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Masters Contest Rules

You will need to fix/remove whatever is causing precombines to break then go back and start over using the supplied save.
You can't have precombines disabled or a scrap mod installed even if you don't touch anything vanilla during building, it causes havoc when exporting.

There are containers in Decoration > Wharehouse > Crates btw, so all is not lost.
 
I rolled back to a time when I didn't move those things, and kept going from there with new ideas in mind.

It was less me being upsetti-spaghetti over not having containers to work with, and more disappointed that I can't show the natural evolution of the landscape due to human interaction. I mean, it's a big ol' barge filled with washed up stock, and now my settlers are just gonna have to ignore that it's there? Oyy... talk about ludonarrative dissonance. Oh well, the fight goes on.

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Having watched that video you linked and done a bit more reading, I've come to a possible new issue. Literally anything scrapped via Place Everywhere's extended scrap options will cause issues with precombines, won't it? The piles of debris in the wrecked house, errant rocks, boards and planks affixed in areas they're not wanted?

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Also (possibly a lesser problem, but one I wanted to bring up regardless), pre-placed items that can be moved and scrapped sans mods disappear and then fade back into reality when moved; as an example, in the garage near the wrecked mansion I picked up and moved the diagnostic cart it disappeared (but the green highlight of the object remained) until I placed it back down, whereupon it sort of fizzled back into existence.

Is this normal? I've never seen this happen before.
 
can you post your load order you are using for the contest
 
looks fine to me
I gave the contest save a quick test and the shipping containers cannot be removed or moved .
As phil says ,deff something wrong with your save.
Is it possible you missed removing a scrap mod?

Try it on a clean contest save and see if it happens again.
 
I think I've said this like three times now, lol

I was using the extended scrap options that Place Everywhere offers when you hit the 'Insert' key. I had previously checked that this was alright to do, and it was. I think others in this thread have as well.

I'm beginning to think that it's not alright to use that option at all, in which case cleaning out that mansion ruin is going to be next to impossible.
 
Bottom line is that I'm not gonna touch any of the containers anymore, period. But I do need clarification, is it still okay to use the extended scrap options from Place Everywhere? Because if not I'm going to need to start over again as I've cleaned out the floor in that mansion, and that couldn't be achieved without activating that option.
 
I can confirm that the extended scrap options from Place Everywhere should not be able to select those containers or the debris in the house at all. The fact that they're letting you means something must have broken your precombines. I've heard that even just having Scrap Everything or other scrap mods installed can have this effect regardless of whether or not they're enabled, so you will probably want to uninstall them entirely if you ever used them. If you're sure they're gone and/or never used them, the next step would be to double check your configs. In your save directory (usually Documents/My Games/Fallout 4) there should be some INI files. Opening them with a text editor and searching for bUseCombinedObjects should tell you all you need to know; if you find it and it says bUseCombinedObjects=0, delete that line, save the file, and start a new save in game.
 
Using Extra Object Selection in PE is fine. The issue is that random mods break precombines - so if you're going to use that option, you should strip down to the bare minimum mods during these contests.

When we ran into the issue with Croup Manor, it was because the Unofficial Patch happened to break the precombines and they patched it very quickly once we pointed it out.

The nice thing, is that once you restore precombines by eliminating the offending mods, the items will restore themselves, and at worst you'll have a weird overlapping item you had previously thought you could safely remove. If you want to test for precombine breaks, disable every mod aside from Sim Settlements and load into your save (with the intention of not saving) to see if anything crazy happens.
 
Also (possibly a lesser problem, but one I wanted to bring up regardless), pre-placed items that can be moved and scrapped sans mods disappear and then fade back into reality when moved; as an example, in the garage near the wrecked mansion I picked up and moved the diagnostic cart it disappeared (but the green highlight of the object remained) until I placed it back down, whereupon it sort of fizzled back into existence.
Is this normal? I've never seen this happen before.

Yes I think this is normal, off the top of my head it just happens with items which you can't store in the workbench, but can move about.
 
Found the issue, yep it was bUseCombinedObjects=0. Whoops.

I'm still sour over how little I can remove from that mansion, and from that shipping crate barge. Damn precombines ruining my best laid plans. Back to the drawing board.
 
While I totally understand WHY precombines are important and have always left them on for building in these contests as a result, I can't help but feel this is one area where Bethesda really shot themselves in the foot with settlement building, for reasons exactly like harkness mentions.

My personal saves use Scrap Everything, and I just deal with the fallout (heh, pun intended?) of that decision. Luckily, I'm between mod load-outs, at the moment, so stripping down to bare bones has been utter cake for each of the contests I've entered - it already is bare bones!

Oh well, c'est la vie. On the flip side, it makes for some truly fascinating work for some of the better builders as they work around those problems. I remember being really impressed by the way someone (I'm pretty sure harkness, actually) worked around some of the broken stuff in Kingsport's house so well that I had trouble seeing where the original roof/etc had been hidden!

-asp
 
I don't see anything preventing me, but I just wanted to clarify & be sure.

I know we have to have a recruitment beacon & city plan desk in each level, but do they have to be in the same place?

-asp
 
This might not be the place for this question, but why is it that most workbenches i.e. crafting stations in plots and standalone’s don’t seem to connect to the settlement workbench so that they have access to a central repository of supplies? I can understand the need for some that don’t, but there are work arounds for the specific things I’m thinking of. Is it just reduction of program scripting and file size reduction?
 
If you build something at one end of the island and fly to the other end it you will see it disappear (unload). This is problematic for plots as not only are they visually unloading, their data also unloads. This affects calculation of resources, KG has some fixes in the pipeline for this but we need to help out by keeping plots reasonably close together, ie; don't build plots at the 4 corners of the island.
Along this train of thought, how small of an area would be acceptable in terms of the rules to use? I'm not 100% sure if I'll try a spectacle build but if I do, I think I'll likely do a 1 cell/2 cell compact build. Like some stuff maybe scattered out but all plots, beds, settler stuff all inside this 1 or 2 cell area either in the middle or at one end somewhere.
 
That's pretty much what my build has been, so far, at least somewhat. The functional bits fill an area similar to Kingsport, +/- a little.

Decorations, etc, are covering substantially more, so far.

-asp
 
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