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Question General Bug-Reports and Mod Review

Bikke

New Member
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This thread will detail my general impression of Sim Settlements, as well as the bugs I've encountered therein. Kinggath has repeatedly asked for impressions/reports, so here's mine. Please bear in mind that this is my raw reaction to years of experience with the mod; if there's something I don't seem to understand, or a concern you think is misguided, the fact that it's still an issue after years of fooling around in Sim Settlements probably means there's a conveyance issue.


Introduction

So, to kick things off. This is my fourth attempt at playing through Fallout 4; I ran into issues where the game would start CTDing with no error message after a while (whether I used mods or not), and no amount of reinstalling seemed to fix it, on my old PC. So I gave up on it. I started using Sim Settlements way back when plots automatically had foundations attached to them, there were no expansion packs or interior plots, etc., - basically, not long after it first came out. I always thought it was a fantastic idea; it created a somewhat new genre of game based on what Bethesda had put in place. With this mod and Salvage Beacons (which I consider indispensable to this playstyle), you really do feel like the vanguard/scout/hero of the commonwealth's settlers, clearing areas and sending back truckloads of supplies to build things out with. It was a good feeling, even as I ran into so, so many issues with plot placement (thankfully, interior plots and Place Everywhere have eliminated that niggle)

Over time, Sim Settlements kept expanding, and I had to restart my playthrough a couple of times due to mod instability and such. RotC came out, Industrial Revolution came out, and so on. I had serious problems with both, but I also seriously enjoyed certain features added by both. Conqueror came out, but I couldn't figure out how to make it mesh with my playstyle, so it has - so far - been completely ignored. And I guess that's what I'll get into first.
 
Mod Design

I feel like I'm one of the 'core' playstyle players Kinggath originally made the mod for, but eventually moved a bit away from. I may be incorrect in that. But essentially, I didn't want to do *less* with my settlements, I wanted them to demand *more* from me; I didn't pick up Sim Settlements because I thought settlement-building was a waste of time, but because the vanilla system is so easy to win at (turrets, generators, shops, sleeping bags under a roof - done). Sim Settlements promised to make things much more challenging, and with Maintenance Costs it's really paid off on that promise (with mixed results in some regards I'll get into).

In some regards, my interests in the mod have been a bit neglected while other things have been pursued; Rise of the Commonwealth seems to focus on those who don't want to get involved with settlements, for instance, as does Conqueror. I don't know how to really utilize either in a way that meshes with my scout-and-supply, build-and-tweak playstyle (though I got Conqueror anyway for the heavy ag plot, which supposedly unlocks without it now... but hasn't unlocked for me, with or without Conqueror, so the joke is on me, I guess).

Industrial Revolution was the only expansion pack that felt like it was really made for my playstyle. Hell yeah, let's have industries that build on each other and advance the tech-level of the whole commonwealth! Unfortunately, there are a few issues with how that's implemented. The opaque tech-tree makes it largely guess-and-check unless you look up the spoilers, and if you do, you find out you can just unlock building plans and skip any sort of interesting supply-chain or infrastructural management. I felt obligated to skip normal industry altogether and try to spam advanced plots everywhere just to feel out the tech tree as quickly as possible. Sorry, Kinggath - that's just a natural reaction to being confronted with that sort of big, unknown system. Once I decided to throw in the towel and look up the spoilers, I figured out what I should and should not be building. And yeah, that did lead to the general conclusion that I should just unlock the buildings I need and get those built - which sorta undermined the feeling of building up industrialization on a settlement-by-settlement basis, and the sense of organic tech progression. It just became a really roundabout way to get rare scrap and power.

I didn't entirely skip trying RotC, by the way. I did try to automate a few settlements - I even have two, Red Rocket and Greygarden, set to automated right now in my save. However, I watched as Red Rocket build 9 small martial plots (?!) and no farms (?!), 1 commercial plot, and so many unnecessary generators/turrets that it's costing hundreds of caps per day in excess maintenance costs. Keeping the lights on there has been a constant drain, all in hopes that, eventually, I can funnel enough scrap for it to upgrade and stop being a useless settlement. I've funneled them weapons and armor, but even with their insane defense value, settlers still die any time mobs wander into the settlement. Not a great look, and definitely didn't help me form a great impression of the expansion pack, even as I see videos of tours for the level 3/4 settlements that look great. I don't dare tear down or build anything in Red Rocket since any time I try to build anything, ROTC inevitably builds something over it and there are problems with the resulting layout.
 
Design Suggestion

What I'd like to see from Sim Settlements - my ideal version of it - pulls on the concepts introduced in Rise of the Commonwealth, Conqueror, and Industrial Revolution in a way that might be unexpected. I actually do like the idea of certain aspects of settlement-building being automated (such as the construction of perimeter walls - that's just dull busywork), and I really appreciated that Rise of the Commonwealth was able to add a lot of unique details to settlements that brought out their character and charm. My problem was that in trying to use the system to get the 'good bits', I had to go through the headache of funneling upgrade scrap to the settlement and dealing with the huge resource imbalances that RotC settlements seem inclined towards.

So what I'd like to see is this; I'd like to see a version of Sim Settlements that allows you to turn on a Rise of the Commonwealth-ish automatic upgrade system, but *doesn't* try to build out the entire settlement as such. Instead, what it does is build out a scaffold/skeleton of all of the 'important' pieces - exterior walls, and any particularly inspired and settlement-unique construction that will really bring character to the city. Enough of the city is left open for the player to freely drop foundations, plots, and so on - possibly with options from RotC to add certain things, like a large building in which to place interior plots, rather than building it from scratch with the ugly, generic pieces the workshop mode gives you. This is especially important to me, because I aim for 10 charisma and 20 settlers per settlement, and many RotC designs don't accommodate that many people - but in order to do so, I often have to make big, somewhat ugly/generic towers for folks to live in. I know a few Sim Settlements plot packs have plots that are meant to address this, but they don't tend to go tall enough or provide enough space.

So. Basically, you turn on this system, you see the framework, okay. You know where important bits will be built, so you can avoid them and build your settlement. The next part is industrialization - in the system I'm proposing, settlements have industrialization levels rather than generic city levels. What this means is that in order for a settlement to upgrade all of its special aspects, it needs a certain level of baseline industrialization. Ideally, I'd like to see this impact everything; residential plots, commercial plots, martial plots, etc., won't upgrade past a certain point until the city can actually support their power needs and provide sufficiently advanced tech to allow them to do so. Maybe you need to hit industrialization level 1 for regular plots to hit level 3, and then you can start building more advanced plot-types (like advanced industry and some sort of advanced commerce, recreation, and martial plots).

Industrialization is something I'd like to see happen on a per-settlement basis, and be strongly related to what kinds of resources you have available in that settlement. I feel like that was the idea behind the current Advanced Industry system, but it was thrown out, for some reason; it would be much more interesting if you needed a coal mine to provide coal resources to build a coal power plant, for instance, instead of upgrading from one to the other without the need for any kind of infrastructural maintenance. Upgrading your coal mine could also mean supporting multiple coal plants, or a bigger one - but not across settlement lines, as these supply-lines would be too busy and local for that. This means each settlement needs to be built up to increasing degrees of industrialization individually.

If you put these two ideas together, you get a system where the player is encouraged to let the game set up the initial framework, decide on an industrialization approach (in this example, coal) for a given settlement, and they start laying the groundwork for that (coal mines, basic industrial plots, etc.,) and as the settlement naturally expands, you see the residences, businesses, defenses, and general settlement framework advance as well, taking advantage of the new industrial resources available. I imagine every settlement would need, at a bare minimum, a materials supply (steel, wood, etc.,) and a power supply provided by their industry (hey, wood can do both! so can oil, with plastics, actually). At the extreme level, you would even see the type of advanced upgrading that occurs (the randomized clutter, what the outer wall is made of, etc.,) be based on what type of industrialization that settlement is hinging on. Over time, as the settlers become able to produce all-new materials rather than merely cobbling together what came before, settlements would get cleaner, more advanced, and more modern-looking. In theory.

Gameplay-wise, the important part (to me) is the emphasis on analyzing an individual settlement's available resources (you might limit what a given settlement is allowed to exploit, or it may just be a matter of space constraints) and then organically building out from there. Settlements with access to fast-moving water (rivers, or the tides at the Castle, for instance), could easily generate power and potentially access resources other settlements lack; somewhere like the Mechanist's Lair has access to more advanced tech for salvage and advancement purposes. That not only contributes to the individual flair of the settlements, it also presents more of a challenge to the player, and it avoids the current issue where instead of spamming generators/turrets, we now just throw down a martial plot and either a nuclear plant (if we've unlocked it) or we use an overpowered industrial-power plot (like Raider Power); in this system, there would be no escaping the logistical constraints.
 
Conqueror

I was actually pretty excited about this expansion, because I assumed (incorrectly) that it would focus on the Minutemen, and make military issues in Sim Settlements far more involved and interesting. It seems like there's a lot of systems in place for that (I notice a lot of plots say they provide side-benefits if the settlement is an outpost), but in practice it doesn't seem to have added much if you're playing the game the 'normal' way (if there's some way to use the outpost system in-tandem with normal settlement building, the intro videos for Conqueror didn't make that clear to me at all). I was particularly disappointed that there's still no way to automatically arm your settlers with all of the cool weapons/armor you ship home; Kinggath said this can't be done without the script-extender, but I use the script extender anyway, so why can't I get that functionality? I've also been disappointed that I still need to use the Get Off My Buildzone and similar mods to improve overall settlement functionality, when Sim Settlements could just as easily manage such things and let you tweak settlement attacks/raids (ROTC already redefines settlement attacker placement, for instance).

What I'd really want to do with Conqueror's feature-set is a bit off-beat, but it ties into the industrialization/city-level stuff I was talking about earlier. I noticed that in one of the upgraded settlements in ROTC, they use the cryogenic pods from Vault 111 as storage devices, and that reminded me of what I'd been wanting to see since way back when Fallout 4 first started; some way to stake a claim (an outpost, basically) in a part of the wasteland that isn't really settlement material. Right now, Conqueror focuses on turning your settlements (which are chosen for their viability for civilian living) into military enclaves, which feels wrong to me; I'd prefer a system where you can run local outposts out of a settlement, setting up minutemen positions in, say, Concord, to both salvage local material and to keep enemies at bay. Maybe that's asking for more than can realistically be done (I know about the old Conquest mod that has similar functionality, but as I understand it, it's quite buggy), but that's how I'd picture the minutemen/sole survivor handling the retaking of the Commonwealth in-general.

More to the point, I'd just like to see Conqueror's feature-set used to improve settlement attacks/raids. On the defensive side, this means being able to train, equip, and deploy your settlers (setting up pre-designated defensive lines and so on for settlement attacks), and it means raids that make sense for a settlement's location and situation (if a particular band of raiders lives nearby, that's who I want to see raiding that settlement, rather than supermutants migrating all the way to Red Rocket for some reason). If these enemy factions actually started to act like, well... *factions*, setting up outposts of their own, or occupying outposts in an area, such as the numerous raider camps in Boston or the supermutant camps in the outlying area, that would be interesting. You'd have something to raid with Conqueror's raiding system, and you'd get a sense you're waging an active war for the commonwealth (and if you don't wage it effectively, pretty soon your settlements will get overrun). I guess I'd like to see Conqueror, ironically, focus more on defense - but if it's possible for the player to take over these enemy outposts, then there's the conquest it's named for.
 
Consistency

I think the biggest single thing I'd like to see from Sim Settlements is design consistency. I got the Megapacks because I figured the plots therein were chosen by Kinggath for bug-free behavior, balance, and cohesive theming. Instead, I had people setting up raider-inspired, gorey homes in my settlements at random (??), power-plots that actually didn't produce power at all (raider power internal) or didn't radiate properly (tesla power internal), and not enough options in general to manage my settlements (I ended up spamming wind turbines all over the place to keep maintenance costs down while providing electricity, which... wasn't really all that fun). The outdoor Tesla power plot is just too weak to rely on, for instance, and the general bugginess/design clash of the other plots I was using made it feel like I had to reset my plots constantly. I found myself picking the same 3-4 plots (especially martial plots!) because they provided the best benefit to the settlement and had the least bugs/issues.

Of course, I read the Megapack descriptions. According to those, if you download the relevant settlement pack, it will override the megapack and you can get modern bugfixes and such. Sweet! So I did that.

Now I have two versions of many of these plots in my build-lists, and no idea which is the more recent one. Not so sweet.

I'm stuck in a situation where Sim Settlements seems to pose a strategic challenge, but I'm looking at Raider Power (25 power at level 1) vs Tesla Power (10 power at level 1, big happiness hit, but it doesn't take up as much vertical space) and I'm thinking, the only reason not to use raider power (even to replace the coal plant, since it gives more than 50 power at level 3) is roleplay.

Sim settlements desperately needs a curated list of balanced plots that provide consistent benefits at various sizes and levels, I feel. The vanilla list (no megapacks, no settlement packs) is too small, but the megapack lists aren't consistent, bug-free, or balanced enough to fill that role. Ideally, this list would allow you to set a settlement 'theme' (raider, scavver, railroad, tech-head, etc.,) and the plots would generally cleave to that culture, so you can avoid wild clashes that require hours of plot-policing.

On the topic of plot-policing, let's talk about internal plots. Kinggath, I love your work and I love internal plots, but for the love of all that's sacred, we need some way to specify that an internal plot has certain entrances/exits from the jump. In theory, in Sim Settlements, you throw down a plot and the game surprises you with what it builds. In practice, with internal plots, you skim over the list of plots (which may or may not bother explaining their entrance/exit configuration, and if they do, may not do so with consistent language) and pick one to avoid creating an impassable floor-plan. I don't want to pick the simple micro-bedroom plot for every room in my settlement, but that sure is the fastest way to avoid issues...

If internal plots could be separated by entrance/exit from the jump, we might see mod authors make alternate versions of their plots that fit these different configurations, too. That'd let players see more diversity, even within the confines of given floorplans.
 
Bugs

Well, I already mentioned the megapack plot override bug, the raider-power plot bug, the tesla power-plot bug, and probably a few others off the cuff, but here's a few others I've noticed. My maintenance costs don't decrease when I delete a turret/generator (I made another thread about it), so I have to manually recalculate it each time. I can literally place/pick up the same generator repeatedly and have the maintenance cost skyrocket.

Settlers seem to have no interest in actually attending their workplaces during workplace hours, which is a massive problem when I need to visit a doctor. I've taken to solving medical issues in the game with crafted medical items just because it can be such a pain to figure out where the doctor is hiding during business-hours.

Settlers seem to have no idea how to navigate internal floorplans whatsoever, and they just stand around looking stoned rather than interacting with entertainment objects. Whereas the weightbench I built is always in use, settlers at recreational plots just take up space, doing nothing.

Settlers don't occupy their martial plots very often, which has gotten some folks killed in raids. Also, not quite a bug, but sometimes I get annoyed seeing a settler use a pipe pistol (Who has time to give every single settler a minigun modded to shoot plasma-laced rounds?) when there's a modded sniper rifle prop on the desk in their martial plot. For that matter, martial plots that don't provide turrets/artillery are useless to me. I feel like a lot of mod authors think the defense score is all that matters; settlement raids exist, guys. Just sayin', if your martial plot doesn't provide actual defense, there is zero chance I will use precious plot space and labor on it. (Exception for minutemen guard force; a dude in power armor is always welcome)

Sometimes, plots will lag on changing plot-type, resulting in two overlapping plots existing. This is a minor quibble, but it was quite confusing. May be worth a look.

That's all I can remember for bugs, for now.
 
Actual Play Impact

I found myself not bothering to build up settlements because I was waiting to unlock nuclear power, because I ran myself out of scrap building power generators. I only started actually settling more settlements than Sanctuary once I got the overpowered Raider Power plot, since that allowed me to actually build up settlements with a little bit of breathing space; however, if I was forced to use the near-worthless interior power generation plots, I'd just avoid the settlement entirely.

I found myself avoiding agricultural plots early on (and using the vanilla farm system), because, let's face it, 2 food per plot at level 1 is hot garbage - transitioning to ag plots is something I can only pull off once I have enough people to spare some. Not quite the 'everyone farms until the settlement grows more advanced' idea Kinggath had supported originally, so it seemed worth mentioning.

I only built a salvage-beacon comm desk in Sanctuary because I couldn't spare the single labourer for it elsewhere. I probably can in a couple of places, now, but in general power-generation and farming take up a huge chunk of the populace, so I can only manage a couple of advanced industry/commercial plots as it is (and that's with 20 settlers). Abernathy Farm is the worst for this; I tried supplying them with power from the Tesla Power plot while I waited for a coal plant to get up and running, and I ended up having to spam wind generators anyway (ran out of aluminium again for the umpteenth time), and it ate up a big chunk of labor. Tenpines Bluff is just screwed; I used internal power-plots there and had to spam wind turbines out of all control, along with regular generators (huge upkeep costs ahoy) to keep it afloat while I wait for an advanced power plot to salvage it. I just settled the Castle, and I just threw down a raider power plot, even though I hate the aesthetics (love the tall windmill, hate the raider gore), in sheer frustration.

I made sure to get a level 3 general store in Sanctuary so I could buy enough aluminium to support all of the wind turbines I was using to transition to nuclear. Joke's on me; they don't sell aluminium shipments for some reason. FML. I realize that if I had spammed basic industry aluminium scrappers, it might have helped with that situation, but - see the issues I was having with labor as it is.

Supplies such as food, water, and scrap keep disappearing from my workbenches. No idea why. Even with a food/water surplus in Sanctuary they keep eating all of my supplies. I've only gone on a deranged power-armored rampage and slaughtered all of my own settlers in Sanctuary over it once. So far.

Not even related to Sim Settlements directly, but I turned on fast-travel in survival mode because I swear to god if I get attacked by raiders at USAF Olivia on my way to Tenpines Bluff one more time I'm going to use the console to nuke the place. I wish I could set up a minutemen outpost there. There's a huge quarry right nearby where we could get unlimited stone, come on guys.

I die a little inside every time I visit Red Rocket, realize they're still so far off from upgrading, and that I can't send them any scrap because it keeps disappearing. Then I put 500 more caps into the donation box and die a lot inside.

I don't really get excited about the advanced industrial progression anymore, though I'm interested in seeing how it comes down. The plots really are amazingly well-designed, and I do grin whenever I see a settlement build together in a really awesome-looking way.
 
Conclusion

Kinggath, I love your work, and this game just wouldn't be worth playing if not for Sim Settlements. I feel like there's more that needs to be done to tie it all together and make it hit right - there's some economic issues that need tweaking (I wish power plots upgraded meaningfully like ag plots, especially, instead of having to pivot from basic industry to advanced), and there's a lot of little issues I've mentioned here - but don't let that detract from the overall fact that, at this point, Fallout 4 is more your game than Bethesda's for anyone using your mods seriously. You've done an incredible job reimagining the gameplay loop, and between you and the various plot-authors out there you've facilitated creative and awesome creations. Thank you.

P.S.: Give us a plot to handle the salvage-team commo or have IDEK fold it into the logistics station or something. Raiders don't interact. Reeee.
 
This is a lot of stuff to digest.
I'll have to re-read it again tomorrow.

You put a lot of effort into this so I didn't want you to think nobody looked at it or seriously read it.
 
I've spent some more time going over my thoughts regarding the design, how some of the more outlandish things I suggested might be doable in a somewhat more manageable form, and how to articulate the general sense I've gotten from the mod and what I'd want from it. In other words, I can elaborate on what I've written here if anyone cares.
 
Been a week; did this get buried in other stuff?

Everyone who needed to see it saw it including KG. :good

The developers have a lot on their plates and they rarely provide feedback, but they do take all the suggestions into consideration. They do read them. I know.

:bye
 
Everyone who needed to see it saw it including KG. :good

The developers have a lot on their plates and they rarely provide feedback, but they do take all the suggestions into consideration. They do read them. I know.

:bye


Ah, gotcha. I wasn't sure if I should post anything more detailed/well-thought-out or if I should just let it drop. In any case, I hope that my whinging didn't cover up how much I appreciate everything you've all done.
 
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