My Diary Building The Commonwealth

[Umair Ahmed]

As there is no dedicated forum for settlement pics anymore as was in the SS1 days, this here people is my thread as I rant about and show you what am building. Along with the shenanigans the game and SS2 pulls out, I bet it would be a fun ride. Nowadays as a jobless software architect in a crashing economy, I have all the time I need to waste on building the continent...

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Zimonja with the red steel monster, still a bit confused as to what it should be...



It must be no hidden thing that I love beams and making cages and structures with visible supports is a costly and frustrating addiction with how snapping works...



Floor plans with internal plots, a pain and a disappointment. Don't know why this format was chosen when all else is multiples of squares. Holo icons are an issue too as they are supposed to clip in the wall for some reason. I mean what else an internal plot will have around it? space?



More beam porn lol. Ignore that institute floor, belch, I scrapped it today. Those pillars out of the roof aren't for show, a necessary evil as snapping those buggers is the hardest with the surrounding supports. Especially the corner ones as I snap two of them on top of each other to make a solid pillar. See the solid pillars in front too, believe me a real roulette has been played for each column...



Yeah, another necessary evil as the industrial set in snappy house is not of standard height so have to add double floors. Also to block seems have to add horizontal beams, fortunately they exist...



So this was my first build which I overhauled today with more floors getting converted to BoS floors. The Bos floor is that second one from the top. I intend to extend that outer cage wall to ground level, if the defences permit. Or I may just scrap it. I really felt the need of an vertically angled beam in the set...

 

[Umair Ahmed]

There is another issue that the plots in SS2 have no clearly defined specs like how many settlers it will need at L3 or how will it look like. It really frustrates me as I have to jump between settlements to see the samples and choose which plan to implement.

For this settlement I am going with an agricultural build while in the future I will also have conversion and production industries here as well. And this is small enough to be not very heavy even with settlers.

Though settlers as usual clip through the floor, that's why I built a hollowed out base with stairs leading up. Though I am not hopeful that the pathfinding AI will be able to work with it.

I also miss that feature in a mod I used in the past with SS1 that teleported the settlers to their job plots... ah the bliss of seeing them actually where they should be but never are... Perhaps I should learn navmeshing and fix these old settlement mods...

 

[Umair Ahmed]

After disabling a couple of mods like increased power radius and light shadows, I was able to achieve 30 FPS minimum in my sanctuary, the performance is just too good against those conveniences...

I have planned to make sanctuary my training hub of sorts for the rest of the settlements which would do something particular and depend on the caravans to supply themselves. Have started the transformation from red rocket initially.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Today I lowered some parts of Sanctuary a bit to save from settlers clipping underneath. Now it seems crowded.

There seems to be more areas that can be done the same but they are more difficult to manage, perhaps in the next session I'll think about them.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Some pics while doing modifications at sanctuary, after disappointingly not finding 3x3 plot plans.

Training/Leisure district, gonna plant trees in the green belt.



Municipal district (Power/Water)



Low Rise Residential District. Green belt has fountains, trees, trash cans and benches.

 

[Kahnares]

Nicely done! I am always amazed and impressed by the creativity some folks have. I'm a city plan person...I don't have a single creative bone in my body (shout out to all those city plan creators; you're lifesavers!). Looking forward to seeing more.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Making a large pipe built nowadays. There is serious lack of building pieces which results in issues in placement but oh well, I can make it work. I want to go with a large agricultural build again but maybe I'll introduce some industrials as well. Its just that the vision I was going with had internal plots hugging pipes vertically why horizontally there would be little or no occupancy with large fields underneath. And all of that in some kind of an under-construction industrial complex which never got completed but had the big pipes and foundations built for the most part.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

A lot of work is still left like supports and foundations. The angles and curves are there to both make it challenging and random. Usually I do systematic builds with patterns to make easier. This will force some irregular ones while still making them reusable.

I am making it so that the pipes are traversable by power armour with floor doors to break falls and junctions.

 

[Mystical Panda]

Nicely done! I am always amazed and impressed by the creativity some folks have. I'm a city plan person...I don't have a single creative bone in my body (shout out to all those city plan creators; you're lifesavers!). Looking forward to seeing more.

I completely agree- It looks amazing! Just what a real town WOULD look like.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Work continues... I simplified it a bit after finding lack of angled pieces. Picture it with plots lining the pipes to make a shanty town of sorts.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Today I remodelled the entry area of Sanctuary, making a more stepped ascending incline. This was to curb settlers ending beneath and also to increase some real estate for more of the green.



Previously this was a 3x3 area on both sides of the path. Now I reduced it to 3x3 right, 1x1 left and a 1x1 green belt behind. While adding a step below with 2x 3x3. The other side of the main path, has the same arrangement but the step below has 2x 2x2, 2x 1x1.



Pushed the defence out and added more plots of the same. Again the scarcity of high tech plots, really irks me.



Food processing.



I was getting really stuck with the storage yard I had made on one side of my settlement. So I built an open air caricature that can be easily extended vertically whenever.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Some parts of sanctuary that I completed some works on.



My CnC centre and obviously my home in this town. Its a 3x3 with the mayor/desk and mama murphy at first level, storage and consoles in second and bedroom at 3rd. Completely built from BOS set of SOE pack, the ascent is managed through angled hall pieces.



Looks into Mama Murphy's indoctrination chamber.



Completed the green belt.



Damn Brahmin, if only I could stop the spawning...

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Oh I forgot to share Red Rocket, next I'll get some pics of that as well.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

So here is my rendition of red rocket, a closed enclave with a ring of plots on the outside and a congested space for residents inside a walled square. The wall also serves as the holder for a conduit based electric grid. All resources are taken from the caravan network so there are no farms, industries, power plants and water works. Max pop for now is 25.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Just worked a bit on Zimonja and removed the second layer of the beam facade. The top floor with external plots is another necessary evil due to abject lack of training internal plots for some skills.

I will be making that sunshine pipe settlement into a manufacturing hub with industrial set to specific components, hopefully there is a complete set of plots available for practical gameplay. But that one is an extreme undertaking so there will be few updates as I get used to its nuances.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

An update after so long haha.

• Sanctuary changes: I have decided to move water to zimonja and industry to sunshine. Overall sanctuary will be farms and power. Pop: 100
• Abernathy needs some protection so am gonna shuffle some people to have some 5-6 people there. Pop: 3
• Red Rocket is now very close to maturity. Pop: 28
• Zimonja for now specializes in water and farms so some of these people will need relocation. SS2 seems to be having a lot of bugs in this vertical settlement with holo icons going bonkers. Pop: 28
• Tenpines is a new settlement that I built with a hotel being the centrepiece. I did some angled adventures using g2m. Will share pics soon. Pop: 14
• Sunshine is still in limbo, I have planned it to be an industrial hub but I guess, the sheer amount of time investment is deterring me subconsciously.

Some sanctuary photos:


The pathing seems to have improved quite a lot. SS2 should do some region based sanitation perhaps in the future...



Extended the green belt path, down to the power/water district.



This place is still in limbo as the other settlements are not compete to take over the industry and water here.

 

[Umair Ahmed]

Here are some pics from red rocket:



The front.



Yep, its a congested hell. I can understand the frustration that bald guy is taking everyday...

As you might observe, the plots actually encroach on the path, this was intentional to have this unusual arrangement and challenge.



Hospital is a godsend, previously all the settlers were sick even though there was no outbreak...



The power station is a necessary evil. Even though the 4k surplus network can easily provide for this measly settlement, SS2 takes almost 30 minutes to stabilize the grid with it, if the settlement doesn't have even one power station. Furthermore SS2 tends to mark it as unpowered when you are away as if the networked power was never a thing...

 

[Umair Ahmed]

So I have started building 2 new settlements to separate out water and storage.

Water in Nordhagen with a hotel to house residents. It will be a congested settlement, though I would try to make it very green.

Storage will be in a fortress like settlement, obviously due to extreme defence requirements. So I chose Kingsport for this. It will be an amalgamation of industrial/concrete sets having 8 stacks of storage. Foundations are like this:



The below one will house the people with other amenities, though on top it will be same as the other one.

Overall settlement updates:

1. Sanctuary Pop 111: I have started to reduce training areas as needs reduce and making more green belts as it becomes feasible. Also started focusing on developing more farms.
2. Red Rocket Pop 27: No updates here.
3. Abernathy Pop 12: I have started to carefully add few settlers here, just to see how it affects stability but till now there aren't any issues.
4. Tenpines Pop 20: This has become a full fledged settlement. Just a consumer settlement for now.
5. Zimonja Pop 38: Have been neglecting this one as I have decided to delegate its responsibilities to other settlements.