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HQ Food and Water

GumShoe

Active Member
Messages
133
I have established headquarters trade agreements with 18 settlements, the majority of which have Hi-Tech Power/Water/Food, but my HQ Food is a dismal 12 when trying to research disease cures. The Water stat is at 90. I have 9 settlers with 10+ END assigned to logistic with a current Logistics Energy rating of 97. I've built all the Cafeterias and Dining Halls I can find. I even did the food research. What am I missing or is this yet another HQ bug?

I'm also stuck on Commonwealth Rising with only 350 power (known bug in v2.2.2) and the Cheat for quest skipping doesn't work.
 
I am having a similar issue. My water at HQ is at zero and my food at 12. I don't have that many trade agreements but I have plenty of food and water at my settlements. I have built most everything except the office level stuff in hq. Your power level rating is based on your points in engineering.
 
I also have very low food/water at HQ. I have allot of trade agreements with my settlements but not how much surplus but have built a ton of new farms and water production facilities at some of my settlements so will see if it increases at HQ too.
 
I'm trying to understand how HQ functions, but this whole thing is just a mess to me. I understand that trade agreements take excess resources from the settlements that you have established agreements with and that the only way to send power to HQ is through a trade agreement and a power transfer plot, but nothing seems to be working the way I want it to. I've been trying to figure out what the issue has been for the past week and I came to the conclusion that I know how HQ and transferring resources functions but not how it all works. To clarify, I get that a settlement needs to put out excess resources but I don't understand what constitutes as excess- is it only water and power generated through plots that's transferred or can you use vanilla resource generators to help? none of this is explained within the gameplay it's just:

"Build a power transfer building to transfer power." and it's like, that's great and all but how do I ensure that I have extra power without spamming municipal plots? How can I make my player made settlements balanced and unique so they will output enough for HQ? I've been seeing responses from people saying to just pick a settlement and spam, but I don't want to do that- technically I can't because I have all but one settlement claimed in my game with the majority using city plans. Or the common response is just to cheat using the terminal to eliminate the resource needs and that just takes the effort out of it- what's the point of me building everything up just to get rid of what all the build-up was supposed to be for? I'm not gonna cheat because I won't understand how this all works if I cheat.

In my situation I have 10 settlements linked to HQ with trade agreements I will attach pictures I took of each settlement so you can see what they're producing along with my HQ status:
  • Sanctuary Hills
  • Emerald necklace
  • Sunshine Tidings
  • Lakeview
  • Chestnut Hill Station
  • Eleanor's Shack
  • The Castle
  • Spectacle Island
  • Beachmont
  • Daylights End
I'm gonna list off everything I have constructed in my HQ that deals with resources:
  • 2 dinning halls
  • 1 communal Kitchen +100 max food
  • Food lab (I can't seem to find information on what resources it provides and what it takes away I know it gives you food)
  • Cafeteria +80 food +5 power usage
  • Power distribution +1750 power
  • Lower hallway +10 power usage
  • Robotics lab +200 power usage
  • Old World Library +10 power usage
  • Medical Lab +150 power usage
  • Communication Center +550 power usage
  • Water Treatment +500
  • Laundry +20 water usage
  • 2 showers (I thought these would take water but when I looked at the room terminal there wasn't any resource requirement)
with all this I have 0 power 0 food and 89(?) water. At first I thought my troubles with transferring resources was because I've been using logistic plots in my player built settlements (Sanctuary, Emerald Necklace, Lakeview, Chestnut Hill Station, Eleanor's Shack, Beachmont, and Daylights End) so I switched them to Caravan plots thanks to the memory lounger (that was a god-send), but nothing seemed to change my power, water, and food all showed 0. After a few days of adding a bunch of vanilla resources to my settlements and going about making sure needs were met in order for my Advanced water and power plants in my player built settlements to upgrade to level 2 or 3 the end result was what I pointed out in the beginning of this paragraph.

I just can't seem to figure this system out, I wish that instead of just giving us a pop-up box saying what these things are supposed to do the SS2 team made an actual tutorial directed by Jake like how they did for the plot types. I can't learn how to play this by simply reading a 2 sentence pop-up it doesn't give me enough information to understand how the system is supposed to work. I'm hopping my post will bump this enough to get some more community involvement because this has really been frustrating me. And if the solution to all this is simply to activate the cheat that eliminates resource requirements than why design HQ like this to begin with?
I'm only allowed 10 attachments so I will make an additional post with the final picture of The Castle.
 

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This is the last picture, The Castle. Hope this post brings more attention to this issue. I'm going to continue to toy around with things.
 

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The fact that the system is so confusing with multiple layers that never get explained, and the frankly so woeful I dont even want to call it a "tutorial", is something that has bugged me since I first got to HQ. The response I have always gotten is just "too bad, figure it out yourself, maybe external resources will be available one day for you" which honestly annoys me enough that I cannot express it without tripping the forum's filtering scripts.
 
The fact that the system is so confusing with multiple layers that never get explained, and the frankly so woeful I dont even want to call it a "tutorial", is something that has bugged me since I first got to HQ. The response I have always gotten is just "too bad, figure it out yourself, maybe external resources will be available one day for you" which honestly annoys me enough that I cannot express it without tripping the forum's filtering scripts.
What really bugs me is that there's no way to see the output of your settlements. When all is said and done how do you know what your settlements are producing after upkeep is taken out?

It was a missed opportunity not to add some sort of resource counter to the memory lounger that way when you click on a settlement you can see things like hard numbers on how much individual scrap your settlement produces per turn (I'm not sure what the time-table for scrap generation is), how much revenue is being generated through taxes (I thought the tax office was going to do this but apparently it just makes it so more caps are deposited to the workbench), what your settlement produces in terms of goods made by production plots (something I've also been having a hard time understanding because there is no in game tutorial revolving around it), the ability to straight up buy scrap, power, and water using money from your HQ treasury (I am literally swimming in caps with nothing to spend them on and this is after I started my playthough with a mod that makes caps harder to find), and what is arguably the most important thing- what is being over produced in your settlement (power, water, different types of scrap).

Would have also been cool to add mercenary contracts where you can send agents from HQ to settlements to temporarily boost defence or automatically win against settlement attacks (I swear I've been getting raided on this playthrough constantly and all my settlements have over 100 defense).

I would appreciate it if the team could make an update that adds in-game tutorials on production, HQ, and resource transfers. It would help to weed out human error from legitimate bugs and cut down on frustration (I'm probebly doing something wrong in my situation, but for the life of me I can't figure out what without completly rebuilding my settlements from scratch and spamming). I really want to learn how all this works, but even the wiki is pretty dry on how all this functions.
 
What really bugs me is that there's no way to see the output of your settlements. When all is said and done how do you know what your settlements are producing after upkeep is taken out?

It was a missed opportunity not to add some sort of resource counter to the memory lounger that way when you click on a settlement you can see things like hard numbers on how much individual scrap your settlement produces per turn (I'm not sure what the time-table for scrap generation is), how much revenue is being generated through taxes (I thought the tax office was going to do this but apparently it just makes it so more caps are deposited to the workbench), what your settlement produces in terms of goods made by production plots (something I've also been having a hard time understanding because there is no in game tutorial revolving around it), the ability to straight up buy scrap, power, and water using money from your HQ treasury (I am literally swimming in caps with nothing to spend them on and this is after I started my playthough with a mod that makes caps harder to find), and what is arguably the most important thing- what is being over produced in your settlement (power, water, different types of scrap).

Would have also been cool to add mercenary contracts where you can send agents from HQ to settlements to temporarily boost defence or automatically win against settlement attacks (I swear I've been getting raided on this playthrough constantly and all my settlements have over 100 defense).

I would appreciate it if the team could make an update that adds in-game tutorials on production, HQ, and resource transfers. It would help to weed out human error from legitimate bugs and cut down on frustration (I'm probebly doing something wrong in my situation, but for the life of me I can't figure out what without completly rebuilding my settlements from scratch and spamming). I really want to learn how all this works, but even the wiki is pretty dry on how all this functions.

Try this mod: Settlement Management Terminal - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/64135
I haven't used it much yet but it's supposed to show you that kind of information.
 
What really bugs me is that there's no way to see the output of your settlements. When all is said and done how do you know what your settlements are producing after upkeep is taken out?
If you toggle the 'Report View' for the resources HUD (you can set a hotkey for that in MCM) you can get a view that looks something like this attached image, which is presently the best you can do. It does show the net positive/negative for each resource (and Caps) at both the settlement you're currently in and the 'network total'. Doesn't get into the more complex issue of "Production-class" plots, though, those are actually presently back on my list of "check those even work the way they say".
ScreenShot179.png
(observe how it shows that Tenpines here is only producing +8 Fertilizer per day - that's coming purely from that Caravan plot you can see there - but that it's holding some resources produced elsewhere in the storage provided by a shipping container and the Junk Gathering plot I add to every single settlement)

The most upvoted post in the Suggestions subforum is still "bring back Settlement Reports", a function SS1 had that'd do much what you're asking for.
 
Try this mod: Settlement Management Terminal - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/64135
I took a look at it last night and used it for about an hour or 2 before something broke. I can't use the terminal anymore because everytime I access the terminal it's supposed to load the software (this was actually really annoying for me because I needed to track settlers, fix their issue and loaf into the terminal for each of them) but dosent and shows the critical error screen. I tried reinstalling it, even reverted to a previous save but the terminal always fails to load the software so I guess I'm SOL with this option.

From what I was able to toy with on the mod it did seem like it was up my alley. I was able to see the deficit of my settlement and production when I tested it with Sactuary although it was a bit confusing how I was in the negative for power, water, and food- it showed -14 for food deficit.

From what I got off the Wiki when settlements are linked they will send food and water to settlements that are lacking in those areas, I don't understand why Sanctuary would be in the negative with so much food production though. If you look at the photo I attached I have over 140 food and my food bar is completely filled that makes me assume that food needs in my settlement are met but if I'm running negative that means 140 isn't enough- if that's the case what is enough food? That's something I'll need to figure out the hard way, it would have been nice to have a tool that calculated all that and showed you the math of how it got to that. For example instead of it just saying -8 for the deficit it would be like
Food production: 140
Food consumption:148
Deficit: -8

Something where you can see the math taking place instead of just numbers because i dont know how it came to each conclusion unless i do the math myself and if i did that what was the point of using the software? For all i know an agricultural plot could have bugged out and gave me a worng ending calculation and if i just refresh the plot im in the green- I wouldn't know unless I saw the work. I guess I'm just use to resource pages like in Cities Skylines where all the math is right in front of you being calculated so you don't have to second guess why even though you're being shown that your needs are met you're actually in the negative and taking resources from other settlements and as a result your settlements aren't self sufficient something that should be a priority before HQ is set up otherwise you can't do any sort of research.

I had no idea and was just trying to make balanced and functional settlements that looked appealing to me so I guess this is another lesson to remember for future playthroughs- focus on training settlers for food, power, and water advancement when it comes to my player made settlements and not worry about scrap generation just let the ROTC plans deal with that.
 
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If you toggle the 'Report View' for the resources HUD (you can set a hotkey for that in MCM) you can get a view that looks something like this attached image, which is presently the best you can do.
I had forgotten about the report view, it does help like the settlements managment terminal, but I don't see anything for water, power, food generation and consumption and it has the drawback the mod has.

I'm probably answering my own question, but are these calculations for surplus ONLY counting plot-based resource generation or is vanilla apart of it like it is for the needs bar? It seems kind of unfair that I could plop a fusion gen in my settlement and power like 6 houses, put down an advanced power plant plot and get it to level 3 and still not be transferring power to HQ because the plot doesn't acknowledge the fusion generator. To me that means things like generators don't count even though vanilla generators effect the WSFW needs bar or the Sim Settlements needs bar. I wounder If that's intentional.

Also the logistics pop up gave me the impression that the more people you assign to logistics the more food you get from trade agreements but so far I'm not seeing anything with the amount of people I have assigned, it also seems like agreements keep your logistics department from gaining energy so I guess in order to research logistics topics you have to cancel your agreements and re establish them kind of a weird thing to have us do.
 
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Vanilla objects DO count, although for power you have to have the generator wired into the same power grid as the Municipal Power Pole of that settlement. I've only ever finished that "transfer 1000 Power to HQ" objective myself by building a couple of the +500 generators you unlock after finishing the quests in Vault 88.
 
Vanilla objects DO count, although for power you have to have the generator wired into the same power grid as the Municipal Power Pole of that settlement. I've only ever finished that "transfer 1000 Power to HQ" objective myself by building a couple of the +500 generators you unlock after finishing the quests in Vault 88.
hmm, I guess that my HQ must have bugged out then, because my settlements aren't transferring the surplus energy to HQ despite me having energy transfer plots, caravan plots, and trade agreements with all 10 of the settlements I listed- I mean, you can even see in my attached photos my average power is over 300 but my HQ power has not changed even once my whole time working with it. water is a whole different can of worms because I've noticed water is never consistent with my settlements for example in Beachmont I have three water pumps that produce 40 water, a pump that produces 10 water and a level 3 advanced water treatment plant which should add up to 239 but the picture shows I have 198 water instead when I add pumps I've noticed that my water will jump up then go back down.

I did some math on my resource generation in Sanctuary, counting by each plot and what they generate and consume I was at:
Generation
Food: 203
Water: 108 (not counting vanilla assets)
Energy: 180 (same as water)
Consumption
Food: 160
Water: 203
Power: 254

I added an extra Advanced water and power plant to offset the consumption as a test to see if plot production is the only resource that gets transferred so +50 to water and +75 adding to:
Power: 255
Water: 158

I ran the settlement manager software (this was before it bugged out and refused to load) and I was still in the negative for all 3 resources so yea I'm at a loss on all this XD
I didn't exactly have trouble with the energy transfer portion of Commonwealth Rising because I just moved 12 savant level people over to engineering and ended up completing it. I have 14 savant level people assigned to engineering right now and 7 savant level people assigned to Logistics and I'm still bleeding power, and have no water and food so I don't know. The only thing I can do is continue to tinker with it until I feel like I need to take a break I want to keep this save for chapter 3 but I'm not sure what's going to happen if I start it with a buggy HQ.
 
Don't forget that Caravans (and Power Transfers) will shunt Food/Water/Power production numbers around to other settlements on that same 'trade network' if those other settlements don't have enough to fill their own meters. Because of that, what one settlement's numbers say their excesses should be, might not be what HQ can actually access.

Now there's also a recurring issue nobody else will believe me on that sometimes, if you haven't been to a settlement that play session, the numbers for what it thinks it's producing/requiring can be off.
 
I've been having similar issues. For me it's my organic material over-riding and taking up nearly all the space that my settlements can hold and every time I expand the space it immediately is filled by more organic material. I'm only kinda getting a handle on how the logic works for supplying HQ, but I'm still trouble shooting. There's a lot of moving parts.
 
I thought that issue with Organic Materials got fixed a patch or two ago; I haven't actually played the mod beyond 'early game' in a non-testing save in over a month, so I can't verify that.
 
two mods that may or may not have been mentioned in this thread that can help with that:
  1. Uncapped Settlement Surplus: permits vanilla water and food sources to continue to produce, even if the workshop is full. can be useful especially if you (like me) frequently have the loaded cell evaluation issue
  2. Sim Settlements 2 Excess Resource Manager: automatically manages the resources in virtual storage by sorting them into three categories; stuff your settlement needs to keep production up, which is always kept, stuff that needs to be thrown away because storage is too close to full to keep production up and you have to much in storage already, and stuff you probably don't need because production is high, but is kept because there is spare space to spare.
 
I took a look at it last night and used it for about an hour or 2 before something broke. I can't use the terminal anymore because everytime I access the terminal it's supposed to load the software (this was actually really annoying for me because I needed to track settlers, fix their issue and loaf into the terminal for each of them) but dosent and shows the critical error screen. I tried reinstalling it, even reverted to a previous save but the terminal always fails to load the software so I guess I'm SOL with this option.

From what I was able to toy with on the mod it did seem like it was up my alley. I was able to see the deficit of my settlement and production when I tested it with Sactuary although it was a bit confusing how I was in the negative for power, water, and food- it showed -14 for food deficit.

From what I got off the Wiki when settlements are linked they will send food and water to settlements that are lacking in those areas, I don't understand why Sanctuary would be in the negative with so much food production though. If you look at the photo I attached I have over 140 food and my food bar is completely filled that makes me assume that food needs in my settlement are met but if I'm running negative that means 140 isn't enough- if that's the case what is enough food? That's something I'll need to figure out the hard way, it would have been nice to have a tool that calculated all that and showed you the math of how it got to that. For example instead of it just saying -8 for the deficit it would be like
Food production: 140
Food consumption:148
Deficit: -8

Something where you can see the math taking place instead of just numbers because i dont know how it came to each conclusion unless i do the math myself and if i did that what was the point of using the software? For all i know an agricultural plot could have bugged out and gave me a worng ending calculation and if i just refresh the plot im in the green- I wouldn't know unless I saw the work. I guess I'm just use to resource pages like in Cities Skylines where all the math is right in front of you being calculated so you don't have to second guess why even though you're being shown that your needs are met you're actually in the negative and taking resources from other settlements and as a result your settlements aren't self sufficient something that should be a priority before HQ is set up otherwise you can't do any sort of research.

I had no idea and was just trying to make balanced and functional settlements that looked appealing to me so I guess this is another lesson to remember for future playthroughs- focus on training settlers for food, power, and water advancement when it comes to my player made settlements and not worry about scrap generation just let the ROTC plans deal with that.
The Settlement Management Terminal mod currently has a known issue where recruiting a tracked settler will cause the behavior you describe. I posted a bug report and the author (cbrgamer3) has replied that they are working on a fix. I was able to fix it by going back to a save before I recruited the settler. Fortunately, I caught it almost immediately after I did it.
 
I thought that issue with Organic Materials got fixed a patch or two ago; I haven't actually played the mod beyond 'early game' in a non-testing save in over a month, so I can't verify that.
I'm not so sure that it's a bug... I was hypothesizing that because a lot of settlement structures require organic materials to create and players unlock the ability to connect their settlements further down the line, it's possible to build up a huge surplus of that material. Particularly for me as I didn't heavily invest in metal materials or rare materials because I didn't have a need for them until I got to some of the requirements for HQ. Is it possible that it's 47k surplus of organic materials as it is in my case? Unsure. But it would be super useful to have a feature within the management tools where I could simply empty out all of my stored surplus resources just to verify.

Edit:
two mods that may or may not have been mentioned in this thread that can help with that:
  1. Uncapped Settlement Surplus: permits vanilla water and food sources to continue to produce, even if the workshop is full. can be useful especially if you (like me) frequently have the loaded cell evaluation issue
  2. Sim Settlements 2 Excess Resource Manager: automatically manages the resources in virtual storage by sorting them into three categories; stuff your settlement needs to keep production up, which is always kept, stuff that needs to be thrown away because storage is too close to full to keep production up and you have to much in storage already, and stuff you probably don't need because production is high, but is kept because there is spare space to spare.
Oh, I should have read this first. It looks like this mod does just what I was mentioning.
 
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