Expanding Settlements / buildable Areas including correct Borders

[Eysenbeiss]

I figured out how the borders of the non-rectangular Settlements are drawn, but want to ask for help on testing how to take the "cutting" off and making the zone of the settlement "rectangular".

Goal is to make the need for overlapping walls, made of concrete shack foundations, obsolete and to have the expanded area shown and not having to guess where you will leave the workshop area.

Trying to explain it as simple as possible.

The center of the "WorkshopSandboxArea", that's how the Element is named in the Fallout4.esm, is refering to the Workshop itself, so when you got an area of X: 4000 (width), Y:4000 (lenght) and Z: 2000 (height), you got 2000 in each direction, east/west and north/south, exept the height, which is always "one-way" from the lowest point of the buildable area !

Now, if you have an Settlement with borders, that are not rectangular, youÄll find additional entries for that settlement, like X: 1900, Y: 1800, while Z usually remains the same value, but there is an additional info, that is important, Rotation !

The value, that you'll find at Rotation defines, in which angle to the center of the zone the triangle is calculated and the borders of that triangle are the "cutzones", that are turning the usually recatangluar buildable area into a lopsided one.

The Epitome of that can be found for Outpost Zimonja, having five entries to calculate the cutoff and since the triangles, that are drawn to create the cutoff, are relative to the centre and overall size (maximum area), it isn't enough to extend the values.

Meaning this: if you got an original maximum of X/Y: 2000 and the length of the calculated triangle is 1800, Y:1700 with an degree of 300, and you want to expand to X/Y_ 4000, it is NOT enough to extend the triangle to X:3600 and Y:3400, while keeping the angle of 300°, since that would result in an eben bigger and lopsided cutoff

You'll need to extend the length, then calculate the "negative" degree and after that extend the widht, if you want to keep the cutoff the same style

Since I am away until March 6rd, I won't be able to test all that, especially if my primary goal is possible, taking the cutoff away and making the "crippled" settlement area rectangular again.

Hopefully, this all doesn't read too crazy, but specific things like that aren't easy to explain, when your mother-language isn't english ;-)

[Userper]

It sounds like good idea, be careful when editing cells though, patches and dlc may edit vanilla cells, and mess up whatever changes you make.

 

Its why its not really been attempted yet... good luck though, sounds like you have a good idea of what your trying to accomplish. :smile:

Edited February 26, 2016 by Userper

[Eysenbeiss]

Thanks, but I am not sure about my approach anymore - could be, that it was just a coincidence, that my first attempt was fitting the zone and that the overall zone results of added rectangles, but it will take some more time to find out.

The main problem is, that Bethesda is using a coordinate-system, that is not really reffering to the real size of the area of the settlements - they set a center by those coodinates and then are putting one or more zones around that centre, resulting in the know cutoffs and also, the rotation they are additionally using is a pain in the ass.

 

Since a zise of X: 5000 and Y: 5000 f.e. does not mean, that you can just substract the values from the shown coodinates, it is a way of trial and error to find out, how much the area really "moves", when you are altering the coordinates, cause you have to change the center of each drawn area (cutoff) too.

Actually, I am fiddling with the Coastal Cottage, since it's workshop is really close to the area-border and both ways, that settlers or caravans are usually coming from, aren't easy to protect, at least not the way iI prefer and simply extending the area, by raising the WorkshopSandoxArea isn't enough, since this is resulting in an unbalanced extension.

I think, all this is the reason, why nobody else has made a serious attempt to change the visual borders and cutoffs/lopsided borders at all ;-)