Sim Settlements 2 - Superstructures Addon Pack

[Irealys]

So I just installed and am thinking where to start with a couple of these plots. One question, what do you mean by enterable into an interior settlement? are you saying this plot gives you a settlement indoors?

Yep, that's what he means

 

[VersusXV]

I have idek and have used it religiously until this playthrough. I wanted to test the actual caravan services plots. I Think i am going to be changing the few Caravan plots i have to Logistics stations. I like having a master station and the functionality seems so much better when it comes to supply lines. My question is do either allow for the sharing of building resources across settlements? I have never figured that out. I mean the hud shows both the settlement and the caravan networks scrap. So if one settlement is low and another has excess will one settlement draw from another's resources to do building and upgrades? Or to pay upkeep costs? But yes it would be nice to have idek's functionality in caravan plots.

I have it added to my caravan to be able to function as an IDEK logistics if IDEK's is installed. It seems to be able to function identically as far as I can tell, basically being a 1x1 IDEKs for those who have it & normal for those who don't.

Upkeep costs should be paid via Caravan Network resources as long as there's multiple active Caravans which are close enough together. It's probably best to also try to make sure that local resources at least cover the costs of the Caravan plot itself, it seems like in some cases the Caravan plot can potentially become inactive if local resources/power/etc were not enough or if assignment has placed the settler elsewhere leaving no one assigned to the caravan. I have adjusted stats & added the ability for a 2nd occupant to 1x1 Portable Caravan, specifically to try to reduce the chances of it seemingly randomly happening.

Yep, that's what he means

It was largely an experiment / proof of concept of sorts. Since while Interior Cell settlements might seem odd, it actually could make a lot of sense from practicality standpoint since in a brand new interior cell there are no chances of mod compatibility issues related to precombines/PreVis since it can be purely new forms on my ESP rather than edits to existing ones. It works fairly well but there can be some annoying issues with getting Caravan Network to reliably link it with the outdoors settlements in the Commonwealth, which has been a major motivational drain as well since to me Caravan Network linking is a critical feature.

Dedicated small worldspace settlements could be an even better thing than interiors since landscape & the environment can be specifically designed as such so that PreVis is used optimally for Sim Settlements 2 to allow for potentially larger total settlements, but there's a lot more complexity to them compared to an interior cell. Natural walls in the default precombined environment could be designed to make optimal use of occlusion via PreVis to limit how much is visible on screen at any given moment so you could potentially build up a lot more without hitting upper limits for draw calls where the game will crash when attempting to load it all. Build Limit gauge is essentially a representation of Draw Calls + Triangles vs the maximum that the game can in theory be expected reliably handle in a hopefully stable manner.

But we can't really do this in the Commonwealth because it would basically have too much of a "footprint" in terms of cell & form edits to edit terrain or add walls to precombines. Even when trying it somewhere pretty far out of bounds trying to do a little bit of terrain editing and landscape painting resulted in over 100 cells modified and numerous conflicts with mods in my load order. Even just adding walls & precombine/PreVis'ing them would affect a larger area because PreVis is in blocks of cells at a time. It inevitably turns into something that basically would be unusable on my own game unless I'd give up multiple mods that I don't want to remove so a non starter. Same situation in FH & NW because there are a lot of good mods adding stuff to them.

So interior cell settlements & eventually small worldspaces are a sort of long term thing that I gradually learn about and eventually want to do. Few people ever get into trying the worldspace stuff besides big total conversion mods so there can be a lack of accessible information and a potential for problems, many of which likely being stuff most authors never have to deal with. With anything in terms of content interacting with SS2 it generally needs to be rock solid in terms of reliability. Plot-with-worldspace would be another pure experiment, that may or may not end up working well. It can be challenging in terms of motivation since at any time, limitations / issues could appear and could make it evident as not a good idea to go forward with.

 

[Prey]

VersusVX I did have a question for you.

I tried to build the white apartment multistory house in Starlight and first they really seem to have pathing issues. If that is due to broken NAV mesh on the part of Fallout 4 and its minor/ easily broken AI villagers, that is fine. I was just wondering if anybody else was having the issue

My real issue with the mod is building that building seems to a weird fluctuation between the first and second level upgrade. I was excited to finally get the next level and utilize the entire building... HOWEVER, the entire building seems to duplicate. so two doors, two power poles, two out layers, still haves the junk of the first layer but then has the stairwell open. I tried to delete the duplicate junk but something blocks me from going upstairs. I was just wondering if I am alone on this issue. I really love the clear look of it as I like the non shack buildings and made my own similar structure but it would be nice to get that one to work

 

[VersusXV]

Things have been a bit slow in terms of progress, have been feeling preoccupied with pc hardware since I'm needing a better CPU but pretty hard to find any of the new ones. Managed to buy a GPU and waiting for some other stuff like a power supply.

My real issue with the mod is building that building seems to a weird fluctuation between the first and second level upgrade. I was excited to finally get the next level and utilize the entire building... HOWEVER, the entire building seems to duplicate. so two doors, two power poles, two out layers, still haves the junk of the first layer but then has the stairwell open. I tried to delete the duplicate junk but something blocks me from going upstairs. I was just wondering if I am alone on this issue. I really love the clear look of it as I like the non shack buildings and made my own similar structure but it would be nice to get that one to work

Sometimes the previous level's stuff can stay behind, though refresh plot should solve it.

About stairway blockage, if this is about Basic 4 Story I had been working on an alternate version to try to better fit the "Fallout aesthetic" & more "progression", on Level 2 I'd had a partial blockage to 3rd floor to give it more of a "progression". Some had felt that it's too samey between levels & not wastelandy enough on the original version. So I had a clutter redesign for it with the intention to have plot skin option to select the old way, but at the time I was hearing of known issues with addon plot skins so I had put that on hold. I believe it was something to do with some of the scripts used for importing skin but been a while so I can't 100% remember. I'll try to look into that again soon, probably it's been fixed.

Had good feedback for the redesigned Level 1 but was a bit unsure how to do L2 & L3, people seemed to feel that L2 should be only 2 stories at least in terms of accessible space. I have an attempt at level 2 clutter done but not sure how much I like it & kind of felt the rubble blockage before 3rd floor was awkward. It's difficult for me because I don't really prefer that kind of look personally but figured players largely do prefer it that way. I had felt before that just blocking it with a barred door might seem a bit lazy, but perhaps it's still better than what's there. I think I'm mostly happy with L1 but might essentially redo or significantly change the L2. It's part of why I don't really like winging it, things tend to go well only when there's a plan like having a mental image of every level. Most of what tends to come to mind are not all that wastelandy & not all that shack like.

I tried to build the white apartment multistory house in Starlight and first they really seem to have pathing issues. If that is due to broken NAV mesh on the part of Fallout 4 and its minor/ easily broken AI villagers, that is fine. I was just wondering if anybody else was having the issue

I haven't been able to hear much or find much info about navmesh especially with multiple story, in terms of either how to ensure it works or how to actually verify if it's working. It feels like guesswork. For verifying, best I'd heard of is just using companions with MoveTo Player to teleport them to the area in question and seeing if they end up teleporting out without ever walking at all. Ideally saying Move Here to someplace upstairs should get them to move there but that can be unreliable even in vanilla areas. I don't know if it's just some issues on my game specifically but navigation tends to be pretty terrible anywhere in the game. Companions with follow package work fine but fairly often do teleport but this isn't uncommon even in Bethesda designed areas. Enemies can navigate just fine unless there's multiple floors then they often seem confused and may stay around where they were if not already on same floor as the player.

I suspect that the navcuts might need to be taller to accommodate 2 or more story buildings and it might be possible to make a custom navcut but with no way to essentially pin things down for firm verification it's guesswork as to whether or not the edited navcuts are actually working. I had tried making a 1x1 version and used it for a while on my plots, later on Kinggath gave us a 1x1 Navcut. I think currently I have the municipals using the KG ones, definitely the Caravan & Communications are at least. I believe I have intentionally left the 1x1 Industrial using the one I made, specifically in case anybody could ascertain if it's working or not. If I can confirm it working then I could try doing some custom tall navcuts. Doing custom navcut for potentially every plot would take up a fair bit of time, I would perhaps do it but would want to know it's effective.

 

[Prey]

Thank you for such a detail and quick reply!

I commend your work and all you are able to do.

On the refresh plot note. I did, in fact refresh the plot's well all the plots and it duplicated everything again. So I build I think 6 of the same buildings. Refreshed them all after I noticed they all were duplicated, stood around for 10 minutes (real world time. Usually only do ten minutes since my computer goes AFK and it freezes everything if Skyrim or Fallout are left open) and I now had three buildings in 1! You should have seen how fast the item or build limit bar shot up.

A lot of the buildings I didn't get to see level two due to some invisible items still blocking the stairway but I really like the design. It is weird that so many people want shack looks and here I am trying to not get my settlers to live in a car or a wall with a 4 x 4. I feel like you should do you!

 

[msalaba]

I haven't been able to hear much or find much info about navmesh especially with multiple story, in terms of either how to ensure it works or how to actually verify if it's working. It feels like guesswork.

From everything I've ever read, the settler AI is crap. They have a hard time figuring out a second story. Anything more than that is a roll of the dice. Even modding the settler AI settings to increase the z distance they search for pathing doesn't seem to do anything. I do not believve I have ever seen a settler use more than a second story. On one game screwing around, I built a 5 story tower. I used console commands the teleport some settlers to the top. They pretty much stood around and scratched their heads. Eventually, they teleported to the ground and went on their merry way... I think that short of re-writing the settler AI code, the pathing and sandboxing are going to be poor.

I hope your worldspace idea bears fruit! It sounds interesting and could open up a lot of possibilities!

 

[Irealys]

It is weird that so many people want shack looks

No it's not. It's the base look of the game. So it's really not surprising that the people still actively involve in the modding community of this game prefer if buildings look like they are part of the world of the game they are enjoying. Look at Abernathy's house, it's a giant version of a shack. Same for Finch house and basically most, if not all, of the buildings made post war.

From everything I've ever read, the settler AI is crap.

My working theory is that the vitomatic intelligence reading is not on a scale of 1 to 10, it's their actualy IQ.

They have a hard time figuring out a second story.

Yeah that's a known issue with settlers. I remember reading about it after trying to make a two story vault. I can't remember the details but basically, nobody would go to the second story to their jobs if under their job there was also a path for them to use.

Since while Interior Cell settlements might seem odd,

It's honestly not. I basically had the discussion you had afterwards when talking with someone about the possibility of SS2 adding new settlements. KG wants to avoid doing things that could conflict with other mods and anything in open world is dangerous for that. Any interior cell is a LOT safer in that regards.

So interior cell settlements & eventually small worldspaces are a sort of long term thing that I gradually learn about and eventually want to do.

Not gonna lie, I will tag along as an interested observer. I do have some ideas for some interior cell use (some interesting for my future mod, some so crazy you might like them) so I will stay close by hoping to grab tidbits of information you might learn along the way.

And feel free to discuss, ask for testing, brainstorm with me about any of it. I'm always ready for a good brainstorm session and I'm hoping I can help in some small way there.

Keep up the great work my man

 

[Prey]

No it's not. It's the base look of the game. So it's really not surprising that the people still actively involve in the modding community of this game prefer if buildings look like they are part of the world of the game they are enjoying. Look at Abernathy's house, it's a giant version of a shack. Same for Finch house and basically most, if not all, of the buildings made post war.

The difference between the two examples you gave is they were being raided, maybe even constantly (hard to tell due to timeline, ex) We technically can build walls, defenses and other amenities to make it possible to build something a bit nicer. Plus stop the raiding

In addition, you can suspend you disbelief but the ASAM sensors in SS 2 were suppose to make building easier. And they would have a lot of prewar structures loaded in they system since I doubt people were making a bunch of shacks pre-war sans supply shortages. No I am not saying they have to be pristine, but I do like the look of the prewar templates of the residential buildings in Concord for example. Windows blown out is fine! But a car? Really? It is easier to move half a bus than to put 5 planks of wood closer together?

Just my opinion of course.

 

[Irealys]

In addition, you can suspend you disbelief

I’m gonna stop you right there. No. It has nothing to do with belief. Or about the look you prefer. If you look back at the post I made, I’m answering a specific part about why people in general prefer the in game look. You can re-read it if you want, you’ll see I never even talked about my own preferences because they are irrelevant to the point I was making. This is an old game and people who are still playing more than likely enjoy the look of the game. And the look of the game when talking about new constructions is “improvise with what’s available” which normally means a shack. Other times it may be re-using an existing building and that’s what interior plots do (my sanctuary only has the tutorial residential as a 2x2, everything else is interior).

As for your idea, I’m not against it. Personally I prefer settlements that have a specific and similar look but diversity between settlements so I’m always looking for new and interesting looks. But if you want that you either have to hope it’s something an addon maker wants to do or roll up the sleeves and start learning. From someone who barely started (as a 40 year old who didn’t have programming classes or experience since the late 90s) I can tell you that between the CK, the tools Kinggath released, the Bethesda mod school videos and the community, if all you want to do is a different look of plots you have no excuse not to do it. For some people who may or may not try crazy things sometimes the tutorials are not enough but maybe a tutorial on world domination was a lot to ask for

Seriously you should give it a shot. If you haven’t looked at the Bethesda mod school I highly suggest you watch the first few videos and maybe one specifically about making plots. You’ll see how everything is there with tools to make it easy and then you could make any and every look you want.

 

[AndyJP]

Some Power Poles now too:
▶ Glowing Sea variants of Telephone 1-6 + Telephone Quad + Telephone Short bare + Telephone Tall Bare
▶ A new test type: Underground Power Connector

Oh that is from your mod, interesting! I've always wanted the wall power connectors that appear on the side of many buildings. Like in Hangman's Alley you can see them all over at the tops of buildings. Is that okay to request? I've never seen them in mods where they function as power connectors.

 

[Prey]

I did want to give you pictures. I am still unclear if this was the intention with blocking the second floor. After waiting 10 minutes and multiple refreshes.. I get the same "design" Notice that the second floor is blocked, beds stacked and second door keeps reappearing


To get to the second floor. I need to delete the Level 1 Clutter. I should clarify this is level 2 building

 

[VersusXV]

I did want to give you pictures. I am still unclear if this was the intention with blocking the second floor. After waiting 10 minutes and multiple refreshes.. I get the same "design" Notice that the second floor is blocked, beds stacked and second door keeps reappearing

View attachment 11481View attachment 11482View attachment 11483
To get to the second floor. I need to delete the Level 1 Clutter. I should clarify this is level 2 building

I'll look into it, though seems like my monitor is dying so might be a bit

 

[Din'elen DarkStar]

I don't get the upper floors until level 3. At level 3 everything looks and acts just fine. Until then upper floors are blocked.

 

[Din'elen DarkStar]

Quick question, what's the benefit to assigning 2 settlers to the portable caravan plot? I saw you can put 2 people on it and I was like OK why?

 

[VersusXV]

Quick question, what's the benefit to assigning 2 settlers to the portable caravan plot? I saw you can put 2 people on it and I was like OK why?

Sometimes the game will shuffle settler assignments like every few days, I believe this is a vanilla behavior that probably can't be avoided. If you have more job plots than settlers this can potentially result in ending up with no one being assigned to the caravan which would cause the settlement to disconnect from caravan network or even multiple settlements disconnecting, if that settlement was a central one connecting multiple. This can cause a cascade effect of sorts if the settlement was relying on caravan network produced resources in order to pay plot operating costs or for scrap capacity, where disconnection can cause there to not be enough resources or too little capacity for the settlement. People on the forums had commented a lot about random or unexpected caravan network disconnections and it seems like this is probably why, alongside possible power grid issues being another potential cause. They had believed they had accounted for everything to where costs, power requirement, settler assignment should be met. People had several suggestions for SS2 changes to try to address this including an auto-assignment priority order or grace period for Caravan Services plots, but I'm not sure if either are possible to do. So I decided to try experimenting with mine with changes that I think could help with this, changes that seem like they'd be effective based on what I know and generally I don't frequently experience unexpected Caravan Network breaks.

The 2nd settler slot is there in effort to reduce the chances of no one being assigned to the caravan plot, alongside other changes intended to reduce the chances of the plot shutting down & causing unexpected disconnection from the caravan network. Another benefit is you'll be able to use a 2nd Salvage Beacon without waiting. For now, the costs/penalties do not increase on 1x1 Portable Caravan while a 2nd settler is assigned. But this can change based on feedback, if people feel it's underpowered or overpowered. Normally plot outputs are stacked for every occupant on it, double for 2, triple for 3, etc. But for Caravans there's no output that's multiplied, range doesn't change either. It also already can function the same as an IDEK Logistics if you have IDEK Logistics Station 2 installed.

I have another Caravan Services plot idea in mind to potentially try to address this from a different angle in a somewhat different way as well.

 

[Din'elen DarkStar]

Sometimes the game will shuffle settler assignments like every few days, I believe this is a vanilla behavior that probably can't be avoided. If you have more job plots than settlers this can potentially result in ending up with no one being assigned to the caravan which would cause the settlement to disconnect from caravan network or even multiple settlements disconnecting, if that settlement was a central one connecting multiple. This can cause a cascade effect of sorts if the settlement was relying on caravan network produced resources in order to pay plot operating costs or for scrap capacity, where disconnection can cause there to not be enough resources or too little capacity for the settlement. People on the forums had commented a lot about random or unexpected caravan network disconnections and it seems like this is probably why, alongside possible power grid issues being another potential cause. They had believed they had accounted for everything to where costs, power requirement, settler assignment should be met. People had several suggestions for SS2 changes to try to address this including an auto-assignment priority order or grace period for Caravan Services plots, but I'm not sure if either are possible to do. So I decided to try experimenting with mine with changes that I think could help with this, changes that seem like they'd be effective based on what I know and generally I don't frequently experience unexpected Caravan Network breaks.

The 2nd settler slot is there in effort to reduce the chances of no one being assigned to the caravan plot, alongside other changes intended to reduce the chances of the plot shutting down & causing unexpected disconnection from the caravan network. Another benefit is you'll be able to use a 2nd Salvage Beacon without waiting. For now, the costs/penalties do not increase on 1x1 Portable Caravan while a 2nd settler is assigned. But this can change based on feedback, if people feel it's underpowered or overpowered. Normally plot outputs are stacked for every occupant on it, double for 2, triple for 3, etc. But for Caravans there's no output that's multiplied, range doesn't change either. It also already can function the same as an IDEK Logistics if you have IDEK Logistics Station 2 installed.

I have another Caravan Services plot idea in mind to potentially try to address this from a different angle in a somewhat different way as well.

One, thank you for such an in-depth explanation, I highly appreciate it. Second thank you for an awesome add-on that I use a lot, a lot. Especially the 1x1 plots. I am truly digging on the large ag plots, pun intended. Their designs are stellar. And now that I know this and why you did this with the caravan plots I doubt I will ever use any other version cause I have had this happen a few times. But never on one of your 1x1's with 2 on it.

 

[Din'elen DarkStar]

It also already can function the same as an IDEK Logistics if you have IDEK Logistics Station 2 installed.

I have another Caravan Services plot idea in mind to potentially try to address this from a different angle in a somewhat different way as well.

I do have it installed and love that feature as well. I use exclusively IDEK's so this was a solid sale on my part having this out of the box.

 

[Din'elen DarkStar]

I have another Caravan Services plot idea in mind to potentially try to address this from a different angle in a somewhat different way as well.

Can you do a setting in the comm station to stop recruiting and only function for salvage runs? I feel the current ones over recruit and sometimes I want to stop recruiting but have salvage runners.

 

[Din'elen DarkStar]

Add talk about big power in small space, I have 2 worker bots at Graygarden on a 1x1 plutonium plant and its putting out 500+ power.

 

[VersusXV]

Add talk about big power in small space, I have 2 worker bots at Graygarden on a 1x1 plutonium plant and its putting out 500+ power.

That might be a bug, or perhaps the bots have extremely high INT. Sometimes Bethesda does give NPCs very high SPECIAL, like Vault Tec Salesman having 96 END, which does add correctly to Agricultural output.

Can you do a setting in the comm station to stop recruiting and only function for salvage runs? I feel the current ones over recruit and sometimes I want to stop recruiting but have salvage runners.

I would like this option but I'm not sure if it's possible to do. It might be something that has to be added as an option on Sim Settlements 2 itself.