Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

Thank you, D_B

Yep, when I played through the Vault88 story, I did the same as you.

I can say from experience, experience is what it takes to get that power stuff sorted. It's pretty damn easy IF it works but a pain in the neck if you changed something and the power fails in a remote part of the structure. Save early, save often, as the saying goes. Also from experience (meaning disassembling and rearranging) I learned a lot, particularly about the atrium parts, later came the overseer and wide halls and all that. It's not simple when you start doing that for the first time but now, I'm restructuring and expanding and dismantling and all that, round and round.. hehe

mandru, I'll take a look

[Art Blade]

checked, they're quite something, your settlements, mandru

[KingRat]

I thought this conduit build was pretty interesting, especially the way conduit was used to get power to the security office and vault door area from the reactor. He put up another vid a few days earlier then realized he didn't need to run power out to the construction area  

[Art Blade]

yeah, that was nice. Crazy how you can carry around the entire (conduit) wiring of a whole vault

So far, I haven't used those elements. Outside the vault, like everyone else the normal actual wiring, and inside my settlement, it is just as simple as this: Power flows through vault floor tiles. As long as you have a seamless floor tile connection starting from the reactor, you won't have any problems unless it glitches out. If you don't get your lights on, then slap in one of those vault wall conduit thingies that snap into the centre of any vault wall, and then you'll have light/power for several blocks away from that point. Rinse and repeat.

***

I decided to dismantle the whole place and to extend the outer wall. Now the concrete wall is three instead of two tiles tall and almost completely engulfs the whole green building area. NOW it is big

The reason was that I when I started to build this settlement, it was an experiment around the water source in the middle and later an experiment with Vault-Tec stuff. I learned a lot and now I need something that makes more sense.

What I had was a 3x3 centre (water) and the floor surrounding it was 2 tiles wide, so effectively a 5x5 square I couldn't actually use (except hanging pics from the walls) and since I built the atrium around it, the floors above weren't accessible, so basically I had a 5x5 unusable space with a big roof covering it up. And everything surrounding that square was comparatively clumsy thanks to the fact that you can't just slap in a separating wall -- you need to w0#k through everything that creates a sealed room with corners and doorways and matching tiles on the other side and so forth.. so I even need to rethink the water purifier. It will obviously stay but I am likely to change the water hole layout (base tiles) so I can this time build upwards. When I said earlier that I couldn't build the third floor, then it was because part of the purifier intruded the space of a wall -- and that's that. The only reasonable thing to do is rip it down and start new. And BIGGER 

Here, w0#k in progress, again. I did change the brightness of most of the pics.. at night, it's hard to see for you guys and I didn't want to wait until sunrise 

this is where I used to take the other screenshots from, and now the wall is behind it, so it is inside the build area now. Before, it ended roughly where the left blue "roof" ends
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the building I use to take screenies from, from the corner of my new wall
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Also new, I expanded to the other side as well so the actual Starlight Drive-In now is inside the walls. Foreground, that lit cube, it is a temporary home for Nick and Dogmeat while I'm building, next to it another one with a bed. I commanded them to sit there so I can build without them getting in the way all the time. That cube used to be at the end of the area, behind it was the wall.
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same thing, only walked quite a few paces backwards. You can guess the silhouette of the shed with the w0#k bench in it. The bright thing is part of the overseer's office. See how I get power everywhere, even when it looks like a Swiss cheese
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Here a look at the back side of those cubes and a good view at Starlight Drive-In, from the corner of my new wall
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view across to the building from the roof of which I usually take screenies. You can tell the wall behind it is quite a bit away. The new compound is huge. Note the EXIT with red lights.. now it's just decoration. I removed all that stuff. Compare with my prior post, there's the same exit to be seen
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once more that building and far in the back, the Starlight Drive-In
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This finally is again from the roof of said building See the deconstruction in progress
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[Dweller_Benthos]

Pretty nice. Of course, if you're attacked they will just spawn inside, but you have the mod for that, right?

Usually Piper never got in the way when I was building, once I started up the build mode, she usually just wandered off somewhere and I would find her at the bar or milling around with the other useless settlers. I never made her sit anywhere. Dogmeat has his dog house he sits in alongside another dog I got from that guy who sells dogs.

[Art Blade]

Yep, got the mod that prevents any and all attacks on settlements.

You're right, during build mode, they wander around or take a rest. But as soon as I hit ESC, they come flying at me. And that was more than distracting more than once

Meanwhile, I did what I said and relocated the borders of the water hole. Still 3x3 but now I can build upwards. Here's just a proof of concept. The "water tower" is in the left half of the pic with those windows and is three stories tall. On top of it, like a roof, is a floor that spans in every direction and basically ignores the water tower below it.

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Oh, I found THE solution for the logic gate door lock. I replaced the inside switch with a power toggle. Now, power toggled on (green light) and the door is open. Outside, it shows the green light on the switch. That's the way it is supposed to be. When I walk outside, I flip the switch, door closes, switch shows read, good. At the same time, the inside power toggle shows a green light which is correct -- there is power for the switch outside to w0#k. Basically only the outside switch can open the door, when it's powered and switched on. On the inside, I can only toggle the power to off and close the door

The improvement: Once inside, toggle the power switch, and all goes dead, door shut. Outside, no lights at all, which is good. So I don't have to run outside and switch it to off and then go back in and switch that to off, too, to shut the door.. it's actually a one-flip-only act to open or close the door on either side. Without irritating wrong indicators. FINALLY -- that's what I had been looking for.

The traffic lights are powered and are well visible on both sides as long as the door is open. Once the door is shut, they're switched off, too, because the whole wall lost its power

outside
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inside
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[Art Blade]

Do you know what is really, I mean REALLY annoying? If a light bulb hanging from a tile that is connected straight to a 500 power super reactor DOESN'T get any electricity. Dead spots, whatever. Observe in the background, that light comes from the same reactor. HOW THE HELL IS THIS POSSIBLE Now I can start to wire up the place or throw the game out the window. RAAAAAAHHH!

FO4 Vault-Tec bug
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[mandru]

I know it's a stupid question but is the generator turned on?  Otherwise it looks like the generator is insulated from the floor.

I'd try placing a vertical wire connection point (I don't have the game open, is that called a conduit, pylon, or a terminal?) to the panel the generator is sitting on or a tile immediately abutting its location and run a line forcing power into the panel. 

I don't have the DLC that adds that huge generator so I'm unfamiliar with its quirks.  I'm under the impression that when in build mode and I'm placing lights if I hold a light up to a powered location where I'm planning on placing it the light will start glowing before I actually affix it.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yep, power stuff like that drove me mad too. I'd have to string a wire to a connector or use a conduit with a power distributor on the top side of a floor like that to power lights that are attached on the lower side. Seems some of the floor/wall/roof parts let power flow and some don't. You've just found one that doesn't or is just one tile too far from the power source for the power to flow to that tile. Infuriating.

But the door with the lights is pretty cool, so the traffic light can be controlled to have a certain one of the three lights on? I never knew that, I just stuck one in Marcy Long's bedroom so that it would cycle the lights in sequence all night. Sleep with that on all the time, you ungrateful.....

[mandru]

For Marcy?  I would think in addition to what you have set up now several out of sequence strobes flashing randomly would also be fitting.

If there was a big hairy knife switch that could be remotely controlled to make a regular clunking sound it would be the icing on the cake. 

[Art Blade]

 

the traffic light works as you described it, D_B. Obviously you can't see that in the stills aka screenshots. When I said "green/red light" then I was referring to the switch and power toggle as they too have got red and green lights.

mandru, the generator is switched on, hence my comment, "Observe in the background, that light comes from the same reactor."

[mandru]

I was aware you'd said "Observe in the background, that light comes from the same reactor."  what I was wondering was if it was possible that the power illuminating that other light was leaking in from some other source.  Simply trying to trouble shoot and check off the boxes for what it couldn't be.

But beyond that have you figured out how to overcome this glitch yet?

[Art Blade]

No. I already ran into the same problem before, and this time it was a floor tile adjacent to the generator what I called reactor, that thing that looks like a sea mine from WWII, top right in the pic.

No, unfortunately I haven't found a solution, it's a proper bug and there are more people with the same problem/bug. I found a w0#k-around, same as described by D_B: you wire it the old-fashioned way.

[Art Blade]

After the frustration I decided to go back a save and see how to proceed. In the end I dared to revert to that save with the bug and see wether I could find a way to fix it.

I did.

The fix is equally mind-boggling as the bug. Here the fix (I'll explain below the pics) and the proof that it works

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What you see in the first pic is a connection from the old power house (you can see the 2x2 hole in the floor where the reactor/generator used to be, top right in the pic, looking up at the hole) via two sloped hallways with stairs inside, to the ground floor in the centre of the pic.

So essentially, in order to get power in the tile next to the generator somewhere else on the fourth floor, I needed to connect the old powerless building's fourth floor with the ground floor, using a new connection. The ground floor and the fourth floor were already connected but the game didn't accept that.

Wow.

[Art Blade]

That wasn't enough for me.. I needed to find out more

I had a hunch: It's got to do with the ground floor.

All floors must be connected to the ground floor via floor tiles. I experimented a bit and here you see why I ran into a powerless light bulb respectively why I now got power: I replaced the stairs in the background left with a sloped hallway (with stairs inside) that connects with floor tiles. (I had removed the connection shown above, so this was the only new connection)

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So, the part I had missed out on was that the "vault" had gaps in the floors. It didn't matter where I put the power generator (it still is ridiculous that the bulb didn't get any juice despite sitting next to a power radiating source) but it did matter that all elements of a building weren't connected via floor tiles and I believe the ground floor is vital for it to w0#k, so.. that's that. I tried several of such connections across the building (always connecting the 4th floor and the ground floor) and always the power went back on. So the 4th floor hadn't got a connection to the ground floor and the light bulb was considered hanging from a tile connected to a part that wasn't connected to the ground floor.. lol Doesn't really make sense but I think I got it sorted and somehow know why.