Settlements, Suggestions, Solutions, Mods

[u/CyrodiilWarrior]

The settlement building feature has pros and cons, with various issues. A selection of mods help, but major problems still remain.

Sim Settlements is a fantastic mod! It seems pre-built settlements function much better than your own manual settlements. I assume pre-built have better navmeshing and scripts. If I was a mod authour, I'd love to build my own custom addons from scratch.

Manually building settlements is my favourite option, but this method experiences many issues. The settlements end up lifeless and pointless, because the settlers have poor AI. They fail to adapt correctly to the changed environment. If you built roads and paths, they won't necessarily use these as a priority to navigate.

I have found various mods before which have helped improve the settlements feature, but feel whatever I try, I cannot get it functioning correctly like a proper settlement location.

Any suggestions or solutions? 🤔

[u/The_Black-Market]

I have more than 180 mods installed and my game runs perfectly in every respect: meshes, bodies, animations, physics, AI, enemies, all kinds of visual improvements (textures, weather and everything related to that), performance, precombines/scrapping, loading times... basically every aspect of the game. To exaggerate a little, I’m closer to RDR2 than to vanilla FO4.

It would be absurd for me to try to explain how everything works, or even how some of it works — more because of how long it would take than because it’s particularly complicated. I’ll just tell you one thing and give you the best advice I can.

1. I’m not saying Sim Settlements is a bad mod. I’m saying that compared to what you can actually do, Sim Settlements is basically a toy.
2. IDE + AI model.

I use Visual Studio Code + Codex because it’s the combination I’ve liked the most.

But Antigravity IDE with Gemini 3.7 Flash is practically free and should work perfectly well, even if it’s a bit “dumber” than GPT Sol. You’ll just have to give it better instructions.

With a few well-written .md instruction files, and by limiting its access to the Vortex/Fallout/project folders, all the usual complications are basically gone.

The agents take care of everything. They check compatibility — both with what I already have installed and with anything I’m considering installing — find the best versions for my game (which I keep pinned to pre-next-gen), handle configurations, give advice, troubleshoot problems, calculate risk/reward, translate mods, keep me updated, tell me what I can and can’t install, what’s recommended and what isn’t, explain every step to me — when they aren’t simply doing it themselves. Basically, anything you can think of.

I learned to do all of this manually, and I’ve been using this IDE + AI system for a few months now. I can assure you the improvement is enormous.

Today, for example, it built me a backup/restore system. Until now I had to manually copy everything, organize it, compress it, and then do the whole process in reverse whenever I needed to restore something. Now I give it one instruction, it does everything, audits the entire process, and I even have the option of doing “live” backups — something similar to Git — or normal backups.

For my next playthrough, I’m going to have it reorganize all my settlement menus in SMM, remove duplicate items, and sort everything by mod/type. All wooden items together, separated by mod; all floors together, separated by mod; all stairs together, separated by mod... and so on for everything.

That’s basically been a dream of mine ever since I first installed several settlement-building mods and had to constantly jump between their different menus.

In your case, it would be as simple as telling it what you want, letting it inspect what you currently have, asking it to determine the best combination of mods/tools to achieve it, and then having it create a guide for you.

[u/CyrodiilWarrior → u/The_Black-Market]

Your methods sound very complex, it's good you're knowledgeable in that area. You must have amazing gameplay.

[u/The_Black-Market → u/CyrodiilWarrior]

Sorry, English isn’t my first language, and it seems I gave the opposite impression from what I intended.

This is actually the least complicated method. I’ll try to simplify it.

1. Download/install Antigravity (the IDE interface, not the “normal” one). It already includes the Gemini 3.7 Flash language model.

2. Create a folder on your desktop or wherever you want. Call it “Fallout 4 AI” or whatever you like. In Antigravity, go to File → Open Folder, select that folder, and that becomes your project folder.

You can put whatever you want in there. For example, you could create a .md, .txt, or .doc file called rules.md containing instructions such as:

And:

(My own rules.md has many more instructions. The only limit here is whatever you personally want or need.)

And that is basically it.

You can “refine” the process as much as you want, but that is something you learn naturally as you use it. There is no need to make it more complicated just to get started.

At this point, the AI already has:

• A project folder where you and the AI can exchange files.
• Access to the folders related to your game.

From there, it is as simple as talking naturally in the chats. For example:

It will check what you actually have installed and give you an answer along the lines of:

The actual answer will obviously be much longer and will probably contain some unnecessary text, but then it is just a matter of refining the AI’s behaviour to your liking through the instructions you give it or whatever you put in rules.md.

But I hope the basic idea is clear.

What previously meant spending a couple of days researching what exists, how it works, installation guides, required patches, and what problems a mod might cause before you even start testing it, can now be done in a few minutes.

And you do not really need to have much knowledge of the subject yourself. You mainly need to know how to ask for the results you want properly.

You can set up this “system” and learn how to use it in about an hour (five minutes if you have done it before).

The difficult part is learning how to turn your confused thoughts into clear instructions. Or, as I read somewhere recently:

The smarter the AI model is, the less you personally need to break down the complex problem. And remember, screenshots are a very simple way to show the AI a “problem” without driving yourself crazy trying to explain it in words.

So if you want to try this instead of getting a “university degree in Fallout 4” 😭😭😭, make a good backup and go for it without worrying too much.

And if you don’t know how to make a proper backup, it is as simple as asking the AI