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OPINION: The SPECIAL/Unique Settler Beacon system is ANNOYING.

Rylasasin

Rylasasin

Active Member
Messages
143
Okay, so the following is purely my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

But you know how when you activate a beacon certain custom-voiced settlers with high SPECIAL randomly show up in your settlements and offer you quests sometimes?
I find that system to be 100%, irrevocably, ANNOYING. to the point to where I've gone back to using Advanced Beacons just so I don't have to deal with them.

First off, the fact that they show up randomly is all manor of annoying, since (unlike Gath, apparently) I tend to build my settlements all at once with a plan in mind, not little by little as settlers come (the central planner method of building.) Having them show up randomly really throws a wrench into that plan. Not to mention it makes a system where instead of going out and about and doing stuff and then coming back building your cities (kinda the whole point of Sim Settlements) you have to keep checking every single city to see if these annoying buggers show up in any of them (since it doesn't tell you when they show up) otherwise you end with 3+ of them in all your settlements. UGH.

And that's the other problem with them: They don't ahve any sort of cap at which to quit spawning, so they'll just keep coming until the mod runs out of them to throw at you, which, isn't happening any time soon.

I mean, at first it's kinda nice to have the settlers show up this way. But, well, it gets old. And very annoying. FAST.

Not to mention the particular ones I WANT to show up (Arcon, Ventalator, etc.) almost never show up until I've already unlocked their quest rewards anyway. Which just adds to the annoyance factor.

TL;DR: I think there should be an option to turn this feature off, and on top of that, make it so ALL special settlers are found out in the wild (like Fishfood) and none of them are beacon-exclusive.

Edit: Just so we're absolutely clear, I don't find the unique settlers themselves annoying. A lot of work went into them and I appreciate that. It's just the method used to summon them that I find really irritating and counter-intuitive.
 
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I asked for a way to turn specifically those off a couple of times early on myself, and only once got an answer that was "I think if you turn off Visitors it turns them off too", but I never did manage to verify that. Probably should be a separate toggle switch, since as you say, half the time the ones that unlock a new plot subtype don't spawn until after you already have it anyway.
 
yaugieLC said:
I asked for a way to turn specifically those off a couple of times early on myself, and only once got an answer that was "I think if you turn off Visitors it turns them off too", but I never did manage to verify that. Probably should be a separate toggle switch, since as you say, half the time the ones that unlock a new plot subtype don't spawn until after you already have it anyway.
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Yeah, definitely.

That, and as I said, they should be found in the wild instead of being in a hidden dev cell and just popping up randomly when you have your beacon active. Yeah that might cause people to bum-rush towards Arcon or Ventilator right away, but hey, choices and consequences.
 
Rylasasin said:
Yeah, definitely.

That, and as I said, they should be found in the wild instead of being in a hidden dev cell and just popping up randomly when you have your beacon active. Yeah that might cause people to bum-rush towards Arcon or Ventilator right away, but hey, choices and consequences.
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NPCs in the world can still have their recruitability "locked" behind quest completion, I know "Tales from the Commonwealth" does that for a few of its people that already exist in the world, so yeah its doable that way. I just doubt the SS2 team will want to make that substantial a change at this point.
 
I'd prefer an option to turn off their "travelling" since trying to make settlements as far from each other as possible results in uniques always being on the road somewhere. And as much as I'd love to go everywhere on foot and encounter them randomly, game doesn't take kindly to that. And agree on the "ones you want never show up" part. I'm at level 50 with no Archibald. Ones that unlock something normally show up after I unlocked it, too. Anyway, there's always the choice to go do their quest or whatever else you want, it's not like there's a time limit. And idk what's so annoying about them "just being there" in your settlement, would much rather fill everything with uniques than listen to another "my back hurts". Seriously, whoever in Bethesda decided to give the same lines to different voice actors should be fired.
 
Antoine Soverie said:
And idk what's so annoying about them "just being there" in your settlement, would much rather fill everything with uniques than listen to another "my back hurts".
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The annoying part (for me at least) is that they never stop spawning and there's no way to control their spawning and/or you're never notified of your spawning, so you can't plan around it.

So If I build ... oh.... say... Hangman's Alley, I put 5 plots down, some beds, etc, slap the thing down. Then I go off to do something else and come back once the settlement has been filled.

But then I notice there's 3-6 of these 'special settlers' mucking about in hangman's. That's like 3-6 settlers that I have NO CLUE what to do with.
Worse, once I go and do thier quests, they're right away replaced by 1-3 more of them per unique settler. So they keep on piling up.
And sending them elsewhere is also out of the question since I do the same elsewhere. Again, unlike 'Gath apparently, I don't babysit my settlement and then when they come along build plots for them. I build my plots, say 'I am going to plan for this many settlers to come to this settlement, and that's it,' set the max settlers to X (I use Pra's beacon script) and then bugger off to do something else until the plots fill, only occasionally coming back to check to see if the settler auto-assign isn't bugging out or when I need to do crafting stuff.

And since a lot of them have auto-greets and home in on you the moment they see you, you can't just pretend they don't exist either. Honestly, if we learned anything from Preston, it should be that auto-greeters are a terrible idea.
 
Rylasasin said:
And since a lot of them have auto-greets and home in on you the moment they see you, you can't just pretend they don't exist either. Honestly, if we learned anything from Preston, it should be that auto-greeters are a terrible idea.
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Couldn't you just console disable the ones you're sure you don't want to deal with? No more auto-greet or random unique NPCs milling about your settlement.
 
I guess it's a matter of preference. Replacing a boring vanilla settler with a cooler one was never a question for me lol, unless you have some mods to make the vanilla ones more tolerable (even though it feels wrong to put someone with a really good stat on something that doesn't make use of it)
 
Also auto-greeters that give you a new quest immediately after you finish the last one are terrible. God I hate Drummer boy.
 
I micro manage and do babysit my settlements. I. Mean the mod is all about settlements isn't it? So I love it when they show. Makes me excited. No matter how many times I have played through
 
Kinda same. Except for the 46 settlers part, that'd be a death sentence for my rust bucket of a console. But some addon packs are like specifically designed to make a planetary with a big fungus farm attached to it, and I love that.
 
My builds are epic. I have a 70 person Sanctuary as well. The thing is Auto assign is busted and causes all kinds of issues I have been finding. So it is better to manage all that yourself for game longevity and a lot less resource issues.
 
Rylasasin said:
Okay, so the following is purely my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

But you know how when you activate a beacon certain custom-voiced settlers with high SPECIAL randomly show up in your settlements and offer you quests sometimes?
I find that system to be 100%, irrevocably, ANNOYING. to the point to where I've gone back to using Advanced Beacons just so I don't have to deal with them.

First off, the fact that they show up randomly is all manor of annoying, since (unlike Gath, apparently) I tend to build my settlements all at once with a plan in mind, not little by little as settlers come (the central planner method of building.) Having them show up randomly really throws a wrench into that plan. Not to mention it makes a system where instead of going out and about and doing stuff and then coming back building your cities (kinda the whole point of Sim Settlements) you have to keep checking every single city to see if these annoying buggers show up in any of them (since it doesn't tell you when they show up) otherwise you end with 3+ of them in all your settlements. UGH.

And that's the other problem with them: They don't ahve any sort of cap at which to quit spawning, so they'll just keep coming until the mod runs out of them to throw at you, which, isn't happening any time soon.

I mean, at first it's kinda nice to have the settlers show up this way. But, well, it gets old. And very annoying. FAST.

Not to mention the particular ones I WANT to show up (Arcon, Ventalator, etc.) almost never show up until I've already unlocked their quest rewards anyway. Which just adds to the annoyance factor.

TL;DR: I think there should be an option to turn this feature off, and on top of that, make it so ALL special settlers are found out in the wild (like Fishfood) and none of them are beacon-exclusive.

Edit: Just so we're absolutely clear, I don't find the unique settlers themselves annoying. A lot of work went into them and I appreciate that. It's just the method used to summon them that I find really irritating and counter-intuitive.
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Ok...I'm going to show my ignorance here. What is this "Unique Settler Beacon system" and "Advanced Beacons" that you are talking about? I thought Unique Settlers showed up after you had set up a Comms station, and the only Beacons I'm aware of are Mark 1 Beacons to have a Caravan Service guy come search a cleared area, and the other Beacon that you place in a container full of loot (although I've never even used that one).

So, what kind of beacon makes Unique Settlers appear? I thought they just randomly showed up, after you had built a Communications Plot. And I also don't have a clue what you mean by "I've gone back to using Advanced Beacons". What are Advanced Beacons? Seems like I'm missing a lot here, and my understanding of Beacons and how they work is lacking.

In my first game trying Sim Settlements 2, I had a lot of special settlers show up. But I started a new game, and in this game I've had very few of them show up. I just figured it was the luck of the draw. Obviously, I have a lot to learn about beacons and unique settlers.
 
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Unique settlers show up after you have completed one of the SS2 Main Story quests. Once you start receiving "visitors" in your settlements, there is a chance you will meet a unique settler.
For more information: Your Settlers
Each of them has specific requirements to meet before they are eligible to appear for you. Some may require that you have a Communications Plot, some may require that you have a Recruitment Beacon.
 
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Cessori said:
Unique settlers show up after you have completed one of the SS2 Main Story quests. Once you start receiving "visitors" in your settlements, there is a chance you will meet a unique settler.
For more information: Your Settlers
Each of them has specific requirements to meet before they are eligible to appear for you. Some may require that you have a Communications Plot, some may require that you have a Recruitment Beacon.
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I appreciate the quick reply, but there it is again..."some may require that you have a Recruitment Beacon". What is, and where can I find, this "Recruitment Beacon".

Duhhh, that radio tower thing that you build in vanilla FO4 is called a Recruitment Beacon. LOL I don't know what I was thinking, I thought Recruitment Beacon was some new SS2 kind of beacon, like the Mark 1. I knew I built that radio tower thingy in every settlement to attract settlers, but I didn't remember what it was called until I did a google search and voila...it is a Recruitment Beacon. Please just ignore me, I just had an elderly moment, maybe its a sign of early onset Alzheimer's? Just call me Dazed and Confused.
 
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Verminator said:
I appreciate the quick reply, but there it is again..."some may require that you have a Recruitment Beacon". What is, and where can I find, this "Recruitment Beacon".

Duhhh, that radio tower thing that you build in vanilla FO4 is called a Recruitment Beacon. LOL I don't know what I was thinking, I thought Recruitment Beacon was some new SS2 kind of beacon, like the Mark 1. I knew I built that radio tower thingy in every settlement to attract settlers, but I didn't remember what it was called until I did a google search and voila...it is a Recruitment Beacon. Please just ignore me, I just had an elderly moment, maybe its a sign of early onset Alzheimer's? Just call me Dazed and Confused.
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No worries. I have a very strong visual memory and always use thumbnail pics to find what I am looking for, so that can easily happen, and does for me on occasion.
 
It'd be really nice if these unique settlers also had leader cards. Would solve the problem of the lack of leaders quite nicely.
 
That would be an easy mod to make.

Leaders System

Learn to set up any Unique NPC with a Leader Card, which gives them special traits while acting as a Settlement Leader. This guide will also go over setting up custom traits to gain full control over how your leader works.
wiki.simsettlements2.com wiki.simsettlements2.com
 
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