Holotape Gameplay Options

Advanced

These options should generally be left alone. They are here to help with compatibility and save file issues. Safest bet is to leave these options default unless someone suggest you do otherwise.

Deficit Cap

If maintenance costs are higher than tax income an you haven't donated any caps to the city, it will generate a deficit. If the deficit gets too high, all of your city's generators and defenses will begin to fail.

Available Settings:

Options: ON or OFF

Default: ON

What These Settings Mean:

ON: With this on, city deficits are capped at 500 caps, this will ensure you have a chance to recover if you fall behind at some point.

Turn this option OFF to make things more difficult by removing your safety net.

OFF: City deficits will no longer be capped, you can go infinitely into debt in a settlement making harder to recover if you fall too far behind.

Stockpile System

By default, extra resources will be stockpiled on the plot as part of the upgrade process. This provides you extra options and benefits:

• Easy access to extra resources via the Access Stockpile option on the plot menu.
• Ability to donate resources to a plot to speed up the upgrade process.
• If you turn Upgrades Advanced to Manual, plots that you choose NOT to upgrade once eligible will go into extra production mode (creating double resources)

The system is designed to provide you more options and benefits and will happen in the background if you choose to ignore it, so leaving it ON is strongly recommended.

If you decide to turn it off, extra resources will no longer be stockpiled on the plot as part of the upgrade process. The option to turn the stockpile system OFF was added for people who have load order conflicts or save corruptions that prevent the resources from ever generating correctly. Without the stockpile system, you get far less resources, but at least you'll be able to upgrade the buildings.

Options: ON or OFF
Default: ON

Use Original Plot Size

This option is there as legacy support for players who have settlements that were built with the very first version (1.0.0) of Sim Settlements (and who have stubbornly refused to rebuild their original plots) which used a very awkward, custom plot size rather than the standard 2x2.

So unless you know exactly what the "original plot size" means (and you really need it), just leave it OFF.

The change to 2x2 as standard came way back in patch 1.1.0 and no new building plans since then have even supported this original custom plot size.

Options: ON or OFF
Default: OFF

Assignment

Alter the way assignments are handled.

City Building

Determine the way settler built cities are handled.

Difficulty

Change the way certain systems work to make the gameplay more or less challenging

Citizen Needs Requirement

By default “ON”, your settlers will not upgrade their structures (residential, agricultural, industrial, commercial, etc.) unless the Food, Water, Defense, and Happiness levels (citizen needs) of your settlement are high enough. It doesn’t matter if you have upgrades set to happen automatically or manually - in either case structures won’t upgrade inside your settlement until citizen needs are met.

Upgrade levels are also affected by this setting in that your “citizen needs” need to be met at/for each upgrade level, mainly happiness level. By default (citizens needs requirement set to ON) most structures will have lower happiness requirements for triggering an upgrade to level 2 but higher happiness requirement to allow for level 3 upgrades.

If you choose to change this setting to “OFF”, your citizen’s needs will no longer be considered when checking for upgrade eligibility. So not having adequate food, water, defense, and happiness won’t keep your buildings from upgrading. It is important to note, even if “citizen needs” are removed (turn off) from the upgrade eligibility calculations, there will still be other aspects that affect your structures eligibility for upgrade(s) such as connectivity to power, residential job requirements, dynamic needs, etc..

Options: ON or OFF
Default: ON

Dynamic Needs

Dynamic needs is an advanced “civilization building” system that Sim Settlements uses to make the settlements you are “founding” all over the Commonwealth more “realistic” in terms of building a functioning communities that have changing needs and desires over time.

The general idea of dynamic needs is that as your settlements grow and your “civilization” progresses your settlers are going to start expecting more from you (as opposed to the vanilla 1 food, 1 water, 1 covered bed, more defense than food + water basic survival mechanic). With dynamic needs, over time as buildings & structures upgrade and the population of a settlement increases, your settlers will start to expect (demand) more benefits, resources, specific plot types, specific structures to at certain upgrade levels, more building materials, and many other things so that you have to build more “infrastructure” as the game goes on - thus to better simulate how an actual town/civilization evolves.

The dynamic needs system runs completely in the background so it is nothing you have to micro-manage or know specifically about how it works. However, if you don't like or simply don't want to have to provide extra resources, utilities, specific plots types, etc., you can turn dynamic needs off.

It is very important to note that turning off dynamic needs will effect, reduce, or eliminate the many positive benefits your factories, farms, stores, and any other job buildings provide to your settlers. The new plot types and building plans introduced in the “Industrial Revolution” expansion pack will be especially affected by turning off dynamic needs as there are a lot of benefits and new positive modifiers for your settlements built in that require dynamic needs to be ON (in order to be activated or for your settlers to take advantage of/benefit from).

For more information on Dynamic Needs click here

Options: ON or OFF
Default: ON

Initial Plot Costs

Reduces the cost of all plots is to only a single ASAM sensor when set to OFF. It is ON by default and plots require various resources to build correctly. This can be helpful if you would like to pre-plot out settlements before any additional citizens arrive. New citizens will then automatically take a plot and start building a home and/or business, so long as Auto Assignment is also ON.

Immersion

Settings designed around immersing you into the game world.

Commercial Requirement

By default in Sim Settlements, your settlers will not “build” and “open” stores on any commercial plots you lay down until a “certain” number of your settlers have also built “homes” on residential plots (in the same settlement) you have laid down.

The basic notion (from an immersion standpoint) is that people will need a place to live before they will even consider any “retail/commercial” venture. Additionally, the “certain” number of homes requirement is a simple way to tie the growth of your settlements commercial aspects to the number of “homeowners” - in the real world you need a large enough foundation of residents (e.g. residential) in a town for commercial enterprises to be feasible and/or supported.

Now, if you want, you can change it so just the total “Population” in each settlement determines if commercial stores will be opened. With this option set to “Population” the only way someone's going to come open a shop in a settlement is if it has a reasonable population. Sim Settlements is designed to work with any charisma level (of your in game character that is) so for example, if you're a player who doesn't like charisma gameplay and you just want a charisma of 1, you'll still be able to get stores to open and upgrade with this set to population (i.e. the population requirements are low). This is especially useful for smaller settlement locations where you may only have room for a much lower number of settlers.

Note: an alternative to changing/messing with this Commercial Requirement option is to use the newer "Beds are Homes" option. There is now a setting called “Beds are Homes” that is OFF by default but if you change it to ON, your settlers will be considered “Homeowners” regardless of whether they have a home on a residential plot - they just need an assigned bed. So you can leave this Commercial Requirement alone and keep the default immersion aspect.

Finally, if you just hate getting involved in your gameplay at all and you want to build those commercial no matter what, you can turn off this requirement completely by changing it to “None”. On the “None” setting, commercial plots will build and upgrade no matter how many settlers or homes you have.

Options: Homes, Population, or None
Default: Homes

Ignore Factions

By default (OFF), things like available flags will consider the factions you’ve met, allied, or enemied with.

Options: ON or OFF
Default: OFF

Martial Tech Requirement

Martial Tech requirement being ON makes it so that Martial plots only upgrade if you have a certain number of assigned Industrial plots in your settlement (both regular and advanced industrial count).

Options: ON or OFF
Default: ON

Realistic Build Times

Enables realistic in-game build times for plots. It is OFF by default and plots will build in approximately 60 seconds in real time. When using Realistic Build Times, times take much longer by using a randomly generated time per plot (upwards of 36 in-game hours). This can lead to more immersive game play.

Options: ON or OFF
Default: OFF

Residential Job Requirement

By default (ON) your settler’s homes (e.g. Sim Settlements residential plots) will not be eligible for “upgrades” unless those settlers also have “jobs” (e.g. they are also assigned to Sim Settlements job plots - agricultural, commercial, industrial, advanced industrial, martial, or recreational - you have a lot of options).

The basic idea behind the "residential job requirement" is to increase immersion, to make it so that it feels like your settlers have to have an advanced economy around them before they're actually investing money into their homes (upgrades).

The calculation/difference this option makes is that at least 50% of your settlers have to be using Sim Settlements “job” plots in order for their homes to be marked as eligible to be upgraded from level 1 to level 2. The number is higher (75%) for eligibility to upgrade from level 2 to level 3. Please note, this is only one factor in deciding eligibility for upgrades for the residential plot type, the other requirements still need to be met.

If you find yourself not using a lot of the Sim Settlement plots for "jobs" for your settlers but you are using the residential plots (and want them to upgrade) you have a couple of options:

1. You can leave this ON and instead use the “All Work Counts As A Job” option to make it so vanilla work objects will be counted by Sim Settlements as “jobs”.
2. You can turn this option OFF and Sim Settlements will no longer use how many of your settlers have “jobs” as a factor when determining if a residential plot is eligible for upgrade (other factors will still apply).

Options: ON or OFF
Default: ON

Recruitment

Alter the way new settlers are acquired.

Upgrade

Change the way upgrades are handled.

Hold Upgraded Until I see Them

If you want to have a chance to see every upgraded level (and what's changed) of every structure your settlers build (don’t want to miss a thing), then leave this setting on. This setting essentially tells Sim Settlements not to execute upgrades (level changes) to buildings until you have had a chance to see the latest upgraded version level first.

Options: ON or OFF
Default: ON

Plot Upgrades

By default, basic buildings will automatically upgrade as soon as they are eligible.

If changed to manual, basic building will now require your direct approval before they will upgrade. This can be done via the Plot Options menu, which is accessible by clicking on the ASAM Sensor on the plot post (or the post itself if you have ASAM Sensors Hidden)

Note: Plots built before patch 2.0.0 will need to be refreshed for the ASAM Sensor to be displayed.

Options: Auto or Manual
Default: Auto

Plot Upgrades Advanced

By default, advanced buildings (e.g. Advanced Industrial) will automatically upgrade as soon as they are eligible. They will randomly select one of the available upgrade options.

If changed to manual, advanced buildings will now require your direct approval before they will upgrade, which will allow you to select the type of upgrade to occur. This can be done via the Plot Options menu, which is accessible by clicking on the ASAM Sensor on the plot post (or the post itself if you have ASAM Sensors Hidden)

Note: Plots built before patch 2.0.0 will need to be refreshed for the ASAM Sensor to be displayed.

Options: Auto or Manual
Default: Auto

Usability

Alter the way some things work so they are more user-friendly to you.

Bans Applied to Plan Selection

By default, building plans that have been removed as available options to settlers (random building plan selection) from the City Planner’s Desk drawer, will still be available for you to manually select in the Choose Building Plan menu on an individual plot.

However, you can turn this option ON and then building plans you have banned at the City Planner’s desk will also not show up in the Choose Building Plan menu on individual plots.

Options: ON or OFF
Default: OFF

Delay Building Materials

When you build a Sim Settlements plot, there is a short time frame where all you see is the foundation (concrete, wooden stilts, or none) and the power pole/agricultural post. After a short delay, visible “building materials” will appear - these are part of the “level 0” versions of each building plan and are generally representative of what will be built on that plot (it’s not generic, so they will not all look the same). They are part of the immersion Sim Settlements brings to your Fallout 4 experience.

One of the issues with the appearance of these visible “building materials” is that they can cause an oddity (difficulty) with re-positioning the plot once they have materialized. So if you find yourself liking to fine tune/control where exactly a plot is sitting (pick it up and set it back down in a new location) you can increase this delay to 30 seconds.

If you really don’t care about adjusting the initial locations of your plots, can essentially change the delay to 0 seconds by changing the option to “None”. You can still move your plots even if this is set to “none”.

Note: the longer this “delay of building materials” appearing is, the longer it takes for auto-assignment to kick in. This is because any auto-assignments of a new/rebuilt plot won't be triggered until about 45 seconds after the “building materials” appear.

Options: 15 sec, 30 sec, or none
Default: 15 sec

Visual

These options have little gameplay affect, but you can disable certain visual things you may not like.

Demolition FX

If you haven't seen it already, whenever you destroy/scrap a Sim Settlements plot or demolish a building/structure that has been (or is being built) on a plot, a little explosion scene/sequence plays out to immersively show the resulting demolition. If you don't like this demolition effect you can turn it off here

Options: ON or OFF
Default: ON