Settlements are empty

Like the title says. there are no settlers anywhere.

I started a new game with all my mods disabled, except sim settlements (and framework+HUD). The problem stayed the same. So i'm pretty sure its a bug.

Sorry for asking but was it a clean install of FO4, clean save game folder (ini) file, and then validated game files in steam? Or was it a new save file "new game"?

I've only been to prebuilt Starlight and prebuilt Abernathy in my two quick test play thrus. Had one game where Abernathy started at level 1 and another at level 3. Haven't seen any civilians at all. Just Blake and fam. In starlight, it was just mole rats and turrets and radioactive barrels. on xbox1s.

I gave it a test run this morning, checking out Sanctuary, Red Rocket, Abernathy Farm, Tenpines Bluff, Outpost Zimonja, and Oberland Station. Besides the vanilla NPCs, they were all ghost towns. Not a settler or a civilian in sight.

Catallaxis said:

I gave it a test run this morning, checking out Sanctuary, Red Rocket, Abernathy Farm, Tenpines Bluff, Outpost Zimonja, and Oberland Station. Besides the vanilla NPCs, they were all ghost towns. Not a settler or a civilian in sight.

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The "no settlers bug" looks like an issue. I already sent a note to KG linking this thread.
Thank you-all for reporting!

Sanctuary and Red Rocket don't pre-build cities by default unless you change that in the options. We can look into the others.

damanding said:

Sanctuary and Red Rocket don't pre-build cities by default unless you change that in the options. We can look into the others.

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I was just testing, so I pre-built almost everything. I wasn't concerned with breaking quests.
The city plans were set to level 3, and they had mostly spawned in successfully, though there were a few items that hadn't scrapped correctly. It was just that there were no people (except vanilla NPCs).
Also worth noting that raiders were still present at Outpost Zimonja.
This was with a full load order, so mod conflicts may be at fault here, though there is nothing in my load order that would obviously be causing the problem.

I'm having the same issue, no matter what settlements I select and such, no settlement get's built. I've made 3 saves testing it out, not a single save was a settlement pre-built. I'm not sure what's preventing it or anything. Am I supposed to talk to the raider lad in Concord and they then start being built? I really don't think I can stand handling going though that tutorial thing again and pretend to care that my forced wife dies. Just going to marry Preston or Gage later anyways.

I've had the same "ghost town" issue, but after searching the surrounding area I found all of the Starlight Drive-in settlers just standing idle outside the borders of the settlement. I went away to check other settlements and when I fast traveled back to Starlight the settlers began walking and doing their regular jobs.

I made it to ghost town Sunshine, walked away from the game to check the forums, and saw your post @Carnivale When I got back to the game to see if maybe fast traveling from and back would help seed any population growth, the game notified me I had lost control of Sunshine and Egret (I went thru the usual steps of taking control, but haven't even got near Egret) and boom a whole gaggle of civilians showed up behind the big building.

I loaded back a save to see if I could get it to repeat. This time after taking control, a regular settler got recruited, but after a bit I magically lost control of both Sunshine and Egret again and another group of civilians spawn in. Then I made the mistake of searching the workbench and regained control of both Sunshine and Egret. (I hope the people the pip boy shows at Egret take care of that crazy old bat for me.)

I then fast travelled to Abernathy. Now it's bustling with civilians.

Could it be the case you have to have opened at least one workbench somewhere/any where for civilians to start showing up?

I rolled back a save again and instead of unlocking Sunshine, I went to Sanctuary just to unlock the workshop. When I fast travelled back to Sunshine, after a bit civilians showed up all at once and the ghouls and roaches were dead. I still get the message that Egret is now mine, I'm guessing that the civilians did in fact off that crazy bat.

Probably the main cause of this is going to settlements too soon after starting the game. Kinggath has said that adding the NPCs is one of the last steps in the process. He also said that the background code for this takes several hours (real time) to finish running even on high end machines. So go play the game like normal folks, do some vanilla quests and explore.

I'll be adding a progress meter for HUDFramework users, and notifications for those without it so you can track where the initial code is in its work. This will help us figure out where the bugs are and where the impatience is. ; )