I have been battling this for quite a while, loosing 8 hours of gameplay on average, trying to go back to a cleaner time, hoping to avoid the reset (I'm up to about 30-35 hours lost). For me, it always occurs at a specific day, which is about 20 days after I conquered GNN for the CH2 quest line. Looking back on my saves, one of the most recent things I did before loading chapter 2 was raid GNN and wipe out the Gunners (I blame pent up rage triggered by the chapter 2 trailer). I can't pinpoint the timeframe, but it
could have been about 30 days before my cell reset issue. However, Kinggath was able to make my save work on his computer, though he is uncertain of the trigger at this time. When I try to replicate his steps (remove EVERYTHING except Unofficial Patch, HUDFramework, Workshop Framework, SS2, and Chapter 2, then travel to another cell, wait a few days where my reset would occur, and travel back to GNN), it doesn't work for me.
I don’t think it is a mod conflict. I am playing on Xbox and as such have only three mods other than SS2. I don’t think it is one of them as it‘s the unofficial patch, a Halo weapon mod and no settlement attacks.
I have 4 Halo mods on my setup. The MA37 and BR55 by Nova Soda, the Mjolnir MK V set (also by Nova Soda), ODST Battlearmor (Nova Soda again), and Misriah Armory (by Nova.... possible relation?). It's a possible link, at this point.
My initial guess was that it was something to do with the general GNN plaza trying to repopulate. Now, I'm wondering if it was something in a mod that I had loaded which was trying to reset. Nova Soda likes to hide his creations throughout the commonwealth. Depending on which Halo mod you have, you can find his grenade launcher and pistol on the map table of the Railroad HQ, the SMG is in the Intitute's SRB, the gauss rifle is with Virgil... could he have hidden something inside of GNN, and that is trying to reset its own spawn timer?
So I had the same issue earlier in my playthrough along with some others here. There is no way I know of to fix the problem once it occurs, so you will have to avoid it happening as much as possible. I was able to salvage the playthrough from a slightly earlier, slightly cleaner save and since moving through SS2C2 Main Quest I haven't had the issue since. I'll put what I leaned here for you to try as well as to document for everyone else. Please bear with me.
Issue: HQ seems to do a reset of some kind. Max workers for most departments are at 0. Energy is no longer generated. The cells are empty again. Rooms are still registered as having been constructed from a HQ build mode perspective, and can be refreshed to appear working, but as far as resource allocation goes, all progress is wiped.
Potential causes (things to avoid):
- Hiring an unexpected settler to HQ (those added spontaneously by other mods e.g: AFT or non-humanoid e.g. junkyard dogs) Note: Cola seems fine.
- Attempting to hire more workers than bed space available (popup message should come up immediately, but on some saves it didn't even seem to check until I returned to HQ. I never saw that message and had HQ working afterwards).
- Travelling away from HQ while construction is in progress (being out of HQ more than 24hrs before I got to "Is there a doctor in the house?" seemed to break HQ every time). For safety, wait a full 24hrs after construction has completed before leaving HQ.
Best advice I can give if you have a save where HQ is still working, is to try progress through as much building as possible within HQ (until after MQ26) before doing anything substantial outside HQ. I lost multiple wasteland trips of 4hrs+ gameplay because I'd assumed HQ was working fine, only to find it had actually bugged out soon after leaving. Keep a note of remaining bed space as you attempt to recruit and return to HQ to check it is fine before going on to do other things.
I have noticed that if I stay close to GNN, and don't leave for more than 25 hours at a time, I can hold off the reset bug indefinitely. But, I get cabin fever, and have to go recruit settlers. I also tried leaving after there was no construction occurring. This did nothing. In fact, my 'scheduled' cell reset can occur 3 days after the GNN 'employees' have been just idle. That said, I had NOT made a gameplay where I didn't accidently try to recruit too many settlers. Still, it never actually recruited too many, and there would always never be more settlers than beds. Not sure how far back I could have that error message baked into a save.
Anyone know how to copy the mod load order from Vortex so I can paste it in here, see if we have any other common threads? There can't be THOSE many people playing Halo mods, can there?