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The Koeran Configuration Wizard Development Thread

Notifications >> *ALL*:

My personal thought as that for Test Profile 1 / Auto, these should all be turned off. My reasoning is that for players who want as close as possible to all-hands-off play while following the storyline, getting 5+ messages a day and associated flags from 8-10 cities...is just going to be aggravating.

(Note that I am basing this on personal anecdotal experience. For me, it was jarring to get a bunch of messages and flags that don't go away until I go and look at the damn thing which created it. From the point of view of a player wanting hands-off settlements to concentrate on the gameplay, when the player is going through a small quest then they're a distraction from the game.

Sure the player can turn the flags visible off in the Data > Miscellaneous area of the PIP-Boy, yet still - why force them to go there to deal with what is in their point of view a minor thing? They want their hands-off!)

(--edit-- Another thought, constant notifications might distract from more important in-game messages that pop up? It's hard enough as is to see "Starlight City is under attack" when busy shooting up a bunch of supermutants. Would this become worse if it's lost amongst 5+ other messages about plot/city upgrades?)

Yep, Agree here also.
 
@RayBo - Thanks for doing that!

All - If we disable notifications for Low Involvement, will the player get a notification if the build limit is hit and the city fails to upgrade/build?
 
About High Involvement making Realistic Build Times be on, may I suggest this instead:
  • IF you choose "High Involvement", rather than Realistic Build Times being on immediately perhaps it has an additional prompt asking directly if the player wishes to enable it:
"You have selected High Involvement, would you be interested in enabling Realistic Build Times? Construction takes 5 additional in-game days after commencement of plot construction or approval of an upgrade. City Plans will take considerably longer, it will essentially be over the course of the entire game to reach City Plan Levels 2 & 3."
  • ->No, I will use Normal Build Times(Default could be this, for those who might be clicking through without reading)
  • --Yes, I would like to enable Realistic Build Times
Then perhaps a follow up prompt: "You can change this setting at any time in the City Manager Holotape found here Gameplay->Immersion."

This can avoid accidental Bug Reports to Sim Settlements or to Addons(has not happened to me but I think has to the others) saying "My Plots are Never Building nor Upgrading". Since most people, if they didn't specifically ask for it to be enabled/may have not ever known of the setting will assume something's wrong during the wait time. Personally I think this happened to me by accident when I was on Xbox One & Sim Settlements was brand new, I actually think I never knew about the setting existing for some months when I'd looked through everything. I used to click through quickly though now I intentionally go really slow & read it every time, just to avoid this happening. I see comments on the patch videos on YouTube every so often stating this kind of issue. I think the existing Wizard possibly having it enabled based on certain choices is probably the cause. It's a niche sort of immersive survival kind of option so I think most players don't know it exists.

Also as another reason, oftentimes we as Sim Settlements Addon Creators may not have done any Construction Stages for our plots which will mean no visual cues at all that the upgrade/construction is actually happening and in these cases the player is left to wonder if things have bugged out or not. Someone on the Discord brought this up, I'd not thought about it before since I didn't have ideas of what to do on my construction stages, it's a lot more time to do them & hadn't really wanted to do them since it increases file size which is not good for Xbox One due to 2GB limit. I've seen some use 12 Stage Models vs my 4, so I think my addon would go up to 30mb or more rather than the 10mb it is right now on Xbox One. I think after learning about this I will do some at some point but it's lesser priority since it's not desirable to do for Xbox.

According to this person, there are fairly few plots outside of base Sim Settlements that have included Construction Stages. They'd want multiple Construction Stages per level since as he's also a Survival Mode player he'd see the plot many times in between levels & often wonders if it's working correctly or not.

But yeah I think the wizard as you guys have designed it is going to be fantastic! The above is the only suggestion I have.
 
Thank you all for re-bringing this to my attention. I've allowed my own personal grumpiness to distract me. Back to looking at this...

We don't really know enough about the buggy 4th tier vendors thing. Testing required - unless someone can confirm, it seems best to leave it turned off.

Ignore Charisma setting - I don't know enough about how this works to have any real opinion.

Build limits and city upgrades - I don't know enough about how this works to have any real opinion. Occasionally I get a "build limit has been recalculated" message, is that relevant? Can someone in the development team shed some light on this, if we don't know?

I like @VersusXV thoughts about realistic build times. It also reinforces for me that I will need to put multiple interim build stages into any plots that I manage to create.

I think that on the whole, it's there, done.
 
I like @VersusXV thoughts about realistic build times. It also reinforces for me that I will need to put multiple interim build stages into any plots that I manage to create.

I think that on the whole, it's there, done.
IMO once there's a prompt about "You picked High Involvement, Do you want to enable Realistic Build Times?" then it covers all the bases
 
I am digging into the costs, production, etc involved with base Sim Settlements plots. This is not Advanced Industrial or Rise of the Commonwealth.

F- me. Now I'm *starting* to understand why people are getting so irate about the experience.

I think that I need to put this into a spreadsheet, for the full grim reality to come to light.
 
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We don't really know enough about the buggy 4th tier vendors thing. Testing required - unless someone can confirm, it seems best to leave it turned off.
You're probably right. Ideally SS would assign key NPCs to plots based on that NPCs specialty, but I don't know if it's even possible to do that.
Does assigning Ronnie to a Weapons Vendor cause any problems, or does it just change where she stands during business hours?

Ignore Charisma setting - I don't know enough about how this works to have any real opinion.
I'm pretty sure that's just ignoring the settler limit of 10+CHA score. I think it just removes the limit completely. Though if it's possible, there should be an alternative limit with the performance options, to stop console players from breaking their game.

I like @VersusXV thoughts about realistic build times. It also reinforces for me that I will need to put multiple interim build stages into any plots that I manage to create.
Yeah, it's a very good point. Is there a recommended number of build stages? If the realistic build time is 5 days, then presumably it should be a multiple of 5.

IMO once there's a prompt about "You picked High Involvement, Do you want to enable Realistic Build Times?" then it covers all the bases
The only problem with that is impatient readers are quite likely to skip over it as the first part reads very much like a 'are you sure?' prompt. The wording may need to be changed to prevent that.

I wonder if it might work better to have the Realistic Build Time question be asked only if the player is using Survival difficulty? Not sure if it's possible to program that without F4SE though. Or otherwise link it to the global refresh rate.
 
You're probably right. Ideally SS would assign key NPCs to plots based on that NPCs specialty, but I don't know if it's even possible to do that.
Does assigning Ronnie to a Weapons Vendor cause any problems, or does it just change where she stands during business hours?
I have not tried this. I didn't want to risk breaking anything before the final Nuclear Option/With Our Powers Combined quests.
I'm pretty sure that's just ignoring the settler limit of 10+CHA score. I think it just removes the limit completely. Though if it's possible, there should be an alternative limit with the performance options, to stop console players from breaking their game.
I've been told that city plans limit the number of settlers to the number of beds in the plan.

That indicates that this might be for players who want to attract 30+ settlers to *really* big home-grown settlements. An Advanced Industrial-based Sanctuary or the like, for example.
Yeah, it's a very good point. Is there a recommended number of build stages? If the realistic build time is 5 days, then presumably it should be a multiple of 5.
I've not seen any recommended numbers. I'm told that multiple stages cause plot-bloat, which would most definitely be an issue for console players.
 
Here is the cost/production of several base Sim Settlements plots (more Commercial plots need checking - the Water costs for Fallon's are actually -1/-2/-0 in the game, I've raised a bugreport):
SimSettlementsGraphic.jpg
This is what a non-city-plan user faces when enabling Maintenance Costs. Note that you can't get L3 Martial plots without at least one Industrial plot, if you happen to have prerequisites turned on - and it's a lot harder to keep the happiness up plus keep the HUD bars full, needed to push several plots to higher levels:
settlementcosts.jpg
This is with base Sim Settlements, no City Plans, and no idea that special "free" power/water sources of any type exist in Project BluePrint. Take special note of all that effort and a cost of 70 caps a day for the equivalent of an L3 city, for a miniscule return of water and food. It only barely defends itself too.

Admittedly I might have the calculations slightly wrong. It is almost 0130. I'm pretty damn sure that it's close to ballpark figure.
 
The only problem with that is impatient readers are quite likely to skip over it as the first part reads very much like a 'are you sure?' prompt. The wording may need to be changed to prevent that.
True & that is why I would suggest the default answer that's highlighted to be No. Or having the answers be worded like:
  1. Yes I like Default Build Times
  2. No I'd like Realistic Build Times (Warning: Very Long!)
Those who don't read just get the Default Build Times, this way they won't end up bug reporting that their plots "never build". There's the possibility that some people might not be reading and also be playing with up/down randomly but this significantly reduces the probability of enabling Realistic Build Times without wanting it or knowing they did.

An additional fail-safe could be adding into Tools menu in the holotape, only if Realistic Build Times is on, "Help! My Plots Won't Build" which simply disables it.

I wonder if it might work better to have the Realistic Build Time question be asked only if the player is using Survival difficulty? Not sure if it's possible to program that without F4SE though. Or otherwise link it to the global refresh rate.
I'd loop it into the wizard by only asking if they select "High Involvement". If they select medium or low then it won't ask this at all and Default Build Times will be used(can still be changed manually if they seek out the option in the holotape).

If people select Easy Mode then it's safe to assume they are very likely to not want Realistic Build Times.

Survival Difficulty is a great point though. If it's possible I'd suggest it to only ask of they selected High Involvement while on Survival Mode. It depends if there's a GetCurrentDifficulty function, Survival is Difficulty=5.
 
A complete pie-in-the-sky recommendation: make the caps costs very obviously red if they are in negative territory. Possibly a mouseover saying how much? Currently if someone happens to have maintenance costs turned on, it's not obvious if a settlement is in negative territory.

The idea comes from my work over the weekend: Sim Settlements and Maintenance Costs - City Design and Building
 
A complete pie-in-the-sky recommendation: make the caps costs very obviously red if they are in negative territory. Possibly a mouseover saying how much? Currently if someone happens to have maintenance costs turned on, it's not obvious if a settlement is in negative territory.

The idea comes from my work over the weekend: Sim Settlements and Maintenance Costs - City Design and Building
Love this, if it's possible it's a great idea. Do you mean when viewing build plan info or plaque info? Something like that is possible but may require F4SE for dynamic "tool-tip" style on mouseover. Unless HUDFramework has features for that? Either way a mouseover style sounds like something requiring Kinggath level skills. I imagine it requiring C programming like F4SE DLLs, to do stuff like track mouse cursor position and check if it's over something while also adjusting everything for everybody's unique resolutions/aspect ratios(I'm on 4K, some are on 1440p, some are on 1440p ultrawide like 3880x1440, one guy said he is on 7680x1080 which I think is a 4 monitor setup) or maybe even multiple displays. Worst part is that this means having to recompile with every game update & users must have F4SE and update the mod every time, so that means Sim Settlements probably can't have the feature.

I'd personally be happy with simply having costs/negatives showing up as red, though I really don't know what would make sense to do for those who use red as their UI color. Though I don't think I've seen anybody yet who does use that as their pip-boy/menu color.

IF I can make some complex plots involving scripts it's very likely that drawbacks/costs will be involved as a balancing factor, at least for those who leave Maintenance costs & Dynamic needs on. I like how those are optional, so I can try to think of how to fit things into Sim Settlements balancing even if I might not like things being strict on my own game. I feel the best route is increasing difficulty of settlement management, and I think taking on more difficulty in settlement management + doing a good job should benefit overall gameplay.

For instance if I made elite settlers plot: elite settlers would each require 2 food instead of 1, passively increase power cost by 1 each, passively increase defense by 1, baseline happiness for them being maybe 10 lower than normal so you effectively need to have more happiness bonuses like recreation. Likely a caps cost for them as well. If it's not impossible it'd be nice if they can be options for City Leader. At the extreme end they could hypothetically have Quests that make them get better.
 
Thinking about it, instead of the sliding caps symbol in the HUD Framework, change to a number. It’s there for the number of people in the settlement. The same should be doable for the maintenance costs.

That way no pie-in-the-sky need for special dll’s etc. to change colors or do mouseovers - which wouldn’t work anyway because we can’t get the mouse down in the corner of the HUD Framework area.

This would be useful for exact numbers while building a settlement (city planners and regular players both). It would also be one possible reminder to the player that they need to balance up that, too. Then they can go looking for what this strange meter is, and work on tweaking it to optimum.

I’m not 100% sure - I couldn’t get an exact number for maintenance costs by looking in the City Planner desk at a non-city-plan settlement. Maybe I simply looked in the wrong area.
 
Thinking about it, instead of the sliding caps symbol in the HUD Framework, change to a number. It’s there for the number of people in the settlement. The same should be doable for the maintenance costs.
I like that but TBH what does the sliding symbol mean? On the bar with industrial symbol on one end & caps icon on the other? Perhaps a number may indeed be a better idea since I don't really get what the sliding gauge means.

That way no pie-in-the-sky need for special dll’s etc. to change colors or do mouseovers - which wouldn’t work anyway because we can’t get the mouse down in the corner of the HUD Framework area.
You can but you have to have console ~ menu open. We do already do this for using ENB & ReShade's in-game menus. But yeah not a great idea since console can't have it and either F4SE or ENB/ReShade would be made requirements which not everyone would want and the ENB/ReShade route would conflict with existing ENBs.
 
I like that but TBH what does the sliding symbol mean? On the bar with industrial symbol on one end & caps icon on the other? Perhaps a number may indeed be a better idea since I don't really get what the sliding gauge means.
Yeah, that sliding gauge with the cap on it in the HUD - its a visual left-right of center (negative-neutral-positive caps) indicator. Actual numbers would be vastly more informative and useful at a glance.
 
Yeah, that sliding gauge with the cap on it in the HUD - its a visual left-right of center (negative-neutral-positive caps) indicator. Actual numbers would be vastly more informative and useful at a glance.
Oh ok, that is what I had thought it to be but wasn't sure. Maybe actual number beside it would be best? Or some option in city holotape?
 
Probably someone said this already, but if the user selects the "Throw everything at me" option, we should make sure to warning him that Maintenance costs it's turned on and explain how it works. For me, that is the biggest flaw with the wizard. Cheers!
 
Probably someone said this already, but if the user selects the "Throw everything at me" option, we should make sure to warning him that Maintenance costs it's turned on and explain how it works. For me, that is the biggest flaw with the wizard. Cheers!
Strongly agreed
 
Yeah, that sliding gauge with the cap on it in the HUD - its a visual left-right of center (negative-neutral-positive caps) indicator. Actual numbers would be vastly more informative and useful at a glance.
While this is technically getting off topic, it is still in the context of what inspired the creation of this topic in the first place.

I'm not certain of the design intent behind the SS HUD. But I think it's also to inform players of their progress towards goals (settlement and/or plot upgrades), as well as the current state of affairs. With that in mind, I wonder if all the gauges would be more informative if they kept the "progress bar" as well as having a number associated. Or even numbers; current status, and a rate of change indicator.
 
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