Best settlement layout ?

[Rallianto]

I've started experimenting with "automation" and give settlers specific jobs, dividing zones etc. Been watching some YT videos, and seems most people are having a center storage. Is this the best layout? And workers can maximum work 100 tiles away from their beds?

[ElDudorino]

If I go for a larger settlement I like to put chests near what they're for, so I'll put a wheat and flour chest and wheat seed chest near the wheat field, that kinda thing.

But I also don't try to optimize everything to be the absolute best it can be. I just like it to look good and work well.

[Rallianto]

Originally posted by ElDudorino:

If I go for a larger settlement I like to put chests near what they're for, so I'll put a wheat and flour chest and wheat seed chest near the wheat field, that kinda thing.

But I also don't try to optimize everything to be the absolute best it can be. I just like it to look good and work well.

Yeah exactly, this is something like this I'll go for, not min/max yet, just trying to figure out. Yeah having a couple of chests with filter enabled for like seeds, flour and wheat close by that field.
I tried to make dedicated areas workers can be in, but they wont leave them for food, so it's easier for now just to not restrict.

[tkdbackkick]

Depending how big your settlement is, the number of settlers you have, and the types you have, it'll change ideal configurations. Or you could be like me and brute force it; with 55 settlers (10 are guards so they don't count), I split up the housing to be roughly 50/50 with farmland in between the housing. The base layout is farmland -> housing -> farmland -> housing -> farmland, where I have crops, animals, trees, and bushes in those zones for farming. Essentially my housing is surrounded by farms and I don't have to worry about people not being able to reach the crops. It isn't ideal but I have so many people that they easily run out and bring everything back to a centralized storage location, where the cooking also occurs.

[Rallianto]

Originally posted by tkdbackkick:

Depending how big your settlement is, the number of settlers you have, and the types you have, it'll change ideal configurations. Or you could be like me and brute force it; with 55 settlers (10 are guards so they don't count), I split up the housing to be roughly 50/50 with farmland in between the housing. The base layout is farmland -> housing -> farmland -> housing -> farmland, where I have crops, animals, trees, and bushes in those zones for farming. Essentially my housing is surrounded by farms and I don't have to worry about people not being able to reach the crops. It isn't ideal but I have so many people that they easily run out and bring everything back to a centralized storage location, where the cooking also occurs.

Thanks for your input. I love games like this where there isn't an obvious solution.
But do you have specific hauling jobs for people just to transport stuff from where it was produced to the centralized storage area?

[Twinky]

I started off with a centralized storage, but realized it wasn't really needed and was boring. Basically I have NPC crafting storage in their work areas, player crafting storage, and then overflow storage. Every NPC (pawn broker, farmer, caretaker, ect.) get their own area. If they don't have an active special skill like fertilizing or animal handling, they farm in their little area and manage loading things (windmills, compost, ect), or they craft in relation to their namesake, the alchemist or blacksmith for example. Guards are the transportation network as they can't do anything else. Basically any storage box is a dump box and gets sorted as needed, unwanted stuff makes its way to the incinerator or Pawn Broker's chest where I can pick it up and sell it, including some ingredients and craft-ables that are beyond their useful quantity. All NPCs include the central diner/kitchen in their restriction area so they all take their breaks and meals together where the food is crafted. NPC gear is managed manually to keep them balanced on melee/ranged and don't get a mismatch of enchanted gear.

That said its surprisingly efficient and foot traffic has a pleasant "lived in" feel for the village and nothing looks "gamey" except my poor sense of fashion and interior decorating.

[Rallianto]

Originally posted by Twinky:

I started off with a centralized storage, but realized it wasn't really needed and was boring. Basically I have NPC crafting storage in their work areas, player crafting storage, and then overflow storage. Every NPC (pawn broker, farmer, caretaker, ect.) get their own area. If they don't have an active special skill like fertilizing or animal handling, they farm in their little area and manage loading things (windmills, compost, ect), or they craft in relation to their namesake, the alchemist or blacksmith for example. Guards are the transportation network as they can't do anything else. Basically any storage box is a dump box and gets sorted as needed, unwanted stuff makes its way to the incinerator or Pawn Broker's chest where I can pick it up and sell it, including some ingredients and craft-ables that are beyond their useful quantity. All NPCs include the central diner/kitchen in their restriction area so they all take their breaks and meals together where the food is crafted. NPC gear is managed manually to keep them balanced on melee/ranged and don't get a mismatch of enchanted gear.

That said its surprisingly efficient and foot traffic has a pleasant "lived in" feel for the village and nothing looks "gamey" except my poor sense of fashion and interior decorating.

Thanks a lot! Yeah I also figured out that you at least need a centralized kitchen, because workers wont leave their zone for food, but they will leave their zone to sleep. But workers won't go more than 100 tiles away from their beds (?), so the farmers house should be with the farm plots etc.
If you don't have a centralized storaged, do you manually move stuff to the workbench when you need to craft something?

[Rallianto]

It's by far the settlement aspect of the game I enjoy the most, production lines and logistics and satisfy the villagers. But they are too easily satisfied.

[Rallianto]

Also checking on villagers happiness, it seems to go lower when village grows in size? As in their prefer a small settlement? I can easily have +100 happiness anyways, but what is the max number (of settlers) theoritically for min/max?

[Twinky]

I don't move anything, the NPCs bring in the materials to my personal crafting area, namely ores, wood, special fish, and monster drops. In any work bench, you can hover over the check boxes for "view what is only craftable", and it will show the bench's storage radius it pulls from. Hence why central storage is popular, but if you let the NPCs do the generic crafting, its not needed to cram everything in the radius.

All I make is armor and weapons, the NPCs do everything else and deliver to a relevant storage area, like a small shed for building materials or I walk into the Alchemist shop and take what I want (yes shop, I made them all look like shops, old school RPG style).

As for the 100 tiles, I haven't actually seen this limit, I just know my guards/transports do almost all of the deliveries and they transport from one end of the village to the other with no issues. So the other NPCs can spend most of their time actually working.

I don't really think there is a min/maxable worth mentioning, its more a matter of how easy you want to make the settlement for yourself and balancing out resources versus consumption. If you over produce you can make a lot of money or you can under produce and struggle. All of my NPCs get a wide variety gourmet bonus, and the biggest upkeep for that is probably fish, but if I want to lessen the burden in that direction, I could just add another fisher. If the struggle is wheat for flour and keeping the animals fed, I can either increase the efficiency of the wheat plots with fertilizer, adding another farmer, or just add wheat to the other areas that have the extra free time to handle it. The only relevant number in regards to settlers, in my opinion is the more you have, the longer it takes the raiders to give up after killing your people, if they manage to get that far. Though by the time it gets to the point where raiders are a serious threat, I think most people have gathered or have an idea of what to gather, in order to setup kill zone traps.

I see people complaining about settler happiness being too easy, I think they miss the point is that its easy because you do it the easy way. I don't waste time and energy on big living spaces for the free happiness bonus, I'll keep them in something smaller and focus my efforts some where else. Once you realize the benefit from the happiness bonus is just cheaper pricing, and then realize you don't buy anything or can afford it regardless, then its overall pointless and you just need them to be happy enough to work, meaning they have food and some where to sleep. If keeping them happy had more purpose, sure, its too easy, otherwise its just an arbitrary stat with no real purpose worth complaining about.