How do I detach myself from the responsibilities of being an "on-call" mayor of a settlement?

[nutbunny]

I had just newly discovered the game mechanic of selling navigation data to find points of interest, and was travelling to only my third or fourth such purchased point of interest when i found myself directed to a tiny settlement of aliens where i got roped in to becoming a mayor responsible for the settlement's well-being.

I can't stand it!
I want to explore the galaxy but can't travel too far away from the settlement because i have to keep returning to sort out town issues and invasions from sentinels.

I find this mechanic very irritating because it pulls me away from what I want to do in the game.

Is there a moment in this settlement quest where they become self-sufficient and i don't need to worry about baby-sitting them?
The running debt keeps increasing, and I want to know at what stage of town-building does it stop growing and start shrinking? For example, Does it happen after building your 6th building?
When does the town start managing its own safety and security?

I wouldn't mind too much if they were going to turn into a passive source of income soon,
but they are an active source of annoying distraction with no end in sight.
I want to hop into my little one-seater spaceship and fly away to the stars but I can't because this god-forsaken town is a ball-and-chain around my ankle.

[bigbadbedwetter]

Settlements have a teleporter in the main office that you can teleport to from any system or galaxy in the game. So, you are not tied to any location because of settlements. Also, you can ignore them and they will be in the same state as you left them last.

[Grimmslayer73]

Like above, Just ignore it. Usually the quest log will shut up after a few days. As for the settlement debt... it has no effect on your personal wallet at all, nor can you pay off the debt with your own money. If you follow the settlement quest, build buildings when prompted and settle disputes when they pop up the debt will eventually go away on it's own and give you a very small passive income in the form of some random resources or trade goods.

[nutbunny]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I feel guilty for not sorting out their issues when a notification comes through, but if the settlement status remains static until i get there, then I guess that does make it easier to leave them hanging.

[dreamrider]

The settlement will stop PHYSICAL expansion after you have added about 20? 25? buildings.

The population will grow to a maximum of 200, as long as you keep interaction with settlement, but beyond about 65 it is quite a slow growth.

After the buildings expansion is complete, and 1) production is raised to $1M, 2) Maintenance is driven down to (effective) 0$, and Happiness is raised to 100%, your involvement with the town is as minimal as you wish.
(You don't REALLY have to do anything with it before that, if you don't want to. Just un-pin it in your Log, and ignore any announcements.)

The Settlement will start providing you with a small daily (RL days) output
of one mineral / gas and one trade good type that is different from the trade goods available from Galactic Trade Termini in the system, after the Settlement debt is brought to 0. Sometimes this small but reliable production of a moderately rare resource, especially one of the active gases (Nitrogen, Sulfurene, Radon) can be quite beneficial.

(Whenever Settlement debt returns for awhile, the product return to the player avatar will pause until the debt is once again paid. Later on, with increased Production, decreased Maintenance costs, and high Happiness, debt repayment becomes pretty trivial, usually a few minutes.)

One of the most important things you get from Settlement development is the initiation of the Taste of Metal quest. You have to kill off one of the early Sentinel raids, and then take one particular piece of unusual scrap to the Anomaly. No more spoilers. The eventual paybacks from this quest can materially effect all of your 'galactic adventuring' play.

You can also acquire a nice collection usable Sentinel parts and Pugneum and Atlanteum, just by returning periodically to kill off any Sentinel raids in the town. It is usually only 5-6 floaters. Except when the Taste of Metal quest is active; those raids are still only periodic, but they always end with one Hardframe you have to kill off to get the town running normally again.

It has been very satisfactory for ME to build may main base out at the edge of the Settlement zone of control, so that the Base zone of control overlaps the Settlement (and can be extended as needed to cover the entire Settlement.) Then you can build other buildings of your own design / desire within the Settlement.

As others have said, as with any of the play quests, you can just ignore the Settlement administration requests / tasks for as long as you want. Just stopping back occasionally, or not at all. But I encourage you to at least finish all the build out tasks of the town eventually. It just feels...homey...and ... alive, compared to the rather stark environs of your base(s).

Also, the build out will eventually give you a Mercantile Bazaar, with a separate Galactic Trade Terminal, and a resident tech & oddities vendor, both of which will have slightly different offerings and prices than a terminal in your base, or on the Space Station.

You will also eventually build 2-3 landing pads as part of town development, which attract trader pilots to trade a bit with, and maybe, once in awhile, a ship you want to purchase. Your own little Trading Post.

If you really, REALLY, don't ever want to have anything to do with the Settlement...
1) Buy a new Settlement map;
2) Take it to a different planet, preferrably one you don't expect to ever have much to do with (This step is NOT mandatory, but...out of sight is out of mind.);
3) Pop the new Settlement map.
3a) The new Settlement will supersede the old one.
4) Very Important. Never Go There.

Be damn sure this is want you want before you commit to it, because the above procedure will throw out all your existing Settlement progress.

[+VLFBERHT+]

I am currently trying (for the first time since settlements were made part of NMS) to max-out Population, Happiness, Productivity and drive maint-cost to zero.

Started on a lrge plot but now, no more building opportunities are available... but heck, i have 4 landing pads, 3 trade centers and 3 water towers + several power generator facilities.

Have tried before to max it out but Population always seemed to stall. Maybe because my initial population of previous tries started to low in the 20's or 30's. Finally found a B-class one staring with 53 Population.

Am now at 77 population, 100% Happiness, 786,000 productivity and around 80k maintenance cost.

Is now A-class, but over the past month off & on play during the week logging in for a couple hours, i had only increase population by 2 but happiness went from 60% to the 100% over that time.

Once you have complete all available building opportunities, the 60+ minute pauses between request for settlement attention for disputes and other is not that bad. It's not like you are required to respond immediately on threat of losing anything.

Don't know if it's normal or not but, I chose to go to the "Hostile Galaxy" and my settlement is on a corrupted planet... what is fun about the corrupted-sentinel attacks that occur once every 2 days, when i arrive, there are about 15-20 sentinels and once i have defeated them a get that "sentinels defeated" sound that is supposed to signify mission accomplished but then, i suddenly get threat level alert like when you first attack a sentinel for 3 to 4 additional countdowns into waves of 3 to 4 flying sentinels.

It must be a base/settlement proximity bug or something, because i never see any of the higher level crawlers and mini-me crawlers that come with the higher alerts.

But anyway, the point is, you don't have to immediately go in and take care of your settlement. You can spread it out over many months but if you're concerned about maintenance cost, simply keep building until your productivity exceeds maint-cost, then you simply select another mission in LOG (so it wont nag-you) and come back at your leisure to take care whining settlers.

[nutbunny]

Originally posted by dreamrider:

The settlement will stop PHYSICAL expansion after you have added about 20? 25? buildings.

The population will grow to a maximum of 200, as long as you keep interaction with settlement, but beyond about 65 it is quite a slow growth.

After the buildings expansion is complete, and 1) production is raised to $1M, 2) Maintenance is driven down to (effective) 0$, and Happiness is raised to 100%, your involvement with the town is as minimal as you wish.
(You don't REALLY have to do anything with it before that, if you don't want to. Just un-pin it in your Log, and ignore any announcements.)

The Settlement will start providing you with a small daily (RL days) output
of one mineral / gas and one trade good type that is different from the trade goods available from Galactic Trade Termini in the system, after the Settlement debt is brought to 0. Sometimes this small but reliable production of a moderately rare resource, especially one of the active gases (Nitrogen, Sulfurene, Radon) can be quite beneficial.

(Whenever Settlement debt returns for awhile, the product return to the player avatar will pause until the debt is once again paid. Later on, with increased Production, decreased Maintenance costs, and high Happiness, debt repayment becomes pretty trivial, usually a few minutes.)

One of the most important things you get from Settlement development is the initiation of the Taste of Metal quest. You have to kill off one of the early Sentinel raids, and then take one particular piece of unusual scrap to the Anomaly. No more spoilers. The eventual paybacks from this quest can materially effect all of your 'galactic adventuring' play.

You can also acquire a nice collection usable Sentinel parts and Pugneum and Atlanteum, just by returning periodically to kill off any Sentinel raids in the town. It is usually only 5-6 floaters. Except when the Taste of Metal quest is active; those raids are still only periodic, but they always end with one Hardframe you have to kill off to get the town running normally again.

It has been very satisfactory for ME to build may main base out at the edge of the Settlement zone of control, so that the Base zone of control overlaps the Settlement (and can be extended as needed to cover the entire Settlement.) Then you can build other buildings of your own design / desire within the Settlement.

As others have said, as with any of the play quests, you can just ignore the Settlement administration requests / tasks for as long as you want. Just stopping back occasionally, or not at all. But I encourage you to at least finish all the build out tasks of the town eventually. It just feels...homey...and ... alive, compared to the rather stark environs of your base(s).

Also, the build out will eventually give you a Mercantile Bazaar, with a separate Galactic Trade Terminal, and a resident tech & oddities vendor, both of which will have slightly different offerings and prices than a terminal in your base, or on the Space Station.

You will also eventually build 2-3 landing pads as part of town development, which attract trader pilots to trade a bit with, and maybe, once in awhile, a ship you want to purchase. Your own little Trading Post.

If you really, REALLY, don't ever want to have anything to do with the Settlement...
1) Buy a new Settlement map;
2) Take it to a different planet, preferrably one you don't expect to ever have much to do with (This step is NOT mandatory, but...out of sight is out of mind.);
3) Pop the new Settlement map.
3a) The new Settlement will supersede the old one.
4) Very Important. Never Go There.

Be damn sure this is want you want before you commit to it, because the above procedure will throw out all your existing Settlement progress.

I am dedicated to completing the building requirements.
I had also activated the Taste Of Metal quest, but if there are more interesting settlement-related quests i will stick around for them.
I am relieved now that i know that i can basically put the settlement on the back-burner and not have to worry about attending to every issue in a timeous manner.

[nutbunny]

Originally posted by +VLFBERHT+:

I am currently trying (for the first time since settlements were made part of NMS) to max-out Population, Happiness, Productivity and drive maint-cost to zero.

Started on a lrge plot but now, no more building opportunities are available... but heck, i have 4 landing pads, 3 trade centers and 3 water towers + several power generator facilities.

Have tried before to max it out but Population always seemed to stall. Maybe because my initial population of previous tries started to low in the 20's or 30's. Finally found a B-class one staring with 53 Population.

Am now at 77 population, 100% Happiness, 786,000 productivity and around 80k maintenance cost.

Is now A-class, but over the past month off & on play during the week logging in for a couple hours, i had only increase population by 2 but happiness went from 60% to the 100% over that time.

Once you have complete all available building opportunities, the 60+ minute pauses between request for settlement attention for disputes and other is not that bad. It's not like you are required to respond immediately on threat of losing anything.

Don't know if it's normal or not but, I chose to go to the "Hostile Galaxy" and my settlement is on a corrupted planet... what is fun about the corrupted-sentinel attacks that occur once every 2 days, when i arrive, there are about 15-20 sentinels and once i have defeated them a get that "sentinels defeated" sound that is supposed to signify mission accomplished but then, i suddenly get threat level alert like when you first attack a sentinel for 3 to 4 additional countdowns into waves of 3 to 4 flying sentinels.

It must be a base/settlement proximity bug or something, because i never see any of the higher level crawlers and mini-me crawlers that come with the higher alerts.

But anyway, the point is, you don't have to immediately go in and take care of your settlement. You can spread it out over many months but if you're concerned about maintenance cost, simply keep building until your productivity exceeds maint-cost, then you simply select another mission in LOG (so it wont nag-you) and come back at your leisure to take care whining settlers.

It's good to know i can put the settlement at the back of the queue every now and then.
I can definitely explore more freely knowing that.