Happiness strangely decreasing

[number23scorpio]

Hi everyone, my name is James. Currently, I am building a settlement in Starlight Drive-in with the aim of reaching 24 settlers, 24 food, 24 water, 24 power and reaching 100% happiness.

 

Everything was fine until recently, my happiness rating fell from 91 to 86 and then to 80. I checked the workshop and saw that no resources were in short demand, and none of my settlers were unassigned. My settlement had no provisioner since all provisioners come from other settlements. The only thing I did recently was sending two merchants (Tina de Luca and Anne Hargraves) to my settlement.

 

Was this due to a bug? I heard that there are certain bugs with the vanilla settlement system. If it is a bug, what should I do?

[Fonger]

IIRC simply being away from a settlement --- like going out adventuring

 

lowers your happiness

[TheGadget1945]

Hi everyone, my name is James. Currently, I am building a settlement in Starlight Drive-in with the aim of reaching 24 settlers, 24 food, 24 water, 24 power and reaching 100% happiness.

 

Everything was fine until recently, my happiness rating fell from 91 to 86 and then to 80. I checked the workshop and saw that no resources were in short demand, and none of my settlers were unassigned. My settlement had no provisioner since all provisioners come from other settlements. The only thing I did recently was sending two merchants (Tina de Luca and Anne Hargraves) to my settlement.

 

Was this due to a bug? I heard that there are certain bugs with the vanilla settlement system. If it is a bug, what should I do?

 

Have you got any robots there ? They supposedly decrease happiness. On about my first playthrough Starlight was attacked by a squad of Gen 1 Synths. There were 16 settlers there and one Brahmin. When the battle was over I found 4 dead settlers and when I looted their bodies all of them had Synth Components AND the Brahmin. Later, happiness increased to the mid 80s.

[Perraine]

Robots created at the workbench have a MAX Happiness of 50, so if any of your settlers are robots, they will bring down the average. (AFAIK, Codsworth doesn't count because he is also a companion) Check Greygarden, and you'll see that without any human settlers it will never rise above 50.

 

Synth Spies will also lower your settlement happiness by (apparently) sowing discord among the feeble humans. You can use the Settlement Management Software Mod, to check to see if there are any slimy Synth Spies in your settlements.

 

Some settlements will not show the correct happiness from the Pipboy screen, you'll have to actually visit the location to get the game to update happiness. Also certain very large settlements don't actually fully load sometimes, so any happiness modifying resources, like food/water/power/beds, can be "out of touch" with the settlement and cause a temporary happiness drop until you walk across the whole area and force he game to load all cells within the settlement.

 

Happiness "pets" such as the cat, and other happiness generators are "averaged" over all settlers - So 1 cat with 1 settler will give 10 happiness ( IIRC?) but will give only about 0.2 happiness with 20+ settlers.

 

Finally, forget checking the workbench inventory for food/water as this has 0 effect on the happiness. Only the food/water produced at that settlement counts towards happiness. The Provisioners only purpose is to allow you, the player, to use a "shared" workbench inventory for building and/or consumption, it is never used or counted by the settlers..

[Moraelin]

A lot of that is actually less of a DESIGN issue with robots or your being away, and more of an issue of Beth's daily script bugging out half-way through unless the cell is loaded, i.e., you're there. You should really get the unofficial patch.

 

That goes for beds, food and water, etc. Most of the "lore" people have about what works and doesn't work to keep settlers happy is really just guesswork around the script bugs giving up on counting food or beds half-way through, and half of it is wrong.

 

When things don't bug out half-way through, robots actually don't affect happiness at all. They're not even counted in the average, actually.

 

You will, however, stupidly enough, need beds for the robots too. You may think that, hey, if you have 10 humans and 1 robot, you need 10 beds... nope, you need 11. While the robot itself won't mind it one bit if it can't assign itself to a bed, the problem arises when it CAN assign itself to a bed, and some human now has no bed. And is unhappy. So, really, build beds for everyone.

 

As for food and water, yeah, STORED food and water aren't used, but SUPPLIED food and water through the supply routes DOES count. (If the script doesn't bug out.) Essentially just look at the numbers up there. If they're green, you're fine. Now citizens WILL complain if they don't produce enough locally, but their happiness isn't actually affected as long as they still get full rations.

 

Also, you may want to have enough defense.

[Moraelin]

Oh, one more thing. Don't use bunk beds. It's not just a game of number of people vs number of beds or such, but really an average of how happy each person is. If a person can't actually assign themselves to a bed, they'll be unhappy, no matter what the numbers say up there.

[TheGadget1945]

I don't know if it affects happiness but for my current playthough as in my last Kingsport Lighthouse has 9 beds for 6 women in a communal bedroom above a karaoke bar overlooking the sea. The main building is repaired via "Rebuilt Kingsport Lighthouse" and fully furnished and they have a greenhouse full of Mutfruit. Happiness is always mid 90s and I rarely visit it. It never gets attacked, which may of course help explain the happiness.

[Moraelin]

Well, if

 

A) the settlement is small enough in surface, that the script doesn't bomb out, or

 

B) you use the unofficial patch, which fixes Beth's broken script,

 

then yeah, happiness tends to stay fairly high. Might need to throw in a bar and a clinic when you have over a dozen people to keep it in the 90's, but yeah, it's quite normal.

 

That said, excess beds don't make people happy. High defense, though, I think it does make them happier. Which is what you probably have if it rarely gets attacked.

 

Speaking of defense, probably everyone knows it by now, but basically you only need 150 defense + population to always win a fight even if you don't show up. Anything more than that doesn't really make any difference. Again, though, Beth's script may bomb out while counting the defenses, so the unofficial patch helps here too.

 

Also, the game lies to you about needing more defense than the food + water production. The chance to get attacked is based on how profitable a raid looks like, which means the total resources stored in the workshop. Especially if you use mods that uncap the resource limits, it's advisable to go empty the workshop regularly. Otherwise eventually the sheer amount of loot makes raiding your settlement starts to look about as tempting as robbing Fort Knox.

[number23scorpio]

Hi everyone, my name is James. Currently, I am building a settlement in Starlight Drive-in with the aim of reaching 24 settlers, 24 food, 24 water, 24 power and reaching 100% happiness.

 

Everything was fine until recently, my happiness rating fell from 91 to 86 and then to 80. I checked the workshop and saw that no resources were in short demand, and none of my settlers were unassigned. My settlement had no provisioner since all provisioners come from other settlements. The only thing I did recently was sending two merchants (Tina de Luca and Anne Hargraves) to my settlement.

 

Was this due to a bug? I heard that there are certain bugs with the vanilla settlement system. If it is a bug, what should I do?

 

 

IIRC simply being away from a settlement --- like going out adventuring

 

lowers your happiness

 

 

 

Hi everyone, my name is James. Currently, I am building a settlement in Starlight Drive-in with the aim of reaching 24 settlers, 24 food, 24 water, 24 power and reaching 100% happiness.

 

Everything was fine until recently, my happiness rating fell from 91 to 86 and then to 80. I checked the workshop and saw that no resources were in short demand, and none of my settlers were unassigned. My settlement had no provisioner since all provisioners come from other settlements. The only thing I did recently was sending two merchants (Tina de Luca and Anne Hargraves) to my settlement.

 

Was this due to a bug? I heard that there are certain bugs with the vanilla settlement system. If it is a bug, what should I do?

 

Have you got any robots there ? They supposedly decrease happiness. On about my first playthrough Starlight was attacked by a squad of Gen 1 Synths. There were 16 settlers there and one Brahmin. When the battle was over I found 4 dead settlers and when I looted their bodies all of them had Synth Components AND the Brahmin. Later, happiness increased to the mid 80s.

 

 

 

Robots created at the workbench have a MAX Happiness of 50, so if any of your settlers are robots, they will bring down the average. (AFAIK, Codsworth doesn't count because he is also a companion) Check Greygarden, and you'll see that without any human settlers it will never rise above 50.

 

Synth Spies will also lower your settlement happiness by (apparently) sowing discord among the feeble humans. You can use the Settlement Management Software Mod, to check to see if there are any slimy Synth Spies in your settlements.

 

Some settlements will not show the correct happiness from the Pipboy screen, you'll have to actually visit the location to get the game to update happiness. Also certain very large settlements don't actually fully load sometimes, so any happiness modifying resources, like food/water/power/beds, can be "out of touch" with the settlement and cause a temporary happiness drop until you walk across the whole area and force he game to load all cells within the settlement.

 

Happiness "pets" such as the cat, and other happiness generators are "averaged" over all settlers - So 1 cat with 1 settler will give 10 happiness ( IIRC?) but will give only about 0.2 happiness with 20+ settlers.

 

Finally, forget checking the workbench inventory for food/water as this has 0 effect on the happiness. Only the food/water produced at that settlement counts towards happiness. The Provisioners only purpose is to allow you, the player, to use a "shared" workbench inventory for building and/or consumption, it is never used or counted by the settlers..

 

 

A lot of that is actually less of a DESIGN issue with robots or your being away, and more of an issue of Beth's daily script bugging out half-way through unless the cell is loaded, i.e., you're there. You should really get the unofficial patch.

 

That goes for beds, food and water, etc. Most of the "lore" people have about what works and doesn't work to keep settlers happy is really just guesswork around the script bugs giving up on counting food or beds half-way through, and half of it is wrong.

 

When things don't bug out half-way through, robots actually don't affect happiness at all. They're not even counted in the average, actually.

 

You will, however, stupidly enough, need beds for the robots too. You may think that, hey, if you have 10 humans and 1 robot, you need 10 beds... nope, you need 11. While the robot itself won't mind it one bit if it can't assign itself to a bed, the problem arises when it CAN assign itself to a bed, and some human now has no bed. And is unhappy. So, really, build beds for everyone.

 

As for food and water, yeah, STORED food and water aren't used, but SUPPLIED food and water through the supply routes DOES count. (If the script doesn't bug out.) Essentially just look at the numbers up there. If they're green, you're fine. Now citizens WILL complain if they don't produce enough locally, but their happiness isn't actually affected as long as they still get full rations.

 

Also, you may want to have enough defense.

 

 

Oh, one more thing. Don't use bunk beds. It's not just a game of number of people vs number of beds or such, but really an average of how happy each person is. If a person can't actually assign themselves to a bed, they'll be unhappy, no matter what the numbers say up there.

 

 

I don't know if it affects happiness but for my current playthough as in my last Kingsport Lighthouse has 9 beds for 6 women in a communal bedroom above a karaoke bar overlooking the sea. The main building is repaired via "Rebuilt Kingsport Lighthouse" and fully furnished and they have a greenhouse full of Mutfruit. Happiness is always mid 90s and I rarely visit it. It never gets attacked, which may of course help explain the happiness.

 

 

Well, if

 

A) the settlement is small enough in surface, that the script doesn't bomb out, or

 

B) you use the unofficial patch, which fixes Beth's broken script,

 

then yeah, happiness tends to stay fairly high. Might need to throw in a bar and a clinic when you have over a dozen people to keep it in the 90's, but yeah, it's quite normal.

 

That said, excess beds don't make people happy. High defense, though, I think it does make them happier. Which is what you probably have if it rarely gets attacked.

 

Speaking of defense, probably everyone knows it by now, but basically you only need 150 defense + population to always win a fight even if you don't show up. Anything more than that doesn't really make any difference. Again, though, Beth's script may bomb out while counting the defenses, so the unofficial patch helps here too.

 

Also, the game lies to you about needing more defense than the food + water production. The chance to get attacked is based on how profitable a raid looks like, which means the total resources stored in the workshop. Especially if you use mods that uncap the resource limits, it's advisable to go empty the workshop regularly. Otherwise eventually the sheer amount of loot makes raiding your settlement starts to look about as tempting as robbing Fort Knox.

 

Thank you for your instructive comments! I never thought building up a settlement would be such a menace. I learned a lot from what you guys said. Still, let me add more information on my situation so that you guys could better help me with it.

 

First, I did not choose the number 24 on purpose. I followed this guys video:

 

I heard conflicting comments about the effect of robot, synth on settlement happiness. Others talked about how excess food/water, beds, and even not being at the settlement has negative effect on happiness. I take it that I need to:

 

- Remove excess resources

- Spend more time at home

- Detect robot & synth

 

I would like to add that I have exactly 24 food, 24 water, 24 bunk beds at this time of speaking. That means my settlers do not need food and water from other settlements to feed them. I also have three bars, two trading emporiums, one clothing emporium, all tier 3 and one tier 2 clinic. All emporiums are assigned to legendary merchants (Vault Tec rep, Tina). My defense is 108. I take it that I need to replace all bunk beds with normal beds right? I currently have 20 settlers but 24 beds, thats bad right?

 

I installed the unofficial fallout 4 patch. But the happiness decreases still. Do I need to reinstall it?

[gamefever]

Uninstalling and Reinstalling Unofficial Patch is bad, bad, bad.

 

Just leave it there.

 

Starlight Drive would be the worst spot to try to get 100% happiness.

There are spawn points all around it but the most frequent spawn point is right smack under a bridge and even on Survival Level it respawns almost every day. This means that your Provissioners will drag over the spawns putting your Settlement into a combat state, which would be bad for happiness.

 

Then on top of that for some reason the Settlers like to wonder around the perimeter of Starlight Drive, no idea how that will effect happiness but if you get spawns they most certainly will agro them.

 

Better Spots would be like Red Rocket Truck Stop or Abernanthy Farm.

Since those spots don't have large settlement borders, load in the same cell, and of course have very infrequent attacks and really no spawn points around them.

Settlers also don't have wonky routes around the settlement as well.

 

If it were me and I was seriously wanting to get 100% happiness I'd probably would just build up all the happiness stuff, but then on top of that I'd just download some mods that added more happiness and be done with it.