Wonder Plots: Wonders of the Settlement

[VersusXV]

(Based on Wonders of the world):

Summary:

• Plot ideas that may not fit well into the other types. Or simply for plots with powerful/complex functionality. Could be considered a "catch-all" category for script-centric plot ideas that don't clearly belong to an existing category.
• Only one of each Wonder Build Plan can exist per settlement(tear it down to build another/relocate it)
• Only one of each Advanced Wonder Build Plan can exist per game or perhaps per worldspace.
• Requires minimum Happiness to function, can also require minimum levels for the other settlement meters. The more powerful the effect, the higher this requirement will be and the more difficult it will be to fulfill via Dynamic Needs penalties. Could offer strong effects but player must manage their settlement well and fulfill settler needs. If settlement needs are not sufficiently fulfilled the plot goes into Dis-Repair making it both penalize Happiness as well not provide any of the special effect functionality so long as it's in Dis-Repair. Scripts are often where things can get OP so this is a balancing system to try to preserve intended Sim Settlements balancing for those who don't disable Dynamic Needs.
• The plot itself is a goal for builders who want the effect & in turn makes settlement management a more significant goal. This would also encourage the player to expand across multiple locations as much as possible, if enough of these existed someday then the player will want to make settlements across the Commonwealth to support them. Non builders will have more incentive to set up City Plans everywhere, especially since City Plan Mega Pack will mean there's going to be an abundance of them. Multiple of them could help allow the player to shape their gameplay via Build Plan selections on Sim Settlements Plots.
• Wonder Plot's Power Pole:
  

An example of the powerful/complex type of plots regarding the kind of stuff they could do would be IDEK's Logistics Station(though it fits very well as an Industrial Plot). It's been cited as on the overpowered side though, that actually is a part of the source for this idea alongside the hypothetical idea of a Plot that grants Perks to the Player. It got me thinking about how can fun/OP sorts of things exist in a game yet not disrupt intended Sim Settlements balance. Wonder Plots would have the drawback of requiring settlement needs to be met to a defined minimum percentage & Happiness to a defined minimum level, settlement caps can't be at a deficit, plus plot costs could be made higher if needed. For example if it's something that makes a settlement really appealing to raiders it could penalize Defense, ILS being present could tell raiders that there are a lot of supplies so this could be a reasoning for a Defense penalty. If the settlement is short on either the plot will not offer its benefit effect, for example if IDEK's Logistics Station was a wonder plot its supply lines would stop functioning temporarily if Happiness was too low. Perhaps when inactive for this reason, the plot could be seen to fall into a state of disrepair that penalized Happiness & the clock could revert to broken. I think this could turn into a win win scenario where powerful effects can be added & they in turn feed into making settlement management more important. With a good variety of Wonder Plots, between them & City Plans needing Happiness I think this would make players place a whole lot of importance on settlement management & keeping Happiness/Needs fulfilled.


Imagine a scenario where ILS would be a Wonder Plot & carry costs/drawbacks/difficulty factors that would make it in the end feel like a more well balanced inclusion, though it's hard for something to be that powerful as a super automatic supply line system. It could require more Food/Power & heavily penalize Defense since they're like stockpiles of resources from Supply lines so would be super attractive to Raiders seeking supplies, a big target. I would imagine something like ILS being an Advanced Wonder Plot for the first one to set up its logistics network, then Wonder Plot for the others. This plot type would be for very enthusiastic Sim Settlements players for whom the settlement management via Sim Settlements has essentially become the main point of their gameplay in Fallout 4. This could allow for powerful, game changing effects but without disrupting balance by having settlement management serve as a balancing check. Dis-repaired Wonder Plots likely would then penalize Happiness. You will need a very well managed settlement to run multiple Wonder Plots, adding each one will up the difficulty of managing the settlement. Generally the player will want to overdo it & have a surplus on every category before wanting to use multiple Wonder Plots. This would contribute to a Settlement's identity since you could most likely only have a few Wonder Plots at most on any given location, my thinking is it would be like this for accommodating them & not having them become inactive/dis-repaired:

• In the Early Stages of a new settlement: No more than 10% of job plots could be Wonder Plots, assuming the player is really smart about settlement management. Advanced Wonder Plot won't be doable. You would have to turret spam to fulfill defense requirements and this won't be able to be met by caps income. It wouldn't be doable without cheating.
• Moderate Settlement: Once it's essentially like a Level 2 City Plan or a Level 1 that is approaching upgrade could have 20-25% of Job plots be Wonder Plots. Advanced Wonder Plot might be doable.
• Late Game Settlement: This is the settlement that's a Level 3 City Plan or similar very developed settlement. Happiness is likely firmly at 100 or at least in the 90's, production is really high in all areas. You're getting loads of caps, extra crops from surplus food, enough Defense that attacks are rare and scrap production is firing on all cylinders. At this point it could potentially support up to 1/3rd of Job Plots being Wonder Plots. One Advanced Wonder Plot will be doable and maybe even a second.
• This is talking probably on ballpark average. A really powerful Wonder Plot may be something challenging to support even for a late game settlement & there might be tamer ones that are a little easier to support. Range in costs/difficulty would be from similar to an Advanced Industrial Plot up to what might sufficiently balance ILS if it were hypothetically going to be in Base Sim Settlements or Plots Mega Pack(Very or perhaps even extremely high costs & difficulty).

An Advanced Wonder Plot could be an only 1 of the build plan per game(or maybe once per worldspace), these could be kind of comparable to the hardest to unlock Advanced Industrial plots. To place it elsewhere you would have to remove the existing one. These would have very high costs & be a challenge to accommodate. You likely would need minimum of 90 or 95 Happiness, 95% employed/housed, 100% defense and all while having penalty like -50/-75/-100 to one of the categories like Defense. One idea I have is for these is for Faction themed ones to track how many of the Radiant Quests you've done. Perhaps could have unlocked benefits based on progression? If someday there are Faction Plots, they could be made to require these or synergize with these and you'd only be able to pick one faction to associate with the particular settlement(Minutemen being a possible exception to this rule). For instance if you had a BoS F.O.B. in Starlight you wouldn't be able to also build an Institute one.

 

[VersusXV]

I selected some from ideas I have that kind of, sort of could be argued they may not quite fit into the existing categories. Though to be fair I don't have fully precise ideas of what they would do, only general ideas of what purpose they'd serve.


Wonder Plot examples:

• City Hall: Miscellaneous benefits, higher power & caps income cost plot.
• Commonwealth Bank of the Minutemen: Can borrow Caps, increase caps output from Commercial plots. Heavily penalize Defense since it's literally a huge stockpile of Caps, mildly penalize Happiness(Settlers in Debt)
• Elite Settler Training Facility: Allow for recruiting a few special, stronger Settlers. But they require 2 Food & have lower Base Happiness(Harder to make them happy) & want more caps or else they might leave.
• Molecular Relay Plot: A Sim Settlements based route to the Institute.
• Sim Settlements Radio Network: Select the aired station to apply benefit to Settlers in the location or alternatively set it to sync with player's chosen radio station. Radio Freedom: Increased Recruitment, Makes the Recruitment Radio plot even more effective! Classical: Makes Settlers more productive. Diamond City Radio: Improve Settler's combat abilities, small buff to HP, Damage & DR/ER. Hypothetically it could be a way to have a Sim Settlements Station which could be used for some Sim Settlement quests to get benefits for your settlement.

(Spoiler Warning for any casual reader who might not have played any of the main quests. Though it's been 3 years)


Advanced Wonder Plot examples:

• Elite Setter Training HQ: This would be a companion plot with Elite Settler Training Facility. This would unlock the ability to have some elite settlers, with the regular facility being the means of recruiting them. Perhaps we could customize the settlers via this? I'd most like a way where I can hook up some settlers with some Looks Menu Presets, this way we could have cool looking ones off the Nexus and we could have our past player characters be Elite Settlers. Through this you'd form a roster of unique Settlers then the Facility would enable you to spawn selected ones in each settlement.
• Minutemen General's Headquarters: Applies benefits based on how many settlements you've helped, perhaps also based on how many Settlers you have across the Commonwealth. Could serve as a home for Preston. Could dynamically benefit the settlement from doing Preston's quests.
• Brotherhood of Steel Forward Operating Base: Provide BoS benefits based on player's ranking with them. Can assign Danse for Paladin level benefits. Can provide extra scrap by doing Scribe missions for Haylen, can provide other benefits for doing missions for Rhys & Quinlan.
• Institute F.O.B.(requires access to the institute ): Benefits based on completing missions for the different departments. For example SRB could give Synth settlers. Bioscience could allow for a Medical Synth to follow the player as an optional companion so long as supplies are available and the player paid Caps to have it follow for up to 24h.
• Railroad F.O.B./Safehouse(requires having a Railroad codename)
• Overboss Lair: Benefits based on number of settlements taken as Outposts for the Overboss. Could be themed with Overboss' preferred raider gang.
• Acadia of the Commonwealth: Different effects based on your choices in Far Harbor.
• Mechanist's Mini-Lair: Gain Automatron parts & a few randomized rare components when completing the Radiant quests.
• Silver Shroud's Hideout

I tried to brainstorm less since I am still on the sidelines still, but couldn't help after cool new people joined the Sim Settlements community. That is a surefire recipe for boosting enthusiasm!

 

[WetRats]

These are great ideas, as are some of the ones in this thread.

Can threads be merged?

 

[VersusXV]

These are great ideas, as are some of the ones in this thread.

Can threads be merged?

Indeed that's the same idea but put more simply. I always tended to assume I need to go into as much depth as possible to make the idea compelling but that thread does get it across.

My version is identical other than thinking about balancing based on ILS being seen as overpowered/overcentralizing. These would basically be Super Industrial/Recreational/Commercial/Agricultural/Martial but all under a single type since there likely would only be few of these. With my own settlements there's usually theme that favors a single type of job plot being the majority, I tend to often like Industrial & Advanced Industrial(I particularly love the R&D Patch stuff) so a Super Industrial would fit right in. A Wonder Plot would be powerful but require heavy settlement planning around it, for instance it might be super desirable stuff so may penalize Defense by a huge amount. Potentially -50 or -100 Defense plus very high power requirements, maybe every Raider & Super Mutant wants it?

You would typically only have one, or in the most advanced/complex settlements maybe a second one and it'd be a major element of the settlement's identity. Rise of the Commonwealth & other City Plans could have it be an extra thing after Level 3, a Build Wonder Plot option or maybe it only happens when special conditions are fulfilled so every City Plan's path towards unlocking it would be unique or even be a City Plan Completion Quest. The unlock condition in general could be tied to Rise of the Commonwealth, perhaps it would become another reason to build more City Plans & can represent another form of multiple settlement synergy.

This adds a 100% completion level goal to work towards for the settlement that also amps up the challenge of settlement management afterwards & like Advanced Industrial Tech Requirements you won't know what are needed. Quests could be made to unlock the plot's full functionality as well. I chose the clock as the plot pole since these would be central parts of the settlement like one of the main landmarks after a Town Hall/City Hall.