Terraformer blocks make extras when imported as part of a City Plan

[VersusXV]

I have noticed extra edge/corner pieces being made when Terraformer blocks are generated as part of a City Plan. Can affect things when doing for Contest, and trying to avoid Complex Tag. It exports the edges as the CP creator has set them up, and it appears to me that when imported it also generates new ones. I'd been making CP on my usual main save, but to test I exported & created it as a city plan with only one blueprint attached. Had been having some issues with build limit gauge so I migrated my CP a second time, exported the plan again as I'd made corrections and used that one for City Plan creation. Most recently I used this City Plan on the contest save and found some duplicated edge pieces.

I'd noticed the item count increasing by more than it should have each time, and then I'd spotted it due to Transfer Settlements annoying bug where things' Z Angles are off by 1/2 degrees, turned out many of the edge/corner terraformer pieces. Ended up reducing my object count by 150, draws by about 300 by eliminating duplicate pieces or those that got generated in out of sight locations(ie under the ground) due to position of the terraformer block.

I'm unsure what best fix would be, between excluding Terraformer Edges/Corner or if Terraformer base blocks generated by City Plans or Transfer Settlements Imports should perhaps automatically not generate edges regardless of the Terraformer Grading setting?

Although to be honest I am very new to working with City Plans so I'm not aware if it's standard practice for the CP creators/users to disable Terraformer Grading holotape setting when doing things with City Plans that included Terraformer blocks. If it is then sorry. I've mostly only used RotC City Plans though I've tried a few of Yagisan's CPs & VikingBaggins Vault 88. I think Yagisan's Microfusion Shed might have included Terraformer blocks but I never noticed if extras got made.

 

[Yagisan]

I've mostly only used RotC City Plans though I've tried a few of Yagisan's CPs & VikingBaggins Vault 88. I think Yagisan's Microfusion Shed might have included Terraformer blocks but I never noticed if extras got made.

The Massfusion plan was made before this feature was available, so uses Kraggles exclusively. Spectacle Island heavily uses this, and there are often a few in more recent city plans. I've never turned off auto grading - but as you may be aware, I have all my raw saves and exports in a public GitHub. I'll freely admit that I don't design for non-complex builds as a general rule, so I've never paid attention to how many blocks it actually makes.

 

[diziet]

I noticed this too, I assumed that it is because the foundations will auto-spawn edges and corners when they are laid down. This TS exports the existing edges/corners, and when the city plan lays a foundation it does its thing and auto-spawns. I never got around to testing by scrapping the edges/corners before exporting to a city plan.

 

[VersusXV]

The Massfusion plan was made before this feature was available, so uses Kraggles exclusively. Spectacle Island heavily uses this, and there are often a few in more recent city plans. I've never turned off auto grading - but as you may be aware, I have all my raw saves and exports in a public GitHub. I'll freely admit that I don't design for non-complex builds as a general rule, so I've never paid attention to how many blocks it actually makes.

That's totally understandable and honestly same here. I'm only trying to design non-complex for the contest. Though I'm experiencing general bugginess with my build gauge so who knows, it's basically a shot in the dark whether or not it's Complex. Tells me I'm 219% over the default build limit, but when I select to do the 25% increase 3 times(I don't think I selected usage + 25%) the gauge was 2/3rds full, this was also testing with all other mods disabled and using the contest save. I'm at ~3000 Draws, about inline with Sanctuary level 3 through the Draw count can range very widely depending on what Build Plans are in use. About 3000 or so would be when using only base Sim Settlements build plans, it can probably reach 3500-maybe 4000 if someone uses all the addons, uses all the most complex build plans fully upgraded, Level 4 Agricultural, etc. Some of the base sim settlement houses like Raised shack add like 12 draws at level 3, some addon ones seem to add possibly up to 100. I think interior plot possibly uses more because they're all spawned objects so I guess at least 1 draw for each thing spawned?

I'll have to set up Sanctuary optimized CP to level 3 again to know for sure, though I'm guessing it will be inevitable to have higher draw count than RotC city plans as they most likely have had custom made meshes/combined meshes made to really optimize things as much as possible. From the trailer for optimized city plans there were very few if any really noticeable differences in terms of obvious reductions to the CPs, so I assume a method like this was used for optimization. Fully custom meshes seems to me to be the way to go for non-complex CPs, though the unfortunate thing is this will bloat the file size which is valuable commodity for xbox. Testing on my NW settlement with some generated Nifs suggests most likely 50mb or maybe a 100mb file size increase due to the included meshes in the probable end result if I try to use generated combined nifs as much as possible(ie. Nearly everything besides the plots being SCOL generated Nifs). Though these numbers would be for uncompressed BA2 or loose file for the meshes, compressed are a fair bit smaller though I did notice from tests Sim Settlements' Main.BA2 appear to be made with the uncompressed so I as a result assume there is reason to not select compressed? I will try out compressed sometime on my NW settlement mod and if any bugs come up as a result I'll just switch to using uncompressed when creating BA2 in Archive2.

At any rate, as the contest entry is my first ever City Plan I will likely need some help & feedback on that front in order to adjust & optimize for a non-complex version should that be deemed to be necessary. I'm willing to do the work for that but might need help to do so in an optimal way.

I noticed this too, I assumed that it is because the foundations will auto-spawn edges and corners when they are laid down. This TS exports the existing edges/corners, and when the city plan lays a foundation it does its thing and auto-spawns. I never got around to testing by scrapping the edges/corners before exporting to a city plan.

This seems to be exactly correct, from what I have observed.

I never got around to testing by scrapping the edges/corners before exporting to a city plan.

That would work although would not address the few edges that may be entirely below the ground/obscured. Not a big deal on the PC since typically the hardware easily handles it and if need be I can use TFC to go track these down and do MoveTo Player 0 0 200(prevents it ending up being below the ground at player's location) on all of them to easily scrap them all. The other option could be to disable grading when importing? I'm not sure there as I figure most players just leave that enabled as it's pretty handy and in my experience, any extra pieces being pretty inconsequential?

But I don't know, perhaps it can have impact on the Xbox? I switched save for testing purposes so had exported from 1st save -> imported on 2nd save, made corrections then exported again -> imported on Contest quick start save. Result was I had close to 150 extra pieces. I haven't played on Xbox in quite a long time, sold it maybe 16 months ago when moving to PC.