Anyone else feel a bit betrayed that you can't use scrap generated by the industrial plots? or any of the caps generated by the town?

[Kamuchi]

I have to agree, I don't like this virtual storage nonsense, tried to like it but there's nothing there.
Playing with mods that make the game much much harder, and use a whole ton more ammo, having settlements not generate scrap makes them worthless.
Also with a small area for normal crops and 1 farm plot, the residential plots just ignore the workshop food production and complain about the lack of food and if I do more farms, I lose workers to that and get nothing in return as it's virtual so need to have more settlers to do the same thing with normal crops.

There is simply no reward for any of the work and that is my only complaint about SS2 to be honest as I really like the mechanics and new plots, just that I don't get anything out of it for my gameplay made me decide to just go back to SS1 as settlements actually make a difference.
If we'd get a away to access the virtual storage I'd come back to SS2, maybe a 2x2 or 3x3 ammo production plot that can crank out some 5.56 rounds or any modded ammo type you can set.

 

[Deleted member 10215]

There is simply no reward for any of the work and that is my only complaint about SS2 to be honest as I really like the mechanics and new plots, just that I don't get anything out of it for my gameplay made me decide to just go back to SS1 as settlements actually make a difference.

I'm starting to agree; the fact that the settlers keep pinching all my crafting mats out of the vanilla Workshops when they lack it in their Virtuals, plus the cost in mats to make more ASAMs, is making it all a lot of cost for basically no reward outside a handful of caps at best. Especially on Survival Mode, since it seems to take well over double the actual required Food for the system to start generating a positive amount of Food items rather than stealing all my own.
Yes I have tried changing the (seemingly) relevant settings in the Holotape, but like "auto assign" it just ignores those when it feels like and goes back to defaults.

 

[Kamuchi]

I'm starting to agree; the fact that the settlers keep pinching all my crafting mats out of the vanilla Workshops when they lack it in their Virtuals, plus the cost in mats to make more ASAMs, is making it all a lot of cost for basically no reward outside a handful of caps at best. Especially on Survival Mode, since it seems to take well over double the actual required Food for the system to start generating a positive amount of Food items rather than stealing all my own.
Yes I have tried changing the (seemingly) relevant settings in the Holotape, but like "auto assign" it just ignores those when it feels like and goes back to defaults.

Yeah, everything goes in and nothing comes out, which makes it entirely pointless to build anything.
I don't mind building more asam's or that they would take from the workshop, as when it's all built, they'll start putting it back, but not in this case

 

[Vance71975]

'Carry Weight Modifications' I play for fun not for realism. But Sorry I didnt mean they where useless, just they are useless to me!
When I saw them my hope was I could use them to get something to help with reasources, now that would have been great. But no, all the reasources go straight to virtual for building plots. Ok I 'could' load a container full of items from a 'dungeon' get someone to carry them back(Or just do it myself). I get they have a use for some players.
To be honest as a 40+ year coder, I WILL fix this myself but not before quite a lot more building mods are developed. I just wanted to reply because the poster of this topic isnt the only one that feels this Virtual system isnt right for them.
Actualy hyjacking the whole Caravan and beacon thing, might just solve it! Giving the reasources to the player rather than virtual. lol, you may have just got me into modding.

I would personally love to see the Range on the Sensor Scanner and Mark 1 Beacon extended, for example , if you go in and clear out vault 114 or 95, drop a beacon, the come and clean out the Entire vault, not just the room you drop it in.

As far as the complaint about them going into virtual resources, I see an easy fix for that, when you use a beacon, they come, salvage everything in the area(including all loot left on bodies) and instead of it going into virtual resources, it gets dropped in the settlement workshop where you can later decide what you want to do with it. Wouldnt it be great if you didnt have to spend time looting bodies and going through chests,desks,etc and you could just drop a Scanner and beacon and they would come clean out everything in the whole internal zone you just cleared?

 

[slink_v_0000]

I've stopped playing SS2 for now. I may try it again in a few months. The deciding factors were the fact that XDI can't be used in an increasingly large number of quests because of all the custom dialogue things going on, and that my turrets were deleted during one quest. I don't mean destroyed. They were deleted. The power lines were hanging in mid-air. I felt lucky to be able to store the power lines without crashing. Messing with the electrical system is not a good idea.

And I dislike playing without XDI intensely. Without XDI it's back to pushing buttons practically at random and hoping what comes out of your character's mouth is something you can live with. Choosing a conversation line because you have a particular perk is pretty much forced RP, to me. Like someone above stated, it's now less like I'm playing the way I want to and more like I'm playing the way the modders of SS2 want me to. Those two things apparently are not the same. The alternative dialogue mod gives LOOKUP FAILED for CC content, and I do use some of that.

So I thank kinggath and his team for all their hard work, and I await a distant future version so I can distinguish the bugs from the design decisions.

Edit: And on-topic, I use Amazing Follower Tweaks to collect everything. I've modded that mod to collect some things it skips, and I've learned to save and restart when a magazine clogs up the text output. It suits me fine. Dogmeat can carry thousands of pounds without any problem. I guess he is wearing Pouches of Carrying.

 

[Lostlegends]

Besides, SS2 seems more interested in being its own game with its own voice actors than what SS1 was. I get that people loved the Jammer quest line and that made sense to make the next iteration of the mod more about that. But since I was one of the player who used the lite version of conqueror (because I played for the plots, not for the raiders or the story) I guess this one just isn’t for me

Have to agree with this, as I said I consider sim settlements more a 'tool' than a mod. Conqueror was an amazing idea, but I could never finish it, and I just loathed starting again due to the quests (toilet king springs instantly to mind) I suppose people just play the game very differently. The way I deal with all SS quests is 'tgm' + 'tcl' and run, the small plot/settler quests are Ok but thats it. I just find many of the quest ideas a little immature and not fitting with the base game.
It's like the 'Depravity' mod great idea, but as soon as I started it's companion mod 'Outcasts and remnants' I was told to go find the 'Giant dildo bat' I totaly lost all interest.
I do appreciate that Sim Settlements has tried to cater to many play styles with it's options, and thats great. However the option for plots to generate scrap into the workbench, has been placed in the hands of the plot designers, that is a mistake in my opinion.
A simple on/off % split between workbench/virtual would work for everyone. the current option is turning some play styles away from SS2.
Although I am now in a solid playthough with SS1 again and have little interest in restarting SS2. I will say I miss a lot about it, and I switched installs between 1/2 about 8 times I think. It is an amazing mod, it just doesnt do what I need it to do!

 

[keriv136]

There are still scavenger plots which put into workshop rather than virtual. Also, I tend to produce a lot of water and also use some mods to craft things like screws, etc. This way I can act like a merchant. I make tons of money and do a lot of trading this way and get all the scrap I need for the most part. At first it is slow, but once my settlements are up a bit, the money comes rolling in. I am just waiting for city plans and I would also like a better way to bypass all the quests (Stranger still shows up and so do the unique npcs but don't really want to use them and do their quests sometimes.)

 

[Lostlegends]

I suppose that i use ss to make fallout into sort of a post apocalyse survival sim,
I dont tend to use money, and I NEVER use city plans, both sort of move away from the style that I enjoy.
Which is why for me SS1 is better than 2, it's just more adaptable.

 

[keriv136]

I suppose that i use ss to make fallout into sort of a post apocalyse survival sim,
I dont tend to use money, and I NEVER use city plans, both sort of move away from the style that I enjoy.
Which is why for me SS1 is better than 2, it's just more adaptable.

I don't see how it is that much different though. You don't even need to necessarily use the virtual resources aspect of it. If you build the Scavenger stations which don't use virtual resources, isn't it the same? If you build the scavenger stations which put items into your workshop instead, then you would just have to pay everything out of your workshop. Turn off autopay so that you only pay when you want to. Seems pretty much the same as SS1 to me if you do it that way?

 

[Irealys]

Have to agree with this, as I said I consider sim settlements more a 'tool' than a mod. Conqueror was an amazing idea, but I could never finish it, and I just loathed starting again due to the quests (toilet king springs instantly to mind) I suppose people just play the game very differently. The way I deal with all SS quests is 'tgm' + 'tcl' and run, the small plot/settler quests are Ok but thats it. I just find many of the quest ideas a little immature and not fitting with the base game.
It's like the 'Depravity' mod great idea, but as soon as I started it's companion mod 'Outcasts and remnants' I was told to go find the 'Giant dildo bat' I totaly lost all interest.
I do appreciate that Sim Settlements has tried to cater to many play styles with it's options, and thats great. However the option for plots to generate scrap into the workbench, has been placed in the hands of the plot designers, that is a mistake in my opinion.
A simple on/off % split between workbench/virtual would work for everyone. the current option is turning some play styles away from SS2.
Although I am now in a solid playthough with SS1 again and have little interest in restarting SS2. I will say I miss a lot about it, and I switched installs between 1/2 about 8 times I think. It is an amazing mod, it just doesnt do what I need it to do!

People playing their own way is a given. Not only this mod but the base game too. So of course the end result when combining both is you have a range that goes from micro-managing roleplayer on surivival all the way to city-plan and never look back, first person shooter mode don’t care about the story and everything in between.

The fact that this mod can (when everything runs smoothly) accommodate all of those play styles is kind of insane. This is something they should be commended for. They are doing their best to provide an interesting avenue for all those play styles tu use the plots and add-ons.

The only issue here is the story, it’s the only part that failed at being accommodating to different play styles. I see it as a pacing issue more than anything else. I remember a lot of people being angry when a Bethesda Dev said they didn’t want to write a lot of lore for the minutemen when meeting Preston because the players would go build for hours so why bother. But it’s true. That’s why the real exposition dump comes from Preston’s later discussions and the Castle. Because the timing is “give them they toys, let them mess up with them and once they are ready to keep playing they’ll pick the quests back up”.

And SS2 locked most of the content required to build a complete settlement behind quest that will require hours to unlock. Defense, power, water are all very basic needs that when not met by plots in settlements make them feel very incomplete. That’s the reason why this is frustrating to many where conqueror wasn’t. Conqueror had the base plots available to you as usual so your settlement could feel complete. The new things that the story unlocked were complementary to a settlement, not requirements for a settlement to function.

So yeah, it’s still at the core the same base set of tools that are available to any play style to play their way but the story and it’s pacing is the thing that gets in the way.

Just for shits and giggles, let’s say power and water are available alongside industrial and agriculture. Then lily throws a fit about wanting more out of ASAMs, you get the whole raiders kidnapping and right there would be the perfect moment to have defense and commercial plots. Right there your full settlement would be set up early and you can let people play with the system, have a few quests to get more asams, maybe one to unlock multi-residential or multi-anything but by leaving those as messages from Jake saying he think he found something new and to drop by when you want you let the player pick their own pace. Unlocking things through the story is a solid idea. The vitomatic works perfectly, The Ron’s introduction works fine too. Any purely optional stuff or things that improve a tool you have is fine. It’s the timing of the essentials that breaks how the story can also be used by anyone.

I have to stop random long rants.

 

[Reaktorbot]

People playing their own way is a given. Not only this mod but the base game too. So of course the end result when combining both is you have a range that goes from micro-managing roleplayer on surivival all the way to city-plan and never look back, first person shooter mode don’t care about the story and everything in between.

The fact that this mod can (when everything runs smoothly) accommodate all of those play styles is kind of insane. This is something they should be commended for. They are doing their best to provide an interesting avenue for all those play styles tu use the plots and add-ons.

The only issue here is the story, it’s the only part that failed at being accommodating to different play styles. I see it as a pacing issue more than anything else. I remember a lot of people being angry when a Bethesda Dev said they didn’t want to write a lot of lore for the minutemen when meeting Preston because the players would go build for hours so why bother. But it’s true. That’s why the real exposition dump comes from Preston’s later discussions and the Castle. Because the timing is “give them they toys, let them mess up with them and once they are ready to keep playing they’ll pick the quests back up”.

And SS2 locked most of the content required to build a complete settlement behind quest that will require hours to unlock. Defense, power, water are all very basic needs that when not met by plots in settlements make them feel very incomplete. That’s the reason why this is frustrating to many where conqueror wasn’t. Conqueror had the base plots available to you as usual so your settlement could feel complete. The new things that the story unlocked were complementary to a settlement, not requirements for a settlement to function.

So yeah, it’s still at the core the same base set of tools that are available to any play style to play their way but the story and it’s pacing is the thing that gets in the way.

Just for shits and giggles, let’s say power and water are available alongside industrial and agriculture. Then lily throws a fit about wanting more out of ASAMs, you get the whole raiders kidnapping and right there would be the perfect moment to have defense and commercial plots. Right there your full settlement would be set up early and you can let people play with the system, have a few quests to get more asams, maybe one to unlock multi-residential or multi-anything but by leaving those as messages from Jake saying he think he found something new and to drop by when you want you let the player pick their own pace. Unlocking things through the story is a solid idea. The vitomatic works perfectly, The Ron’s introduction works fine too. Any purely optional stuff or things that improve a tool you have is fine. It’s the timing of the essentials that breaks how the story can also be used by anyone.

I have to stop random long rants.

I dont think its a random rant.

I really like the story, but you got a point. I also think that it takes to long questwise to get the essentials.

In vanilla Fallout 4 Struges introduces you to all 4 Essential right away, Food, Water, Beeds and Defense.

I think SS2 should have a way to at least unlock Food Plots, House Plots and Defense Plots early (at some point after you visited the workshop in concord and get more ASAMs). This would give the player the bare essentials for building basic settlements and recruiting more settlers.

Industrial, caravan stuff and in my opinion even power and water plots can wait and be gradually unlocked thorugh the stroy.
The reason that power and water plots are not essential imo, is that the vanilla power generators and water purifiers synergise well with building a "Plot based Settlement". But thats just a feeling I have from playing a lot of SS1.

 

[Irealys]

The reason that power and water plots are not essential imo, is that the vanilla power generators and water purifiers synergise well with building a "Plot based Settlement".

Going back to my rant, I’m talking about how it’s not as inclusive to every base style. In SS1, I wasn’t forced to use defenses and water and power from the base game. I could turn on the cost for these and decide if the penalty (cost) was worth the bonus. I think that it works well to stop cheaply spamming base items. Now it’s not an option. You WILL use generators and water pumps and turrets (because the base guard posts keep getting unassigned) until the story says you don’t have to. So now playing with a cost to these when I’m forced to use them really doesn’t seem like I’m free to play the way I want. I can but only by using the cheat to open all quest items but then the story feels completely disjointed to what I’m playing.

Another example of an option that doesn’t t work well in SS2 is realistic build times. I loved to use these in SS1 and to counter the days they’d all have without homes, defense, food etc, I could donate guns, food and beer to the city desk to sustain the settlement until construction was over. SS2 is not kind to that (although it has nothing to do with story pacing).

Oh also the way SS2 works in terms of how building plots work industrial absolutely needs to be introduced as early as it is.

 

[Deleted member 10215]

Having given it some more thought over the weekend, I find myself coming to a realisation - in my head, SS2 isnt a "redo the settlement mechanics and maybe a few related optional quests" mod any more (which is what got me into SS1), its a "quest mod so linear even the slightest deviation breaks it, also something about settlements i guess but we're making that even less under player control" now. And until the devs finish making sure their questline works and start fixing core level mechanics bugs instead, I cant see that changing. It honestly feels like nobody on the dev team even alphatested anything other than the questline.

 

[Strec]

I agree with Lostlegends concerning the basic resources (wood, concrete, .....) permitting to construct the settlements, surely because I like to play like him, creatting settlements from scratch and not using city-plans in all settlements (generally I use city plans on some settlement I don't want to manage myself and reserve some settlement for my pleasure :p )

Second I agree the fact that don't getting the materials (wood, concrete,...) partially kills the method consisting to have dedicated settlement producing while some others are consumers (I'm too poor to be capitalist IRL I want to be in Fallout :p ).

Don't know if it is easy but you may introduce some special plots giving the resources (for example a generic material scavenging plot could give virtual resources and a dedicated lumbermill could give real wood in the workbench, eventually with more needs like more power consumed or some heavy SPECIAL needed).

A second alternative, perhaps easier, would be the possibility to buy with caps some of the virtual resources produced.

 

[Karen Byington]

People playing their own way is a given. Not only this mod but the base game too. So of course the end result when combining both is you have a range that goes from micro-managing roleplayer on surivival all the way to city-plan and never look back, first person shooter mode don’t care about the story and everything in between.

The fact that this mod can (when everything runs smoothly) accommodate all of those play styles is kind of insane. This is something they should be commended for. They are doing their best to provide an interesting avenue for all those play styles tu use the plots and add-ons.

The only issue here is the story, it’s the only part that failed at being accommodating to different play styles. I see it as a pacing issue more than anything else. I remember a lot of people being angry when a Bethesda Dev said they didn’t want to write a lot of lore for the minutemen when meeting Preston because the players would go build for hours so why bother. But it’s true. That’s why the real exposition dump comes from Preston’s later discussions and the Castle. Because the timing is “give them they toys, let them mess up with them and once they are ready to keep playing they’ll pick the quests back up”.

And SS2 locked most of the content required to build a complete settlement behind quest that will require hours to unlock. Defense, power, water are all very basic needs that when not met by plots in settlements make them feel very incomplete. That’s the reason why this is frustrating to many where conqueror wasn’t. Conqueror had the base plots available to you as usual so your settlement could feel complete. The new things that the story unlocked were complementary to a settlement, not requirements for a settlement to function.

So yeah, it’s still at the core the same base set of tools that are available to any play style to play their way but the story and it’s pacing is the thing that gets in the way.

Just for shits and giggles, let’s say power and water are available alongside industrial and agriculture. Then lily throws a fit about wanting more out of ASAMs, you get the whole raiders kidnapping and right there would be the perfect moment to have defense and commercial plots. Right there your full settlement would be set up early and you can let people play with the system, have a few quests to get more asams, maybe one to unlock multi-residential or multi-anything but by leaving those as messages from Jake saying he think he found something new and to drop by when you want you let the player pick their own pace. Unlocking things through the story is a solid idea. The vitomatic works perfectly, The Ron’s introduction works fine too. Any purely optional stuff or things that improve a tool you have is fine. It’s the timing of the essentials that breaks how the story can also be used by anyone.

I have to stop random long rants.

Don't stop rants. As one who occasionally does this, I enjoy good ones. I like SS2's story and agree, they should be commended for it, and I think a lot of us do. I am still trying to set things up so everything is taken care of by the settlers on some settlements and set others up so I have more control. I wanted to enjoy Conqueror, but I apparently don't play that way, I'm a settlement builder, have accepted this and just go with it.

 

[smogmonster512]

Don't stop rants. As one who occasionally does this, I enjoy good ones. I like SS2's story and agree, they should be commended for it, and I think a lot of us do. I am still trying to set things up so everything is taken care of by the settlers on some settlements and set others up so I have more control. I wanted to enjoy Conqueror, but I apparently don't play that way, I'm a settlement builder, have accepted this and just go with it.

I was under the impression that you could build conversion or production type Industrial plots, and the things they produce can be bought at shops. I haven't checked, but perhaps with those types of plots you can buy shipments of junk from a general store? For example, having a Brewery provides booze that can be bought at a bar plot, rather than dumped into the workbench.

 

[DeScruff]

I'm starting to agree; the fact that the settlers keep pinching all my crafting mats out of the vanilla Workshops whetuan they lack it in their Virtuals, plus the cost in mats to make more ASAMs, is making it all a lot of cost for basically no reward outside a handful of caps at best. Especially on Survival Mode, since it seems to take well over double the actual required Food for the system to start generating a positive amount of Food items rather than stealing all my own.
Yes I have tried changing the (seemingly) relevant settings in the Holotape, but like "auto assign" it just ignores those when it feels like and goes back to defaults.

Im also kinda inclined to agree.
I understand why the separation of Virtual, and regular Workshop, but it just also feels weird when the virtual workshop has a ton of a resource like concrete, wood, or steel and you have no access to it even though your building infrastructure for your settlement (foundations, power poles, stairs exc)

Also it doesn't feel like I am personally benefiting from any of the choices of which kinda plots to build besides the farms. The scavenger plots do give me some extra junk, but its always random. In SS1 if I was doing a playthrough that required a lot of a certain kinda component like circuitry I would work my way up any kinda tech tree to make that kinda thing. Can't really do that here since they keep all their circuitry.
It would very quickly get over powered though and I'd end up with way more circuitry then I could ever use.

EDIT: New keyboard... this is the second website where Ive posted accidentally while still typing, and I still don't know how its doing that...

 

[Lostlegends]

I was under the impression that you could build conversion or production type Industrial plots, and the things they produce can be bought at shops. I haven't checked, but perhaps with those types of plots you can buy shipments of junk from a general store? For example, having a Brewery provides booze that can be bought at a bar plot, rather than dumped into the workbench.

So that would mean, that you pay and work to build a settlement, they produce goods, and you have to work and pay to buy those goods from them. Little one sided rofl!
I'm a town leader not a charity fund raiser, gimme my loot lol.
I would be more in favor of a sort of manager plot, all reasources even if virtual have to be recorded, EG 500 wood. I would think a plot that takes a set percentage each day from virtual and adds it too the workbench, should be simple enough. Or better yet. if wood > **; subtract *% from virtual and add to workbench. The city planers still get what they want and the city designers also get something from SS2.
Maybe when they release more info I will look at modding, but havent modded a beth game since morrowind.

 

[Bored Peon]

Well last I checked my Starlight was up to almost 800 caps in the workbench. So the caps are there, you just aint getting as much as you did in SS1.

 

[Lostlegends]

Not debating it cant be done, it's more about the 'How' its done. For ME personaly buying stuff is a little like buying a jigsaw puzzle and paying someone to finish it.
It's about where different people get the fun element.
I get the fun from designing a good working chain of settlements that produce the wood/concrete etc to slowley expand and develop more settlements. I suppose this may be difficult for some to understand due to the varied ways people do the same thing, but experiance has taught me that if I do something a set way there are always many others doing it that way as well. And the reason I first responded to this thread was to say 'yep me too'.
The team making this seem to understand what I am talking about, as the base game has many options for making it play in different ways. I/we are just saying that 'they may have missed something' But I still feel SS2 is a very impressive mod!