Closed Settlers standing in the middle of the road and not at their shops

[tankthing]

The papyrus edits Kinggath suggests are exactly what I was referring to that made the most difference in settler strangeness.

Another thing to do is get rid of lights that generate shadows. There's a mod out there that makes sim settlements lights generate shadows, it is beautiful and can make a big difference visually in small settlements, in larger ones the same lights will eat your computer and come back for more. If you have the mod, try disabling it and loading one of your problem saves and seeing if it makes any difference.

Player placed water is another huge performance sink. To easily see one of the issues happening with it, try placing one of the large water sheets from the SOE pack or BYOP and then place a second one directly over the top of the first one so they overlap... Instant framerate tank. It doesn't always happen but when it does, look out because it's really really bad. Double refraction calculations = high GPU overload.

When you've tested, please come back and report your results, I'm very interested in seeing if my anecdotal personal experience translates into the larger world. If it does, it may give some options for mod authors to look at performance issues and potentially batch and/or throttle requests made to the settler scripts to avoid overloading whatever it's overloading behind the scenes.

One thing I've noticed is that in early versions of SS, I was able to get settlements up above 90 settlers and, while wonky to the point of being seriously demented, the settlement would still function. Later versions with more features are having problems handling above 60 settlers. I don't know if this is due to having all these new plots that add NPCs which may be somehow counting against the settlement scripts. Lots of speculation, little hard data.

Just wait until the cow script gets stuck in some kind of fugue state and you end up with 10+ cows running around in a single settlement with 1 cow trough. That's a funny one.

The 2 cows and many settlers trying to steal a boat at the lighthouse with the cows doing the hotwiring is probably still my favorite.

 

[Tinuvia]

Love the industrious cows! Talking the settlers into mischief ...

 

[tankthing]

I'm still trying to figure out how to explain how they got there... they're literally too big to path over the tiny little boat ramp thing and certainly too large to pass the doorway into the cabin.

Teleportation only gets you so far before you have to give in and recognize the superiority of the bovine intellect for getting into stuff.

 

[Tinuvia]

Where there's a will there's a way, it seems

 

[tankthing]

Sweet mother of god, they've gone amphibious... It's a whole new world when wearing IR HUD glasses...

Just saw this in my game while swimming to the Castle. I think one of my provisioners is really lost.

 

[Mikazu]

@kinggath
Thank you, will check it out!

EDIT: I'll be the first to bow to our new bovine overlords


http://imgur.com/a/NTkWI

 

[spaced]

here is one of my guard posts, the guard is walking away from it however I WILL catch him at it from time to time. I have it set up so that if I am attacked here he will trigger the siren and that will then trigger an firework launcher to shoot out an minutemen flare so I need him at it. Im not sure if its just that having more settlers on guard duty will create "shifts" idk. Im sure its not sim settlements causing this but idk at this point. http://imgur.com/a/HoP96

How did you manage to set this up - it sounds awesome!!!

 

[MrCJohn]

@Mikazu Since you're on PC, you have a lot more options to help with script lag. That page also has some ini settings for Papyrus that can dramatically improve your script performance.

This has helped me... though I may up the numbers a bit see if helps further.

My helpful hint is this... and this helps when you are actually playing the game versus settlement building...

1) Turn off auto assign
2) Turn off auto upgrades
3) Do the assignments yourself - one plot at a time. This is especially true once your population grows...
4) Turning off the auto upgrade or assign means when playing the game, the game doesn't stutter or CTD (CIT building especially - anywhere near it) when the messages come up about building plot changes...
5) Hang out for 10 mins game time in an interior space.... let the AI run freely and unload the other cells....

This may be a little past what SimSettlements was about initially, but I think SS has unleashed a monster - but it is manageable... just be prepared for more manual work than auto pilot.

I actually love it more because it is a lot more immersive IMHO.

John

 

[tankthing]

There's a few sensor mods that do all this and more. This could be entirely automated and free you up a guard.
Auto Doors has a proximity sensor that will power on a switch when an enemy gets in range.
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/8457/?

Hook that to your siren and your fireworks launcher and you're done.

This one: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21214/? has some promise as well

In my games auto doors mostly gets used to open and close garage doors at times of day to simulate the opening and closing of businesses. It's a cheap and cheesy way to get the job done but it's kind of cool to be in a settlement when they all open up or shut down.

 

[Vaporize]

How did you manage to set this up - it sounds awesome!!!

Easy peasy, connect one power line to the siren, then from the siren to the firework launcher, load the firework launcher with a few emergency flares (the ones that summon the MM from the chem bench) and then maybe a firework for added effect. Once activated the settlement will rush to the area as well as support from the MM that were just called in. Can post video if needed.

 

[Vaporize]

OP here, so I have read several replies now, and now that I am playing FO4 again want to clear a few things up in regards to this error I am still seeing, and now it is pretty much in every settlement not just SANC, so this is a script error then? I just went to the drive in and like clockwork everyone was just standing in place, provided it was night time but I see this all the time. Is there now a fix for this?

 

[Vaporize]

There's a few sensor mods that do all this and more. This could be entirely automated and free you up a guard.
Auto Doors has a proximity sensor that will power on a switch when an enemy gets in range.
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/8457/?

Hook that to your siren and your fireworks launcher and you're done.

This one: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21214/? has some promise as well

In my games auto doors mostly gets used to open and close garage doors at times of day to simulate the opening and closing of businesses. It's a cheap and cheesy way to get the job done but it's kind of cool to be in a settlement when they all open up or shut down.

also a solid way to set that up, but are you noticing the settlers still standing about? Has a fix or cause been discovered yet?

 

[Vaporize]

@Vaporize Did you ever figure out what was causing all of your settlers to slack off?

Just wanted to check back in, still seeing the same issues however now it is happening in more than one settlement. Some have pointed the problem being to the AI scripts I'm still having a hard time trying to narrow this down but it seems like now I am not the only one with this issue at least.

 

[Loredena]

Are any of you seeing this in settlements other than Sanctuary? That's my primary pathing problem settlement, though occasionally the settlers get mill around in the Castle. I know Sanctuary has some hidden settler idle spots that cause some serious weirdness at times - for that matter one idle has every dog and cat in the place trying to climb on top of a residence in mine. Next time I'm going to give in and build around the workshop instead of moving it....



/edit and now that I've actually read the entire thread I see that it isn't just Sanctuary, so nm

 

[tankthing]

I've seen this behavior under the following circumstances. It doesn't matter where the settlement is and isn't specific to Sim Settlements (this is a vanilla AI issue).

1) Settler cannot find path to work location - Stands there looking stupid
2) Settler cannot find path to home location at night - Stands there looking stupid
3) AI Scripts backed up - All settlers take forever to assign, many move only a few steps at a time, then stand there looking stupid, nobody works, nobody sleeps.

You can easily reproduce this behavior at Finch Farm.

build all the settlement beds under the bridge inside of prefab housing
build staircases up to the bridge
build a bunch of crops in planters on the bridge
come down and delete the stairs as you come.

Settlers will frequently teleport up to the bridge to work but if you quick travel in, they'll all teleport to the workbench and many will stand there looking stupid the rest of the day.

If you reverse the beds and work objects you'll see the same behavior. Some will still teleport but you'll still see sheep just standing there.

If you want to see script objects backing up, simply build a vanilla settlement someplace like sanctuary without mods or script optimizations, you'll see overload starting around 30-40 settlers on PC (25ish on xbox). Doing the papyrus optimizations on the wiki will let you get to 40-50 before it starts overloading.

This is a game issue and can be reproduced without Sim Settlements because the problem is in Settler AI.
The mod Busy Settlers and any other mod that adds settlement workstations so settlers have jobs sees the same problems.
It's more prevalent in Sim Settlements because of what it adds to the game. All I can offer for advice to mitigate the issue is keep your settlements around 20 population, make sure every plot is pathable (on all sides for agricultural plots whenever possible) and don't have a lot of workstations where stuff can be done so the settler AI has less to back up on.

 

[Vaporize]

I've seen this behavior under the following circumstances. It doesn't matter where the settlement is and isn't specific to Sim Settlements (this is a vanilla AI issue).

1) Settler cannot find path to work location - Stands there looking stupid
2) Settler cannot find path to home location at night - Stands there looking stupid
3) AI Scripts backed up - All settlers take forever to assign, many move only a few steps at a time, then stand there looking stupid, nobody works, nobody sleeps.

You can easily reproduce this behavior at Finch Farm.

build all the settlement beds under the bridge inside of prefab housing
build staircases up to the bridge
build a bunch of crops in planters on the bridge
come down and delete the stairs as you come.

Settlers will frequently teleport up to the bridge to work but if you quick travel in, they'll all teleport to the workbench and many will stand there looking stupid the rest of the day.

If you reverse the beds and work objects you'll see the same behavior. Some will still teleport but you'll still see sheep just standing there.

If you want to see script objects backing up, simply build a vanilla settlement someplace like sanctuary without mods or script optimizations, you'll see overload starting around 30-40 settlers on PC (25ish on xbox). Doing the papyrus optimizations on the wiki will let you get to 40-50 before it starts overloading.

This is a game issue and can be reproduced without Sim Settlements because the problem is in Settler AI.
The mod Busy Settlers and any other mod that adds settlement workstations so settlers have jobs sees the same problems.
It's more prevalent in Sim Settlements because of what it adds to the game. All I can offer for advice to mitigate the issue is keep your settlements around 20 population, make sure every plot is pathable (on all sides for agricultural plots whenever possible) and don't have a lot of workstations where stuff can be done so the settler AI has less to back up on.

Well that is about as final of an answer I think we are going to get and pretty much what I needed to hear from someone who understands the game code far more than I do, at least now I ( and most of the people on this thread) can just enjoy the game /the mod now and hope someone creates a new AI script or something. Cheers.