Help request: Creating a settlement in the CK

[Zetsumi_Nihilus]

To get to grips with the CK, I've been building an interior based on a prison - cellblock, mess hall, and utility areas, with the intent to turn it into a dungeon or NPC town and build an exterior once I'm done with the interior cell. However, I've heard Walking Dead has had a fair chunk set in a prison in recent seasons (I stopped watching in S2, personally) and it occurs to me that, rather then a dungeon or town, this area might be better served by turning it into a player settlement, as people might enjoy building their own post-apocalyptic prison settlement inspired by the show. But, I don't have the first clue as to how settlements work, my CK knowledge goes about as far as building and navmeshing cells. So, I was wondering if anyone can give me a step-by-step walkthrough on what exactly is involved and how difficult it will be to turn the area into a functional or semi-functional settlement. As far as HOW functional, while it would be nice to have it show up in the caravan/reassign settler menu and be fully integrated, it's an acceptable compromise if that's not possible and it ends up being a stand-alone settlement that can't be connected to the rest, so long as it can produce settlers, assign them to gather resources, ect.

Area is currently built in an interior cell. I have the Automaton DLC, but I'm yet to purchase the workshop DLC - will probably do so at some point in the near future, income permitting.

[RustyXXL]

I really can't help you there, but there are a few mods that add settlements and seem to have solved most of the problems. There's a vault settlement mod (I think something like Vault 98) and one the adds the Easy City downs racetrack as a settlement. Maybe take a look at their mods in fo4edit to get an idea about how they solved the problems.

[Zetsumi_Nihilus]

I really can't help you there, but there are a few mods that add settlements and seem to have solved most of the problems. There's a vault settlement mod (I think something like Vault 98) and one the adds the Easy City downs racetrack as a settlement. Maybe take a look at their mods in fo4edit to get an idea about how they solved the problems.

Eh, I have no idea how to use FO4edit, and would really prefer to keep to the CK now that it's out. I'm more asking for the basics of how I would go about setting it up as a settlement, obviously just plonking down a workshop bench isn't going to cut it. Haven't gotten far enough to start troubleshooting problems yet. Thanks for your reply, anyway, I'll keep it in mind if I get far enough on my own trying to reverse-engineer existing settlements to run into such problems.

[RustyXXL]

Given how the FO4 CK has some of the same weaknesses Skyrim already had ( missing Loadorder management, not being able to load multiple master by default) that have the same solutions as for the skyrim ck, and how essential tes5Edit was for any modder who cared about clean mods, compatibility and mod conflict resolution, things that the fo4ck doesn't seem to be gotten better at, I think it's pretty safe to say, that fo4edit will stay a very relevant tool for aforementioned modders and same minded users, for the projectable life span of fo4. So in the long run it might be a good idea to get used to fo4edit. Just to give you my 2 cent about that topic.

Not meaning to hate or anything, it's just meant as my personal advise on your reaction (atleast how I percieved it) to fo4edit.

As I said, on the topic of standalone settlements I can't give you to much more advise than looking at vanilla/other mods solutions.

[EmissaryOfWind]

Trust me, xEdit is far easier to use for everything that doesn't involve placing objects. That being said, creating a settlement so that it works correctly, with settlers and all, has been a topic of discussion in the beta forums, and it involves using the script from Automatron that adds the Mechanist's Lair to the settlement list. Personally, I still haven't gotten it to work, it's kind of complicated, so prepare yourself ;)

[Zetsumi_Nihilus]

@Rusty

Fair enough, but I'm not exactly making massive mods that effect or modify vanilla assets. I'm just building in an isolated interior cell. And I tend to stick to habits that avoid conflicts - I don't touch existing assets. If I want to modify something, I duplicate it with a new formID and modify the duplicate. When I do the exterior, I'm likely going to do it in it's own small worldspace, to minimize conflict risk, and the only change I'll make to an existing worldspace is to stick a door object with the model of a car down linking to a matching one in the exterior's small worldspace. The door object will be located somewhere out of the way, away from major settlements and/or high-risk zones that other mods are likely to alter. I prefix all my new formID's with codes to ensure I don't inadvertently end up adding the same ID as someone else: IE, instead of 'raidermelee', I'd make the ID 'ztsprisonnpcraidermelee'.

Then again, as I said, my knowledge is pretty limited. Do you still think I'll need to learn to use FO4edit if I'm sticking to these sort of low-impact low-compatibility-risk designs? If I absolutely need to, I'll look into it, but I have no ambitions to make major mods, only isolated small dungeons/areas like the one I'm working on. Mostly I just do player houses and dungeons for myself: I just get into the level design element of it, and anything more then that, I'd rather leave to the people that know what they're doing.

@EoW thankyou, that sounds like exactly what I'm looking for, but my knowledge in scripts is more or less nonexistent. At least I've got a clue where to look now though, as I was hitting a dead end just trying to duplicate the workshop/resourcecontainer and linked refs setup from the existing vanilla ones.

[RustyXXL]

first off: Sounds you already use a lot of good practises, that's nice to see. :)

Please keep in mind that a lot of this is based on experince with Skyrim and it's ck. Things might have gotten better in some points, and I simply haven't seen enough ck made mods for FO4 to draw any conclusions about that, but I try to "hope for the best but expect the worst case".

The Skyrim CK had a couple of issues that could lead to problems and often CTDs. 3 of the mayor ones were wild/dirty edits, Identical to master records and deleted records.

Let's say you are making a mod. You copy your first entry, Change a few things and at some point decide that maybe some of these changes you want to reverse to vanilla values, but don't remember them, so you simply doubleclick the original entry to look at those original values. You didn't change anything, so everything should be okay, right? Well the problem is, by just double clicking it to view it, the CK counted this as a change, without you actually changing anything. This can happen in multiple ways, without you even noticing it. Those edits are called wild edits or dirty edits, or identical to master records, depending on wether the ck changed something automatically you didn't want to or just copied the original entry in your new esp. The last type, deleted records is another type and can happen either by accident (rarely) or because you decided to remove something vanilla ie to place your door to your own cells. Additionally if you create new entries in your plugin and then just delete them, they aren't removed from the file but simply flagged as deleted.

While those deleted records in your file shouldn't be a problem, as you are most likely to be the only one referencing them, deleted vanilla records can be a ctd issue. That is why you shouldn't delete them, but set them as initially disabled. This way they still exist in a way that ie scripts referencing them aren't harmed in any way.

The first types can cause problems and revert other mods changes, depending on the loadorder.

 

All of these issues can be fixed very easily in fo4edit, some of them even automated and just require a few clicks, but can be a major pita to even find in the ck.

 

Additionally to those points, some things are in fact much easier to make in fo4edit than in the CK, to a point where even now there are modders who almost exclusively work with xEdit in Skyrim. It also can be automated further with its scripting support.

 

So, based on these experiences I just can say, no matter what you are modding, as long as the esps/esms are involved, at least get enough knowledge about xedit to be able to check for wildedits/dirty edits/itms and undelete records.

 

Man that got a lot longer than I ment to...xD

[Zetsumi_Nihilus]

No, it's quite informative. I know some of the ones you're talking about, those that would trigger asterisks when looking at object properties. Previously I'd just been getting around them by saving constantly and loading whenever I triggered one by looking at an object after taking down the data I needed from it. Haven't noticed obvious ones like that happening in the FO4 CK so far (It seems somewhat less jury-rigged then Skyrim's did to me so far, judging by the fact it hasn't been crashing every so often like Skyrim's would), but there certainly might be less obvious ones going on. I'll have a go at using it for this once I get it to a more complete state.