Holotape Performance Options
As of patch 1.1.9 a Performance Options section exists in the City Manager 2078 Holotape. These options allow you to disable certain object types from being spawned in most plots.
Turning off any of these performance options will remove related things from your buildings to help improve performance. The more plots you have built, the longer the process will take, though you do not have to wait (in a settlement) for it to complete.
A couple things to know/keep in mind:
- These performance options are Global meaning they will effect every Sim Settlements plot, building plan, , city plan, and structure at every settlement in your game.
- It may take a while for all AddOn Pack authors to add support for performance options to all of their building plans (it takes a bit of work). So it is likely that if you turn off some of these options, that some building plans added by installing AddOn Packs will not reflect your performance preferences (until the AddOn author releases a new version that supports performance options.
Contents
- 1 Descriptions of the Performance Options
- 1.1 Configure Multi-Threading (High Impact)
- 1.2 Respect Build Limit (High Impact)
- 1.3 Complex City Plans
- 1.4 Detailed Models (High Impact)
- 1.5 Extra Lights (High Impact)
- 1.6 Clutter (High Impact)
- 1.7 Animated Objects (High Impact)
- 1.8 Special Effects (High Impact)
- 1.9 Animation Markers
- 1.10 Radio
- 1.11 Sound Emitter
- 1.12 NPCs and Pets
- 1.13 Water Planes
Descriptions of the Performance Options
You can enable/disable these via the Performance Options menu. The settings labeled (High Impact) will be the best place to start if you are having severe frame rate issues.
These are organized from most impactful to least impactful.
Note: none of these options are applied to the VIP homes, where the object types are key to VIP having any meaning. VIPs are rare, so they should have minimal impact overall.
Configure Multi-Threading (High Impact)
Sim Settlements now uses a combined thread pool. The thread pool helps prevent the mod from overloading the script engine by limiting the amount of actions it can make simultaneously.
Multi-Threading allows code to run much faster, but can occasionally overwhelm your game. If you find you are frequently crashing, especially in settlements, changing some of these options can help.
Max Threads allows you to control how many threads can run simultaneously (faster systems can run more threads). The "AUTO" option means Sim Settlements will make and educated attempt to calculate the number of threads your system can handle.
- By default this setting is set to Auto, which allows Sim Settlements to determine how many threads to use. Currently this is 10, but in the future will adjust dynamically based on the other mods you have installed.
- You may adjust this from 1 to 20. The higher the number, the more resources you’re allowing Sim Settlements to use. Warning: Going too low could cause Sim Settlements to become incredibly slow, and going to high could cause it to crash - so it’s advised you leave this setting on Auto unless instructed to do otherwise.
Multi-Threaded City Building makes use of more of your system to speed up the city building experience. If you find that you're experiencing crashes, disabling this may help.
Respect Build Limit (High Impact)
When this is enabled, City Building and Plot item construction can be interrupted if it would push over the build limit. This will default to OFF unless the performance wizard is run and you choose Low/Medium/Xbox One/Xbox One S.
Available Settings:
- Options: ON or OFF
- Default: OFF
What These Settings Mean:
- ON: Sim Settlements will continue to build things even if the settlement is past the build limit (vanilla or modified).
- OFF: Sim Settlements will prevent itself from going over the settlement build limit (vanilla or modified).
Additional Information:
If a plot is refreshed when the settlement is over budget, an option will be given to allow that plot to exceed the build limit. This will be most useful for fresh plots that are built after the build limit has been hit, which will otherwise never build while the Respect Build Limit is enabled.
When upgrading a City, if the build limit would be hit or exceeded, you will be prompted to choose whether or not to allow the level to continue building beyond the limit. If you were away from the settlement when this happened, you will instead be prompted when you return to the settlement.
Complex City Plans
Detailed Models (High Impact)
Sim Settlements plot buildings and city plan builds are designed to generate detailed structures and objects using the highest graphics and texture quality. This is done through the use of complex models and high polygon objects.
Available Settings:
- Options: ON or OFF
- Default: Depends on Console/PC
What These Settings Mean:
- ON: Sim Settlements will use complex models and high polygon objects in rendering plot buildings and city plan builds.
- OFF: This will disable complex models, and if possible, replace them with lower polygon versions. Any plot item that is flagged as high polygon will be either removed or replaced with a lower end model.
Extra Lights (High Impact)
Extra lights that are used to enhance a building, but that are not the primary lighting will be removed. Turning this "OFF" will disable non-primary building lights. These are lights with shadows, or smaller lights meant to add more detail as opposed to the primary lights which are meant to help you see the building at night.
Clutter (High Impact)
This will disable the settlers non-furniture belongings as well as the randomized clutter. Random and static clutter objects placed in buildings as decoration will be removed. VIP clutter is excluded from this setting.
Animated Objects (High Impact)
This will disable animated models, and if possible, replace them with static versions.
Special Effects (High Impact)
Turns off special effects such as smoke, fire, water, or other particle creating objects.
Animation Markers
Radio
This will disable/remove objects that play the radio stations.
Sound Emitter
This will disable objects that play some sort of looping sound effect.
NPCs and Pets
Any extra NPCs and pets will be removed. So turning this "OFF" will disable any pets and/or extra NPCs created as part of a building plan.
Water Planes
Water planes that add a surface of water to things will be removed. Turning this off is useful if one of the building plans you're using that has water planes is above other things. When a water plane is placed, the Fallout 4 game engine will treat all space below that as being underwater, which can result in odd effects.