The only Recreational Building Plans that increase happiness are the Relaxation ones. The others are for training Settler stats.
Information about Recreation Plots
Thank you. My happiness has always been high, but it always bugged me having a bar not full aha, I like having them all maxed. Was just weird it was maxed out, and then randomly super low.
The "Recreation meter" on the HUD only tells you what percentage of them have assignments of that type, it doesn't actually affect anything directly. As long as the Happiness (the base-game rating) is at or above 80, or at least trending that way, you're all good. Usually only takes 1-2 Relaxation-type Recreation plots plus a Bar and Clinic to keep them sitting at or around 100 Happiness, in my experience, although I don't build to more than 25ish people per settlement.
If someone's already at a 10 in a SPECIAL stat, they'll get unassigned from the training of that stat, and then it'll have to wait for the next round of auto-assignment to see if it can give them another one.
So as long as I have the game auto-assigning I should be good? I don't think I even have a clinic building plan or a bar so maybe that's part of it? I never even paid attention to settler stats, do they necessarily do much? Or do they just boost specific plots based on the stat need?
Also 50 settlers, how many plots is that, how many turrets and actors do you have? This settlement will have issues due to fallout 4 problems.
I noticed a couple people saying they keep them small. I love having mega-cities, is this not necessarily a good idea? My Sanctuary settlement was my first where I tried ironing out some problems since it's been a long while since I used SS2, but yeah I think I had most of the Sanctuary workshop area filled with a giant platform for my city to be on one large level place. I had like 30 home plots, 32 recreation plots, 3-4 defense plots, and then like 20 industrial and 20 agriculture plots. Everything seemed to be going okay other than my recreation problem. Also; actors?
A mistake I've made in the beginning as well was thinking that recreation is as important as the other ressources. But it is not. It is either is a tool to increase happiness OR to train the stats of your settlers. Hereby it is not necessary to train ALL settlers. In fact as Recreational Plots have high maintenance costs so having them for every settler would rest heavily on your economy. So I guess you have maintenance costs off otherwise it would be a real problem.
Also there are heaps of settlers that already have decent stats so it is not necessary at all to train them. Non-special settlers might start out weak but it's not necessary to train them in ALL stats. Specialising them all by letting them train one stats is absolutely enough as they can only work one plot anyways.
Yeah I have no clue. I have it on what seems to be the easiest setting where it takes care of itself, but I also use FO4 heavily modded, and have a
ton of materials + caps that i've 'deposited' at the city planning desk. Seemed like it was making enough money? But this makes sense. Felt weird though letting the bar go down since it was full for a long while then randomly dropped. I did ask earlier in this but i'll ask again, what are the stats necessarily for? Just boosts on specific plots? In this case is it just better to have a couple training plots and then the rest are normal relaxation plots?
Thank you guys for the information. Seems to make slighty more sense. Guess my overall questions are;
1. Are large settlements not necessarily advisable? I enjoy making mega-cities, hence my (currently) only settlement being in Sanctuary and having over 50 people. Currently in progress using the castle as a foundation to make an even bigger city, should I not lol? Or will it just be a little glitchy?
2. Do settlers need stat training? Someone mentioned they are already usually good so you don't need many, but what does settler stats do anyway? Does it just give boosts for certain plots?
3. So simply, as long as happiness is up, the recreation bar is just to be ignored?