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This post will explain how to unlock World Repopulation currently*, how it works, and changes that will be coming in the future.
(*for those of you following a lot of my posts, I was incorrect about it being broken - it does work! There are just some gates to get to it currently - read on to find out more!)
What is it?
World Repopulation causes NPCs to move into the old blocked off buildings in the game world as your settlements progress. You'll find over time doorways are on buildings that previously were inaccessible, and you may find the owner wandering around nearby, or inside the dwelling.
You'll recognize the dwellings as they have a small lantern to the left of the doorway.
The doors will mostly be locked at night (though addon authors will be able to override that for some of their designs), and the interiors are flagged as owned homes - so don't expect to go in and loot without consequence!
The doorway and people that move into a building can change on your next playthrough, as the system is based on pairing unique interior cells to the shape of the building they match. So you may meet a conspiracy theorist on the north side of Concord this playthrough, and the next time you play that same building might be owned by some orphan kids - and each will have a completely unique interior that still matches the shape of the house/building!
This is one of our most powerful systems, well beyond what plots are capable of, as with full interior cells being used, add-on authors will be able to use the full power of the Creation Kit to design their cells - adding in quests, dungeons, custom NPCs, or anything else they can dream up - without having to do a bunch of scripting like plot designers often have to do for these sorts of advanced things.
What makes World Repopulation trigger?
As settlements gain large amounts of excess Power, Food, and Water - they will gain Economic Influence in the area. (I capitalized Economic Influence, as it's part of a system I hope to expand on for Chapter 3, and much of the support code for this is already in place!)
Once a certain amount of influence is achieved in a region, it can begin supporting people outside the walls of the settlement. Think of it like suburban sprawl. As a city becomes successful, more people will move in and around the city to take advantage of its prosperity. The more influence, the more people will move into the surrounding areas.
The system has some requirements:
1. Finish the main quest "Well, Well, Well" from SS2. (Cheating past the quest works as well) This requirement technically only applies to Concord, but that's the only area we've really rigged up for World Repopulation so far - read the next section for how we plan to expand things.
2. Any settlement you wish to have influence on a region must be part of an SS2 caravan network - which means it must have a Caravan Services building, and be within range of another settlement with a Caravan Services building.
For a settlement's excess power to grant influence, it must be part of an SS2 power network - which means it must have a Power Transfer building, and be within range of another settlement with a Power Transfer building.
These requirements will likely be removed in the future, it is only there due to the calculation of surplus resources being an expensive code action, and so we're doing it as part of the network calculations to save resources. We will likely find an alternative way to calculate this for settlements not part of networks in a future patch.
3. Settlements only influence locations within Caravan Services range - which is 70,000 units. This is the same unit of measure we use for most settlement related distance checks, and is the distance the NukaWorld Vassal system uses - so if you look at your pipboy map in a save with NukaWorld raiding in play, then highlight a settlement, you'll see other settlements in the vicinity change their icons so you can get a rough idea of this range. (In the future, we hope to add a map with visual aid showing you these ranges and influence)
What's going to change?
- Currently, World Repopulation is almost exclusive to Concord. Our plan is to expand this system to a large majority of the unused buildings in the Commonwealth. This will likely occur close to when we update the Addon Maker's Toolkit, as we'll need a lot of help to expand the number of interior spaces to cover so many buildings.
- The small lantern's outside the doorways that appear are going to be converted into controller objects, similar to the ASAM Sensor on the plot. This will allow things like viewing who the designer of the interior is, or disabling the doorway if it conflicts with another mod.
- Once the system is expanded beyond Concord, the "Well, Well, Well" requirement will then only apply to Concord, and only in saves that are working on the SS2 main quest line.
- If we end up expanding the Influence system mentioned above, there will end up being more ways than just Power, Water, and Food excesses to trigger repopulation.
(*for those of you following a lot of my posts, I was incorrect about it being broken - it does work! There are just some gates to get to it currently - read on to find out more!)
What is it?
World Repopulation causes NPCs to move into the old blocked off buildings in the game world as your settlements progress. You'll find over time doorways are on buildings that previously were inaccessible, and you may find the owner wandering around nearby, or inside the dwelling.
You'll recognize the dwellings as they have a small lantern to the left of the doorway.
The doors will mostly be locked at night (though addon authors will be able to override that for some of their designs), and the interiors are flagged as owned homes - so don't expect to go in and loot without consequence!
The doorway and people that move into a building can change on your next playthrough, as the system is based on pairing unique interior cells to the shape of the building they match. So you may meet a conspiracy theorist on the north side of Concord this playthrough, and the next time you play that same building might be owned by some orphan kids - and each will have a completely unique interior that still matches the shape of the house/building!
This is one of our most powerful systems, well beyond what plots are capable of, as with full interior cells being used, add-on authors will be able to use the full power of the Creation Kit to design their cells - adding in quests, dungeons, custom NPCs, or anything else they can dream up - without having to do a bunch of scripting like plot designers often have to do for these sorts of advanced things.
What makes World Repopulation trigger?
As settlements gain large amounts of excess Power, Food, and Water - they will gain Economic Influence in the area. (I capitalized Economic Influence, as it's part of a system I hope to expand on for Chapter 3, and much of the support code for this is already in place!)
Once a certain amount of influence is achieved in a region, it can begin supporting people outside the walls of the settlement. Think of it like suburban sprawl. As a city becomes successful, more people will move in and around the city to take advantage of its prosperity. The more influence, the more people will move into the surrounding areas.
The system has some requirements:
1. Finish the main quest "Well, Well, Well" from SS2. (Cheating past the quest works as well) This requirement technically only applies to Concord, but that's the only area we've really rigged up for World Repopulation so far - read the next section for how we plan to expand things.
2. Any settlement you wish to have influence on a region must be part of an SS2 caravan network - which means it must have a Caravan Services building, and be within range of another settlement with a Caravan Services building.
For a settlement's excess power to grant influence, it must be part of an SS2 power network - which means it must have a Power Transfer building, and be within range of another settlement with a Power Transfer building.
These requirements will likely be removed in the future, it is only there due to the calculation of surplus resources being an expensive code action, and so we're doing it as part of the network calculations to save resources. We will likely find an alternative way to calculate this for settlements not part of networks in a future patch.
3. Settlements only influence locations within Caravan Services range - which is 70,000 units. This is the same unit of measure we use for most settlement related distance checks, and is the distance the NukaWorld Vassal system uses - so if you look at your pipboy map in a save with NukaWorld raiding in play, then highlight a settlement, you'll see other settlements in the vicinity change their icons so you can get a rough idea of this range. (In the future, we hope to add a map with visual aid showing you these ranges and influence)
What's going to change?
- Currently, World Repopulation is almost exclusive to Concord. Our plan is to expand this system to a large majority of the unused buildings in the Commonwealth. This will likely occur close to when we update the Addon Maker's Toolkit, as we'll need a lot of help to expand the number of interior spaces to cover so many buildings.
- The small lantern's outside the doorways that appear are going to be converted into controller objects, similar to the ASAM Sensor on the plot. This will allow things like viewing who the designer of the interior is, or disabling the doorway if it conflicts with another mod.
- Once the system is expanded beyond Concord, the "Well, Well, Well" requirement will then only apply to Concord, and only in saves that are working on the SS2 main quest line.
- If we end up expanding the Influence system mentioned above, there will end up being more ways than just Power, Water, and Food excesses to trigger repopulation.
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