Allow headquarters to build itself, at least in part

[SunniJB]

I feel like the unique selling point of SS (1 and 2) is that you can let your settlements build themselves. Like, "watch the wasteland rebuild organically, give your settlers the tools they need to care for themselves, get unique and impressive settlements without having to hand-place everything", that kinda thing.

And I find the initial gameplay of HQ to be really satisfying. I love cleaning up this place and seeing it slowly get better. But it requires a degree of management and hand-placement that the rest of the mod brags about getting rid off, and as a player that really enjoys just tipping the first domino and watching the magic happen (with some help in the form of resources), that felt pretty jarring.

It would be nice if HQ had some things that could be done without your input. Like how the settlement settings allow you to set the plots and city plans to auto-upgrade, maybe HQ could have settings like "automatically choose room type upon cleaning", "automatically assign staff based on SPECIAL stats" and "automatically assign unassigned staff to facilities"?

Like, I just got here, I have no idea if Women's Bathroom SE on the Office Floor should be an armor workshop or not. I don't even know what that does. And if I figure it out later and want to change it, I have to navigate the three labyrinths that are HQ and try to find the (often missable) plaque placed outside the door. If I can even remember which door it is, or find it in the overview.

 

[GuardianMF]

This debate is reminiscent of the talk about automation after Chapter 1’s release. Lots of features were missing, including leveled plans, compared to what we had in the 3-in-1 version. The amount of manual effort that was needed to manage your settlements and keep it together was too much, but it got way better with time. The promise of Chapter 3 mechanics to bypass some current hurdles to progress is very appealing to me, as I find myself less motivated after each restart (last save was plagued by the molerat tunneling bug, notably). As someone who hasn’t made it to HQ yet, I’ll take a hint from this thread and I’ll spend the countless hours currently required to experience what the mod has to offer (without cheats) on some PS5 games…

Oh, and an upvote from me.

 

[SunniJB]

This debate is reminiscent of the talk about automation after Chapter 1’s release. Lots of features were missing, including leveled plans, compared to what we had in the 3-in-1 version. The amount of manual effort that was needed to manage your settlements and keep it together was too much, but it got way better with time. The promise of Chapter 3 mechanics to bypass some current hurdles to progress is very appealing to me, as I find myself less motivated after each restart (last save was plagued by the molerat tunneling bug, notably). As someone who hasn’t made it to HQ yet, I’ll take a hint from this thread and I’ll spend the countless hours currently required to experience what the mod has to offer (without cheats) on some PS5 games…

Oh, and an upvote from me.

If it helps, the mod has absolutely blown me away up until HQ. In my opinion, HQ introduces a relatively complicated system too fast and asks the player to navigate it in order to make choices they do not know the meaning of yet.
But the 30-ish hours I've played before reaching HQ (not strictly with SS2 content, I was also mucking about) have been fantastic. The new quests and characters are so well written. The quest design reminds me a lot of FNV. There's quests where you need to use your skills, find components, make your own choices through action instead of just through a menu. There is a quest towards the end of the current content where you're taken out of your comfort zone by losing your gear, which I found so super fun. There's so many little side things to do, places to go and people to meet, things that are added by SS2 without being part of the main quest, and I adore all of it.

Yes, HQ is not enjoyable for me right now. But HQ is a teeny tiny portion of the huge amount of content SS2 has right now, and I would 100% recommend experiencing it. If you get to HQ and decide you wanna wait for an update before trying it, you can just do that.

And it's worth noting that there's plenty of people who already really like the HQ gameplay.

 

[yaugie]

Having given it some more thought, I think my own complaints about HQ can be boiled down to a couple of points.

1. It is a LOT of new mechanics that work unlike the rest of the game, all thrown at you at once, with little explanation outside of some steps to copy and never being told WHY.
2a. Despite it being framed like you are now a meta manager and leaving the details to your staff, in practice it feels like the opposite - you still decide EVERYTHING, and your staff are just graphical, interchangeable representations of numbers.
2b. On that note, your "leadership style" that Jake in particular talks up, has no practical effect or relevance apart from whether the Library is on the first or second floor. Now a lot of that will be dealt with when "Addon Packs" for HQ start coming out; I just worry that will end up like World Repop where nobody ever releases anything for it. In a practical sense - there is no player choice to it all, no weighing up pros and cons, or considering of opportunity costs of NOT doing certain things.
3. There is no real "reward" for pushing through and completing it, apart from the building looking nicer. By the time you can get things like fully upgraded Labs and range expansion for Caravans and deploying City Plans remotely you dont even need them anymore. Nothing actually useful by the stage in a playthrough you can GET to them.

Now I can see the potential of the system, dont get me wrong. It just feels so drastically overtuned for costs but undertuned for benefits as it stands right now - to the level of there being no real POINT to "completing" it beyond what the quests require, even more so if you have Disease switched off.
THAT is why I like the idea of automating its construction - The Player's input is meaningless to the process anyway, and you arent missing anything you would notice apart from busywork. You are already little more than a Drinking Bird clicking on 'Next' anyway, might as well take that step out entirely.

NOTE: I actually LIKE purely mechanics driven gameplay - I have more hours logged in Satisfactory than anything else this entire year - but HQ just feels... pointless and contrary to what it says it is. Satisfactory also doesnt lie to your face about what it is, either.

And no I will not be saying what I would add or change; experience has taught me that saying what I want guarantees it wont ever happen, unless someone else can get credit for it

 

[SarahAda]

[...] The Player's input is meaningless to the process anyway, and you arent missing anything you would notice apart from busywork. [...]

i have to admit i am coming around on this one. i enjoy the HQ play and think it's a positive addition, but the "feels too consequential to get started, but is actually not consequential at all" is probably exactly the wrong balance to strike for the first impression, and it seems like a LOT of people are getting stuck on that and not getting over it before they see through the magic trick and it becomes "just graphical, interchangeable representations of numbers".

i may be a very bad example, because my first HQ game crashed just after getting doctor in the house done, and i've had two games died about halfway through HQ builds, and only now on my 5th or 6th time through the HQ do i fully understand whats going on and see the "it's chill" "no consequences" "take your time, figure it out, it'll be fine" model, but i don't see through it enough that it's all just shapes and lines and numbers go up.

some work probably needs to be done to reframe the inital HQ moment so players aren't hit with the feeling of floating over the abyss of systems they don't understand. i really don't know how to make it feel like it's safe to explore at your own pace, but i am becoming more and more convinced that disconnecting the main jake plot storyline at or around How To HQ is going to need to happen. some people are just going to get off the bus there, and we probably don't want to lock them out of that future content.

 

[SunniJB]

some work probably needs to be done to reframe the inital HQ moment so players aren't hit with the feeling of floating over the abyss of systems they don't understand. i really don't know how to make it feel like it's safe to explore at your own pace, but i am becoming more and more convinced that disconnecting the main jake plot storyline at or around How To HQ is going to need to happen. some people are just going to get off the bus there, and we probably don't want to lock them out of that future content.

I think it just needs to be introduced slower. For example, starting the player out with "this is the command menu, it's like the workshop menu. Here you can command your employees to do stuff. How about we get this place cleaned up?" and then you ONLY have access to facilities, and ONLY to the cleaning.

I think the learning curve on the initial settlement gameplay is perfect. Introduce three plots to begin with, very slowly introduce new plot types over time, often locked behind quests. Have an option in the holotape to unlock everything so you can play with it right away if you want to.

 

[SarahAda]

For example, starting the player out with "this is the command menu, it's like the workshop menu. Here you can command your employees to do stuff. How about we get this place cleaned up?" and then you ONLY have access to facilities, and ONLY to the cleaning.

isn't this EXACTLY what Mansfield's tutorial during How To HQ does? it tells you to how to designate a janitor, give you exactly one project to clean one room, fast forwards that room to completion, gives you mansfield's office and only that one room to construct, fast forwards that room to completion, then calls you over to have a conversation with Lupe and Theresa about the logistics department.

unless everyone who's complaining about systems overload is skipping this quest then it's clear this needs to be expanded, but i am unsure what changes are going to be required to get over that systems thalassophobia.

 

[SunniJB]

isn't this EXACTLY what Mansfield's tutorial during How To HQ does? it tells you to how to designate a janitor, give you exactly one project to clean one room, fast forwards that room to completion, gives you mansfield's office and only that one room to construct, fast forwards that room to completion, then calls you over to have a conversation with Lupe and Theresa about the logistics department.

unless everyone who's complaining about systems overload is skipping this quest then it's clear this needs to be expanded, but i am unsure what changes are going to be required to get over that systems thalassophobia.

Yeah, and I thought the new HQ system looked pretty fun up to that point. Facilities is introduced, then cleaning, then construction. Then establishing trade routes. Then recruiting settlers, then administration.

But around the point where I was supposed to be recruiting settlers it started being overwhelming. Like, I don't have more room, I need to build more beds. I open the construction menu I was just introduced to and oh my god there's so much fucking stuff in here. None of it is dorms, though. How do I unlock dorms? I don't know, I keep cleaning. I am able to make a newly cleaned room be a dorm, great. I lack scrap logistics. What are scrap logistics? Is that the energy of my logistics workers? Is that the amount of scrap I have? I try to look for the tutorials, but the "tutorials" tab of the holotape is just for plots. Where do I find more scrap? Do they need somewhere to store it all? I saw a storage closet in the build menu, hold on--I build a storage closet, my scrap has not gone up. I open the engineering menu. Holy shit, there's like four subcategories and I don't know what to do with any of them. But, hey! There's that power room thingy that was in my quest log! I can't build it, because I need scrap. Is that... Different from scrap logistics? I leave it for now. I look through the options, trying to get familiar with it. I can put in some lamps, but that requires power. I don't have any power yet. Unless they mean engineering power instead of electrical power? Why would I build lamps? What does that do? I get back to the facilities menu. I hit construct, and I think I've accidentally gone back to the top layer of the command thing because it looks the same. Oh shit, I can construct things for all the facilities? I can make Aiden a bedroom? Nice! I try to assign more workers to be in security, but it says "max 1 settler" and after I assign one settler it tells me there are no jobs. Ok, whatever. Two rooms I set to cleaning are now done, and Aiden's bedroom is an option for both of them. But I thought I already built him a bedroom? Wait, is head security office different from head security quarters? Didn't I make that in the tutorial? Can I build two of them? Where IS any of this stuff, anyway? Oh, wait, the stats just updated, I have more facilities energy again. I decide to clean more rooms. They all ask me if I want them to be bathrooms or armor workshops or whatever. I have no idea. When I choose something, it brings up some kind of trade menu with two rooms available at the "vendor" and "my" inventory being empty. What do I do? Do I transfer the available build plans to my inventory? Will that activate them or unactivate them? I just exit the menu without doing anything. I am standing quietly in the atrium. I don't know what I just did. I still have not built any dorms.

Then I try to look around the building to get any idea of what is going on, but it's a maze. A fire has started in the floor and no one can put it out. M.I.L.A is asking if I saw the game last week. I did not see the game. She shoots Jake with a cryoblaster, aiming for the fire in the small supply closet where all my settlers are huddled, so he attacks her with a gun. A fight breaks out. The noise is awful.

I decide to go do something else.

 

[SarahAda]

see, this is exactly why i am waffling on this. half the things you complain about are explicitly talked about in the existing tutorial during the story quest:

• rooms are in the construction menu, where you constructed them last time. there's more because the training wheels have been taken off and you are free to explore the systems. maybe we need to put all the categories in the tutorial quest and give them special impossible "there's nothing in here yet!" projects to make it clear the order and organization?
• where did you see dorms? AFAIK it's always called living quarters. it's called living quarters in the tutorial, and the quest, and the corner notification when you run out of living quarters, the pop-up error when you recruit someone without living quarters to support them. i could see this if the quest notification was something like "you must construct additional pylons" but as far as i am aware, no one ever talks about anything except living quarters
• what's scrap logistics? "we're out of scrap, can't do any more project" says Theresa, "is there some problem with your logistics supply line? oh let me guess, you don't have one" replies Mansfield. maybe this needs to be renamed to make it closer to the "Supply lines" terminology? "Scrap Supply" maybe? maybe something more evocative like "Supply line moving crew"?
• i will admit "department energy" is a bit abstract, but as far as i am aware "power" and "engineering energy" aren't ever overlapped in the dialog or text anywhere. the vanilla game calls it power, so we're probably stuck with that. maybe something like "engineering time"? I'd use "workload", "tasking", or "capacity" but i think those are really industry specific and unless you do agile or waterfall PMO you probably don't know what that means.
• each room projects description has a "+1 jobs" or whatever marked on it, and there is a "max workers" counter for each department. maybe these need to be made more obvious? maybe we could have that hud element flash or something when the "not enough jobs" assignment error comes up?
• yes, someone's office and someone's quarters are different rooms. i hope this is not knowledge specific to SS2, otherwise there are a lot of people sleeping at their workplace and meeting their subordinates in their bedrooms. maybe this is just how the world works after the pandemic?
• Aiden and Mansfield are different people. you made an office for Mansfield, the head of facilities, during the tutorial, and now you are making Aiden, the head of security, an office. or maybe a bedroom? your narrative gets a bit muddy here. again, i hope "different people are different people" is not knew knowledge the mod needs to train players on.
• is the second Aiden's bedroom is marked as an upgrade or improvement, i.e. the project title says improved? i know this is a historical hold-over from before HQ 2.0, but i've always through it weird leveling private quarters is facilities construction instead of engineering upgrades like most of the others? maybe it needs to be moved?
• or maybe there really are two construction projects to build Aiden's bedroom? Did you mark two rooms with the purpose of "head of security private quarters"? Maybe some of these one-off rooms could be removed from the list of available purposes once one room is marked with that purpose? would that cause problems if you ever want to move that room later?
• the cleaning project asking you how you want to use the room is working as intended. just pick which one you want more and if you want to change it later you can. maybe this needs to be explicit on this menu? a line like "you can always change the purpose of a room later by using the door controller on that room."?
• Psudovendors, "some kind of trade menu with two rooms available" are used every place you need to make a choice and the mod authors want to give you more information then is possible in those popup windows. just like picking a building plan for a plot, you "buy" the thing you want, in this case you are selecting which room you want the project to build into, since you have two rooms with that purpose that you could build this project into. this is pretty much the only option to do deep choices like this, which is why it's used everywhere. engine limitations.
• the way psudovendors works a little differently for assignments, as you are "selling" them to the department you want them to work for, but i suspect this is because it's hard to rename "my inventory" to reflect the department? pretty much everywhere else you are "buying" the thing you want. this is about as consistent as it can be across the whole mod.
• paradoxically navigating the HQ gets easier as the rooms get cleaner, but you might be interested in this map. i have talked previously about how combining the ground and top floors in the UI can lead to confusion, and that separating them in the same way the office and basement levels are separated could make it easier and more readable to the player.
• Disasters probably need to be delayed until Doctor in the house, or maybe at least a few in-game days. this is probably a legit case where we are overloading the player by starting disasters too soon, and delaying until the player has demonstrated mastery of the construction systems can lower this strain.

edit: improved Sarah's phrasing to be slightly less accusatory.

 

[SunniJB]

see, this is exactly why i am waffling on this. half the things you complain about are explicitly talked about in the existing tutorial during the story quest:

• rooms are in the construction menu, where you constructed them last time. there's more because the training wheels have been taken off and you are free to explore the systems. maybe we need to put all the categories in the tutorial quest and give them special impossible "there's nothing in here yet!" projects to make it clear the order and organization?
• where did you see dorms? AFAIK it's always called living quarters. it's called living quarters in the tutorial, and the quest, and the corner notification when you run out of living quarters, the pop-up error when you recruit someone without living quarters to support them. i could see this if the quest notification was something like "you must construct additional pylons" but as far as i am aware, no one ever talks about anything except living quarters
• what's scrap logistics? "we're out of scrap, can't do any more project" says Theresa, "is there some problem with your logistics supply line? oh let me guess, you don't have one" replies Mansfield. maybe this needs to be renamed to make it closer to the "Supply lines" terminology? "Scrap Supply" maybe? maybe something more evocative like "Supply line moving crew"?
• i will admit "department energy" is a bit abstract, but as far as i am aware "power" and "engineering energy" aren't ever overlapped in the dialog or text anywhere. the vanilla game calls it power, so we're probably stuck with that. maybe something like "engineering time"? I'd use "workload", "tasking", or "capacity" but i think those are really industry specific and unless you do agile or waterfall PMO you probably don't know what that means.
• each room projects description has a "+1 jobs" or whatever marked on it, and there is a "max workers" counter for each department. maybe these need to be made more obvious? maybe we could have that hud element flash or something when the "not enough jobs" assignment error comes up?
• yes, someone's office and someone's quarters are different rooms. i hope this is not knowledge specific to SS2, otherwise there are a lot of people sleeping at their workplace and meeting their subordinates in their bedrooms. maybe this is just how the world works after the pandemic?
• Aiden and Mansfield are different people. you made an office for Mansfield, the head of facilities, during the tutorial, and now you are making Aiden, the head of security, an office. or maybe a bedroom? your narrative gets a bit muddy here. again, i hope "different people are different people" is not knew knowledge the mod needs to train you on.
• is the second Aiden's bedroom is marked as an upgrade or improvement, i.e. the project title says improved? i know this is a historical hold-over from before HQ 2.0, but i've always through it weird leveling private quarters is facilities construction instead of engineering upgrades like most of the others? maybe it needs to be moved?
• or maybe there really are two construction projects to build Aiden's bedroom? Did you mark two rooms with the purpose of "head of security private quarters"? Maybe some of these one-off rooms could be removed from the list of available purposes once one room is marked with that purpose? would that cause problems if you ever want to move that room later?
• the cleaning project asking you how you want to use the room is working as intended. just pick which one you want more and if you want to change it later you can. maybe this needs to be explicit on this menu? a line like "you can always change the purpose of a room later by using the door controller on that room."?
• Psudovendors, "some kind of trade menu with two rooms available" are used every place you need to make a choice and the mod authors want to give you more information then is possible in those popup windows. just like picking a building plan for a plot, you "buy" the thing you want, in this case you are selecting which room you want the project to build into, since you have two rooms with that purpose that you could build this project into. this is pretty much the only option to do deep choices like this, which is why it's used everywhere. engine limitations.
• the way psudovendors works a little differently for assignments, as you are "selling" them to the department you want them to work for, but i suspect this is because it's hard to rename "my inventory" to reflect the department? pretty much everywhere else you are "buying" the thing you want. this is about as consistent as it can be across the whole mod.
• paradoxically navigating the HQ gets easier as the rooms get cleaner, but you might be interested in this map. i have talked previously about how combining the ground and top floors in the UI can lead to confusion, and that separating them in the same way the office and basement levels are separated could make it easier and more readable to the player.
• Disasters probably need to be delayed until Doctor in the house, or maybe at least a few in-game days. this is probably a legit case where we are overloading the player by starting disasters too soon, and delaying until the player has demonstrated mastery of the construction systems can lower this strain.

I'm not looking for a point-by-point explanation of the things I was confused about. I've played a lot with HQ since then and I understand it better now. But I am one person, with one brain, playing the mod for the very first time. The initial tutorial delivers you a lot of info at once and expecting me to know the new system from heart after that isn't realistic.

Yes, I can look up a map online. I can find the tutorial in the "tutorial messages" and use the forum and what is currently on the wiki. If I found a video playthrough of the initial tutorial I could refresh a lot of things. I could rewatch the first questline. But my opinion is that going through this process of outside resources, a lot of playtime and probably several playthroughs in order to feel comfortable with the HQ system means that is is not welcoming to new players. I'm currently in school for game design, and it just feels like HQ is suffering from "developer brain" -- where you've been working on the same project for so long, playtesting it within the team, that how it works feels obvious to you but is convoluted for a brand new player.

I know this is going to get better, because the mod is always under development and I trust the developers. They've delivered before. But you need to realize that you're working from six playthroughs worth of knowledge, and I am not. What is obvious to you because it was mentioned in the tutorial is not obvious to someone who saw it once ten hours of playtime ago.

 

[yaugie]

it just feels like HQ is suffering from "developer brain" -- where you've been working on the same project for so long, playtesting it within the team, that how it works feels obvious to you but is convoluted for a brand new player.

That is actually a VERY good way to put it.

Now, I happen to have the kind of brain processes that make these systems feel almost intuitive to me, and some people keep on saying I have probably the most knowledge about how the mod works of anyone not on the team - I at least read every public post on the forums too. I have done probably 30 full playthroughs of both chapters, and numerous "focus on this one bit" "cheated" runs for beta testing and bug reporting on top of that.
And with all that, there is STILL stuff in the mod even I dont fully understand. This is why I have complete sympathy and understanding for people not "getting it" instantly.

Expecting the kind of person that saw the glossy action movie trailers and grabbed the mod to also be the kind of person that is right now playing Satisfactory on another PC (modded because the base game just isnt mechanically complex enough) is really pushing it.

 

[Antoine Soverie]

Yeah, and I thought the new HQ system looked pretty fun up to that point. Facilities is introduced, then cleaning, then construction. Then establishing trade routes. Then recruiting settlers, then administration.

But around the point where I was supposed to be recruiting settlers it started being overwhelming. Like, I don't have more room, I need to build more beds. I open the construction menu I was just introduced to and oh my god there's so much fucking stuff in here. None of it is dorms, though. How do I unlock dorms? I don't know, I keep cleaning. I am able to make a newly cleaned room be a dorm, great. I lack scrap logistics. What are scrap logistics? Is that the energy of my logistics workers? Is that the amount of scrap I have? I try to look for the tutorials, but the "tutorials" tab of the holotape is just for plots. Where do I find more scrap? Do they need somewhere to store it all? I saw a storage closet in the build menu, hold on--I build a storage closet, my scrap has not gone up. I open the engineering menu. Holy shit, there's like four subcategories and I don't know what to do with any of them. But, hey! There's that power room thingy that was in my quest log! I can't build it, because I need scrap. Is that... Different from scrap logistics? I leave it for now. I look through the options, trying to get familiar with it. I can put in some lamps, but that requires power. I don't have any power yet. Unless they mean engineering power instead of electrical power? Why would I build lamps? What does that do? I get back to the facilities menu. I hit construct, and I think I've accidentally gone back to the top layer of the command thing because it looks the same. Oh shit, I can construct things for all the facilities? I can make Aiden a bedroom? Nice! I try to assign more workers to be in security, but it says "max 1 settler" and after I assign one settler it tells me there are no jobs. Ok, whatever. Two rooms I set to cleaning are now done, and Aiden's bedroom is an option for both of them. But I thought I already built him a bedroom? Wait, is head security office different from head security quarters? Didn't I make that in the tutorial? Can I build two of them? Where IS any of this stuff, anyway? Oh, wait, the stats just updated, I have more facilities energy again. I decide to clean more rooms. They all ask me if I want them to be bathrooms or armor workshops or whatever. I have no idea. When I choose something, it brings up some kind of trade menu with two rooms available at the "vendor" and "my" inventory being empty. What do I do? Do I transfer the available build plans to my inventory? Will that activate them or unactivate them? I just exit the menu without doing anything. I am standing quietly in the atrium. I don't know what I just did. I still have not built any dorms.

Then I try to look around the building to get any idea of what is going on, but it's a maze. A fire has started in the floor and no one can put it out. M.I.L.A is asking if I saw the game last week. I did not see the game. She shoots Jake with a cryoblaster, aiming for the fire in the small supply closet where all my settlers are huddled, so he attacks her with a gun. A fight breaks out. The noise is awful.

I decide to go do something else.

I think that sums up just about everyone's first run with HQ rather nicely. And while Jake says, "just take your time, you're not gonna do this in a day" or something, the objectives want tons of people in HQ and quarters for them. So you try to do just that and get lost. Maybe we can see more in-game explanations? Like talking to department heads for advice? They're not gonna tell you "hey so the TINKER menu does that and EXECUTE does this. No not that, we need an executioner for that" but at least something along the lines of "hey so the facilities department can do all the heavy lifting, like cleaning rubbish and building nice rooms, then here at engineering we can improve them. And the admin folks can slap a bunch of signs and decorations on them so everyone knows where everything is", "this new thing allows us to train a whole department and improve their work!", "hey fancypants, so here at admin department we can decide on policies for HQ and those can impact how you want to run the place. Do you want everyone to work for free? That sounds a bit like slavery and therefore bad, people might not really want to stay here, ya kno. If you consider paying the workers, they might put more soul into their work. You can ignore safety measures and get more shit done but that would lead to all kinds of disasters. Now I like when stuff goes boom and on fire but that's just me. It's not exactly a safe working environment but hey, whatever floats your boat", "hey chief, so me and Jacob talked about this and we found a few ways to improve caravans and communications, you can even send teams to recruit settlements or build them up remotely! You should give it a try, just let my department know!", "you know, other than treating diseases we can also tinker a bit with your gear, just build some labs for experiments on armor, weapons, power armor, you name it. You don't need to be a rocket scientist and know everything, we'll help. You'll just need to go to a lab and call someone from science for assistance", we might need to make more connections with settlements so we get more capacity to build stuff at once. We call that one scrap logistics" (kinda having a hard time with phrasing that)
Also to counterpoint HQ rewards being useless, I love "asam database". Having anything you built before instantly build to level 3 is awesome.

 

[yaugie]

Maybe we can see more in-game explanations? Like talking to department heads for advice?

There are already dialog options with the Core Cast of "any suggestions" and "department status" once you get up to building HQ and talk to them (either in person or over the HQ Radio - which always goes to them even if you change the Department Heads manually which is another system that presently does literally nothing except for add more confusion and another point of failure to the scripted mechanics). However, I have never gotten anything useful out of those apart from Lupe apparently believing we need more dining rooms than we have staff. That was on my list of "wait for someone else to notice before complaining" issues - I have a whole notepad doc of stuff I havent reported myself yet due to how poor my own response rate for Questions posts is, but if people dont even know thats there at all...

 

[Captain LaserBeam]

I think that sums up just about everyone's first run with HQ rather nicely. And while Jake says, "just take your time, you're not gonna do this in a day" or something, the objectives want tons of people in HQ and quarters for them. So you try to do just that and get lost. Maybe we can see more in-game explanations? Like talking to department heads for advice? They're not gonna tell you "hey so the TINKER menu does that and EXECUTE does this. No not that, we need an executioner for that" but at least something along the lines of "hey so the facilities department can do all the heavy lifting, like cleaning rubbish and building nice rooms, then here at engineering we can improve them. And the admin folks can slap a bunch of signs and decorations on them so everyone knows where everything is", "this new thing allows us to train a whole department and improve their work!", "hey fancypants, so here at admin department we can decide on policies for HQ and those can impact how you want to run the place. Do you want everyone to work for free? That sounds a bit like slavery and therefore bad, people might not really want to stay here, ya kno. If you consider paying the workers, they might put more soul into their work. You can ignore safety measures and get more shit done but that would lead to all kinds of disasters. Now I like when stuff goes boom and on fire but that's just me. It's not exactly a safe working environment but hey, whatever floats your boat", "hey chief, so me and Jacob talked about this and we found a few ways to improve caravans and communications, you can even send teams to recruit settlements or build them up remotely! You should give it a try, just let my department know!", "you know, other than treating diseases we can also tinker a bit with your gear, just build some labs for experiments on armor, weapons, power armor, you name it. You don't need to be a rocket scientist and know everything, we'll help. You'll just need to go to a lab and call someone from science for assistance", we might need to make more connections with settlements so we get more capacity to build stuff at once. We call that one scrap logistics" (kinda having a hard time with phrasing that)
Also to counterpoint HQ rewards being useless, I love "asam database". Having anything you built before instantly build to level 3 is awesome.

I like these suggestions - even if they can't get the Voice Actors to do a bunch of new lines, this could theoretically be on a terminal somewhere (like they are sending messages to each other and to you at HQ) and you could read them to get more information beyond the tutorial messages in the pipboy. It is an organization scheme that took me a while to understand as well and just being able to read some quick messages like this would have helped understand the division of labor and the different roles and responsibilities.

I'll also add that I agree about the HQ rewards being underrated. Aside from being able to spend resources instantly upgrading a city plan, the ASAM database, expanding caravan and comm station reaches, even to other worldspaces, all of that really makes a difference. I can only imagine how much more important it is going to be when Conqueror dynamics come back in Chapter 3. Not having a "hub" and having to run things like the war desk and call in raids out of one of your settlements in SS1 Conqueror was kind of annoying in several respects, and it seems like HQ is going to step into that role. Once I release my HQ add-on (working out the last round of bugs at this point), it is just room designs right now, but I want to try to see if I can add more "actions" that will lead to rewards, like being able to use virtual resources to construct a whole suit of power armor for the player as a basic example and I will probably add more complexity after that (for instance security recon missions that might provide randomized loot).

 

[Antoine Soverie]

I like these suggestions - even if they can't get the Voice Actors to do a bunch of new lines, this could theoretically be on a terminal somewhere (like they are sending messages to each other and to you at HQ) and you could read them to get more information beyond the tutorial messages in the pipboy. It is an organization scheme that took me a while to understand as well and just being able to read some quick messages like this would have helped understand the division of labor and the different roles and responsibilities.

I'll also add that I agree about the HQ rewards being underrated. Aside from being able to spend resources instantly upgrading a city plan, the ASAM database, expanding caravan and comm station reaches, even to other worldspaces, all of that really makes a difference. I can only imagine how much more important it is going to be when Conqueror dynamics come back in Chapter 3. Not having a "hub" and having to run things like the war desk and call in raids out of one of your settlements in SS1 Conqueror was kind of annoying in several respects, and it seems like HQ is going to step into that role. Once I release my HQ add-on (working out the last round of bugs at this point), it is just room designs right now, but I want to try to see if I can add more "actions" that will lead to rewards, like being able to use virtual resources to construct a whole suit of power armor for the player as a basic example and I will probably add more complexity after that (for instance security recon missions that might provide randomized loot).

Dunno if you take suggestions but I'll post them anyway. And thanks, you're doing god's work.
Admin missions to improve a settlement's happiness (ideally set it to 100 for a week or something). Throw a party, send some clowns. Or free beer, whiskey and hookers.
Science missions to cure a settlement of disease and prevent it from getting another outbreak for a while.
Science missions to spawn a disease of the next level (hello evil institute/enclave players) and research it
Logtistics mission to deliver huge crates of supplies to a workshop (could be easily cheated in, same as happiness, but hey - immursion)
Admin mission to recruit someone to a settlement and start their quest (alternative to recruitment center I guess)
Facilities mission to clean up a settlement
Admin missions to get BoS, MM, Railroad, Insititute protection for a settlement (simillar to faction mayors trait)
Security and logistics mission to clear a place and salvage it for stuff and discoveries (nearly guaranteed rate, could be random place or a fixed one idk how that would work)

 

[fathamburger]

I've only just made it to the HQ so I can definitely understand and share some of the OP's confusion.

It's so overwhelming and I'm potentially stuck that I've decided Im going to take a break and get some answers first. At the same time Im pretty impressed by both the ambition and scope repopulation system as well as the HQ system that I don't hate things straight away. There's a lot of potential as long as things dont become a chore later on, in which case let's not forget how many are using SS2 for the automation factor. Maybe others besides myself even ENJOY seeing things develop in an automated fashion vs having to do it ourselves?

Right now I'm at pt where the first "free"/quick cleaning was apparently wasted on toilets and one other room Besides the facilities room and straight away I dont have any scrap to actually build the facilities desk where I'm now maybe stuck? the energy, scrap, all these new virtual inventory items are never explained. I tried to scrap some things around the place to get some scrap as we've been doing so far, this doesn't work. It can only be supplied by the new HQ and inventory systems? more confusion. Agree with the OP that all of this isn't introduced very well

As for where the toilets are that I apparently cleaned? I have no idea. Its not like you can mouse highlight each room to actually see what's considered named what, the floor plan / project list doesnt actually.. show a floor plan. Apparently "main" combined first and second floors or something? this definitely should be broken up.

All this talk about department heads but the settlers I've been collecting that would be ideal so far cannot be moved to HQ as per normal. How does that work? also not explained.

Between this stuff and the unexplained "get more support for final battle if you've done more of your friends quest lines", it still feels like Ch. 2 is relatively undercooked vs how long Ch.1 has had to mature. Have an overall feeling of being thrown into some new deep end and being left entirely in the dark without support compared to everything else and the only thing Jake can say is "Im ready for a project boss!"

So far it seems like I probably would enjoy the projects and directive level play assuming I can eventually progress and unlock such systems.

Maybe I should take a more permanent break till this is all reworked and split over a longer tutorial quest line?

 

[yaugie]

Maybe I should take a more permanent break till this is all reworked and split over a longer tutorial quest line?

I wouldnt hold your breath; I have been arguing for Chapter 1 stuff to get some actual ingame tutorialising rather than "copy what I say with no explanations and call that a tutorial" ever since it came out, and its only recently that it is even being entertained as a notion rather than flat out rejected. Hell, I pointed out during tonights livestream that we occasionally get people needing help with literally the first quest of the mod due to poor wording, and the response was laughter.
but sure yaugie your opinion is totally valued really despite all evidence suggesting otherwise

 

[Antoine Soverie]

Maybe others besides myself even ENJOY seeing things develop in an automated fashion vs having to do it ourselves?

I gotta admit, I'm nowhere as talented as city plan makers so I often just leave it to them to make something that looks crazy good. Occasionally have to switch things around or add more cause a lot of city plans don't take HQ, or even disease into account. So I need a million food and there's 6 hobos working 6 basic farms. Or 10 industrial plots while everything else is unbuilt.

first "free"/quick cleaning was apparently wasted on toilets and one other room Besides the facilities room and straight away I dont have any scrap to actually build the facilities desk where I'm now maybe stuck? the energy, scrap, all these new virtual inventory items are never explained. I tried to scrap some things around the place to get some scrap as we've been doing so far, this doesn't work. It can only be supplied by the new HQ and inventory systems? more confusion. Agree with the OP that all of this isn't introduced very well

I don't get the free toilet thing. You're only supposed to clean and build specific rooms at every stage of the tutorial (Mansfield's office, closet for Jake and entrance security post for Aiden). Everything else should not be available until it's finished.
Main floor includes both the main floors, yeah. Confusing but everything else is its own instance.
You'll get the settler recruitment thing later, there's a tool for that. The quest will point you to it.

Hell, I pointed out during tonights livestream that we occasionally get people needing help with literally the first quest of the mod due to poor wording, and the response was laughter.

I wouldn't take that personally. If you're looking for proof that something is what you believe, then you'll find it either way. It is kinda funny though that people drop asams on the ground instead of using workshop mode. Though a popup right after Jake says that would be appreciated. But doesn't the quest tell us to do that in workshop mode? I forgot (again). Also can't expect the mod to hold our hand the entire time (except for HQ, we do need that there). Sure, I spent like 2 or 3 hours looking for Raphael in the sub but I admit it, I'm a moron and my IRL perception is 0.

 

[fathamburger]

I don't get the free toilet thing. You're only supposed to clean and build specific rooms at every stage of the tutorial (Mansfield's office, closet for Jake and entrance security post for Aiden). Everything else should not be available until it's finished.
Main floor includes both the main floors, yeah. Confusing but everything else is its own instance.
You'll get the settler recruitment thing later, there's a tool for that. The quest will point you to it.

To try to not derail from the OP's topic, I'm going to make a new thread in a bit to more specifically ask questions requiring explanation and also discuss the failings of basically how this whole thing is done, explained and structured. Many more on Reddit struggling also and outright wanting the whole system deleted whereas I think it can be reformed.

 

[Antoine Soverie]

Are they old posts? I'll just say it, HQ on release was not worth playing. I can understand where the team was coming from when they released it like that, try and polish it to perfection then it's never coming out. And everyone wanted chapter 2 already, both the devs and the players. Don't want the same situation as in Conqueror, with the mod being left unfinished. Same now with ch 3. Sadly or luckily, I can't wipe my memory and experience HQ again for the first time but it seems mostly good (when it works, which is most of the time I guess?). It's still very micromanage-y for a lot of people's tastes. Right now (well, right now I'm at work but whatever) I'm running around settlements building hi-tech stuff so HQ can finally be satisfied, power seems more or less alright but water and food, damn. Gonna need way more of that. (I guess the in-story explanation is this is what we get when we "ask settlements nicely" for resources - jack shit. Brotherhood and Institute superiority!)
There are a ton of threads about HQ as it is, you can check those out too.

 

[Captain LaserBeam]

Are they old posts? I'll just say it, HQ on release was not worth playing. I can understand where the team was coming from when they released it like that, try and polish it to perfection then it's never coming out. And everyone wanted chapter 2 already, both the devs and the players. Don't want the same situation as in Conqueror, with the mod being left unfinished. Same now with ch 3. Sadly or luckily, I can't wipe my memory and experience HQ again for the first time but it seems mostly good (when it works, which is most of the time I guess?). It's still very micromanage-y for a lot of people's tastes. Right now (well, right now I'm at work but whatever) I'm running around settlements building hi-tech stuff so HQ can finally be satisfied, power seems more or less alright but water and food, damn. Gonna need way more of that. (I guess the in-story explanation is this is what we get when we "ask settlements nicely" for resources - jack shit. Brotherhood and Institute superiority!)
There are a ton of threads about HQ as it is, you can check those out too.

It's a good point and I wonder if some of the problems people also have with HQ is if you just chucked down a bunch of city plans and never tweaked them, your settlements would still be full of basic level agriculture, water, and power. That doesn't provide much! Most city plans assume the user is going to build the city at any point in the game, so they have to keep everything basic level because the player may not have skilled or gifted settlers to man advanced or hi-tech plots once they are unlocked. This means that if you are playing in automated mode where you fire and forget with the city plans, your cities are not going to be bringing much when you establish supply agreements with HQ. Also, most of the city plans you will see do not contain power transfer, and few contain hospitals. That means none of your power is being sent to HQ, and there are no hospitals dispensing your disease cures and vaccines you research in HQ. There's a crucial nexus between that tech tree in the settlements and HQ, and if the settlements are still low down in the tech tree due to only out of the box city plans being used, that is going to be painful.

You would need to do like you are doing and like I do @Antoine Soverie and go back and change some of those basic power, water, and agriculture plots to advanced or high tech. That is an big leap forward in terms of the resources produced and would be providing a lot more of everything to HQ. One high-tech ag with a gifted settler provides over 100 units of food, and several of them are multi-assign so that's even more.

In any case, the notion that HQ would somehow be removed from SS2 is kind of preposterous. It may get more balancing and some small tweaks, but it seems very clear that HQ and what capabilities you have built there are probably going to be very important in Chapter 3.