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Hate vanilla settlment system, how can SS help MY GOALS?

Charwo

Member
Messages
32
Well, I have been playing Fallout 4 for a couple of months using FROST and many many mods to subvert all the spirit of FROST. One of the reasons why is I wanted to learn the settlement system, but the idea that the Commonwealth needs that much rebuilding in 2287 induced much nerdrage. But the idea of rebuilding in 2082 was much better.

Problem: I HATE the settlement system with a passion that's difficult to describe. The interface alone is enough to rage quit. Now eventually because of various story mods, I'm going to play an actual, if high modified Fallout 4 game. I want living, pretty, but not fully modern settlements to populate the map to at least give the appearance this is not a lifeless theme park.

I want REALLY rebuilt settlements. My headcannon says 110 years, the canon of the game is 210, I want the idea that even if Boston itself is a ruin, Civilization is thriving on Mojave levels: electricity, local production, indoor plumbing is not unheard of, preferably with lots of repurposed robots supplementing what would otherwise be a rather low standard of living.

Basic buildings would be around the level in these mods:
DC Glory:
Javawalk's mods:
And maybe a few of the "wealthy" mods
Stuff that says we've moved on from both shacks and pre-war kitch

I'm wondering how and if this can work with SIm Settlements because if I'm going to build or modify settlements, I'm going to use the Creation Engine. The settlement system is unredeemable in eyes, and it's not even good for Vaults. But since a lot of this is gonna rely on SS hardware, I don't want t to create a settlement in the engine where nobody can live cause it doesn't use SS plots. Or something.

I also am wondering what if any of the forums would be best for discussing the following in this spirit:
Which settlements should get what transfer, based on probable wealth, relative safety, trading opputnites, and visual appeal?
What other mods I can use to make the Commonwealth appear as rebuilt as possible outside the settlements? This is especially true of the Fens, North End, Docks and the area around the Bostom Library, but also if there's a way to justify a rebuilt Concord or Lexington or Salem or even possibly Fort Hagen (base houses and all) after it's cleared out by the SS.
Mods to tweak the number of adults, children, ghouls and robots per settlement?
Which settlements should be left as vanilla to make sense the context of the quests?
How long I should wait before I port a Castle blueprint after clearing the Mother of All Mirelurks?

I'm not even sure I want to play Conquerors UNLESS the prizes to be taken are the pre-existing towns, parts of Boston, Vaults or infrastructures like the Corvega factory or the Breweries. I want to roleplay as much a possible where the raiders aren't using ruins as hideouts, but as material assets, they can use to shake down and manipulate the locals. Like the Brewery guys shakedown farmers for produce, not to survive, but turn it into beer, and thus they're GANGSTERS, not mere looters.

Even adding a little context to that would redeem the setting to various degrees.
 
I may not be the best person to answer because I'm pretty new here, but I'm here!

I'm sure it's no surprise, but if you're wondering whether sim settlements was created with exactly that aesthetic in mind, it wasn't really. I think a lot of folks like the scrappy look of the post-post-apocalypse!

Also, Idk if you want to talk about what's immersive for you or not, but I'm interested to talk about it! so i stuck my ramblings in a
I think about the fact that 200 years after the fall of Rome, essentially all previously roman cities were still in the shadows of their former "greatness" in terms of technology, architecture, standard of living, etc. (and would be for quite a while longer). It's hard to "come back" from even a run of the mill ecological collapse / destruction of empire, let alone one that stems from nuclear war (and the nuclear winter that follows a nuclear war). Plus the tech they were trying to recover was stuff like cement...hard, but nowhere near as hard as the stuff that commonwealth wastelanders have been trying to recover. Let alone the logistics of an empire like the United States that requires truly global imperialism to maintain. Personally I find it perfectly plausible that peoples constructions would still be quite ramshackle; Sure there's the NCR doing good work rebuilding, but I don't think that such progress is automatic. I don't think everyone can be scavving grocery stores for prewar canned food, but it seems that in the Commonwealth that's not what's happening, people are subsistence farming. All that said, there are also obviously lots of things that are implausible; e.g. caps as currency, the institute being so powerful and so insular (if they stayed so small they'd struggle to maintain themselves, given their very large material needs, and if they managed to maintain such advanced capacity to manufacture, they could easily have brought large swathes of the commonwealth under their feudalistic rule even without sharing any tech in order to satisfy those needs).

City plans sound like they might fit well into what you're looking for. City plans are a feature of sim settlements, they are essentially pre-built settlements that change and grow over time. If you use conquerer, all of the settlements can already be built up, which sounds like it might be something you're interested in! You don't need to use any other conqueror features if you don't want to, but yes, conqueror was set up with the kind of immersive considerations you're talking about.

There's also an add-on pack called Home Improvement that has very clean, well-built building plans that might be exactly what you're looking for! It looks like someone mentioned it to you when you were here a few years ago, welcome back!

Something to consider is looking on the forums at the city plan contests. If you like what you see then you can add that to your game!

Im afraid I don't know of any other mods off the top of my head that will suit, and I'm not experienced enough with SS to say if any settlements ought to be left vanilla for quest purposes. As far as repairs go you could look at something like "clean and simple," which is a mod that has just tidied up all the settlements and made them pretty nice.
 
Hi there. I’m also relatively new but I do have a few things to tell you regarding your plan.

First off, Sim Settlement won’t change the game world, or at least not significantly. My understanding is that it tries to avoid doing that as much as it can. Conqueror will not make Corvega a target, it targets settlements. If you find someone who made a mod to turn it into a settlement then maybe it could be compatible. Otherwise it won’t do that type of things.

Also Sim Settlements doesn’t work in the basis that the game story is wrong, it accepts that the story is what is it and stays within the parameters set by the game. Now any individual add-on pack of plots can have its own look and some of them definitely went for a more “rebuilt” look (ex: Another brick in the wall, Home Improvements etc). But most are made to look like they fit in the existing world.

Also Sim settlement uses plots. The idea is that you put down those work and home plots and assign settlers to them. In time these plots can upgrade depending on various prerequisites. The way I understand your post, you don’t seem interested in that. You seem to want to create the settlements yourself with normal furniture you’d place. It really isn’t something Sim Settlements handles. Not that it’s incompatible per say (you could use a combination of plots and non-plots furniture) but SS without plots would not be doing much, if anything.

One thing to keep in mind, Kinggath seems to be super interested in not doing anything. Wait, that sounded like he’s lazy. Not what I meant. What I mean is that he has options for Sim Settlements to control things so you don’t have to. For instance when I say you have to assign settlers to their plots, I meant you could but you could also set it that the game does it itself. You want to place down plots yourself? Go ahead. You think it would be nicer to take someone else’s city plan and just use that, its an option. Basically everything SS does has a very hands on setup and a very hands off one.

So can SS help you achieve your goals? My gut feeling says “not even a little” but that comes from my impression that you don’t want to use plots and want to build yourself. If I misunderstood please re-explain what you want from the Settlements only (because SS won’t touch anything else) and maybe I can see if SS could help you in that specific area.
 
To the best of my knowledge, I'm the most prolific person that makes city plans for non-vanilla settlement locations. Several of those locations are either already done, or on my to do list.

I kinda like the crappy look myself, but you are free to change up the selected plots in any of my plans to something more to your liking.
Sim Settlements City Plans - Commonwealth Engineering Plus by Yagisan
is where my mod added settlement plans end up.
 
Welcome aboard. I'm not really a modder... more of a player with a lot of building experience. One thing about what you are asking is what kind of aesthetic do you want. There are mods for grungy vanilla type construction, and also clean settlement mods. Meaning that the structure parts are newer looking. Personally I like that clean look. But what I've found over the years is that some combination of both gives you the best chance of building what you like. Unless you plan on making your own... and there are folks out there who do just that. Got questions? Just ask.
 
To the best of my knowledge, I'm the most prolific person that makes city plans for non-vanilla settlement locations. Several of those locations are either already done, or on my to do list.

I kinda like the crappy look myself, but you are free to change up the selected plots in any of my plans to something more to your liking.
is where my mod added settlement plans end up.

Actually those mods might work! Well sorta...like the Red Rocket Concord is Gold but I don't want it there, I'd want those buildings at Oberlin Station

But I have another question.....do you know how to legitimately mod the game/ I like City plans, and I think they could be important, but I just posted a LONG ass post in the Non SS forum. Having additional settlements will help with the ambiance but won't help the basic problems I have with the game.

I need BOSTON to be a living city. Not all of it but enough to be a viable city-state, and that means modding the exterior of large parts of Boston, probably moving Trinity Tower and certainly the Yangzee

And eventually creating a whole Public Occurrences backlog of new stories about events in the last two or three years, and eventually dismantling Diamond City into the entirety of the Fens, or at least turning it into a refugee center with characters from devastated coastal communities.

Thing is, can I pick your brain on why you think each settlement should look the way it does?
And also have you heard of Helgen Reborn for Skyim? My idea to settlement building is being the patron, and not an architect...of fixing up Concord and Jamaica Plains and Quincy and Salem. I'm building them the robots rebuild modern quality housing I clear it, I pay the money I get a pretty pre-war looking settlement that gives my a mortar on which to smite my enemies or something. And by this I ond't just mean the exteriors, I mean the interiors too. Like not only would the roof of the church be patched but the Museum would be repaired and turned into something awesome, as would the speakeasy an such.
 
Actually those mods might work! Well sorta...like the Red Rocket Concord is Gold but I don't want it there, I'd want those buildings at Oberlin Station
If you mean the city plots, you can change those on the ASAM sensor.

But I have another question.....do you know how to legitimately mod the game/ I like City plans, and I think they could be important, but I just posted a LONG ass post in the Non SS forum. Having additional settlements will help with the ambiance but won't help the basic problems I have with the game.
Ooof. That really comes across as "City Plans aren't modding".
Can I mod "legitimately" - I sure can - for multiple games. I imagine you've checked out the links in my signature right? Maybe you even use some of them.
Here's the problem, I've read your long post, and what you've asked for, is for us to basically remake Fallout 4 for you. I don't want to do that. I basically come back from a long day at work, spend some time with my kids, with my limited free time work on one of my mods or a city plan.

I need BOSTON to be a living city. Not all of it but enough to be a viable city-state, and that means modding the exterior of large parts of Boston, probably moving Trinity Tower and certainly the Yangzee
I think you may have confused need and want.
Straight up, from a technical point of view, the game, be default, only runs the AI of the 20 closest NPCs to the player, and only half that in combat. A living city with many NPCs will slow your game down a lot. At a certain point, you can reproduce the triangle of death anywhere in game.
Large scale landscape edits, like what you ask for are also problematic. You get instant incompatibility with other mods, CC content, and possible broken quests. Is it technically doable? sure. Is it a good idea? probably not.

And eventually creating a whole Public Occurrences backlog of new stories about events in the last two or three years, and eventually dismantling Diamond City into the entirety of the Fens, or at least turning it into a refugee center with characters from devastated coastal communities.
That's an enormous amount of work right there - It would need more people than there are working on SimSettlements.

Thing is, can I pick your brain on why you think each settlement should look the way it does?
My take on the settlements is that there are people, and they can rebuild - but they need to be inspired. The player character provides the inspiration, and initial hands on guidance to the settlers.
In my headcannon, and with my city plans, the settlement network and economy is slowly being reestablished. Ultimately the city plans and settlements become dependent on each other for mutual growth and survival. The Commonwealth is in a bad state, as raiders and the Institute have crippled the redevelopment, which is why things look like the nuclear war was only a few years ago. The Institute has everyone no longer trusting each other, while they strip mine the Commonwealth for resources. The raiders just keep kicking people while they are down. Until you start kicking back, they are going to be living in hovels.

And also have you heard of Helgen Reborn for Skyim? My idea to settlement building is being the patron, and not an architect...of fixing up Concord and Jamaica Plains and Quincy and Salem. I'm building them the robots rebuild modern quality housing I clear it, I pay the money I get a pretty pre-war looking settlement that gives my a mortar on which to smite my enemies or something. And by this I ond't just mean the exteriors, I mean the interiors too. Like not only would the roof of the church be patched but the Museum would be repaired and turned into something awesome, as would the speakeasy an such.
I have. It's rather similar in concept to SimSettlements city plans.What you are asking for, directly conflicts with the system Fallout 4 uses to provide good performance in places like downtown Boston. It's technically possible, but your game will become choppy and potentially unplayable depending on how much "repair and restoration" work that gets done.
 
Yagian,

I apologize for implying city plans are 'real modding' I meant to say it's not regular modding, and the thing is modding within the content of sim settlements isn't going to give me what I want because I don't want what the game defines as mechanical settlements. In practice if possible I have no problem creating a Boston divided as Freeside open and Stip Open, where you have to very separate maps with a decent population density. If you've played Fresside Open, there are maybe 30-40 NPCs in Freeside exterior tops and I think it's half that number. It doesn't have to be a lot of people and in any given cell it would be as full as Diamond City Marketplace.

Thing with settlements is the NCPs are all "settlers" and have no ability to be individually named characters with dialogue and quests down the line. If settler NPCs brought in special quests, like a sick child, a ransomed husband, a performing a marriage as a justice of the peace, somebody building a wild west style high-class salon with music and drinks and pretty show girls and such, then I wouldn't have so much a problem. As is, they kinda.....stare at you and listlessly go about their business If like every 5th or 10th NPC was as interesting as KLEO or Daisy then yeah, it would be awesome, THat's not Sim Settlements that;'s the settlement system itself.

I don't see why the archives would be such a problem, they'd be on computers, some written in the style of Piper for Occurrences, others would be recent archives at the Globe or Boston Public Library.

A lot of this is gonna be tell don't show but you're right that I need to minimize the workload much as possible, even to think about this.

The thing about 'regular modding' is using the CE and moving he camera around and connecting stuff properly and being able to do it without requiring SS asa master file.
 
Making them unique, with names is actually fairly easy. Making settlers interesting is hard. To make them fit in, they need good voice acting. That's often hard to find for free, or potentially expensive. Ever wonder why CC doesn't use voiced characters to give quests, etc - it's because even Bethesda doesn't want to pay for it. Tales from the Commonwealth does some of what you want, but it's not perfect*. If you need vanilla settlers to have a name What's Your Name works really well.

If you want my 2 yen advice, pick *one* thing about Fallout 4 that bugs you. One small thing. Open up the CK, and have an attempt at changing it to how you like. For me, one of the things I didn't like was a lack of settlement locations.

Odds are you'll fail on your first try. That's OK. I spent 3 and a half hours yesterday learning how not to do what I want. When I next sit down to work on that mod, I'll have a different idea on how to get what I want.

Eventually, you will get a good sense of what you can, and can't do with Fallout 4.

*I don't use this mod anymore, but I have in previous playthroughs.
 
That one thing, without any doubt watsoever is the disaster that is the Old North Church.

So I have three goals:
Nix all external enemies from north Boston
Refurbish the Old North Church
Change the Railroad password to Tubman because come'on, RAILROAD is your password?!
 
do you know how to legitimately mod the game/ I like City plans, and I think they could be important, but I just posted a LONG ass post in the Non SS forum. Having additional settlements will help with the ambiance but won't help the basic problems I have with the game.

I need BOSTON to be a living city. Not all of it but enough to be a viable city-state, and that means modding the exterior of large parts of Boston, probably moving Trinity Tower and certainly the Yangzee

It sounds like you're really talking about creating a new game entirely, or at least a kind of full conversion mod. If you've played something like Enderal you'll know what level of work you're likely talking about. But hey, more power to you! Step one is to start small like @Yagisan says, and learn.

In my headcannon, and with my city plans, the settlement network and economy is slowly being reestablished.

Definitely! I love that.

Once you've got all the settlements connected and growing it *feels* like a large and living community.

I don't see why the archives would be such a problem, they'd be on computers, some written in the style of Piper for Occurrences, others would be recent archives at the Globe or Boston Public Library.

What you're talking about is just a lot of writing! Or at least it sounds that way; from how I understand you, (and maybe @Yagisan too) you're talking about something on the order of a novel, at least in terms of complexity, even if not word count.

Tales from the Commonwealth does some of what you want, but it's not perfect*. If you need vanilla settlers to have a name What's Your Name works really well.

Settlers of the commonwealth also adds interesting settlers (from the same folks as Tales from the commonwealth)!
 
Once you've got all the settlements connected and growing it *feels* like a large and living community.
It sure does. That what I try to do with my Commonwealth Engineering, and Commonwealth Engineering Plus City Plan Packs.

Settlers of the commonwealth also adds interesting settlers (from the same folks as Tales from the commonwealth)!
Settlers of the Commonwealth is great. I actually use that instead of Tales. (It doesn't conflict with my own mods).
 
Something to also consider is how much personal time it will take to get there. I don't know how familiar you are with the CK, but I can tell you that the learning curve is steep. Also, what you are proposing will require new meshes and textures, plus a whole host of other things you haven't thought of. The CK will not be your only tool. You will more than likely need a program to generate meshes.... like 3DS Max... another tool to skin whatever you make meshes for.... like Substance Source and Photoshop. Mind you, I am not trying to dissuade you in any way. Rather give you a heads up as to what you want to put on your plate.

I work with a modder named IceStormNg....and like many people around here he has forgotten more than I know about modding the game. He released a couple mods up on Nexus, they are no longer there because of the mod collections debate. Anyway, what he did was make a whole ton of modern looking women's clothes, shoes, accessories.... then after about a year into the project, he rebuilt Fallon's. It is no longer a small little cell like in the vanilla game. How I fit in is to be a beta tester, researcher, proofreader and a dialog artist. ALL custom made content.
ENH20191117141015_1.jpg


This is on the main floor, the NPC has dialog but no voice. We could not find anyone to do voice acting. And that was over a year ago when we started. The only person in there that has a fully spoken part is Becky Fallon. We set it up so she uses her vanilla interactions with the player, but changed everything else... appearance, clothes, and her post is up front running the store.

ENH20191008215701_1.jpg


This view is from the second floor, devoted to shoes. We thought, what woman does not have a large collection? All you see here is custom content. It took us about a year to fill it, then test it. There are 5 customer service NPC's up here all with animations of some sort and dialog. Again, no voice acting. The reason I bring this into the discussion is because the mod is still a work in progress. But it will take time.
 
One other quick item.... at one point, the mod was a little over 10GB in size for the download. That included a CBBE file that was close to 2 Gb by itself.... there was something like over 700 different outfits in the collection that he built.
 
Parothead.....you're right I CANNOT create assets. Oh god coloring things in MS paint is a problem. So have to use what assets there are. BUT there are a TON of rebuilt assets to use from mods. I actually have permission from two guys from Skyrim in principle to try to port their real animals to Fallout 4, to complement the green mods. That may be beyond me. and may always be beyond me.

What I was hoping if I could do the basic building with available mods, like snappy house kit etc, I could post pictures of screenshots and point out thee assets I need, and get someone to make them maybe? Like in the case of the Old North Church
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...l_Revere_church_interior,_Boston,_Mass._2.jpg
https://northendwaterfront.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Old-North-Church-Interior-696x464.jpg
I need the assets, at least most of them to make the Sanctuary look like THAT
And someone's already reapired and clean the spaces for me:
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/19815

What I need, and might exist already are clean version of the pews, the carpets, the walls, the organ, and functional version of the candelabra lights you see all over Boston. The clock would be nice but the thing that's gonna sell it is the windows. I don't want them to be see-through, and I don't need functional mirrors in a fallout game any more than I need functional mirrors, but the windows do need to light up the place at night.

Maybe also i someone's been to Old North Church, what might be in the display cases. Actually a good description of what he real-life interior would be like other than the Santary would be nice.

THing is if the nice assets DO exist they can be repurposed. As more parts of the rebuilding are done, eventually I want to get the REALLY hard stuff done, like.....Tinrity Church. The interior of that place is BREATHTAKING and it might be the last place I could assemble because of all the new assets. However, if someone wants to make a church building mod, assets from these two would be a solid foundation.

The question is, do I have the assets to fix Old North Church in existence, and the truth is I don't know and there are LOTS of mods that might have churchy stuff in them, and finding them must less searching them is gonna be.....awful.

Otherwise, my best bet might be to be something simpler and more probable to have assets: the Old Corner Bookstore, Hubris Comics interior or maybe even Wilson Atmotoys HQ.

Honestly, give me a an small interior location where I'm most likely to have the assets available to repair to pre-war or run down but still serviceable standards. Milk run of milk runs where the assets exist in-game or with mods.
 
You might find those parts you are looking for. But as I understand it, the ONC has parts of the main quests involved with it. Mess with that stuff too much and you will break the game if you are not carefull. You might be better served making a player house with Snappy or a different mod like I did first
 
You might find those parts you are looking for. But as I understand it, the ONC has parts of the main quests involved with it. Mess with that stuff too much and you will break the game if you are not careful. You might be better served making a player house with Snappy or a different mod like I did first

Oh you don't understand, even if I had FULL MOD POWERS, the Old North Church would not be changed in any significant quest breaking way. Following the Freedom Trail would work the same way....but you're potentially right about changing how the seal works. In that case, you change the parameters. In this case beyond the parishioners above, the door to the crypt is sealed in such a way that not even someone in power armor could break it open.....alone......and without tools. In the tunnels are coffins, and in one of them is a stealth boy assualron called Death to Spies. You will never see the coffin open, but you will hear it if you become hostile to the Railroad. Passwords the same reactions the same, only after the initial encounter, you can see Death to Spies luring down the corridor. Also if you lead an assault against RR there's just gonna be a push-button under a desk to release the door lock

With the Pastor, you have to either pickpocket him or do Unlucky Valentine so he trusts you enough to give you the key to the crypt. You CAN kill him, but this results in an IMMEDIATE non-standard game over. Like specifically there's an event if you kill anyone on the Sanctuary level, you get a prompt saying there's an anti-material turret in the ceiling you can't see, because it's hidden. It blows your leg off, you survive because this a city with functioning hospitals but you are put on trial and executed for first-degree murder. And in the style of Balance pf Power, (also about nuclear war): "And no, there is no animated display of the trail or your death, or with parts of bodies flying through the air as the turret took you down in the first place. We do not reward murderhobos. Even psychopaths need to be discreet in where and when they kill."

Not even a death shot, just straight to the main menu. This does not apply to the Brotherhood quest Tactical Thinking BUT does in End of the Line as you are working alone and not part of a strike force.

But the locking door, the Death to Spies the Pastor, none of those are actually modifications of the RR quests, only separate events with similar triggers.
 
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