Sometime in the Fall of 2021. The scope of the project is massive and we’re still hard at work. We’re close enough to commit to sometime in the next 3 months though! Once we’re certain of a date, we’ll make it known.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "Gunner Outbreak" mean?
Gunner Outbreak is the the title of the story trailer for Chapter 2 and the unofficial subtitle of Chapter 2.
How big is it going to be?
Total file size will be around 500 MB. We won’t have a final figure until we compile all the files from our voice actors, who are still hard at work.
Will it be released on XBOX?
Yes! The plan is for it to release on both NexusMods.com and Bethesda.net. PC and Xbox releases will be available on day one.
Does it require any additional mods?
Chapter 2 will be its own plugin that requires Sim Settlements 2 to be installed (which itself requires Workshop Framework).
In addition, Chapter 2 does require the official Automatron Fallout DLC.
Do I have to have played Chapter 1 first?
No, but we recommend finishing your Chapter 1 playthrough first for a better and more immersive experience. If you have a save where you finished Chapter 1, you can pick it up right from where it left off!
In the mod’s holotape, we include cheat commands to skip ahead in the story. Chapter 2 was designed for people who want to start a clean playthrough and jump right into the new content – but anyone can use it!
We’ll likely do a recap video to help remind everyone who played Chapter 1 a long time ago, and that will probably be enough to get someone new up to speed.
Who are the Commonwealth Police Department and those Doctors I saw in the trailer?
In addition to continuing the story from the initial release of Sim Settlements 2, Chapter 2 will include several additional questlines introducing new factions and characters that begin to appear as a result of your work restoring the Commonwealth to a thriving region.
We won’t spoil the details, other than to say there are 3 good-sized quest lines in addition to the continuation of the main story – each introducing a number of new characters, factions, and unlocks!
Is it just quests?
No! Patch 2.0.0 will ship the same day (or very close to) as Chapter 2 and will include lots of new features – including a Disease mechanic for settlers, a World Repopulation system whereby the success of your settlements causes other areas to become populated, and a brand new gameplay mode that allows you to establish your own faction headquarters!
Plus more building plans and classes, more recruitable settlers, and tons of stuff to unlock!
All of this will be introduced via quests, but will also be moddable so that other authors can expand these systems outside of our quest lines.
I saw the major FO4 Factions in the trailer, does the SS2 quest impact the main quest?
None of the base game quests are altered by Sim Settlements 2.
Sim Settlements 2’s story tries to remain adjacent to the vanilla main story – acknowledging things you’ve done in it, and occasionally giving you nudges and reasons to engage with it. We’ve also managed some clever integration with a lot of the vanilla characters by reusing voice lines, and taking advantage of the alias system in the Creation Engine to create alternate scenes to some quests without ever editing or breaking them!
The ultimate goal is to make the vanilla Fallout 4 quests and Sim Settlements 2’s quests feel at home with one another – and do so in a way without editing any of the vanilla quests so we can remain maximally compatible with as many mods as possible.
Do I have to do the vanilla quests to play Sim Settlements 2’s quests?
Generally, no. Even in Chapter 1, where you may have found Jake asking you to help the people in the Museum, you don’t actually have to. After killing the raiders, you can exit back out the front door and our scripts trigger everything to continue so you don’t have to engage with Preston if you don’t want to.
Throughout Sim Settlements 2’s Chapters, we will attempt to do similar things – presenting you with options and benefits to engage with the main quest lines of Fallout 4, but not forcing it.
When will the Addon Toolkit be updated?
As soon as we can after release.
Before we release any new mod, we coordinate with interested addon authors that have released content in the past to show them the new features so they can start poking around the systems.
Many of them will be able to reverse engineer what they see, but more importantly, they’ll help steer us in the correct direction before we get into full documentation so we can focus on the stuff they are most interested in expanding on.