Concept for allowing users to individually clean up their settlement workshop menus

[wax2k]

Hi! :smile:

On the subject of "deciding and choosing what we want so see in the workshop menus and what not" and based on DDProduction83's idea (give that man some kudos!) with the special grenade in his latest Build A Castle mod, I decided to come up with a small concept for workshop mods in general and especially for bigger ones (in terms of amount of objects added) like Homemaker, Snap'n Build, OCDecorator or Alternate Settlements or even Settlement Keywords.

I will point the authors of my favorite settlement mods to this thread to hopefully convince them of the concept in general and of implementing such a solution (or any other with the same goals and benefits) in their mods. But this is also meant to address any modder, that might be able and interested to do this as a separate mod for vanilla game or as an addon for existing mods.

Unfortunately I don't have any experience in making a mod myself, so I can't tell you, how DD made it in detail and making it myself would probably either need a whole lot of time to get into it or lead to a flawed result (or both). Apart from that, I think it would be a great improvement for almost every mod, that adds items to the settlement workshop, to allow their users to customize their workshop menu. It might even be interesting for armor/weapon-crafting mods as well, since these probably have similar issues from a users' point of view, especially when using a lot of them.

So for the concept itself:


Showing/hiding objects, groups of objects with similar themes, whole object sets and/or whole workshop menus via having special items in inventory or not.


Two general approaches are possible (a combination of both is also possible, but could lead to confusion):

"Set enabling items":

Apart from a basic set of "must have" objects from the according mod, everything that is to be considered part of a set or a certain theme would not show up in the workshop menus by default, just if you pick up the according enabler-item.

"Set disabling items":

All objects from the according mod show up in the menus by default. Picking up the according disabler-item hides a set/theme/category from the workshop menus.

General:

• The enabling/disabling items would preferrably be craftable at a vanilla workbench and would generally have no weight and no cost.
• Their craftability could be restricted to certain circumstances like having sided with a certain faction or having done a certain quest (like for example the Institute Set in Homemaker) or by requiring special ingredients.
• It should however always be possible to get a new copy of the item, in case you lose it.
• The enabling/disabling item should be categorized as one, that doesn't clutter your often-used inventory tabs. I'd suggest "mods", not only because it fits so well, but also because normally you almost never use that tab, apart from moving mods to/from the inventory. In crafting menus it shouldn't show up as a mod/ingredient, due to not being part of a crafting recipe.

Benefits:

• No need for a mod author to split a mod into modules or to provide several disabler.esp's to allow users to choose individually
• No need for users to quit the game and reconfigure or reinstall a mod just to change which items they can currently use/see
• Less cluttered workshop menus overall
• No need for users to keep certain items cluttering their menus, even though not wanting to use them anymore to build new stuff, just to make sure they don't lose items they already built
• Can even be used to hide all objects of a certain mod from the menus, without having to disable/remove the mod, thus being able to keep objects you already built with it
• Works with or without using SK (though it probably would need two different versions of the .esp that includes the special items. Still it would be only one additional esp in each users' load order that allows everything, that otherwise would need several different modules or disablers)
• When using the second approach, users are not forced to use it at all, if they prefer to have everything in their menus at the same time, but even with the first approach, it shouldn't be too big of a hassle for these users

It would also be possible to make a mod like this for vanilla menus in general or an addon for Settlement Keywords, allowing to individually show/hide some of the menus no matter which mod added items there.

It wouldn't even have to be the original authors themselves who make this, since it's an addon which would rely on the main mod, although of course it would be a lot nicer when being made/included by the authors themselves, since that means, it will already be included in updates to the mod.

Please let me know, what you think of it and if you have additional ideas, feel free to post them as well.

As a side note: this concept does not make any difference in terms of the category keyword cap. If a mod adds custom category keywords to the game, hiding their items from the menus in this way would not reduce their custom category keyword count in any way.

This thread is not intended for any discussion about the category cap in general or the pros and cons of using Settlement Keywords. The concept itself as well as the goals and benefits of it apply to any mod, that adds to the workshop menu, no matter if it only uses vanilla categories or incorporates Settlement Keywords or even if it adds its own custom categories. Please refrain from arguing on that!

Edited January 28, 2016 by wax2k

[Gambit77]

If you do this I think you should go with the disabling items approach, so that people would have to opt in to using this system.

I myself probably would rarely use this feature, because when I'm settlement building I don't always know what I want to build. For me it's more liking paging through a catalog to see what I like. I think that this would be of more use to power users that have already memorized everything that's available and already know what they want to build before ever opening the menu.

[wax2k]

I agree. The disabler-approach will probably be the better way for most mods. Special mods though, like DD's Castle Wall Fix mod for example, would be better off with the enabler-approach, due to their objects being made for one-time use only.

Edited January 28, 2016 by wax2k

[ad3d0]

There are already options and possibilities to write and compile scripts. Some mods already use custom scripts. So probably getting it scripted, will be a better way than this, creative but not practical method.

[wax2k]

If this is already doable with the current tools at hand, doing it with scripts would definitely be the better way. The general goals and benefits of the concept would still mostly apply to that approach, I think. In the end it would be scripted menu choices or similar instead of picking up/dropping an item. The main reason for me to post this, is that I would like some kind of solution to easily customize the workshop menu on the fly and I've seen a lot of users either requesting something similar or at least complaining about having too many objects they don't want or use in the bigger settlement mods and not being able to choose and customize more individually, some of them even refraining from using a mod due to this.

 

Is it something that you are already considering or would tend to consider for future updates to Snap'n Build or other future mods of yours, ad3d0?

Edited January 28, 2016 by wax2k

[Ethreon]

I was thinking that instead of a grenade have a quest item (cannot be dropped) which can be activated in the menu (remember FWE and MMM from FO3), then have a menu which lets you choose the item you want to activate. This probably requires more than the current scripting, but would be more convenient than a grenade you have to craft and toss around. The item can be hotkeyed if you build intensely, letting you choose on a fly.

[Gambit77]

Honestly this sounds like a job for mod configuration menu. The question is how long do we have to wait for that.

[wax2k]

Exactly... and so far it seems, that the item-method is pretty easy to do and would even only require one and the same specialitem.esp for both SK- and non-SK versions of a mod. So it might still be worth to do it while waitng for MCM or similar. Edited January 29, 2016 by wax2k