and how far with testing you are willing to go.
- The big ones to ensure to test for are stuff like Fallout 4 Main Quest on any routes, Sim Settlements Conqueror's Jammer storyline, since these being broken can cripple the game by making MQ/Conqueror quest progression impossible for the save.
- Notable base game/DLC side quests are also important to test for
- If you're willing, testing for major quest mods like Thuggysmurf's mods, The Machine & Her by Nika Cola, The Bleachers by MunkySpunk, Crime & Punishment by Flashy, (all hyperlinked for easy reference) etc, if they have any using the same area can be great to test for if everything continues to work. In an ideal case the settlement causes no issues for any of these, since immersion focused players are likely to use the combination of Sim Settlements, custom settlement locations and major quest mods. Example load order.
- Radiant quests (less important, and usually less likely to break)
#1 really important to check for and solve, if it happens that any MQ or Jammer's storyline takes place at the location. If I can't solve an MQ or Kinggath quest breakage caused by a WIP settlement I would probably scrap the settlement / totally relocate it. #2/3 it's great to be able to solve but ideally at least a compatibility note, although there are so many quests that it can be difficult to test for them all and just know which major quest mods use which cells. #4 Radiants I generally don't worry about, have tested for Radiants a few times and generally they just worked anyways. All testing ideally done from a fresh new game or at least one that hasn't had older versions of the settlement installed plus never had anything uninstalled mid playthrough.
Can the quest problems (if any are found) be solved or is it highly difficult or not possible? If not solvable can the settlement be adjusted so things will work, ie changing up the affected cells? I try to look into the technical side like this first before doing aesthetics/polishing up so that way it can be a much easier decision to change up which cells I will use. I spend most of the time before publishing ideally since certain issues cannot be resolved on an ongoing game, meaning the users would need to rollback or start a new game. If the settlement doesn't register correctly or if it alters data that a vanilla quest relies on, those kind of issues even when fixed on the settlement ESP will remain unfixed for ongoing saves that used the previous version.
I do "Scrap Version" as a secondary file by having the main file not break precombines and having an optional "
(Not recommended for use by most users) Scrap Addon" plugin that overrides the original to break it, for the people who want to scrap everything no matter what. This way the core settlement plugin is the same for everybody so avoids making City Planners have to consider supporting multiple versions for different iterations of the settlement, which is another big reason why I just do ESP flagged as ESL so it's just 1 core plugin. City Planners who are using broken precombine version(Unlikely, due to the typically severe performance hit) can simply use xEdit to make both plugins be required. Scrap Addon definitely optional to create, though people will probably request it.
