Announcement: Rise of the Commonwealth

[ShieldSean]

If the only settlement you've tried to build is Sanctuary, you may want to take a longer tour through some of the others. Some of them are unbelievably complex and outright gorgeous, others may leave you cold.

As for resources, yeah, initial resources got overcorrected in the most recent patch where they had been left out entirely at level zero. It's getting fixed.

It's not the only settlement I've let someone else manage, I've seen Sanctuary, Red Rocket, Abernathy Farm, Sunshine Tidings, and Graygarden. There hasn't been a single one I'd allow to be done again. Maybe you have a suggestion as to what settlement I should think about allowing someone to manage, because at this point I wouldn't let anyone do any of them again. Not only that but after letting them manage the settlements for a few in game weeks, I go check in on them and the settlers are amazingly showing up, but the followers as managers aren't building beds, some are lacking water, and the power lines are all missing, so when I put in residential plots for them I have to then get power to them.

I'm glad to hear that resources are getting fixed, but that's not going to help out my current game, and I'm not sure I'll do another settlement build this intensely again, it's more effort than I prefer to play with, so I was excited to see what the settlers would build themselves. And after seeing it, I'm filled with crushing disappointment. Unless there's a way to have the settlers start over on a location? Can I take over the settlement and then load another set of plans?

 

[Karyusan]

if you dont like you can scrap all the settlement with the town meeting gravel and uninstall rotc and find a settlement that suit your taste with the mods transfer blueprint.

 

[Tinuvia]

@ShieldSean I’m just wondering if you had the cities upgrade to level 3 (not just the plots)? You say you let the settlers manage them for a few in game weeks, it’s just that it takes at least 10 in game days (and most likely more) to upgrade to level 1 and a lot longer to see the finalized cities. If you’ve only seen level 0, I can understand if you’re dubious as to what the settlers are up to.

 

[tankthing]

It's not the only settlement I've let someone else manage, I've seen Sanctuary, Red Rocket, Abernathy Farm, Sunshine Tidings, and Graygarden. There hasn't been a single one I'd allow to be done again. Maybe you have a suggestion as to what settlement I should think about allowing someone to manage, because at this point I wouldn't let anyone do any of them again. Not only that but after letting them manage the settlements for a few in game weeks, I go check in on them and the settlers are amazingly showing up, but the followers as managers aren't building beds, some are lacking water, and the power lines are all missing, so when I put in residential plots for them I have to then get power to them.

I'm glad to hear that resources are getting fixed, but that's not going to help out my current game, and I'm not sure I'll do another settlement build this intensely again, it's more effort than I prefer to play with, so I was excited to see what the settlers would build themselves. And after seeing it, I'm filled with crushing disappointment. Unless there's a way to have the settlers start over on a location? Can I take over the settlement and then load another set of plans?

I'll pick on Graygarden since that's one I built:

This is a screenshot of Graygarden L3. Lots to do, even more to explore. I have intentionally aimed the shot so it's a teaser because I want the players to go see whats over that hill or up on the overpass for themselves. Hint: The whole actual settlement.

(the blue cow on the right is a debug thing used to help keep track of flags and wouldn't appear in your games)

I believe the settlement is designed to hold 18 settlers with 24 jobs because there's 6 robots that come with the place. If you killed the robots, it's on you to balance it properly. There's 41ish plots and one bartender assignable object in this settlement.

Why wouldn't a settlement refresh to pick up updates without losing progress help your current game? That's exactly what that functionality is supposed to do. City Planner -> Refresh Settlement.

Power is magical because we can't place power lines without F4se. You are free to wire it or not for your own immersion purposes. This is an engine limit KG will probably eventually work around but has not worked around yet.

Water is part of what we're fixing and will be available on settlement refresh without progress loss.

And yes, you can take over a settlement, scrap it all and load your own transfer settlements blueprints or do your own builds. In the fullness of time the RotC creation tools will be released and you will be able to build your own settlement blueprints for release as well.

It's ok to not like the builds. Hell, I don't like all the builds and I built some of them but the implication that they're all crap because you don't like the build style on some of them or don't have the patience to actually play the game is kind of ingenuous at best and simply trolling at worst.

 

[Otherwhere]

RotC takes a shift in mindset from Sim Settlements. It took me a little while to grok that: the settlements are building up gradually, over time, using a plan that I had no idea what it would include. So I can understand the concern over not enough beds, or water. But I relaxed because RotC was new, bugs were being worked out and patched, and the potential is great. I only hope that my basic XBox One can handle it. (I've switched off most of the performance options just to try and help my system out.) And already someone did a release of additional Leaders, so I am very excited to see what comes out of the release of the kit to build your own (even if console users can't)!

 

[ShieldSean]

It's ok to not like the builds. Hell, I don't like all the builds and I built some of them but the implication that they're all crap because you don't like the build style on some of them or don't have the patience to actually play the game is kind of ingenuous at best and simply trolling at worst.

The word you were probably looking for there was disingenuous, so pretty close, and I got what you meant. The first thing that bugged me about the graygarden build was that immediately all the food production went away, and inside the greenhouse, well, I don't even know what to say about that. It's too bad you can't rename settlements because it shouldn't have garden in the name anymore. I'm curious what sort of theme you were going for there?

What I'm saying is that when I saw SimSettlements on PCGamer, it made me interested in playing F4 again because there could be some variety in how things are built. I really like the residential plots, and the idea that a character can have his/her own space to build how they like, I just did that at The Castle today, and the interior plots fit very nicely in some of the alcoves. And with RotC it was just one better even, get those lazy settlers to work! The game is so immersive as is, it always stood out in the base game how they'd hammer the walls but the walls would never change. So from excitement, and seeing the cutscene, to where my builds are now... well it's been a pretty precipitous drop.

It looks like my Sanctuary is at level 1. So I donated another 1000 or so supplies I think I can spare. That got them to like 70% of the upgrade scrap. Mostly though, it's such a discouraging maze of a settlement, I've moved everything I need and use to Hangmans Alley because I just don't feel comfortable being in or near Sanctuary anymore.

That's why I asked if there was a better settlement to look at. Having let 5 settlements be built I feel like is a statistically significant number in the game, and if all 5 are basically to be avoided after I let companions build them, well when would you give up? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me... Fool me 5 times, what kid of idiot am I at this point?

In the end you've got to expect that players are first going to try and make use of RotC in Sanctuary. Soon as I got it installed I tried to assign Codsworth, and learned that wouldn't work because he wasn't a follower yet. I assigned him as soon as I got back, and then switched to Preston, so I could move Codsworth to Greygarden where he could be "happy" with other robots and not mess up Sanctuary's happiness. Anyway, though, if you want people to love how RotC works and looks, get an epic opening settlement design. I'm not a city planner, or an interior decorator, but I know at a gut level what's happened in Sanctuary is really unpleasant.

Overall my sincerest apologies to the person who did the settlement builds for any offense I may have caused, I'm super sorry, it just got to the point where I had a WTF moment after multiple settlements being a mess.

 

[Rocola]

I think you still haven´t seen the totally of the mod. Tweak the options in the holotape to explore a Little. Disable realistic time, city and plots requirements, deactivate stockpiles, and the city will upgrade faster. There´s lvl 0 to 3 so you have seen only 25% of it, or less, because more and more things appear at higher lvls (lvl0 is kind of ugly)

If you don´t like the build, it´s a matter of taste, and that´s your problem and you still could build the settlements yourself, no need for the autobuild. All designs that i´ve seen are excellent, with details i should have done different, but i can live with that. Kiggath has mentioned he will realese a mod that will let modify all the objects from any city plan in workshop mode. Meanwhile, if you don´t like any section you can "disable" any object in the console and build there whatever you want.

Also, when the toolkit for city plans is realised, there will be more designs around, and maybe any of them suits your taste. I´m waiting for designs for those with low end rigs :P

 

[tankthing]

Technically the food going away is another bug caused by the full scrap done by the settlement management system. The food items inside the greenhouse should never have been scrapped. In fact, the settlement actually relies on them for food at higher levels. I will confirm they actually come back at some point because if not, the settlement balance is going to just not work later in the development.

Agreed that the Sanctuary build could have been a bit less... Layered? Painted with a trowel? Disorganized? Broken? There's plenty of descriptors that could be used (and have been used behind closed doors) for the Sanctuary build.

To paint the 24 settlements in the entire expansion with the same brush is a mistake though. That's the point that needs to come across. Bugs with plants are one thing, saying the whole thing is crap because the plants got wiped on a full settlement nuke is quite another.

The ones you're going to want to stay away from are Sanctuary and Murkwater (same builder).

Red Rocket is a one-off done by a builder who was also tasked with a lot of the settlement regression from level 3 to level 0.

Ones you might like if you like a lighter, less scrappy style that is still busy are Hangman's, Zimonja, Finch and Jamaica Plains.

For an even lighter, cleaner style that keeps to the overall fallout design philosophy, yet explores new ways of doing that, Lighthouse and Sunshine Tidings.

For a more old western frontier take on the commonwealth: County Crossing and Ten Pines (two different builders but the two different takes on "frontier" are worth a look)

Sommerville, Castle, Slog and Coastal Cottage share an author as well.

The rest were built by me. I am not qualified to objectively judge my own work because when I did the baseline builds and a fair chunk of the decorating, I made the design choices I felt were the right ones to make at the time. Along the way I had a lot of help from several other team members and I think the settlement results are stronger for the collaboration.

Edit: I missed Croup which was built by the same person that built Ten Pines.

For clarity, the ones I built were:
Nordhagen, Abernathy, Greentop, Graygarden, Warwick, Egrets, Taffington and Oberland.

 

[Aurora Moon]

Yeah, I don't use the ROTC much anymore after having tried it out on a few settlements.

I did like the red rocket build, however. It's like a mini-fortress that protects the road to sanctuary at level 3.
coupled with the mod that changes it so that the raiders/attackers spawn outside of the settlement....let's just say raiders now never have an chance to reach sanctuary anymore.

Like Rocola mentioned, it does take time for the settlements to slowly build up into something truly impressive, like with the red rocket build. There are a couple settlements that I feel fits the ROTC aesthetic... but for the most part I do prefer to build and place some of the stuff on my own to suit my own tastes. However, it's still a very nice add on for the few settlements where you don't feel particularly inspired to build anything there. So out of laziness/lack of inspiration it's nice to have the ROTC at work for you there.

 

[ShieldSean]

I think you still haven´t seen the totally of the mod. Tweak the options in the holotape to explore a Little. Disable realistic time, city and plots requirements, deactivate stockpiles, and the city will upgrade faster. There´s lvl 0 to 3 so you have seen only 25% of it, or less, because more and more things appear at higher lvls (lvl0 is kind of ugly)

If you don´t like the build, it´s a matter of taste, and that´s your problem...

I could look into the settings, but I'm going to let these things play out, if my game lasts long enough. I'm already up to level 77 on survival mode, which means I've slept a solid 8 hours every day, and I've done a lot of looting and moving back and forth between everywhere and my settlements. And I haven't yet completed the main quest, nor have I been to Jamaica Plains or further southeast even. So it's not looking like Sanctuary will ever make it up to level 3 by itself, even after setting it up as early in this play through as possible.

So my second suggestion is to maybe get more settlement "levels" but let those levels advance faster individually. Then maybe settlement designers could stop levelling their settlements at different levels depending on their preference, or then they could get to level 18, when they release their settlement, and then release a point upgrade getting them to level 22. Of course that would mean the management interface would need to show current level/max level.

And as you said @Rocola it's definitely my problem, unless maybe I'm not alone in finding so many of the builds unappealing, and then it hurts the mod and it's success.

Given all my issues, and frustrations, I still firmly believe that KingGath should absolutely be offered a job at Bethesda to help them work on whatever settlement system they try and build into either Elder Scrolls VI, or Fallout 5. I'd suggest it's up to him as to whether his role there should be as a programmer actively building that system, or just a product owner, writing requirements like the epic build he's designed for Sim Settlements.

 

[ShieldSean]

I did like the red rocket build, however. It's like a mini-fortress that protects the road to sanctuary at level 3.

The fortress of the Red Rocket is pretty intense. I have noticed as I walk by that there are the sounds of a cocktail party happening there, pretty awesome. Only problem there is that where my provisioner to Abernathy used to have an easy walk, now he has to squeeze past the road barriers and settlement wall to get all the way around to the new gate.

Something interesting about the walling off your town to ring it with turrets, like the designer for Sanctuary did, well, they also ended up putting turrets on the interior also, I imagine to try and match the resources number.

Also, there's a new template in the new files at nexus, mod ID 29801 that looks great. I feel like that's what I was hoping for but since I started my Starlight after my character was on night duty, I couldn't quite make straight roads like that.

 

[Otherwhere]

I'm doing a mix of RotC Leader-led settlements and the "older," self-directed building from Sim Settlements. Since Starlite doesn't have a plan at the moment anyway, I am free to explore making my own settlement plan according to the character I am playing. Partly I am doing a mixed approach for fear of overwhelming my basic XBox One with too many settlements building and upgrading at the same time. Being able to assign a city leader even in my self-directed builds, and experience how they tweak the settlement, is a really cool feature and I look forward to more options!

 

[Corrosive]

Something interesting about the walling off your town to ring it with turrets, like the designer for Sanctuary did, well, they also ended up putting turrets on the interior also, I imagine to try and match the resources number.

Thats because mobs will magically teleport through walls and and barriers directly into your base at times. Bethesda has also decided at some places theres spawn points pretty much in the middle of where you'd build a base and put a wall around it.

 

[SFCR0CK]

@tankthing since I see you mentioned you built Warrick, could you please look at the sizes of the rooms on the top floors of the main building there in level 0 and level 1 because they are to small to place any interior plots in so they are basically wasted space. Thanks.

 

[tankthing]

They should already have interior plots in them.

 

[SFCR0CK]

They should already have interior plots in them.

In my ROTC build at level 0 they are empty and I think the city upgraded to level 1 and they still empty. I will check later and see and let you know. I just know an interior plot from the work shop is to big to fit in any of the spaces on the 2 floors above the main building.

 

[tankthing]

make sure you've got the settlement population entirely filled up so all plots are fully instantiated.

 

[Muddball]

Hey tankthing, quick question for you and the other original builders out there if I may? Was there anybody on the team who took a minimalist visual approach? Let's face it, some of the settlements are simply gorgeous. But even as pretty as they are, some of them are just... a little too much. For me anyways.

And I guess for anybody else who's reading this, are their any players who (like me) kinda want some of the farm type settlements to tone it down a little?

 

[SFCR0CK]

make sure you've got the settlement population entirely filled up so all plots are fully instantiated.

I went back and checked and the settlement is level1 about to go to level 2 and still has a few spots for some settlers, so we will see what happens. Thanks.

 

[CptCOOTS]

Hey tankthing, quick question for you and the other original builders out there if I may? Was there anybody on the team who took a minimalist visual approach? Let's face it, some of the settlements are simply gorgeous. But even as pretty as they are, some of them are just... a little too much. For me anyways.

And I guess for anybody else who's reading this, are their any players who (like me) kinda want some of the farm type settlements to tone it down a little?

When the tools are released for community designed settlements I will be producing a blueprint for each settlement that is along these lines; a functional and minimalist approach.