Windmills cost maintenance

[Welka]

Ok, so I posted earlier a thread regarding my problems stopping my settlements to lose a shit ton of caps.

https://simsettlements.com/site/ind...crazy-unable-to-make-profit-please-help.5828/

I'm told that windmills don't cost maintenance money but when I add one to the settlements they cost me 20 caps per day each. To run my sanctuary settlement I need 80 energy so I have 4 windmills. That's 80 caps per day going in maintenance for the windmills that are supposed to be free... What gives?

 

[kinggath]

Only windmills that have a particular actorvalue will prevent maintenance costs. Some mods don't have this value on their windmills, so Sim Settlements doesn't know that they are windmills.

 

[Welka]

Hi Kinggath! First let me thank you for this awesome mod! I watched all your in-depth videos and though they are very useful, they do not hint how to keep the cities afloat.

Any clue on how to make a profit with the mod out of the box? The only mod I have affecting settlements is Horizon and I believe they add windmills to the game, which are the one I have been using.

But this set aside, how does one make a profit using only your mod? There are no windmils or alternate power options that I could find in SS or IR. Since each plot require more water/energy/defense than the generated revenue, it seems impossible to make any sort of profit.

Thanks again Kinggath. I really love your mod and I don't want to turn off the maintenance costs as I love the management side of it.

 

[kinggath]

The keys to making a profit are to focus on maintenance cost free items early. So avoid turrets, and use lots of windmills (there is one in the base game). You also don’t have to power level 1 plots (the exception is Advanced Industrial) and they will still function - they just won’t upgrade.

So you can do things like not build any power until your settlement is established enough to be able to afford putting settlers on Commercial and recreational plots. Commercial generate higher taxes, and with recreational providing a happiness boost, you can afford to double some of the taxes without the happiness penalty being a problem.

I intentionally haven’t covered this stuff in the guides because that’s part of the strategy gameplay, experimenting and finding stuff that works. Unfortunately, other mods throw a wrench into things as their items don’t always work as expected with the numbers. The level 1 plot power thing is also unclear due to limitations of the game’s UI.

 

[Welka]

Thanks for clarifying. I found out where I when wrong. I was using the horizon windmills (really tall ones) and completely forgot about the vanilla one... My bad.

I managed to get my Sanctuary settlement in the green now but I still get a message saying it's in deficit. Maybe it takes some times to update,

Thanks for the help, I love your mod!