Losing settlements (experiment)

[spared_life]

I have every settlement most with 20 settlers and high happiness. I wanted to see if I could lose every settlement.

I started by just removing the beds but the happiness was decreasing at a snail pace. So I started removing all food and water at the settlements where I had removed the beds.

Most have huge defenses, on some I removed all defenses such as Somerville, Temping Bluff, and County Crossing. Others I left up full defenses like in the Castle (400), Spectacle Island (1000). Then some I left a portion.

I have companions at many of the settlements. In fact I actually found Garvey at Sunshine Tidings Co-op and I lost him about 20 levels back.

I also left stores at some settlements and scrapped them at others.

In the area of the teens in happiness is where I started getting the you may lose alignment warnings. Oberland dropped out of alignment very quickly. Others just stopped losing happiness and turned green despite having zero food, water, and beds. Spectacle Island is in the red and down to 5. The lowest settlement happiness and still maintain alignment. Must be the 1000 defense.

I've had to return to many of them to kickstart the happiness decline. X6-88 was at Croup which was holding at 20 in the green. I moved him to the airport which was at 60 with no settlers. The happiness immediately changed to 20. Meanwhile back at Croup I could not get the happiness to continue down until I removed all defenses.

Some it was only necessary to empty the junk in the workstation to get the happiness to continue down.

Kingsport was stuck green at 23. I went to empty the workshop and it had 1200 purified water. Not sure how I got that or what to do with it I went ahead and emptied it. The happiness started going down again. I wasn't overburdened though so I looked in my inventory and I had one purified water not 1200.

Graygarden stopped at 18 but the last trip there it jumped to 16 green.

The only thing Sanctuary Hills doesn't have is food and beds, testing that. The loss of happiness is very slow. Along with the Slog that maintains 5 food and has 8 non destructible beds, that has been a really slow burn.

At this point I still have several to go. Since reaching in the 20s happiness most have quit going down in PipBoy and show green but they are still losing happiness.

[DouglasGrave]

If you have trouble getting happiness down because of them, the beds at the Slog (and similar locations) can be removed either by console commands or by fudging the settlement building interface to grab them and place them on flooring for removal.

[spared_life]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

If you have trouble getting happiness down because of them, the beds at the Slog (and similar locations) can be removed either by console commands or by fudging the settlement building interface to grab them and place them on flooring for removal.

I know, not wanting to do that or start killing settlers.

I had trouble getting Murkwater below twenty until I removed all defenses and power. It immediately went from 20 to 16 and is continuing down.

I have 5 supply lines left and the most trouble is the hub to those 5 lines at The drive in. The 5 settlements connected are also trouble. I keep going back to the drive in and removing tons of junk. I was thinking maybe they are helping each other even though the others have no junk.

[spared_life]

Just since typing that last reply Murkwater has dropped to 12 and still going down. All my highest happiness settlements have defenses still. A few I have removed the defenses and the happiness started dropping again.

[xybolt]

There are other factors that do contribute to the settlement happiness like having a dog or even cats. These domestic animals start to show up if you have four or more settlers.

Then some furnitures (eg overseers desk, a barber chair, ...) contributes to the happiness as well.

[spared_life]

Originally posted by xybolt:

There are other factors that do contribute to the settlement happiness like having a dog or even cats. These domestic animals start to show up if you have four or more settlers.

Then some furnitures (eg overseers desk, a barber chair, ...) contributes to the happiness as well.

Yes it's interesting to see what gets thrown in the happiness mix when the settlement gets low. I travel back to settlements where the decline has stopped and start scrapping until I find the reason. In one settlement all that was needed was to remove a shop.

Strange enough Spectacle Island dropped to 5 without losing it and now it is the first settlement to actually start going back up. It's at 18 and still rising. Two things though it is on the supply lines and there is a BOS hanging around all the time. I have 1000 defense there but nothing else, no beds, food,water, power and 20 settlers.

Another thing I have noticed is I haven't lost aligned with any settlement where a comanion is.

[spared_life]

Croup manor just hit 4. So it now holds the record for lowest happiness and still aligned.

Edit: Croup just hit 2% and I am still aligned. Spectacle Island is back to 20% from down to 5.

[xybolt]

does the alignment not get changed after a while? I am unable to recall it exactly, but I believe that the timer starts when the happiness started to go under a given threshold. It's to give the player a chance to "fix" it.

[spared_life]

Originally posted by xybolt:

does the alignment not get changed after a while? I am unable to recall it exactly, but I believe that the timer starts when the happiness started to go under a given threshold. It's to give the player a chance to "fix" it.

Yes you are correct. I usually get that notice in the mid teens. The problem is getting there. Nearly all the alignments I have lost so far are settlements with pre existing settlers. I now have 2 settlements at 4 happiness and 2 that keep going up and down. I can't really tell you when I lose alignment because once you lose alignment the stats don't show.

[tulle040657]

You can't lose every settlement. Some of them you will keep no matter how low your happiness goes

[Bored Peon]

I tried this years ago and I could not get it to happen.

The big thing you are missing is killing a settler. That will tank your happiness in a heartbeat because it is a -20 penalty to target happiness. Refusing to defend, failing a radiant also have a similar debuff.

I do not know why but it is harder to get settlements to actually leave when you purposely try. I have seen a few people that had issues and lost control very quickly.

[spared_life]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

I tried this years ago and I could not get it to happen.

The big thing you are missing is killing a settler. That will tank your happiness in a heartbeat because it is a -20 penalty to target happiness. Refusing to defend, failing a radiant also have a similar debuff.

I do not know why but it is harder to get settlements to actually leave when you purposely try. I have seen a few people that had issues and lost control very quickly.

I saw several pieces on this and it looked interesting enough to me to see how the game reacts under different edit (spelling) : circumstances for myself.

I think it's an interesting possible coincidence I haven't lost alignment on any settlement with a companion. Also that most of settlements with pre existing settlers fell out of alignment first. Then there are those settlements that are gaining happiness despite flat zeroes across the board.

Not being the analytical brain you and Enept are I can't put the pieces together but I am having fun with watching the settlement reactions to minor changes I make.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by spared_life:

Not being the analytical brain you and Enept are I can't put the pieces together but I am having fun with watching the settlement reactions to minor changes I make.

Yeah before they released the Creation Kit I had gone through using console commands to watch effects to figure out the basic happiness mechanics. There was just far too many people making up brahminshit theories based upon coincidence.

The happiness penalties for no bed/unsheltered bed, no water, no food, and no defense are -20 target happiness each. So technically your target should be 0 happiness if you have none. However if you have any of the above then it goes up by 20 target happiness.

You also have to keep in mind the current happiness change amounts depend on the difference between the target and current happiness. The closer the smaller the change, the father the larger the change. Which means once you get like below 30-40 happiness it takes a long while to drop farther.

As to why you get happiness jumping upwards, I aint sure because I would need to see it for myself rather than just guess. However if I was to guess then it would be one of the necessities are being filled like a dog, cat, brahmin or something.

[DouglasGrave]

Also worth remembering is to avoid having robots around, since their default 50 happiness all the time will drag the average back up.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

The happiness penalties for no bed/unsheltered bed, no water, no food, and no defense are -20 target happiness each.

Note in regard to the beds that having almost anything solid above them can count as them having shelter, in addition to some of the bunk beds from the Creation Club possibly providing shelter to themselves.

[spared_life]

I am down to zero happiness at Croup. I moved all the settlers to the airport but one. Zeroes all the way across the board. The only green I have is the zero power. I will probably try adding something that requires power and see if it goes to red. I have a few more settlements at 2 now. I don't know what else I can do.

Speaking of the airport I had a fun time watching X6-88 entertain the BOS troops and I picked up a few souvenir uniforms for the settlers back home.

@DouglasGrave: I have Codsworth plus all the Graygarden crew with zeroes across (they actually still tend the dirt and clip the air). It stop going down at 18 but everytime I go back there it drops a little more. It's down to 12 right now.

[Bored Peon]

Power does not affect a settlement happiness unless except indirectly something like power missing for the required defense and water items.

You would think a few outside lights and table lamps, or a fully powered settlement would affect a settlement's happiness.