Welcome back, everyone! Our tour got a little delayed by technical issues, but now we can continue visiting the settlements and getting them up to date. If you recall from last time, our next settlement is The Slog. It won't be getting any major updates except for defense, since we founded it relatively recently. The big development is that the prisoners were locked up here a while ago have reached 100 submission, so we can treat them like regular settlers as far as jobs go.

 

 

I'll put Sparta in a punishment suit since she's a unique character; the other two will just become generic Minutemen for the defense plots I'm going to build. The reason we need to put in defense plots is because the settlement doesn't have enough defense points; this means that it'll attract random attacks and we want to curb that. The Slog also needs more beds, which we'll accomplish by replacing the regular beds that come stock with the settlement with bunk beds.

 

 

OK, so far so good for The Slog. With its immediate needs addressed, happiness should start to rise naturally, eventually leading to upgrades and improvements. Since we're in this area, let's also visit Greentop Nursery.

 

As I walked down there, I was reminded again about an annoying limitation in the game - I had to stop myself at 128 potential settlement sites, leaving a lot "on the table." One that I had to abandon was Breakheart Banks. I really wish I could build up that location since its in such a strategic spot and it makes a lot of sense from a narrative perspective. Oh well, too bad  Based on a conversation I had with a much more experienced modder, it's possible to overcome the 128 limit, but it would require a lot of script edits and it would probably break compatibility with Sim Settlements 2... and sadly, the Workshop Framework that underlies SS2 appears to be closed source, so a user-created patch isn't feasible.

 

Greentop is generally in good shape. The only thing it needs is one more bed - and of course, longer term I need to rebuild the main house - but that doesn't make sense to do yet since this is such a recent addition. We'll add some housing but otherwise make no changes to the layout. We also have another submissive prisoner here who we'll enroll into the punishment suit program and put to work in the greenhouse. I toyed with letting Red's Rangers recruit her, but the nursery already has enough defense (actually, after adding her to that job it no longer does, but it's good enough for now).

 

 

The last settlement in this area is County Crossing, the newest settlement and not actually a real Concord location since its a BOS settlement. A quick check of its stats in the pip boy reveals that its sustainable. Defense is a bit lower than I'd like, but that's something I can leave alone in the short run. After we complete Book 4 I need to flesh out the Brotherhood's zone of control a bit, and that'll be the time for me to go in and really update County Crossing. 

 

The Concord Core

We won't actually be visiting Concord today unless I encounter a specific deficiency. Up in the northwest corner of the map I have several settlements that have 100% happiness, and while I'd love to return to them after the "work" part of this exercise is done so I can fine tune them a bit, my priority for today is to check up on any settlements with specific unmet needs so I can ensure they are moving in the right direction.

 

Quarrytown is next (Tenpines Ridge was at 100% happiness). It has 61% happiness and seems to be suffering from a lack of defense. It actually has an excess of beds, so as long as one defense plot is sufficient (and therefore, one additional NPC), it shouldn't need further modifications.

 

However, almost right away we can see a potential problem - the automatic gates aren't opening, which suggests there isn't enough electricity to meet the settlement's needs. That means we'll also need to install a power generation type plot. However, it also means we might not need to add a defense plot. Why? Look at the turret in the screen shot below. At least some of the settlement's defenses are also offline.

 

 

Well, I'd hoped it would be that simple, but as you can see the power pushed total attack potential over total defense again, so we're back to square one with building defenses and also probably needing to build housing. The food amount shouldn't be a problem - next time the supply lines refresh the caravans will make up the difference. This corner guard post should more than meet my defense needs (I had to use the console to disable some of the marble blocks so it fit but otherwise all's good with it), so that just leaves us needing to take care of the housing situation.

 

 

I put up a few shacks around the perimeter to ensure everyone had a safe place to sleep. This will eventually become overkill since the big house at the top will upgrade to add more beds, but that can't happen until happiness is higher, so for now we have to make do with lesser options. Meanwhile, I observed that my commercial plot was operating at degraded efficiency because it had no access to electricity. I went ahead and ran some electrical wires to address that. Getting power down to the bottom of the quarry will be trickier, and I'll leave that for another session.

 

 

With that done, basic needs are all met and happiness is starting to go up. So let's move on to our next area, the small salvage station at the Red Rocket. I passed through Concord on the way there and did notice that they had an electricity shortfall, but I decided to leave it be for now. The lack of power wasn't causing any loss of critical statistics, so my capital was fine even if it had a little shortfall (eventually you can share power between settlements anyway, so its possible this will be a non issue if the rest of my areas keep developing on their own).

 

Red Rocket is a very small settlement right now. It has an interior plot for salvaging from the station along with a shack for connecting to the caravan network. Food and water gets brought in from Concord, but the problem is defense, which is at zero. To fix this, we'll need to assign a guard and give them somewhere to live. I decided to put in Uituit's war truck and war trailer in for this role, and while it took a little work to place it correctly now defense for this outpost is more than adequately covered.

 

 

That should put the Red Rocket in position to start gradually improving. Eventually I'll probably expand it a little bit, but if you're familiar with the "triangle of death" bug you'll understand why it isn't a major focus of my efforts. 

 

Next up is Abernathy Farm, which seems to be stuck at about 81% happiness. A quick look at the Farm's dashboard shows us the immediate problem: not enough power. This is degrading some of the higher level buildings and, in turn, making people unhappy. Getting the power plant going wasn't too difficult, as the move of one of the 3x3 farms from basic to advanced some time ago had left some unemployed settlers. Consequently, I didn't need more housing, food, and so forth. Speaking in food, my two trainees had reached a higher level of endurance, so I was able to finish upgrading the farm plots at Abernathy to advanced ones. 

 

This didn't completely solve the power situation, but after I decommissioned the old water pumps, everything balanced out. I have several settlements that generate pretty large water surpluses now, so the two water pumps at the Farm aren't necessary anymore and also took up a lot of space. Without them, the back yard has a lot more leg room.

 

 

We'll need to return here in the future to finish the homestead and install happiness boosting items, but until high tech farm plots become available, this settlement is pretty much done. Let's head to Sanctuary next for a check-in. I had noticed that the happiness level was down a bit, and on further investigation I found that this area had a power deficit and also a small food shortage. Defense, while not critical, was also lower than idea. I put in a 3x3 gourd farm where the vanilla gourd patch is located, then installed a guardpost next to the trading post. After some brainstorming, I decided that Sanctuary should have an advanced defense plot, which in turn means having a settler with a higher level of agility. To achieve this, I also set up an agility training area. This will delay the defense coming online for a while, but it shouldn't cause any critical problems... and in the meanwhile, food and power are now where they should be.

 

 

While I was working on Sanctuary, I noticed that my wood stockpile ran out. This is probably just a side effect of all the construction I've been doing, but I decided to prioritize our small wood collection outpost for my next visit. In-universe, this is actually an outpost of Ridge, and it's pretty much a mirror of the machine parts outpost at the Red Rocket. In other words, it needs defense right now. Once that's in place, it should be able to improve on its own with minimal interference. In fact, as you can see from the Sim Settlements 2 augmented reality tiles, the plots here are ready to upgrade and are only being held back by happiness and defense.

 

 

Incidentally, as I've been doing these I've been starting to get upgrade notifications from the places I visited last time, so it looks like my work on them is paying off. For today, we'll wrap up our work with a visit to Ridge. Hopefully it won't require too much work.

 

Funny thing, Ridge is actually just fine. Its happiness is going up and all of its critical performance indicators are full. It looks like that last wave of upgrades must have topped off whatever was holding back this settlement and now it's reaping the benefits. The main issue here seems to be that there isn't enough population to fully support its industrial plots. I dropped off a raider prisoner here for taming, so next time I return that'll help. I'll also keep an eye out for other potential citizens, but for now I think this settlement is in good shape and I'm not going to mess around with it.

 

 

With Ridge confirmed to be in good shape, that completes the northwest section of the map. Next I need to address the central regions, especially Red Tourette's base at the Federal Ration Stockpile. For today, however, I think we're all set!