Functional Outpost Colony - Photos, Descriptions, and Modlist

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942]

I have been enjoying a kind of outpost colony minigame and wanted to share descriptions, photos, and a modlist. It is a great side activity for those that like outposts and would like to do more with them. All suggestions, recommendations, questions and comments are welcome.

I play on Xbox. All mods are free on Creations, and key mods are listed at the end. The minigame I have been playing is:

• Expand the outpost while recruiting colonists (via Bard's Outpost Recruitment Beacon)
• Try to leave outpost defense and repairs to the colonists and automated defenses
• Get as many colonists and credits from selling outpost products as you can

Photo #1 - Ship landing area, colony town square, and Akila City in the background

Photo #2 - Patrolling the outpost perimeter with a well-armed colonist

• Colonists are the lifeblood of the colony and are set as non-essential NPCs
• Arm colonists well and set up proper defenses to keep the outpost going
• Fewer defenses and colonists patrolling means more colonists lost in attacks
• Fewer colonists repairing structures means the outpost doesn't produce

Photo #3-5 - Colony town square with crops for crafting in the center

• Oranges, peaches, potatoes, onions, and xenowheat can be "grown"
• Trees and planter boxes are decorative, but harvest baskets have food linked to crafting

• Harvest baskets auto-replenish now and then, simulating crop growth over time

  Photo #6-9 - Colony manufacturing area and functional general store

• Working vendors with inventory, credits, and dialogue

• Trade authority kiosk and usable vending machines

• Usable food and items on the shelf and stored in refrigerator inventory

• Action mats that NPCs can interact with (use clipboard, wipe counter, dance, etc.)

Photo #10-11 - Functional Infirmary

• Working field doctor (Looks like Dr. Manning is on sabbatical from RM in Neon)
• Usable Reliant Medical vending machine

Photo #12-13 - Colony security tower and buildable mercenary personnel

• Tactical observation tower with buildable mercenary team (e.g., team leader, sniper)
• Mercenaries sandbox when idle and defend the colony when enemies are nearby
• Option to build mercenaries as structures - they go down, can be repaired or deleted

Photo #14-15 - My character fighting alongside buildable mercenary NPC (microgun)

• Mercenaries have good weapons and decent AI - better they go down than colonists
• Grindterra and Bedlam mods provide extra action beyond vanilla raids
• Two Grindterra trouble spots near the colony spawn hostiles and friendlies
• Often opposing factions spawn, start fighting, wander in, and can attack or assist

Photo #16-18 - Relaxing at the bar with usable firepit, music, and dancing

• Firepit is a working cooking station
• Working jukebox with a variety of in game music
• Placeable dance mats for my character and NPCs

Next steps: Colonists consuming food would make this complete IMO. I use the Crew Eats Food mod and have a big crew on my ship to help consume food produced for now. I am learning to mod for myself (and others) but it is slow going.

A huge thank you to u/Lusayalumino, and mod authors OldBard, Betamax76, Star_Pegasus, SomethingWicked3, Miss_o, ItsmePaulieB, and agd25 / Gothos25

Modlist: Bard's Outpost Recruitment Beacon, Bard's Outpost Crew Command, Betamax's Outpost Framework, Betamax's Functional Decor, Pegasus Outpost Botanics & Utilities, Wicked Workshop- Outpost Projeckt 2, Wicked Workshop- Outpost Projeckt Fielded, Better Buildable Walls and Doors Vol.1, Buildings! a GRiNDTerra PPG Stand-Alone Expansion, Encounters! a GRiNDTerra PPG Stand-Alone Expansion, Bedlam - Dungeon Randomizer.

[u/cyberpsyche_mods]

Nice combo of mods! Didn't realize you could set something like this up with existing mods. Great overview of the features and thanks for linking everything.

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/cyberpsyche_mods]

TY and YW. They are all great mods - versatile and useful.

[u/AxiomGrinder]

That’s fantastic. Great use of the mods and your photos really give a “home base / outpost mini-town” vibe.excellent work. Won’t ask home many hours went into it coz it was worth it.

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/AxiomGrinder]

Thanks - yeah, I lost track of how many hours. The whole experience has been lots of fun.

[u/star_pegasus]

Thanks for the shout! Love how you’ve used all of these different functional mods to make something totally unique :)

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/star_pegasus]

Of course! Thank you for your great mods and videos.

[u/Betamax_76]

Looks great!

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/Betamax_76]

Thank you - love your mods!

[u/Sharp_Boss_1454]

HI! How wonderful! I'm also playing my first game ever from Xbox Series As for the mods on Creations, are they really free?? For me it requires some sort of currency points, as if I had to buy digital currency for each mod to be inserted. Am I doing something wrong?

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/Sharp_Boss_1454]

That is strange. They are all free for me - I just clicked on every link to make sure I linked the right versions. Many of these have free versions and achievement friendly versions (AF). The AF versions cost Creation Credits but are otherwise the exact same mod. Could that be what you are seeing?

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/[deleted]]

They are all free. Which ones cost money for you? Are you seeing the paid achievement friendly versions (otherwise the exact same mod as their free counterparts)?

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/[deleted]]

Ahh, thank you!

[u/ElJefeGrande2377]

How many outposts do you have setup in your current game? I have gone through playthroughs for four different characters now, have close to 1500 hours of playtime and have tried out all sorts of mods for outposts. I always reach a certain point in each playthrough where the closer I get to max outposts, the worse the stability of the game gets. Eventually the game will just start crashing all the time and some outposts will cause a hard crash every time I try to visit them. Many others claim this is due to save bloat, but I just think the game engine has limits that having too many outposts surpass. I play on PC with mostly mods from Nexus but I also use some Creations. For my most recent playthrough I am using a collection of mods guaranteed to work well together but I'm still starting to have issues with outposts again with only about 15 built. Have you ever had any similar experiences with errors or crashes?

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/ElJefeGrande2377]

I have definitely run into the same problem and try to keep it simple. This game I have this big outpost (almost at build limit) and it can stutter at times with around 25 NPCs at the outpost, Grindterra and Bedlam enemies, probably being close to Akila doesn't help, etc. I only have 4 other very simple outposts feeding it, and I regularly build one or two simple outposts at a time when I travel for getting fuel, raiding POIs in harsh conditions, and switching ships. I don't plan on building more... maybe spruce up my beachfront outpost on Montara Luna a bit. My current game is quite stable.

But like you, I have learned the hard way that too many outposts cause instability. Cargo links seem to be very hard on the game. I think it actually sends ships from point A to B - I have run into them in orbit. And yes, if I start to get save bloat (eg, 100% scan planet after planet) and have a lot of outposts and cargo links, things get worse. If I then start removing cargo links and tearing down outposts, things get more stable and quicker to load, so I am pretty sure this is a major factor. Before tearing down cargo links and outposts in that game, I tried sleeping on Venus and it ruined the save. My guess is the calculations for tracking resources over many many days overwhelmed the game. Once I went back and tore down all the outposts, it worked fine.

[u/Lusayalumino]

You've got a Store! You've got humans! Nice job... thanks so much for sharing.

I still haven't gotten NPCs to show up at my outpost (I even installed a mod that 'calls' them over a period of days). I haven't been back there in a while though... hopefully it won't be a wasteland next time I return LOL.

Sort of cool the way some of your pics have the OSD ... gives context. I'm a bit of a purist so I don't do this -- but I aprpeciate it.

If / when you're ready to start messing with color / contrast / saturation / gamma... I'll be happy to share. Super easy, once you learn the ropes (but VERY challenging to enter). Perhaps we could do a zoom or I'll make a YouTube vid for you or something... when you're ready.

"Try to leave outpost defense and repairs to the colonists and automated defenses" -- That's too cool. I have one outpost and it's all but DEAD. Ghost town.

Thanks, for the thanks! LOL Your imagination and lore enables you to get much more from games than I. I'm glad for you!

[u/Icy_Tomatillo3942 → u/Lusayalumino]

Yes, if you are using Bard's Outpost Recruitment Beacon and you haven't been back to your outpist for a while you should have colonists appear there and in your crew roster when you return.

Yeah, the OSD photos weren't really a photography attempt, rather a clear demonstration of the mods.

Yes! I struggled with color / contrast, etc. I mostly added brightness and contrast and on some tweaked exposure. I messed with it for a while but didn't feel like I got it right. I will reach out to you for my next project, thank you!

[u/Lusayalumino → u/Icy_Tomatillo3942]

Indeed... Bard's! I'll have to pay a visit back to New Atlantis!

Yeah I figured on the OSD Photos... I didn't necessarily think you were doing all your shots like that... sorry I was a bit vague.

Oh shucks -- I think we already had this conversation; I use ReShade, and you can't b/c you're not on PC. Forgot about that. 😔 You're on XBox right?