Allow headquarters to build itself, at least in part

[SunniJB]

I feel like the unique selling point of SS (1 and 2) is that you can let your settlements build themselves. Like, "watch the wasteland rebuild organically, give your settlers the tools they need to care for themselves, get unique and impressive settlements without having to hand-place everything", that kinda thing.

And I find the initial gameplay of HQ to be really satisfying. I love cleaning up this place and seeing it slowly get better. But it requires a degree of management and hand-placement that the rest of the mod brags about getting rid off, and as a player that really enjoys just tipping the first domino and watching the magic happen (with some help in the form of resources), that felt pretty jarring.

It would be nice if HQ had some things that could be done without your input. Like how the settlement settings allow you to set the plots and city plans to auto-upgrade, maybe HQ could have settings like "automatically choose room type upon cleaning", "automatically assign staff based on SPECIAL stats" and "automatically assign unassigned staff to facilities"?

Like, I just got here, I have no idea if Women's Bathroom SE on the Office Floor should be an armor workshop or not. I don't even know what that does. And if I figure it out later and want to change it, I have to navigate the three labyrinths that are HQ and try to find the (often missable) plaque placed outside the door. If I can even remember which door it is, or find it in the overview.

 

[sranger]

Having given it some more thought, I think my own complaints about HQ can be boiled down to a couple of points.

1. It is a LOT of new mechanics that work unlike the rest of the game, all thrown at you at once, with little explanation outside of some steps to copy and never being told WHY.
2a. Despite it being framed like you are now a meta manager and leaving the details to your staff, in practice it feels like the opposite - you still decide EVERYTHING, and your staff are just graphical, interchangeable representations of numbers.
2b. On that note, your "leadership style" that Jake in particular talks up, has no practical effect or relevance apart from whether the Library is on the first or second floor. Now a lot of that will be dealt with when "Addon Packs" for HQ start coming out; I just worry that will end up like World Repop where nobody ever releases anything for it. In a practical sense - there is no player choice to it all, no weighing up pros and cons, or considering of opportunity costs of NOT doing certain things.
3. There is no real "reward" for pushing through and completing it, apart from the building looking nicer. By the time you can get things like fully upgraded Labs and range expansion for Caravans and deploying City Plans remotely you dont even need them anymore. Nothing actually useful by the stage in a playthrough you can GET to them.

Now I can see the potential of the system, dont get me wrong. It just feels so drastically overtuned for costs but undertuned for benefits as it stands right now - to the level of there being no real POINT to "completing" it beyond what the quests require, even more so if you have Disease switched off.
THAT is why I like the idea of automating its construction - The Player's input is meaningless to the process anyway, and you arent missing anything you would notice apart from busywork. You are already little more than a Drinking Bird clicking on 'Next' anyway, might as well take that step out entirely.

NOTE: I actually LIKE purely mechanics driven gameplay - I have more hours logged in Satisfactory than anything else this entire year - but HQ just feels... pointless and contrary to what it says it is. Satisfactory also doesnt lie to your face about what it is, either.

And no I will not be saying what I would add or change; experience has taught me that saying what I want guarantees it wont ever happen, unless someone else can get credit for it

I feel like the concept/idea of HQ is cool and awesome; gives me some MGS5 Motherbase vibes. But I agree with many of your points, for me the gameplay loop just doesn't feel good. You can of course cheat via MCM and holotape options, but the default difficulty for it leaves much room to be desired.

I find the whole cleaning component kind of superfluous to be quite honest, I'm not sure if we'd lose much if that element was just scrapped really, especially since it has a timer on it. It doesn't feel right since basic settlement mechanics in the game doesn't have anything like that.
And I understand some of this is engine limitation, but I do find the navigation, UI, and accessibility of HQ to be cumbersome. I struggle to understand where exactly I'm cleaning and building rooms. I understand there's a map but jeez it's tough having to cycle through the command menu multiple times to have it up.


I also have to disagree with the notion that it's only a vocal minority that has qualms with HQ. At least from what I've seen in public discourse in FO4 mod communities, it seems like HQ has been a hot topic ever since CH 2 launch. However I do want to say, I am very grateful for this mod. It is a monumental achievement and you guys are releasing it for free + giving it ~monthly updates. I've given countless praises to it and I still highly recommend it to everyone.

 

[yaugie]

I feel like the concept/idea of HQ is cool and awesome; gives me some MGS5 Motherbase vibes. But I agree with many of your points, for me the gameplay loop just doesn't feel good. You can of course cheat via MCM and holotape options, but the default difficulty for it leaves much room to be desired.

I find the whole cleaning component kind of superfluous to be quite honest, I'm not sure if we'd lose much if that element was just scrapped really, especially since it has a timer on it. It doesn't feel right since basic settlement mechanics in the game doesn't have anything like that.
And I understand some of this is engine limitation, but I do find the navigation, UI, and accessibility of HQ to be cumbersome. I struggle to understand where exactly I'm cleaning and building rooms. I understand there's a map but jeez it's tough having to cycle through the command menu multiple times to have it up.


I also have to disagree with the notion that it's only a vocal minority that has qualms with HQ. At least from what I've seen in public discourse in FO4 mod communities, it seems like HQ has been a hot topic ever since CH 2 launch. However I do want to say, I am very grateful for this mod. It is a monumental achievement and you guys are releasing it for free + giving it ~monthly updates. I've given countless praises to it and I still highly recommend it to everyone.

That post was actually me partly holding back my full opinions, because I know HQ hasn't had a substantive numbers balance pass yet, and we all know Chapter 3 is going to route at least SOME of its new content through HQ - plus, kg has mentioned in the livestreams that there's still at least some functionality for some Departments (Security and Science most notably) that hasn't yet been implemented.
So I'm trying to not judge it as if it's "finished", but even then... it just doesn't feel like a "gameplay loop" or addition, just a "dead end". I'm fairly sure the 'missing content' for the Science Dept will cover at least one of my wishlist-features though... (and if it's "not quite" what I expected, I'll MAKE it do it)

And yes, especially outside this forum, it is by far the least liked part of the mod at this point.

 

[Captain LaserBeam]

That post was actually me partly holding back my full opinions, because I know HQ hasn't had a substantive numbers balance pass yet, and we all know Chapter 3 is going to route at least SOME of its new content through HQ - plus, kg has mentioned in the livestreams that there's still at least some functionality for some Departments (Security and Science most notably) that hasn't yet been implemented.
So I'm trying to not judge it as if it's "finished", but even then... it just doesn't feel like a "gameplay loop" or addition, just a "dead end". I'm fairly sure the 'missing content' for the Science Dept will cover at least one of my wishlist-features though... (and if it's "not quite" what I expected, I'll MAKE it do it)

And yes, especially outside this forum, it is by far the least liked part of the mod at this point.

You could certainly make an add-on that only adds HQ research and mission actions - it's definitely something I'm eyeing next and does not seem terribly difficult to do compared to a lot of the CK stuff in this mod.

 

[Captain LaserBeam]

I find the whole cleaning component kind of superfluous to be quite honest, I'm not sure if we'd lose much if that element was just scrapped really, especially since it has a timer on it. It doesn't feel right since basic settlement mechanics in the game doesn't have anything like that.
And I understand some of this is engine limitation, but I do find the navigation, UI, and accessibility of HQ to be cumbersome. I struggle to understand where exactly I'm cleaning and building rooms. I understand there's a map but jeez it's tough having to cycle through the command menu multiple times to have it up.

That's an interesting point on the cleaning - it would be nice if there was a setting that could remove the timers on the cleaning (kind of like an override timers LITE) so it happens very quickly but retains it for construction and upgrades. I know for my new HQ add-on I set some of the room "upgrade" timers to only be 1 hour because it was essentially changing some light fixtures or something and I thought that should happen super-quick. Someone could also always make a QOL mod for Chapter 2 and go change all the cleaning times to 1 hour (I don't think the dialogue will take 0 hours?) and make it go super-fast.

But yeah I will agree that I only know the layout of HQ now from looking at it in the Creation Kit for weeks. I was totally lost all the time wandering around before I started doing that. Only other option is print out the maps from the wiki - that takes me back to old-school nintendo games of having map printouts or pages ripped out of nintendo power.

 

[SarahAda]

I also have to disagree with the notion that it's only a vocal minority that has qualms with HQ.

don't overestimate the net promoter and indignation advantage effects here. people who are vocal are definitionally people who have something to say, either positive or negative, and angry carries a lot further then happy. in any given sample of internet noise, what you are likely to see is someone passionate and angry, regardless of the actual feelings of the majority of the sample. (ref: CGP Grey video on angry thought germs).

 

[sranger]

don't overestimate the net promoter and indignation advantage effects here. people who are vocal are definitionally people who have something to say, either positive or negative, and angry carries a lot further then happy. in any given sample of internet noise, what you are likely to see is someone passionate and angry, regardless of the actual feelings of the majority of the sample. (ref: CGP Grey video on angry thought germs).

like I said I disagree, from the sample sizes I've seen on this forum and in other communities along with some discussions I've heard with ss2 devs or listening to kinggath reflect on stream, the criticism is quite apparent.
Also I just don't believe this argument holds as much water for this due to the nature of this product: the silent majority here tends to bite their lip and has a larger tolerance for issues because the product is free, community-driven, and much of the existing mod base is superb.

I just think it's kind of disingenuous to say that it's only a small minority that have criticisms with the HQ component. I'm sure there are people who love it in it's current state like yourself, but I don't understand the need to minimize feedback and suggestions from folks who are very active in the mod community and have hundreds of hours poured into playing/testing the mod. At the end of the day everyone wants to make the mod a better playing experience.

And once again I'm not saying all of HQ is bad, the concept and idea is really cool. It's just the gameplay loop, user experience, and reward system that I have issues with.

 

[yaugie]

You could certainly make an add-on that only adds HQ research and mission actions - it's definitely something I'm eyeing next and does not seem terribly difficult to do compared to a lot of the CK stuff in this mod.

I've already given it a bit of a poke; I'm just waiting to see what that 'still to be added' content does before I get really stuck in, because I don't want to be duplicating functionality - at least one of my ideas for using that is something I feel almost certain will be 'baseline'. This is also why the other secret project I've had in the works for months now is still not out - waiting to see what Chapter 3 does there too.