Settlement Build Limitations After "Settlements Expanded"

[ce1145]

I wanted to make my first post in the forums to get my foot in the door and hopefully get a bit of an answer to something I've been mulling over for a while now. I've had Settlements Expanded installed for quite some time, and so far haven't had any issues building, but before I get too carried away and build on a much bigger scale I was curious if anyone has heard or experienced any sort of issue or limitations besides the height limit and a gradual fps drop when building excessively in one settlement. For example- can the game only handle so many unique objects within a settlement before crashing? Any other tips concerning large scale projects would be appreciated as well. Thanks in advance!

 

Btw, wanted to apologize in advance if this topic ends up in the wrong place, format, etc- I don't consider myself a modding rookie, but I am a rookie to the forums. If you feel the need to throw any general forum advice my way, that would be appreciated as well.

 

Thanks!

[seekingthesun]

Technically speaking the limit for settlements is the number of triangles. There will eventually be problems with graphics because you're taxing your computer's resources. That said, the limit is a lot lower than it needs to be for players that exceed the specifications. The problem with "settlements expanded" that I've found is that the author did so without any consideration for how many cells their buildable area bleeds into. My mod http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11545/? does so while minimizing extraneous cells/worldspaces per settlement and in my opinion includes better areas nearby settlements instead of just raw size.

[ce1145]

Hmmm alright thanks!! That's definitely good to know. If I run into any problems today I'll give your mod a try. As I read elsewhere, there seems to be a fair amount of confusion, differing opinions, various applicable mods, etc, since there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet everyone can agree on when it comes to modding-in more reliability to extensive settlement building. At least not that I've found, that still fits my purposes. I guess I'll have to keep researching. Frankly I hope to get some other input on this thread too in hopes of a more varied pool of info, experience, and opinions for everyone, but I'll gladly take what I can get.

 

Also @seekingthesun , are there any other good threads on the subject that you know of? I can't imagine I'm the only one that doesn't have this all figured out. Thanks again though!

[seekingthesun]

Just send me a message if you have a question. There were two reasons why I made that mod. The primary was that on my machine those settlement expansion mods performed really poorly. Part of that is the issue of those modders but another is how prone Bethesda games are at various leaks, memory, cell buffers, as well as them not culling things when they're finished. That settlement frontiers mods simply works better in nearly every way.

I'll give an example. So there was a bitter modder who made another settlement expanded mod who said that my claims that my mod performs better are false. So say there's a settlement, and the settlement is a part of a few cells. In the vanilla game they didn't optimize the build area/ performance hit formula so it's possible to expand on those cells, since they're being loaded(loosely speaking) anyway. One could expand quite far within the same cells as vanilla and it would all be the same.

However, as soon as you expand into a new cell, that comes at a cost. The settlement expanded all-in-one has the croup manor settlement expand into about two dozen different cells all the way from the boat wrecks at libertalia to Longneck's cannery, to way the hell out in the ocean. That comes at a major cost.

[ce1145]

@seekingthesun Oh, well I was originally just talking about the simple mod that uses a console command of sorts that negates the limit on how much can be placed (sets the visual bar at zero). I get what your saying about your mod though now- might as well make use of the entirety of those cells and optimize the process while I'm at it. I originally was pretty content with the vanilla borders and all too, but you've got me sold on it! Glad to know the technical differences now too.

 

Ya I saw that- that got pretty heated. Especially concerning the comments on his/her mod. It's the first I had seen something like that. I feel like that's what happens when someone doesn't truly enjoy the mod making process. I think what keeps the best modders and mods going is not just a sense of pride towards the mod, but an appreciation of the process and community regardless of the download to endorse ratio.

 

Anyway, I oughta be able to finally try your mod and see how it goes. Thanks for the help!

[EmissaryOfWind]

Alternatively, Place Everywhere allows you to turn off the "outside settlement border" thing to place objects outside of the border without touching the border itself, but you may need to place them inside first and then move them to where you want. It comes with its pros and cons, like any mod, so you can check it out and see if it works for you.

[Vormina]

I use a similiar mod called Higher Settlement Budget and I have several settlements that I've placed about 3 times as many objects as vanilla allows, and I haven't had any signs of FPS drop or lag.

 

The only time I ever had any lag issues was when using certain lights from the Homemaker mod that cast shadows.

 

I think the vanilla build budget is in place more for consoles than for PC, my Spectacle Island is nearly as dense as Lexington with no lag issues yet. :)

[ce1145]

Awesome, that's what I was thinking- glad to hear I oughta be fine. After what all I've put in my Drive-In build, I think if I were to lag I would of by now anyway, lol. Thanks!