Daishi5
Active Member
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I was catching up on the livestreams when one of KingGaths guests asked if anyone had even finished the mod with component difficulty, so I figured it might be helpful for me to give my feedback after I finished and advice for anyone who wants to try it themselves. I would recommend using the extra mod that allows you to throw away excess resources, you will need it for SS2.
Unfortunately, the advice/feedback divide is a little hard to divide up, for example I am not sure if I should be saying "we need more options to produce lead" or "you need to plan to optimize your use of lead." So, this comes out as just a lot of random observations.
1. Understand bottleneck resources. In component level difficulty, your basic industrial plots (EG, Building material, organic, machine parts, and rare resources) each produce a variety of components in a fixed ratio. However, maintenance costs all come in different ratios. So, for most of the game, you are going to be overproducing most of the components. The materials that you are not overproducing are "bottlenecks" because those resources are what limit your capabilities.
Your bottleneck resources may vary, and mine varied over time, but for the most part my bottlenecks were copper, cork, lead, and sanitizer.
2. Spam items that consume non-bottleneck resources. When you start, I would build one of every item that produces a resource and identify what its maintenance costs are, for example the humble water pump was something like 2 cloth and 3 ceramic. However, neither cloth nor ceramic were bottleneck resources for me, this means that a water pump produces 3 water at the cost of a resource I was just going to throw away anyway. For all intents and purposes, the water pump had zero actual maintenance costs to me. A water plot with a settler producing 16 water for 10 caps may seem cheap, but when you compare it to 5 water pumps which cost nothing of any value, the water pumps are a better option.
You basically have 3 real costs, settler time, bottlenecks, and caps. The plots will always cost at least 1 of those items (settler time), so always look to see if you can meet a need without using one of the three real costs. (Very useful items to spam are windmills, small generators, water pumps, small water purifiiers, and laser turrets.)
3. Bottlenecks will change, so keep your resource items grouped up. When I started, oil and steel were not bottlenecks for me, so I was spamming the small 3 power generators all over the place, but eventually I got the remelting facility which gave me an alternative method of producing more copper. However, this made oil into a bottleneck for me as I could spend oil to get copper, which I needed for power and communication facilities. So, I had to run around scrapping small generators and turning them into windmills, this would have been a lot easier if I had kept them all in one central place in each settlement.
4. Beacon, beacon, beacon. I found that it was very hard to find conversion plot plans from mark 1 beacons, I really had no control of which caravan plot was used to fetch my beacon, so I couldn't just train up one good caravan plot to do my exploration. So, since I couldn't find a good way to get a reliably high chance of discovering a plan, I settled for the plan of always dropping a beacon in every location. This didn't work great, but it did mean I was drowning in non-bottleneck resources.
5. Focus your training early. Training plots for endurance and strength use a lot of cork and lead, both of which were bottlenecks for my playthrough. Intelligence plots were also expensive in copper. I would recommend each settlement have 1 training plot for str, end, and perception at least so you can start training workers for your HQ early. HQ can also use a lot of high int, but for some reason, a lot of the special settlers have really high int.
6. Disable auto-upgrades. Manually re-enable auto-upgrades on plots that you know won't use up your bottleneck resources, for example none of the basic industrial plots have an upkeep, none of the basic food or martial plots used bottleneck resources so they all could auto upgrade. Shops used cork and homes used copper, so they were not allowed to upgrade on their own.
7. Collect all the caps and bullets. I maxxed out both luck perks that let me find random caps and ammo. I didn't use stores to keep up on my cap maintenance, I was collecting caps and bullets to sell so I could donate caps to my settlements for their upkeep.
8. More ASAMs, all the ASAMs. I needed more asams in the early game, so I was putting a PRA's Vend-o-matic plot in every settlement, because the level 3 plot sold ASAM sensors from the vending machine. I don't know why, but even with 2 of the ASAM factory production facilities, I couldn't seem to get general stores to sell me more ASAM sensors. However, once I had the HQ and set up my first resource connection between HQ and a settlement, somehow now in settlements I could craft with my virtual resources, which allowed me to craft boxes and boxes of ASAMs. This may or may not have been a bug, no one answered my forum question, and on category level playthroughs, I don't see the same behavior. I would suggest you follow my early strategy of making it so every settlement is producing ASAMs from some plot, I like the vend-o-matic plot.
9. Get all the settlers. Since training uses up bottleneck resources, you won't be able to train up all your settlers, but the named settlers you get from SS2 have decent stats, you want to get every extra settler you can get your hands on, treat them like pokemon.
10. The HQ doesn't seem to use bottleneck resources except copper. For me, resources used in HQ were all things I was throwing away, so I was able to fully build out my HQ with only my settlers stats keeping me from finishing the quests right away.
11. There is no non-settler method of producing food, so high tech farms are a priority. I didn't build advanced martial because I could supplement them with free turrets, I didn't build advanced power and water for the same reasons. But Food is special because it always requires settler time to produce, so advancing up the tech tree to high-tech farms is probably a good use of your time. Plan out which locations you want these farms in though, because you need to train endurance up on some settlers there.
12. Settlers can wear clothes, clothes have stats. I am not sure how clothes work with settlers stats, but they can do something. I put a +2 end outfit and +1 end hat on a settler who received a total of +1 endurance. I don't know why, but all I needed was the +1 to get them to gifted, so it was enough. So, collect those outfits and play settler dress up.
13. Buy shipments of concrete and pick up all the cigarette packs you can. Building a new caravan plot requires wood, steel, asbestos and concrete. You can pretty much always count on steel and wood being locally available, but concrete and asbestos are harder. The most weight efficient methods of getting those items are cigarette packs which are everywhere, and shipments of concrete.
14. You won't need much power, until you will need a huge amount of power. Most of the buildings you use won't use much power at all since you won't let them upgrade. I found a single basic power plant could meet every settlements needs. Then HQ needed 1k power. However, the 100 power fusion power plant, guess what it doesn't need? Thats right, bottleneck resources. I was able to produce 800 power from those without running out of daily resources, then I threw a couple advanced power plants at the problem and done.
15. Do the nightingales quest as early as you can. I was having problems with diseases, but I waited to do the nightingales quest until last, I would recommend you do it first just so you can get the sanitation plots going.
Final thoughts. At first, I found component difficulty hard, but once I realized I should be looking at bottlenecks as limits that took options off the table it became a lot easier. Quite simply, bottlenecks removed my ability to use advanced martial, so I just used more basic martial plots and a lot of laser turrets. It also removed my ability to train high quality settlers, so I just used more settlers. It also limited my power, but once I cut out lots of training and advanced martial my power needs dropped drastically.
I also really wish I had a better way of finding new conversion plots, I was desperately trying to get the military recycler that gave lead as a resource and the oil platform. However, without a way to select which settlement does the scavenging, it didn't seem worth it to try to train up my caraveneer in luck and perception. My solution of littering the entire commonwealth in mark 1 beacons didn't work.
I am torn on whether component difficulty is better than category difficulty. On the one hand, component difficulty basically removed several types of plots from the game, those being advanced martial, advanced water, advanced power, and most of the commercial plots. However category difficulty pretty much makes all the conversion plots useless, and those conversion plots made exploration and beacons a fun gameplay loop that only component difficulty gets to experience.
Unfortunately, the advice/feedback divide is a little hard to divide up, for example I am not sure if I should be saying "we need more options to produce lead" or "you need to plan to optimize your use of lead." So, this comes out as just a lot of random observations.
1. Understand bottleneck resources. In component level difficulty, your basic industrial plots (EG, Building material, organic, machine parts, and rare resources) each produce a variety of components in a fixed ratio. However, maintenance costs all come in different ratios. So, for most of the game, you are going to be overproducing most of the components. The materials that you are not overproducing are "bottlenecks" because those resources are what limit your capabilities.
Your bottleneck resources may vary, and mine varied over time, but for the most part my bottlenecks were copper, cork, lead, and sanitizer.
2. Spam items that consume non-bottleneck resources. When you start, I would build one of every item that produces a resource and identify what its maintenance costs are, for example the humble water pump was something like 2 cloth and 3 ceramic. However, neither cloth nor ceramic were bottleneck resources for me, this means that a water pump produces 3 water at the cost of a resource I was just going to throw away anyway. For all intents and purposes, the water pump had zero actual maintenance costs to me. A water plot with a settler producing 16 water for 10 caps may seem cheap, but when you compare it to 5 water pumps which cost nothing of any value, the water pumps are a better option.
You basically have 3 real costs, settler time, bottlenecks, and caps. The plots will always cost at least 1 of those items (settler time), so always look to see if you can meet a need without using one of the three real costs. (Very useful items to spam are windmills, small generators, water pumps, small water purifiiers, and laser turrets.)
3. Bottlenecks will change, so keep your resource items grouped up. When I started, oil and steel were not bottlenecks for me, so I was spamming the small 3 power generators all over the place, but eventually I got the remelting facility which gave me an alternative method of producing more copper. However, this made oil into a bottleneck for me as I could spend oil to get copper, which I needed for power and communication facilities. So, I had to run around scrapping small generators and turning them into windmills, this would have been a lot easier if I had kept them all in one central place in each settlement.
4. Beacon, beacon, beacon. I found that it was very hard to find conversion plot plans from mark 1 beacons, I really had no control of which caravan plot was used to fetch my beacon, so I couldn't just train up one good caravan plot to do my exploration. So, since I couldn't find a good way to get a reliably high chance of discovering a plan, I settled for the plan of always dropping a beacon in every location. This didn't work great, but it did mean I was drowning in non-bottleneck resources.
5. Focus your training early. Training plots for endurance and strength use a lot of cork and lead, both of which were bottlenecks for my playthrough. Intelligence plots were also expensive in copper. I would recommend each settlement have 1 training plot for str, end, and perception at least so you can start training workers for your HQ early. HQ can also use a lot of high int, but for some reason, a lot of the special settlers have really high int.
6. Disable auto-upgrades. Manually re-enable auto-upgrades on plots that you know won't use up your bottleneck resources, for example none of the basic industrial plots have an upkeep, none of the basic food or martial plots used bottleneck resources so they all could auto upgrade. Shops used cork and homes used copper, so they were not allowed to upgrade on their own.
7. Collect all the caps and bullets. I maxxed out both luck perks that let me find random caps and ammo. I didn't use stores to keep up on my cap maintenance, I was collecting caps and bullets to sell so I could donate caps to my settlements for their upkeep.
8. More ASAMs, all the ASAMs. I needed more asams in the early game, so I was putting a PRA's Vend-o-matic plot in every settlement, because the level 3 plot sold ASAM sensors from the vending machine. I don't know why, but even with 2 of the ASAM factory production facilities, I couldn't seem to get general stores to sell me more ASAM sensors. However, once I had the HQ and set up my first resource connection between HQ and a settlement, somehow now in settlements I could craft with my virtual resources, which allowed me to craft boxes and boxes of ASAMs. This may or may not have been a bug, no one answered my forum question, and on category level playthroughs, I don't see the same behavior. I would suggest you follow my early strategy of making it so every settlement is producing ASAMs from some plot, I like the vend-o-matic plot.
9. Get all the settlers. Since training uses up bottleneck resources, you won't be able to train up all your settlers, but the named settlers you get from SS2 have decent stats, you want to get every extra settler you can get your hands on, treat them like pokemon.
10. The HQ doesn't seem to use bottleneck resources except copper. For me, resources used in HQ were all things I was throwing away, so I was able to fully build out my HQ with only my settlers stats keeping me from finishing the quests right away.
11. There is no non-settler method of producing food, so high tech farms are a priority. I didn't build advanced martial because I could supplement them with free turrets, I didn't build advanced power and water for the same reasons. But Food is special because it always requires settler time to produce, so advancing up the tech tree to high-tech farms is probably a good use of your time. Plan out which locations you want these farms in though, because you need to train endurance up on some settlers there.
12. Settlers can wear clothes, clothes have stats. I am not sure how clothes work with settlers stats, but they can do something. I put a +2 end outfit and +1 end hat on a settler who received a total of +1 endurance. I don't know why, but all I needed was the +1 to get them to gifted, so it was enough. So, collect those outfits and play settler dress up.
13. Buy shipments of concrete and pick up all the cigarette packs you can. Building a new caravan plot requires wood, steel, asbestos and concrete. You can pretty much always count on steel and wood being locally available, but concrete and asbestos are harder. The most weight efficient methods of getting those items are cigarette packs which are everywhere, and shipments of concrete.
14. You won't need much power, until you will need a huge amount of power. Most of the buildings you use won't use much power at all since you won't let them upgrade. I found a single basic power plant could meet every settlements needs. Then HQ needed 1k power. However, the 100 power fusion power plant, guess what it doesn't need? Thats right, bottleneck resources. I was able to produce 800 power from those without running out of daily resources, then I threw a couple advanced power plants at the problem and done.
15. Do the nightingales quest as early as you can. I was having problems with diseases, but I waited to do the nightingales quest until last, I would recommend you do it first just so you can get the sanitation plots going.
Final thoughts. At first, I found component difficulty hard, but once I realized I should be looking at bottlenecks as limits that took options off the table it became a lot easier. Quite simply, bottlenecks removed my ability to use advanced martial, so I just used more basic martial plots and a lot of laser turrets. It also removed my ability to train high quality settlers, so I just used more settlers. It also limited my power, but once I cut out lots of training and advanced martial my power needs dropped drastically.
I also really wish I had a better way of finding new conversion plots, I was desperately trying to get the military recycler that gave lead as a resource and the oil platform. However, without a way to select which settlement does the scavenging, it didn't seem worth it to try to train up my caraveneer in luck and perception. My solution of littering the entire commonwealth in mark 1 beacons didn't work.
I am torn on whether component difficulty is better than category difficulty. On the one hand, component difficulty basically removed several types of plots from the game, those being advanced martial, advanced water, advanced power, and most of the commercial plots. However category difficulty pretty much makes all the conversion plots useless, and those conversion plots made exploration and beacons a fun gameplay loop that only component difficulty gets to experience.
