Recreation seeming to be broken?

[Saturnity]

Have about 50 people in a Sanctuary settlement. It's my first settlement so I don't know if i'm doing something wrong. I have the settlement settings on the auto to where it takes care of auto-assigning.

All the way up to like 40 people, all bars were maxed out and all was good. I came back to my settlement after some quests, and now my recreation is maybe 1/6 full. I keep building more and more and more recreation plots, going around and making sure I have multiple of each, and the bar just simply isn't going up. Should I just keep building them? Am I missing something about how recreation works? Do training plots not necessarily count as 'relaxation' points? I tried googling and nothing would show up that gave any information, so I think I'm probably missing something rather than getting a bug.

Also I just joined this site, is the server running kinda slow right now or something? I click the forum homepage and I gotta sit for a few minutes for it to load

 

[Cessori]

The only Recreational Building Plans that increase happiness are the Relaxation ones. The others are for training Settler stats.
Information about Recreation Plots

 

[yaugie]

The "Recreation meter" on the HUD only tells you what percentage of them have assignments of that type, it doesn't actually affect anything directly. As long as the Happiness (the base-game rating) is at or above 80, or at least trending that way, you're all good. Usually only takes 1-2 Relaxation-type Recreation plots plus a Bar and Clinic to keep them sitting at or around 100 Happiness, in my experience, although I don't build to more than 25ish people per settlement.
If someone's already at a 10 in a SPECIAL stat, they'll get unassigned from the training of that stat, and then it'll have to wait for the next round of auto-assignment to see if it can give them another one.

Sanctuary in particular has always been really finicky for me about the meters being full too, even when you know they should be; it seems to depend where in the settlement you are located as to what it counts at that instant.

And yeah, the forums are being slow as heck for me too the past couple days.

 

[Karvoc]

Also 50 settlers, how many plots is that, how many turrets and actors do you have? This settlement will have issues due to fallout 4 problems.

 

[Eichkater]

A mistake I've made in the beginning as well was thinking that recreation is as important as the other ressources. But it is not. It is either is a tool to increase happiness OR to train the stats of your settlers. Hereby it is not necessary to train ALL settlers. In fact as Recreational Plots have high maintenance costs so having them for every settler would rest heavily on your economy. So I guess you have maintenance costs off otherwise it would be a real problem.

Also there are heaps of settlers that already have decent stats so it is not necessary at all to train them. Non-special settlers might start out weak but it's not necessary to train them in ALL stats. Specialising them all by letting them train one stats is absolutely enough as they can only work one plot anyways.

 

[yaugie]

In fact as Recreational Plots have high maintenance costs so having them for every settler would rest heavily on your economy. So I guess you have maintenance costs off otherwise it would be a real problem.

Even with Maintenance Costs off, the stat-training ones still put more of a strain on your settlement network's Food and Water supplies, which especially early game when you're only running one or two settlements with low-tier production plots can be quite the pain. I think that's called "Dynamic Needs" in the holotape.

 

[Saturnity]

The only Recreational Building Plans that increase happiness are the Relaxation ones. The others are for training Settler stats.
Information about Recreation Plots

Thank you. My happiness has always been high, but it always bugged me having a bar not full aha, I like having them all maxed. Was just weird it was maxed out, and then randomly super low.

The "Recreation meter" on the HUD only tells you what percentage of them have assignments of that type, it doesn't actually affect anything directly. As long as the Happiness (the base-game rating) is at or above 80, or at least trending that way, you're all good. Usually only takes 1-2 Relaxation-type Recreation plots plus a Bar and Clinic to keep them sitting at or around 100 Happiness, in my experience, although I don't build to more than 25ish people per settlement.
If someone's already at a 10 in a SPECIAL stat, they'll get unassigned from the training of that stat, and then it'll have to wait for the next round of auto-assignment to see if it can give them another one.

So as long as I have the game auto-assigning I should be good? I don't think I even have a clinic building plan or a bar so maybe that's part of it? I never even paid attention to settler stats, do they necessarily do much? Or do they just boost specific plots based on the stat need?

Also 50 settlers, how many plots is that, how many turrets and actors do you have? This settlement will have issues due to fallout 4 problems.

I noticed a couple people saying they keep them small. I love having mega-cities, is this not necessarily a good idea? My Sanctuary settlement was my first where I tried ironing out some problems since it's been a long while since I used SS2, but yeah I think I had most of the Sanctuary workshop area filled with a giant platform for my city to be on one large level place. I had like 30 home plots, 32 recreation plots, 3-4 defense plots, and then like 20 industrial and 20 agriculture plots. Everything seemed to be going okay other than my recreation problem. Also; actors?

A mistake I've made in the beginning as well was thinking that recreation is as important as the other ressources. But it is not. It is either is a tool to increase happiness OR to train the stats of your settlers. Hereby it is not necessary to train ALL settlers. In fact as Recreational Plots have high maintenance costs so having them for every settler would rest heavily on your economy. So I guess you have maintenance costs off otherwise it would be a real problem.

Also there are heaps of settlers that already have decent stats so it is not necessary at all to train them. Non-special settlers might start out weak but it's not necessary to train them in ALL stats. Specialising them all by letting them train one stats is absolutely enough as they can only work one plot anyways.

Yeah I have no clue. I have it on what seems to be the easiest setting where it takes care of itself, but I also use FO4 heavily modded, and have a ton of materials + caps that i've 'deposited' at the city planning desk. Seemed like it was making enough money? But this makes sense. Felt weird though letting the bar go down since it was full for a long while then randomly dropped. I did ask earlier in this but i'll ask again, what are the stats necessarily for? Just boosts on specific plots? In this case is it just better to have a couple training plots and then the rest are normal relaxation plots?

Thank you guys for the information. Seems to make slighty more sense. Guess my overall questions are;
1. Are large settlements not necessarily advisable? I enjoy making mega-cities, hence my (currently) only settlement being in Sanctuary and having over 50 people. Currently in progress using the castle as a foundation to make an even bigger city, should I not lol? Or will it just be a little glitchy?
2. Do settlers need stat training? Someone mentioned they are already usually good so you don't need many, but what does settler stats do anyway? Does it just give boosts for certain plots?
3. So simply, as long as happiness is up, the recreation bar is just to be ignored?

 

[Eichkater]

1. Are large settlements not necessarily advisable? I enjoy making mega-cities, hence my (currently) only settlement being in Sanctuary and having over 50 people. Currently in progress using the castle as a foundation to make an even bigger city, should I not lol? Or will it just be a little glitchy?

The more you build the more objects are in a given cell and the more your pc has to do. 50 settlers and the corresponding plots sounds insane tbh. You will not find a single city plan experienced builders did with that many settlers. So I reckon it is not advisable. Building too much in one spot leads to instabilities. Those I have encountered when building too much in one spot.

2. Do settlers need stat training? Someone mentioned they are already usually good so you don't need many, but what does settler stats do anyway? Does it just give boosts for certain plots?

Short answer: No, they don't necessarily. Further down the line you go through a tech tree which unlocks more buildings. Higher Tier buildings, such as advanced plots and high-tech plots have a certain stat requirement. 5 for advanced and 7 for high-tech. Thus, if you want to build a let's say high-tech farm you'd need at least one farmer assigned to that plot with an Endurance stat of at least 7.
But while you are playing you will encounter many, many special settlers that can be recruited either by just talking to them or by doing a little quest. Most of them have high stats. Also all the available vanilla companians have good stats. So with a bit of juggling around one could probably outfit a lot of higher tier plots with just those entities.
But ofc you can make life easier by just training them. It takes a while mind to get them to lvl 7 but you can rotate them around. The higher the stat the higher the output of that plot but I think it's not worth the time to really min/max every single settler.

3. So simply, as long as happiness is up, the recreation bar is just to be ignored?

The recreation bar is not necessary for your settlement to advance but happiness is. I take it more as an indicator of how many people are currently not training in my settlement.

 

[Saturnity]

The more you build the more objects are in a given cell and the more your pc has to do. 50 settlers and the corresponding plots sounds insane tbh. You will not find a single city plan experienced builders did with that many settlers. So I reckon it is not advisable. Building too much in one spot leads to instabilities. Those I have encountered when building too much in one spot.


Short answer: No, they don't necessarily. Further down the line you go through a tech tree which unlocks more buildings. Higher Tier buildings, such as advanced plots and high-tech plots have a certain stat requirement. 5 for advanced and 7 for high-tech. Thus, if you want to build a let's say high-tech farm you'd need at least one farmer assigned to that plot with an Endurance stat of at least 7.
But while you are playing you will encounter many, many special settlers that can be recruited either by just talking to them or by doing a little quest. Most of them have high stats. Also all the available vanilla companians have good stats. So with a bit of juggling around one could probably outfit a lot of higher tier plots with just those entities.
But ofc you can make life easier by just training them. It takes a while mind to get them to lvl 7 but you can rotate them around. The higher the stat the higher the output of that plot but I think it's not worth the time to really min/max every single settler.


The recreation bar is not necessary for your settlement to advance but happiness is. I take it more as an indicator of how many people are currently not training in my settlement.

Okay this makes sense. I play on an Xbox Series X so maybe that's why it's been pretty stable and the game isn't running as rough as PC? I used the Castle to make another mega-city with a bunch of people and still haven't run into stability issues. Must have gotten lucky. I am not good with any strategies nor have I looked into any, so my building plans pretty much consist of a giant grid of houses. My creativity is terrible for creating actual cities so I end up with what can best be described as 'townhouse rows' where I have a long line of like 15 plots, with another 15 plots facing it, 15 plots behind those, and then 15 plots facing the new row, so in the end I have four lines, each with 15 plots, with a little 'road' between them to walk up, leaving me with 60 plots. I think my Sanctuary mega-city has like 80 total plots at this point or something.

And thank you for the skill info. I think I just haven't had the mod long enough to actually experience a lot of it and necessarily had high-tier plots. Heck, I think I only have tier 3(?) as my highest for my Sanctuary mega-city. Still unlocking stuff as I go on

 

[yaugie]

I don't think I even have a clinic building plan or a bar so maybe that's part of it?

Those are both 'subtypes' of Commercial plot - they both provide a little Happiness, on top of the Caps that shops generate (and Clinics help out with the Disease mechanic too). I build one of each in every settlement, but that's of course personal choice.

I never even paid attention to settler stats, do they necessarily do much? Or do they just boost specific plots based on the stat need?

In essence, every SPECIAL stat has a primary effect on a plot type to increase their effectiveness. This page on the wiki describes it better than I ever could:

Settlers

wiki.simsettlements2.com

The generic "Settler" dudes that the recruitment beacon pulls in tend to have pretty weak stats - 1s and 2s across the board, generally. As Eichkater said, the base game's "companion" NPCs tend to have great stats - as a point of reference, the super mutant companion "Strong" has a 24 in Strength. It's also somewhat of a minor 'meme' around here that for some reason, the base game NPC "Mama Murphy" that's with Preston and company in Concord has 19 Strength. (a 10 in a stat is generally considered to be the maximum a normal human can get to)

 

[Eichkater]

It's also somewhat of a minor 'meme' around here that for some reason, the base game NPC "Mama Murphy" that's with Preston and company in Concord has 19 Strength. (a 10 in a stat is generally considered to be the maximum a normal human can get to)

Well, she killed a Deathclaw with three bullets after all...