the Sim Settlements forums!

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

I finished SS2 with component difficulty and have some feedback/advice.

Interesting, I was under the impression there was no way for you to access the Virtual Resources outside of HQ.
 
Interesting, I was under the impression there was no way for you to access the Virtual Resources outside of HQ.
Idk if it's a mid conflict or anything, but I seem to be able to? The amounts of resources I have access to are in the thousands when the HQ is running a logistics line to a settlement as opposed to the few hundred when it's just caravan lines.
 
Idk if it's a mid conflict or anything, but I seem to be able to? The amounts of resources I have access to are in the thousands when the HQ is running a logistics line to a settlement as opposed to the few hundred when it's just caravan lines.
I saw someone else mention that a few days back, but I've never observed it doing that myself?

Honestly, after this 'test run' where I ended up with fully 1/4 my Virtual Storage being nothing but Asbestos and being unable to build anything in HQ, I think I'm going back to just "Categories" level.
 
Yeah that was a slight problem at one stage, but nothing that couldn't be fixed by switching a building materials plot to lumber mill and donating a percentage of my looted armor/weapons as scrap steel. (absolutely don't need the cash from them lol)

Also idk why it took me so long to actually start using Mark 1 beacons, but that has helped immensely lol
 
The only 'mechanical advantage' that I saw to playing on 31 Components was that (obviously) Construction in HQ can then pull from Workbenches directly for its required materials, instead of relying purely on what's in the Virtual Storage - which considering the multiple mods I run that "alter" the availability of junk resources (biggest one being the ability to 'break down' ammo for raw materials) is pretty dang useful. I'm just not sure that is enough of a plus for me personally.
 
For plot unlocks using the beacon system, a mayor with the Investigator trait (Nick Valentine) is nearly mandatory, though a caravaneer with decent luck and perception might be helping out here too - I used Amara and Hesper. To ensure Nick's town is the one that does the beacon run, I had all communication plots in other nearby settlements turned off/unmanned. That said, I haven't had any luck yet unlocking a few plots, like the 2x2 Military Salvagers conversion plot.

I have, though, unlocked the (confusingly named) interior Military Salvagers plot in the Wasteland Venturers addon pack by Tinuvia. I'd like to think these two are stepping on each other somehow, but I'm probably just unlucky with my unlocks.

Going ahead and just using Tinuvia's version isn't that simple though. Its building plan is a bit wrecked currently and so zero lead is produced. Another problem is that the plot's ASAM is obscured enough by the back wall that it can't be interacted with. I managed to fix both issues for myself via some FO4Edit changes (To get lead producing: edits and additions to the ProducedItems property in the WEAP building plan. To get ASAM access: moving the shack wall's X positioning in the plot's static collections).
Having to rely on the RGN god for plot unlock is realy "lame". On one playthrough I had virtualy all caravans (10+) busy on scavaging mission with all personnel under the influence of the SPECIAL Zapper. Even the steel plant which usually unlock by scavaging Corvega or Saugus took many tries before success. Here my take on how it should be done:
1. You get a message from The Ron. "Hey cool Cat, I heard your are short on component X, come see me, I may have something for you.
2. You go met the Ron. There a let say 25% chance he has schematic for a production/conversion plan on hand for a very big amount of caps, or 75% chance that he know the location where to find the schematic, for a bit less caps. If you have to go somewhere to get the schematic, it could be a HQ mission also.
3. But guess what? That schematic, is pre-war, so mostly useless. Therefore, you task your HQ science personnel to adapt the plan so you can built it with what is available in the wasteland.
4. To avoid RGN god disfavor, those events are scripted and you can have more that one "quest" at a time. Caps and HQ ressources are the limitations, not your luck.

Also, I'm not done with the Commonwealth rising quest now, but so far I see no tangible improvement for settlements. What about repeatable research which boost power/water/food/industrial production and defence rating for X% per run.
 
I've been playing on component mode, and it's been a slog due to the aforementioned bottlenecks. The main problem for me has been that there's no way to get an overview of system-wide production and consumption rates (which is presumably something the Comm Array ought to be more than capable of generating in-universe), so correcting persistent deficiencies is very tedious. Like the OP, I ended up going around demolishing my T2 and T3 defense plots once I realized that was the reason I had no lead, but it took a long time before I realized that, and I had no idea how many I needed to remove in order to bring my lead production positive again (or how many extra machine disassembling plots I'd need). I was intending to make a little tool for myself to do these sorts of calculations, but haven't quite gotten around to it ...

A way to quickly deactivate plots other than physically finding the settler and assigning them to something else would also be nice (and it'd be fantastic if the auto-assign system ignored such deactivated plots, too).



This would be a great solution to the bottleneck problems. I feel like it should only be unlocked with HQ, though, as that's the point at which you could say your organization becomes large enough to negotiate trade deals for rare components. Mechanically, this would just be a recurring task (whose parameters you get to set beforehand from a terminal). This would also allow for the possibility of an event for protecting/rescuing trade caravans, depending on the total value of the trade agreements as compared to security power/defenses/etc. And some kind of nonlinear "price" increase for larger quantities of (especially rare) materials would discourage relying on outside traders to support large numbers of high-tech plots.
Just a question, do you know how to change the resource reports so it shows you a settlements net-output? I generally have my report set to show me the full thing, so it shows me the current settlements storage, the current settlements net daily change in each resource, the total network storage, and the total network daily output/shortage.
 
Just a question, do you know how to change the resource reports so it shows you a settlements net-output? I generally have my report set to show me the full thing, so it shows me the current settlements storage, the current settlements net daily change in each resource, the total network storage, and the total network daily output/shortage.
Oh!! Well, I had no idea that report function existed, thank you! Fixes one of my problems at least :).
 
I've been playing on component mode, and it's been a slog due to the aforementioned bottlenecks. The main problem for me has been that there's no way to get an overview of system-wide production and consumption rates (which is presumably something the Comm Array ought to be more than capable of generating in-universe), so correcting persistent deficiencies is very tedious. Like the OP, I ended up going around demolishing my T2 and T3 defense plots once I realized that was the reason I had no lead, but it took a long time before I realized that, and I had no idea how many I needed to remove in order to bring my lead production positive again (or how many extra machine disassembling plots I'd need). I was intending to make a little tool for myself to do these sorts of calculations, but haven't quite gotten around to it ...

A way to quickly deactivate plots other than physically finding the settler and assigning them to something else would also be nice (and it'd be fantastic if the auto-assign system ignored such deactivated plots, too).



This would be a great solution to the bottleneck problems. I feel like it should only be unlocked with HQ, though, as that's the point at which you could say your organization becomes large enough to negotiate trade deals for rare components. Mechanically, this would just be a recurring task (whose parameters you get to set beforehand from a terminal). This would also allow for the possibility of an event for protecting/rescuing trade caravans, depending on the total value of the trade agreements as compared to security power/defenses/etc. And some kind of nonlinear "price" increase for larger quantities of (especially rare) materials would discourage relying on outside traders to support large numbers of high-tech plots.
There's a conversion plot that does exactly this in one of the add on packs. It converts more common resources to lead and ballistic fiber.
 
There's a conversion plot that does exactly this in one of the add on packs. It converts more common resources to lead and ballistic fiber.
Last time I checked, it was still very unbalanced compared to what an advanced martial plot actually requires (the 2x2 plot anyway, the interior one gives barely anything). Maybe that got tweaked since.
 
Last time I checked, it was still very unbalanced compared to what an advanced martial plot actually requires (the 2x2 plot anyway, the interior one gives barely anything). Maybe that got tweaked since.
Honestly don't know about that, but as someone who's played Sim games for years, needing a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of industrial to end user isn't uncommon. It forces you to deal with things like sanitation.
 
I saw someone else mention that a few days back, but I've never observed it doing that myself?

Honestly, after this 'test run' where I ended up with fully 1/4 my Virtual Storage being nothing but Asbestos and being unable to build anything in HQ, I think I'm going back to just "Categories" level.

I think I was the person who saw that behavior where the virtual components somehow became real with an HQ link to a settlement. I didn't see it again when I tried testing switching my category game over to components.

I am trying another game with minimal mods, component difficulty and settler death turned on, so I might be able to replicate it again.
 
Also, feedback on settler death. Diseases start out way too early compared to solutions in the main quest. I started "If I had a hammer" in sanctuary, which put it up to 10 people, and with 10 people I already had a disease in sanctuary before completing that quest. I tried building some cemetaries, but they only provide 50 sanitation at the start, which means it was only covering the pollution of the person working it, making a level 1 cemetary a net negative where it uses a settler, and costs maintenance, but produces net nothing. I am almost done with the 1st part of the game, rushing chapter 1, and my only solution to disease I have come up with is keeping all my settlements very small (less than 8), and trying to train everyone in endurance so they don't die.

I don't have hospitals or sanitation because I still cannot start the nightingales. It isn't a crippling problem, that I cannot overcome, but it feels like I have to run around and finish a lot of chapter 2 stuff before I can really start building big settlements.
 
Diseases start out way too early compared to solutions in the main quest.
I had the sanctuary 5 infected a couple times. And it's kinda annoying. Especially if it's chicken pox that you can't cure until endgame (I'm assuming thats either a bird flu or covid reference, lol). You can buy a ton of disease cures and stab em with it and wait for the nightingales. If it was me, I'd change the reqs to something easier like whatever exists or 3 settlements and building 1 cemetery or having anyone infected anywhere or visiting diamond city. You might not get to the first quest for a while (since it's really far east and mirelurks be stronk in there) but at least get access to caches and stuff. And for "How to HQ", 15 people to complete it and start the doctor quest is kinda a lot. Since you're probably going to be picky about it and not send someone with stats of 1.
Also you can unlock hospitals and sanitation by upgrading cemeteries, without any quests (though that makes nightingale rewards kinda sad).
 
I had the sanctuary 5 infected a couple times. And it's kinda annoying. Especially if it's chicken pox that you can't cure until endgame (I'm assuming thats either a bird flu or covid reference, lol). You can buy a ton of disease cures and stab em with it and wait for the nightingales. If it was me, I'd change the reqs to something easier like whatever exists or 3 settlements and building 1 cemetery or having anyone infected anywhere or visiting diamond city. You might not get to the first quest for a while (since it's really far east and mirelurks be stronk in there) but at least get access to caches and stuff. And for "How to HQ", 15 people to complete it and start the doctor quest is kinda a lot. Since you're probably going to be picky about it and not send someone with stats of 1.
Also you can unlock hospitals and sanitation by upgrading cemeteries, without any quests (though that makes nightingale rewards kinda sad).
Wait. Do you not know what chicken pox is?
 
Oh oops, I googled it and yeah. It's named different in my country so I assumed it's one of those "modern" things. We did recently have bird flu, swine flu and now I guess monkeypox...
 
Oh oops, I googled it and yeah. It's named different in my country so I assumed it's one of those "modern" things. We did recently have bird flu, swine flu and now I guess monkeypox...
Alright lol anyway...

The game doesn't throw any major diseases at you until you have access to hospitals. Mostly, they just reduce settler effectiveness, you can totally ignore them and never really notice the impact until later...just like chicken pox ;p And, since you have to turn on settler death, it really doesn't matter. I think it's pretty well balanced over all. You could always just turn off diseases until then too.
 
I had the sanctuary 5 infected a couple times. And it's kinda annoying. Especially if it's chicken pox that you can't cure until endgame (I'm assuming thats either a bird flu or covid reference, lol). You can buy a ton of disease cures and stab em with it and wait for the nightingales. If it was me, I'd change the reqs to something easier like whatever exists or 3 settlements and building 1 cemetery or having anyone infected anywhere or visiting diamond city. You might not get to the first quest for a while (since it's really far east and mirelurks be stronk in there) but at least get access to caches and stuff. And for "How to HQ", 15 people to complete it and start the doctor quest is kinda a lot. Since you're probably going to be picky about it and not send someone with stats of 1.
Also you can unlock hospitals and sanitation by upgrading cemeteries, without any quests (though that makes nightingale rewards kinda sad).
I forgot that hospitals and sanitation could be unlocked by cemetaries, I guess they have a purpose after all. It is kind of sad their entire purpose is to get a useful plot type, but its at least a path I can follow.
 
Yeah, you can get Hospitals a couple of ways. Even without ever building a Cemetery, having a level 2 of both a Clinic Shop and a Rare Materials Industrial will unlock Hospitals too.
 
Top