About this mod
So, you ended The Mechanist's menace & got yourself "his" lair as a well-earned reward for your valiant efforts to save The Commonwealth, which makes you a hero. But a hero's work is never done. Help The Commonwealth once more; build a hub of commerce & industry in that same place that brough that menace. Welcome to Mecha Town!
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
**CONCEPTS & IDEAS**
Inspired a little bit by Cyberpunk's Night City and more with Fallout 4's Diamond City, Mecha Town makes use of The Mechanist's Lair pros as a factory interior cell with lots of verticality, and the cons of being narrow, dark, noisy and constrained by certain aspects of the place.
Night City's beauty always shined at night (Debatable xD) where there's noise, neons, fun and danger, which are all there in Mecha Town in their own forms, where it's always night xD.
- NOISE: The place is always noisy with machinery. Makes sense since it's an industrial city.
- NEONS: The neons are always on and eye catching, but not excessive or overused.
- FUN: Have a drink at the bar, smoke a cigarette by the fountain or mix yourself a nasty Nuka Cola at the Nuka Mixer. The market alone is fun to hang around.
- DANGER: Get a bounty job from the Headhunter's office AKA Bounties Office and hunt yourself some rogue robots, sponsored by Isabel Cruz herself. ((Coz you won't believe how many times I heard the line "So...are you ready to track some robots?". This was built in her honor)). Also, for heights, in the words of Banning on Markarth...."Don't fall".
As for Diamond City, there's not much to tell. Love or hate Diamond City, it is a spectacle of what survivors of the apocalypse can achieve with what they have or what they make use of, and Mecha Town is no different, except it's better despite being smaller in scale.
QUICK OVERVIEW:
The design strategy I used to build Mecha Town is based on functionality & use. Meaning, I didn't just place plots around randomly. Most plots have a reason for why they were placed where. I also worked with a zoning plan that divides the settlement into 3 main zones; industrial, commercial and residential. There are also 3 mini-zones that can be named as "Command Corner", "Water Works" & "Entrance Plaza".
I also took great care in what materials I used for prefabs, floors and walls. I used vanilla concrete and WRK's metal structures while minimizing the use of wood since it doesn't fit into this place, but you will still see a few wooden structures around, especially in plots, which isn't intrusive or out of place IMO.
Oh, and there's a player home AKA the Mechanist's Home/Abode. It has a kitchen, bathroom, living and dining areas, a crafting corner and a sleeping area. I didn't over-decorate it to give people a chance to place their own stuff, but it's decent enough & works as a simple player home. The bed in there is player only.
With Mecha Town, you get an industrial and commercial hub that produces all SS2 scrap/junk types to be used and traded with other settlements via caravan services while providing a vibrant marketplace for residents and newcomers alike.
And finally, I played on the fact that if The Mechanist is alive or not ((Or replaced the Sole Survivor)), you or Isabel get to keep an eye on everything going on from the command room that sports a perfect view for each of the 3 main zones. I based the heart of the city plan concept on that fact.
THE 3 NECESSITIES (POWER-WATER-FOOD):
Power is abundant in Mecha Town via a single power plot ((REQUIRES HIGH INT)), but not everything runs with Municipal power. The recruitment beacon and the 2 vanilla security cameras run on the small generator that already exists in the Lair throughout all 4 levels. The Mechanist's Home/Abode also runs on it's own small generator.
Water is abundant too and provided via 1 plot to the whole settlement. ((REQUIRES HIGH INT))
As for food, since this place is not exactly farming-friendly, it will have a single hydroponics bay plot that grows food to sustain the settlement on levels 1, 2 & 3. But for level 0, you will need to provide food for people until the settlement levels up to 1. I could have placed a few soil spots and crops around, but it didn't feel authentic or real, especially since there's no sunlight anywhere, and placing artificial lighting felt cheesy and weird. Hell, even the hydroponics bay feels a bit out of place no matter what plot I used, but I picked the one that felt closer to home.
SCRAP, JUNK AND MATERIALS:
I added a long vertical stack on SS2 scrap containers behind the Industrial Zone structure to store the SS2 output materials. That stack is the same on all 4 levels. The reasoning behind this can be summed in one sentence: There should be no shortage of junk or materials in this place.
To elaborate, you kill lots of robots and after confronting the Mechanist to officially claim the place, you will be left with lots of robot bodies around. It hit me that there should be no shortage of junk either from these dead robots or the fact that it's a factory for making them. There should be lots of junk from the start if you ask me, and I worked it into my design.
16 settlers, 16 beds & 16 jobs at L0 AKA the foundation.
18 settlers, 18 beds & 18 jobs at L1.
20 settlers, 20 beds & 20 jobs at L2.
22 settlers, 22 beds & 22 jobs at L3.
I picked 22 as the max since it's the max number of settlers you can get based on 11 CHR you can get from Vanilla Fallout 4 with CHR bobblehead exploit. Also, 22 is more than enough to make the place lively, trust me.
- 15 Residential Plots; 1 plot fits 6 settlers, 2 plots for 4 settlers & 12 plots for 12 settlers. 13 are located in the residence building & and the aisle above, while 2 are located near the entrance, serving as hobo/homeless people place that fill the empty narrow spots I didn't want to leave empty.
- 7 Municipal Plots; 1 taxes, 1 power, 1 water, 1 caravan & 1 communications.
- 7 Industrial Plots; 3 building materials collectors, 2 organic material collectors, 1 machine parts collector and 1 rare materials collector.
- 5 Commercial plots; gun store, armor store, clothes store, bar & clinic.
- 5 Recreational Plots; 2 INT learning, 1 CHR learning & 2 relaxation. They mostly serve as aesthetics, except INT learning which is crucial for settlers in order to run power and water plots efficiently.
- 2 Martial Plots
- 1 Agricultural Plot; only a single hydroponics bay, coz it's an interior cell with no sunlight, and a factory. Having lots of agriculture around didn't suit the place IMO.
SS2 by kinggath & Sim Settlements Team
SS2CH2 by kinggath & Sim Settlements Team
SS2 Wasteland Reconstruction Kit by kinggath & Sim Settlements Team
Workshop Framework by kinggath
HUD Framework by registrator2000
SS2 Addons:
Favelabulous by kopfjagger
SimHomestead 2 by Eldarth
Jampads 2 by TurmoilPriest2003 and CaptainLaserBeam
Junk Town 2 by uituit
Pra's Random Addon 2 by pra
Scrappers by ohnno
SS2 Superstructures by fftfan and VFX
Tiny Living by Freddrick
Vault-Tec Tools by Samutz and Wulfharth
Wasteland Venturers by Tinuvia and Myrmarachne
IDEK's Logistics Station 2 by IDontEvenKnow
Extra Mods but Highly Recommended:
Workshop Plus by kinggath
Longer Power Lines by Puma361
The only solid requirements to build the City Plan are SS2 and Workshop Framework, but I recommend having the same mods above for the same exact results.
- Before using Mecha Town's City Plan, increase the settlement limit by 100% at the workshop.
*** - SCRAP EVERYTING IN THE SETTLEMENT before building L0 at the City Planner's Desk.
If you don't scrap and build L0 directly, you will end up with floating trash and lambs where the catwalks I scrapped were, plus a metal door in a solid wall where I placed the CP Desk, and you may find other stuff around the place not scrapped like crates, robobrains, loaders & containers.
I dunno why this happens & I couldn't fix it. I am sorry about this, I really tried to fix it.*** - Do not scrap the small generator under the metal ramp or the security cameras.
There's no harm done if you do, but when you build the city plan, you might have to wire them manually. Just wire the generator to the beacon and to the conduit above by the camera, and you should be good to go.*** - If you finished the quest "Restoring Order" right away & want to build Mecha Town ((Or want to build in general with or without SS2)), I suggest you reset the cell.
The best way to do that is to exit The Mechanist's Lair & wait 30 days outside. This ensures that all the robot carcasses are removed. You might want to double check after the cell reset since it's highly likely that a single robot carcass will persist. THIS IS NOT MY FAULT! IT'S A VANILLA THING!*** - Just enjoy!**FINAL WORDS**
This is my first mod ever! I appreciate any constructive feedback and criticism.
Special thanks to the below people for their amazing mods:
kinggath & Sim Settlements Team for The Sim Settlement Experience.
registrator2000 for HUDFramework
kopfjagger for Favelabulous
Eldarth for SimHomestead 2
TurmoilPriest2003 for Jampads 2
uituit for Junk Town 2
pra for Pra's Random Addon 2
ohnno for Scrappers
fftfan for SS2 Superstructures
Freddrick for Tiny Living
Samutz for Vault-Tec Tools
Tinuvia for Wasteland Venturers
IDontEvenKnow for IDEK's Logistics Station 2
Puma361 for Longer Power Lines
Extra thanks to the below people for the few mods I used to make my bad video review ((Not their fault. I am just bad at this xD)):
erico9871 for Disable Headbob
Gopher for Immersive HUD - iHUD
Niero for No NPC Greetings
A VERY small thank you to my cousin, even though he won't see it xD.
And finally, a silent thank you to the one person who introduced me to modding in general. May she forever rest in peace.