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Implemented Request for help - something I'm not getting about Faction Pack start of play

spacefiddle

Well-Known Member
Messages
576
TL;DR my earlier broken saves were not having faction workers gain bonus WRE resources, leading to much confusion.

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Using a Minutemen faction pack, tho I don't think that matters here.

Started Sanctuary as a normal settlement. Built it up to 12 settlers, producing a total of 30 food. All settlers needs met 100%, slight excess of everything. Happiness 85 and climbing. I let the Agri plots all get to level 2, hence the 30 food.

Plonked down a War Planner's Desk and converted to an Outpost. Claimed for Minuteman.

Conq HUD shows +5 Rations. Outpost Report at the desk shows 12 civilians as expected, producing a total of 125 Rations. Therefore these 12 civvies are consuming 10 Rations each - 120 - and thus the +5 Rations left over.

I dumped in resources to recruit 5 faction soldiers, thinking this was maybe a display glitch. The next day, one soldier showed up, and now I am at a rations shortfall. After several more days, no more soldiers have shown up.

I thought you needed +10 rations for each Faction soldier. I also thought Civvies consumed less rations than Soldiers?

With the break-even I am showing now, it's impossible for me to recruit my initial 5 Warriors in order to take a Ration-producing Vassal.

What am I missing? If I consume what I produce, what is the correct method of building up that first attack force to take your first Vassal with?

Edit: ReSaver says there are several SimSet scripts running, but they all seem related to plots upgrading (a couple of "UpdateSpawnedObjects," that sort of thing, under "AdvanceStage()").
 
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I really wouldn't use a settlement full of civvies to turn into an outpost. You're far better off, I think it's best to use an empty one and just fill it with faction recruit's. Food and ration production is best done in vassals.
 
how on EARTH did I post this in Mod Suggestions? I thought i WAS in the help section.

Can anymod move this thread to where it should be? eep
 
I really wouldn't use a settlement full of civvies to turn into an outpost. You're far better off, I think it's best to use an empty one and just fill it with faction recruit's. Food and ration production is best done in vassals.

That's my point - and i need 5 recruits to attempt to take a vassal. And I need +50 rations to get 5 recruits. Whether I start with civvies, or empty, the break-even issue is the same. Something is different in my game that most faction-pack people are not seeing.

Do civvies use 10 rations each in your Conq or Liberator pack-based games? Are you using the WRE system?

Even if i started with an empty settlement - how do I "fill it with recruits" if no one is producing resources? I still need +50 Rations to attract 5 recruits.
 
Do civvies use 10 rations each in your Conq or Liberator pack-based games? Are you using the WRE system?

That's how it works. Every mouth in your empire (outpost or vassal) consumes 10 Rations and 1 Food, except captives: they consume 5 Rations and 1 Food.

With a 5 recruit start, I usually play something like:
  1. Warrior on at least 5 Vanilla Crops to food the troops
  2. Worker on Ag plot for Rations
  3. Warrior on Commercial plot for Wages
  4. Warrior on Industrial plot for Equipment
  5. Guard on martial plot for Control and Defense
(This maintains the 2:1 Warrior to other roles ratio for best morale and also gets the worker production bonus for rations.)

Then, wait.

The pay off on the plots won't really start until they level.

Once they get to level 2, you should have resources to recruit at least three more dudes. When you do or are able: add 1 more Ag, 1 more Commercial, 1 more Industrial.

A Level 3 plot with the highest morale bonus should produce something like 75 Resources. (Less with lower morale.) 2 Sets of level 3 Ag/Comm/Ind can give you enough resources for 15 extra dudes if you don't botch your morale via either bad management or getting them killed.

If you have any workers [edit: and Civilians], you won't need equipment for them so your Equipment Bar will outpace the other two. If you have Civilians, your Ration bar will probably lag behind the other two.

A smart minuteman leader would also make Preston the leader of this HQ because his Superhero Manager Power lowers the ration needs of recruits.
 
With a 5 recruit start,
How do you get that 5-recruit start? That's what I'm asking. Witrh WRE on, I claim an outpost, I have zero recruits.

Is placing the Desk supposed to get me 5 starting recruits? Maybe that's the issue, becuause I don't get them with WRE on.

And again - these food plots are all level 2, worked by civilians in a normal settlement that had 12 people and 30 food before I made it my HQ Outpost. As soon as I turned it into my Outpost - boom, +5 rations, no way to get more recruits. Zero soldiers. Therefore no vassals, no additional plots - that's the issue.

Morale is 92.

Something else is going on here. I don't get NEARLY the values you quote from my plots.

I am also intrigued by this Quine fellow you quote in your sig.

I also note you are kind of having to cheese the system by putting 5 Warriors on vanilla crops. That shouldn't be necessary.

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UPDATE: GOT IT. I think. My earlier broken saves did not have Faction Workers producing their bonus resources, causing me to misinterpret the pop-up about roles. I thought a Settler or Civilian would produce more from a plot ANYWHERE - not just Vassals - because in my game, they were. Previously I had built up a settlement to decent values - with settlers - before converting to Outpost and that led to a surplus.

Now it seems to be working correctly. Displacing settlers from their food plots and placing Faction Workers there instead is... slow going at the moment as I'm giving the scripts time to update, but that seems to be catching up values to what you mention they should be.

Reverting to a much earlier save with only a couple of settlers, maybe even just the Concord 4+1.

The path to success with Soldier Needs on, then, running a faction pack, would be:

  1. Use the Concord 4 to work 4 food plots to Level 2 at least
  2. Don't recruit any normal settlers. As long as you suck up the caps cost of early defenses, and cover their water, maybe throw them some booze and Nuka-Colas, they should become happy enough to upgrade.
  3. Convert to outpost.
  4. Displace the Concord 4 to whatever you need least. Maybe just go 2 Adv Ind and 2 Commercial and call it a day.
  5. Assign your first 4 Faction recruits as workers to those Level 2 food plots
This should get a surplus across all three WRE. I think. I hope. With decent settlement happiness you should suck up the imbalance morale hit on to get to 5 more recruits on Day 2, and you can keep them Warriors and start making Entertainment plots.

Side Note: Assigning a Faction Worker to a Doctor plot does not seem to work right now. They only have the "i'm looking for chems" dialogue and you can't get doctor services. However, if you make a normal settler into a Doctor before converting to an Outpost, they have the full normal Doc dialogue even after conversion. I'm thinking maybe recruit 1-2 normal settlers and have them be a Doc and another merchant so you get the full range of options and services.
 
How do you get that 5-recruit start? That's what I'm asking. Witrh WRE on, I claim an outpost, I have zero recruits.

Any HQ always produces 50 Wages/50 Rations/50 Equipment on its own without any plots. That's enough for 5 recruits. Might also need 500 caps/donated resources in recruitment desk also to get going. Been a while. Claim outpost: Wait a day: 5 Recruits. (Put 600 caps in the till and see if you get lucky with an extra dude to start.)

Is there something about Liberators that requires a settlement already have civilians?

If you already have civilians at a settlement and then make it an outpost HQ you immediately reduce your rations by 10 times the number of civilians. Even if there are already Ag plots, you won't get any new recruits unless/until this reduction is covered.

Also, if there are already civilians at a settlement and it is then made into an outpost, these same civilians will only be able to move to another outpost.

I self build everything and don't use city plans: Sometimes I will have a civilian pre-construct a settlement that I want to be an outpost. But I always move this civilian to another settlement before making actually it an outpost. (Tbh sometimes this settler just gets "retired.")

Civilians/settlers can be moved freely between regular settlements and vassals, but anyone who lives at an Outpost can only be moved to another outpost. (The exception to this rule is leaders/commanders who can be moved thru that mechanic.)

I also note you are kind of having to cheese the system by putting 5 Warriors on vanilla crops. That shouldn't be necessary.

Warrior on at least 5 Vanilla Crops to food the troops

To be clear, I meant one warrior on at least 5 vanilla crops (producing 5 Food, but no rations, for 5 Recruits), not 5 warriors on crops. Should have written, "A warrior on at least 5 Vanilla Crops to food the troops."

This is a temporary measure either until I'm able to to get food and rations from my first vassal. Most of the time, for this recruit, I opt for a Rec plot, instead, and then just stuff the workbench with scavenged food.
 
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Ok, between what I just figured out messing with old saves, and what you say there, this is all making a lot more sense now.

One thing i've done is, i wanted to try / test / muck with the Conq systems in their entirety; so I am using City Plans all over, pre-built, and most of them are pre-conquered. That limits options. Your first outpost will almost certainly have to be Sanctuary or Red Rocket, and RR just doesn't have the room. So by default, you're stuck with the Concord 4.

The City Plans system is not, I must regretfully conclude, fully grokking with Conqueror right now. Every city plan has a shortfall. I get it, food is unsexy when there's crazy buildings to build and plots to try, but a typical settlement I take over has, like, 12 people and 6 food and 234324 water with a massive caps deficit and Defense shortage. :skull All pre-conquered settlements have also had hostile Civvies in them, and seem to break on post-processing "remove faction skins." Even when processing seems complete and they're no longer hostile, for instance, they never adopt the flag and I can see the Skins script still running for days on end. But that's other stuff and I think KG is working on all that for either 4.27 or 5.0.

So I've turned on "control vassal workbenches" or whatever it's called, and I have to manually adjust every city plan so that adopting a city isn't a net loss. Making a pass over them all to balance them for Soldier Needs would be a fairly large undertaking, so this is probably the best solution.

Thanks for stopping by, you helped clarify things and let me go back and look at my old saves with new context. In the newer save, the Worker bonuses are working as expected. I'm going to revert to a (much!) earlier save and follow the steps I outlined above.
 

This settlement, according to this report, needs 140 Rations (14 Civilians/recruits) and 20 Wages (guard and worker) and 10 Equipment (Guard).

Plots, again according to this report, are producing 35 Wages (85 - 50HQ), 80 Rations (130-50HQ), and 20 Equipment (70 - 50HQ).

Except for Rations, the total production looks good. You need 10 more rations to fill your W/R/E bars and meet your current needs.

Those 10 rations need to come from either an Ag plot leveling, or someone who isn't currently working an Ag plot needs to start working one (newly placed or switch an existing plot to Agriculture.)

Or increasing morale might get you the rations you need.

92% morale is bad morale. Anything not 100% morale is bad morale. At 100%, you start getting production bonuses. Each up arrow is worth I think plus 20% to WRE production. 5 up arrows is gold and twice the WRE.

In an outpost, you want (the goal) is 2 Warriors per every other role. The civilians is killing you on this front.
 
Yeah, that's the gist of it - all my Agri plots are level 2, but they are all being working by Settlers.

I may just toss this save and go back to just the Concord 4 arriving.
 
Oh for.... it just struck me why I'm different, here. For anyone using any other faction pack, chances are better than bad that they choose Starlight for a first Outpost.... or at least, anything NOT Sanctuary Hills. It's a much more central location in reach of more Vassals.

When you plonk down the War Desk, you get WRE of 50/50/50. If you're in an empty settlement, than means you can recruit 5 soldiers. Simple. But the Concord 5 eat all your starting resources! Plonk down a War Desk in Sanctuary without recruiting anyone, and you're at break-even. That's what I was seeing from the start. This whole rigamarole I went thru is not just from my earlier broken saves - it only affects you if you choose Sanctuary as your first Outpost without getting rid of the Concord 4 or 5.

/picardfacepalm
 
it only affects you if you choose Sanctuary as your first Outpost without getting rid of the Concord 4 or 5.

I think you are letting them out of the museum too soon.

War desk first. Go to the museum and get the holotape and sensors/kill the raiders, but ignore/don't talk to Quincey Five. Leave and go back to Sanctuary. Build up outpost till you recruit at least 10-15 dudes. Only then go back to museum and talk to Quincey 5/finish quest. They are patient and will wait until you are ready for them. I leave them in the museum all the time. Maybe even go and bring them back to Sanctuary with an actual Minutemen escort: "Thanks a lot, Preston, but I'm already the flipping General!"
 
Wait.

You can build a War Desk and choose a Minutemen faction pack without doing Preston's quest and becoming General?

/facepalm

Never even occurred to me. I assumed that Minutemen would not be unlocked as a faction unless I did that first.

Edit: how do you get around the requirement of three vanilla-owned settlements to take the Castle back? Or do you? I am currently trying to leave 3 settlements alone / not pre-conquered, that have "gain this workshop" quests of their own, to count towards the Vanilla faction total.
 
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Update: the number of civilians in this outpost is TOO DAMN HIGH. I was hoping there would be more than one exact way to do this, but it's looking like not so much. Morale is currently 34% and plummeting every day, tho that may be related to some goofy shelter bug that's hit me, despite Shelter being turned off in MCM.

Do warriors really need to be > civilians? How do you capture a new outpost, then? It'll have like 9-15 civvies in it, does it need to maintain 10+ idle warriors in it to keep Morale up?

Edit: ugh never mind it's not that, i have some weird shelter bug where it keeps coming up 1/10 despite MCM setting it to OFF.
 
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IDK. I don't play it. But unless that faction pack requires the Museum Quest or First Step to unlock the Minutemen faction, I don't see why not. I played a Pillars of the Community faction pack and didn't have to go to the amphitheater first. Just dropped a desk at Starlight. I think the BoS faction pack is locked behind quest progression

Morale is currently 34% and plummeting every day, tho that may be related to some goofy shelter bug that's hit me, despite Shelter being turned off in MCM.

Morale and happiness are mysteriously related but they aren't the same. First and foremost, morale depends on the correct role ratio. Then on success or failure during assaults. The sheltered bed business won't affect your morale, even though it will tank your happiness. Good morale might even help alleviate the hit. Deaths during assaults might have an effect on morale. Too many civilians definitely will have a negative effect on morale.

High happiness may or may not affect Morale. High Morale helps when happiness is low. Low Morale and low happiness is a one two punch in the face.

The temporary -50 happiness is usually a death penalty. The temporary happiness penalty is always only either death or failing a settlement quest. Either some of your dudes bought it, or some pre-existing folk got dirt-napped. The hHigh Morale is like happiness on steroids and usually will smooth over this hit. But not if you don't have the correct role ratio.
 
See that's weird. No assaults yet, no one died, no attacks on my base. I have no idea where this -50 came from, it just appeared the day after I plonked down the War Desk.
 
How are you handling those first 5-6 food objects? In my Outpost, every time I return, the game has auto-assigned one soldier to EACH plant. Literally each individual plant. And it doesn't even change their roles to worker. I have 5 Warriors each of them working on ONE Tato plant. /tableflip
Since you can't un-assign people, I've had to shuffle all kinds of silliness around to get them off the gorram things.
 
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