building Frontier - Skyrim Settlements 1.0.2

Build your own settlements anywhere in Skyrim - from a lone camp by the road to a walled town full of people with homes, jobs, shops, moods and enemies at the gate.

Frontier is an SKSE plugin with its own build menu. You set down a workbench, build with anything in your game, put down whole ready-made Skyrim buildings with working interiors, lay level ground and roads, and settlers arrive to live, work, trade, eat, sleep and defend the place - while you're there and while you're away.

It changes no vanilla record. Both plugins only add new things.

Requirements

• Skyrim Special Edition / Anniversary Edition 1.6.x or 1.7.x (see Known limits for 1.5.97 and VR)
• SKSE64 for your game version
• Address Library for SKSE Plugins

 

Optional: powerofthree's Tweaks - lets the build menu show editor IDs for things Skyrim normally forgets.

Getting started

1. Craft a Settlement Workbench Kit at any forge (4 firewood, 2 iron ingots, 2 leather strips).
2. Use the kit from your inventory and place the workbench where you want your settlement.
3. Activate the workbench to open the build menu. Everything is done from there.
4. Put down a Recruitment Banner (Settlers page) and some beds - settlers start arriving from the next day.

 

Features
Settlements

• Any number of settlements, each with its own workbench, name, area and storage chest.
• Area size adjustable per settlement, from a small camp up to about 300 m across.
• A map marker with the settlement's name, and fast travel to it. You can choose your own fast-travel arrival point.
• Each workbench only shows its own settlement's things.
• Settlement Storage - one chest per settlement for materials, food, taxes and everything your workers bring in.

 

Building

• Build with any object in your load order - Skyrim's and every mod you have installed show up on the Build page.
• Categories: walls, floors, roofs, doors and doorways, stairs, fences and gates, beams and pillars, foundations, whole buildings, interiors, decor, nature, defences. Search box and an "exterior only" filter.
• Free-camera placing: fly round the piece while you place it, turn it, tilt it, roll it, raise and lower it, push it further or closer, scale it (10% to 1000%).
• Lock in place - lock a piece where it is and nudge it a few units at a time.
• Line up with the last piece - same height, angle and size as the piece before.
• Snapping - pieces click flush against the ones next to them.
• Fine steps for precise work, and a key to square pieces up.
• Keep placing: after putting a piece down you get another one straight away - walls and fences go up without trips back to the workbench.
• Move, copy or remove anything you've built. Removing gives the materials back.
• Invisible markers (idle markers and so on) are drawn as a box while you place them, so you can see where they stand and which way they face.
• Full controller support.

 

Building costs

• Building uses Hearthfire materials: sawn logs, quarried stone, clay, nails and iron fittings. What a piece costs depends on what it looks like it's made of (wood, stone or metal) and how big it is.
• Materials come out of the settlement storage first, then your inventory.
• A "free building" switch is in Settings if you'd rather build without materials.

 

Ready-made Skyrim buildings

• About 150 of Skyrim's own town and village buildings - houses, farmhouses, halls, inns, shops, manors, longhouses, mills, warehouses, stables, barracks, huts, blacksmiths, meaderies, lighthouses - in Nordic, Whiterun, Riften, Solitude, Windhelm and Orc styles.
• Each one comes with a working interior, either empty (to furnish yourself) or furnished (Skyrim's own furniture, beds, shelves, lights and fixtures, with empty containers and no owners).
• Buildings with more than one door have all of them working.
• Blacksmith buildings come with their forge, anvil, grindstone and sign.
• Interiors have walking maps (navmesh) so settlers can move about inside.
• Up to 20 copies of each building, shared by all your settlements.
• Rename buildings, move them (doors and outside pieces come along), or remove them.
• Furnish any interior with the same build menu: press Shift + B inside one of your buildings.
• Move or remove Skyrim's own furniture inside a building, and put it back later.

 

Land and roads

• Level ground - lay flat ground to build on, in plain dirt, rough dirt, stone paving, Nordic stone, wooden boards, Dwemer metal, or "match the ground" (takes the land texture under it so it blends in).
• Sides: sloped bank down to the land, sloped bank on a stone wall, straight down, stone wall, or nothing.
• Walk your roads: press Shift + R and walk - the road is laid behind you as you go, with smooth curves, soft edges that blend into the grass and following slopes and level ground. Dirt path, cobbled road, packed dirt, match-the-ground, rough dirt, stone paving, Nordic stone, wooden boards, Dwemer metal, or loose stones and boardwalks. Four widths. Plain, snow, autumn and Reach looks, or picked from the land for you.
• Clear an area - take away trees, plants, rocks and fallen logs round you. Everything can be put back.
• Distant view - your bigger buildings and walls stay visible from far away.

 

Settlers

• Hundreds of unique settlers with their own names and real Skyrim faces and voices - Nords, Imperials, Bretons, Redguards, elves, Orcs, Khajiit and Argonians.
• They arrive at your recruitment banner (with your hold's banner on it) - how many depends on room, beds, the settlement's size and how happy the people already there are.
• Homes: give each settler a house. They own it like any Skyrim home - their bed, their things, and they lock the door at night. If you want in after dark, pick the lock.
• Houses are named after who lives in them ("Ingrid's House").
• Jobs: farmer, hunter, miner, woodcutter, gatherer, guard, shopkeeper, tax collector, smelter, alchemist, tanner.
• Work clothes for their job, their own clothes at home.
• Job stars (1 to 5): settlers get better at their job with practice - more goods each morning, better guards, better shops.
• Everything settlers bring in goes into the settlement storage each morning.
• Settlers slowly put things out on the shelves and tables of their homes and shops.

 

Work stations

• Chopping blocks, ore veins (iron, silver, gold, corundum, orichalcum, quicksilver, moonstone, malachite, ebony), crops (cabbage, potato, leek, wheat, gourd), tanning racks, trees for gatherers, smelters, alchemy labs and animal pens.
• Workers use the station you give them - or one is set up for them near the workbench.
• A miner brings the ore of the vein they work.

 

Animal pens

• Cow, goat and chicken pens. Animals turn up on their own and are replaced over time if lost.
• A farmer working a pen brings in milk, eggs and hides.

 

Crafting workers

• Smelters turn ore into ingots, tanners turn hides into leather, alchemists brew restore health, stamina and magicka potions from cheap ingredients.
• Part of what they make goes to a matching shop in the settlement to sell, the rest into storage.

 

Shops and inns

• Turn any building into a shop: general goods, blacksmith, alchemist, fletcher, clothier, food and drink, jeweller, spells, books, hunter's goods or fence.
• Shopkeepers trade like Skyrim's own merchants - same goods lists, the usual "What have you got for sale?", restocked every two days.
• Shopkeepers stand behind the counter, open in the day, shut at night. Shops are open to customers during opening hours.
• Inns: the tavern keeper runs the bar, sells food and drink, rents rooms and sleeps at night like Skyrim's innkeepers. The inn never locks its doors.
• A bard performs Skyrim's songs, and visitors come by - travellers, adventurers, mercenaries, pilgrims, merchants and more.
• Settlers spend some evenings at the inn.

 

A day in the settlement

• Every settler has their own plan for the day: up at their own time, work, lunch break, back to work, then an evening walk, a drink at the inn or a quiet night in.
• They walk through doors like anyone else - no popping in and out of buildings.
• They chat, sit, eat, and use the furniture you've put down instead of standing about.
• Walking paths: press Shift + T and walk a route to record it. Settlers use your paths as guide rails to get round buildings. Walk an area back and forth and it becomes a place they wander about in.

 

Defences and guards

• Guards with day and night shifts, who patrol or stand at a guard post. Press Shift + G to set a post where you stand, facing the way you face.
• Give guards their own patrol routes, or let them choose.
• Walls, gates, towers and barricades you build count as defences ("Defences" category on the Build page).
• Skyrim's town gates can be placed as open archways.

 

Attacks

• Bandits, Forsworn (in the Reach), wolves, bears, trolls, sabre cats, frostbite spiders and spriggans attack now and then, depending on the hold, the weather and how strong you are.
• You get a warning about an hour before.
• If you're there, the fight happens for real. If you're away, it's worked out from your guards, settlers and defences.
• Losing a fight means stolen food and gold - and, if you allow it, dead settlers.
• More guards and better defences keep attackers away for longer. A full storage draws them in sooner.

 

Food, mood and taxes

• Food: every settler eats one meal a morning from the storage. Farmers, hunters and tavern keepers bring food in; hungry settlers get unhappy and eventually leave.
• Mood: each settler's mood has reasons you can see - home, bed, job, food, guards, a tavern, recent attacks, taxes, defences, requests met or forgotten. Happy settlers work harder. Miserable ones refuse to pay taxes, and eventually pack up and leave.
• Taxes: give a settler the tax collector job and set a rate from none to very high. They do the rounds and the gold goes into the storage - minus their cut. The higher the rate, the unhappier everyone gets.

 

Growing settlements

• Settlements grow from camp to village to town as they gain people, buildings, shops and defences.
• Bigger settlements draw more settlers, have richer shops, and their people are prouder of them.
• Settler requests: now and then settlers ask for something - a well, a shrine, a tavern, a blacksmith, more guards, walls, lights, benches, a farm. Give it to them and they're pleased for days. Ignore it and they grumble.

 

The build menu
Thirteen pages: Build, Overview (the whole settlement at a glance), Buildings, Land, Roads, Settlers, Homes, Jobs, Work spots, Defences, Wellbeing, Economy and Settings. Four colour schemes, adjustable text size and window opacity, full mouse, keyboard and controller support. The game pauses while the menu is open (can be switched off).

How some of it works
Walking maps
Skyrim's NPCs walk on a hidden walking map (navmesh) baked into the game. It doesn't know about anything you build, so on raised level ground NPCs would walk on the old land underneath, sinking into your ground or standing still.

Frontier makes walking maps for your level ground while you play. It copies Skyrim's walking map round your settlement, lifts it onto your ground, cuts holes where your buildings stand, joins it edge to edge with Skyrim's own map round it, and swaps it in. Skyrim's triangles under your ground are hidden while yours are in use. Nothing is saved: it's made again when you come near and put back when you leave, so Skyrim's own walking map is never changed for good. It only exists while you're near the settlement.

Ready-made interiors
The interiors are copies of Skyrim's own interiors, with their walking maps. Each building has 20 copies, shared by all your settlements. Once all 20 copies of a building are in use, it can't be placed again until one is removed.

Roads
Walked roads are real ground meshes written while you play, curving with the way you walked and following the land and your level ground. On first start the mod creates a pool of 1,024 small path files in Data\Meshes\FrontierSettlements\Paths, because Skyrim only reads loose files that existed when it started.

Attacks while you're away
If you aren't there, the attack is worked out: each guard counts for more as they gain stars, other settlers count a little, and your walls, gates, towers and barricades add to it.

Keys

• Shift + B - build inside one of your buildings
• Shift + R - start / stop walking a road (in a settlement)
• Shift + T - start / stop recording a walking path (in a settlement)
• Shift + G - set / remove a guard post where you stand (in a settlement)

 

These keys only do anything in a settlement or one of your buildings. Everywhere else they reach the game as normal. All of them can be changed in FrontierSettlements.ini.

While placing, a help panel on screen lists every key and controller button. The main ones:

• Mouse wheel - turn; Shift / Alt + wheel - tilt / roll; Ctrl + wheel - further / closer
• Page Up / Page Down - raise / lower
• + / - - bigger / smaller
• L - lock in place (then the arrow keys nudge it); M - line up with the last piece; G - snapping on / off
• X - fine steps; R - reset / square up
• Click or Enter - place; right-click or Esc - cancel

 

Known limits

• Skyrim 1.5.97 hasn't been tested, and the walking maps need 1.6 or later - on 1.5.97 settlers can't walk properly on raised level ground. VR is not supported.
• Walking maps can only be made where Skyrim has a walking map underneath. Settlements over deep water may have spots settlers can't reach.
• Each walking-map rebuild leaves about 1.5 MB in memory until you quit. This mostly happens when you go through doors near a big settlement, and it's cleared when you restart the game.
• 20 copies per ready-made building, shared by all settlements.
• FrontierRooms.esp is about 84 MB and has the master flag, so it takes a regular load-order slot (sort it with LOOT). FrontierSettlements.esp is a light plugin.
• Doors into ready-made buildings are load doors, like Skyrim's.
• Clearing an area can't remove distant trees or object LOD (DynDOLOD and so on) - only what's loaded round you.
• Walked roads are limited to roughly 9 km per game session before a restart is needed to lay more.
• Settlers away from you move slowly, the way Skyrim moves any NPC you can't see.
• Uninstalling mid-game leaves everything you built in the world, plus doors into interiors that no longer exist. Pack up your settlements first.
• Settlers can die in fights by default - switch it off on the Defences page if you'd rather they couldn't.
• Hooks into the game's input and rendering are shared with other menu mods in the usual chained way - other overlay mods work alongside it, but a mod that blocks all input may stop the menu reacting.

 

FAQ
Does it edit any vanilla records?
No. Neither plugin overrides a single Skyrim record. Everything it adds is its own.
Can I add it to an existing save?
Yes. Craft the workbench kit at a forge and start.
Can I use buildings and pieces from other mods?
Yes. Anything installed shows on the Build page and can be placed like anything else. The ready-made buildings with interiors are Skyrim's own.
Can I remove it?
Pack up every settlement first (Overview page). Removing the mod with settlements still standing leaves the pieces in the world and doors into rooms that no longer exist.
My settlers just stand there.
Check the Land page: each level ground shows whether settlers can walk on it. Recording a few walking paths (Shift + T) round your buildings helps a lot. Give workers a work station on the Work spots page.
How do I get more settlers?
Put down a recruitment banner and more beds. Keep everyone happy - nobody new comes to a settlement whose people are unhappy. Bigger settlements draw more people.
No attack ever comes.
Attacks come every few in-game days. Lots of guards and strong defences keep attackers away for longer. The Defences page shows when trouble is expected.
Can I stop attacks, hunger or settlers leaving?
Yes - each has its own switch in the menu.
Where do my settlers' goods go?
Into the settlement storage (Economy page > Open storage), every morning at 6.
Why are there new files in my overwrite folder (Mod Organizer)?
Those are the road path files the mod makes on first start (Data\Meshes\FrontierSettlements\Paths). They're needed for walked roads. You can move them into the mod's folder.
Is it compatible with...?
It changes no vanilla records, so conflicts are rare. Mods that change Skyrim's town buildings' meshes change how the ready-made buildings look. Mods that rebuild Skyrim's walking maps in the same spots work alongside it, because Frontier copies whatever walking map is loaded.
Performance?
Settlers are run once a second, walking maps are worked out on a background thread, and a settlement costs nothing while you're away beyond a few numbers each in-game day.

Planned for the future

• A warning bell to call settlers to safety and guards to arms
• Supply lines - settlers carrying goods between your settlements
• Follow-ups after attacks: tracking the attackers down, bounties
• Plain stone foundations under buildings on slopes
• More building styles and pieces, including free new models
• More gate types
• More jobs and things for settlers to do
• Translations

 

Permissions and credits

• The plugins contain no assets from other mods. They use Skyrim's own records and models only.
• Built with CommonLibSSE NG (MIT-licensed fork), Dear ImGui, spdlog, {fmt}, DirectXTK and rapidcsv - full notices in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt in the download.
• Fonts: Cormorant Garamond and a renamed subset of Source Sans 3, both under the SIL Open Font License.
• Please don't re-upload this mod. Translations and patches - just ask first.