Building Class: Selected in the ASAM Sensor just above the individual building plans. Examples: furniture store, basic water plant, advanced farm or caravan services, etc.
City Plan: a pre-designed arrangement of plots and/or other workshop items that can be imported via the City Planner's Desk.
Plan or Building Plan: The specific buildings that can be built on a plot.
Plot: The empty area or foundation with an ASAM Sensor that marks the spot you specify for building in your settlements.
Rise of the Commonwealth for Sim Settlements 2: Collection of 36 upgradeable City Plans for Sim Settlements 2, covering every vanilla and DLC settlement! Download RotC for SS2 on Nexus.
Vit-o-Matic: The device used to read S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats of NPCs. Also known as a Vigor Tester.
¶ Plot
Plots are objects placed through the Sim Settlements 2 Workshop menu that designate where a Building Plan will be built.
Plots can be one of seven different Plot Types and several different Plot sizes, each of which is chosen and placed by the player, or through the use of City Plans and Layouts.
Each Plot type has a number of Building Classes and Building Plans, which can be chosen through the ASAM Sensor. If no choice is made, Sim Settlements 2 will randomly choose a Building Plan.
¶ Plot Status
In order for a Plot to provide its benefits to the settlement, certain requirements must be met. Most often, the requirements are that the Plot is powered, and a settler is assigned, though this can vary depending on the building plan used on the plot.
There are two ways to determine if a plot is Active:
If you believe a plot to be inactive, you can confirm by activating the ASAM Sensor which will reveal any issues in the Status line at the top of the menu.
Once any issues are resolved with the Status, the plot will quickly be restored to Active and the benefits will be re-applied to the settlement.
¶ Building Class
Building Classes are groups of related Building Plans that can be applied to Plots.
Building Classes can be chosen through the ASAM Sensor. When you select a Building Class, a Building Plan with be randomly selected by Sim Settlements 2 from among the currently available list of Building Plans in that Building Class for that Plot Type.
¶ Building Plan
Building Plans are specific building designs that are applied to Plots.
Building Plans can be chosen through the ASAM Sensor, or randomly selected by Sim Settlements 2 from among the currently available list of Building Plans for that Plot Type.
Building Plans will level up after some time, with each new level increasing the quality of the plan, and changing its appearance to reflect these improvements. Most Building Plans will have three levels, some Add-On packs Building Plans may have fewer.
Many Building Plans are available as soon as a particular Plot Type is unlocked, and many more Building Plans will become unlocked through exploration and completion of quests.
Unlike Plots, many more Building Plans will become available through Add-On packs.
¶ City Plan
A City Plan is a pre-designed arrangement of Plots and/or other Workshop items that can be imported via the City Planner's Desk.
Plots from City Plans are placed when the City Plan is applied, but they will not be fully built yet.
City Plans can be either one-level, that are complete once all the included Plots are assigned and built, or they can be multi-level, and will add more Plots and Workshop items as time passes and the settlement grows.
Sim Settlements 2 comes prepackaged with one-level City Plans for each of the vanilla settlements.
Many more City Plans, most multi-level, will be available as Add-On packs.
¶ Layout
A Layout is a pre-designed arrangement of Plots and/or other Workshop items that can be imported via the Workshop.
Building Plans imported via Layouts can be already built at various levels.
Layouts are also referred to as Workshop Framework Layouts and/or WSFW Layouts.
¶ Virtual Storage
Virtual Storage is used to hold resources and caps allotted to be used by Sim Settlements 2 to build and level-up Building Plans and pay for the upkeep of Plots which have already been built.
Each Industrial Plot provides an amount of Virtual Storage which increases as the Building Plan levels up.
Additional Virtual Storage may be added through the construction of Storage Containers which are found in the Sim Settlements 2 Workshop menu.
When settlements are connected by Caravans, they will share a common Virtual Storage pool.
Resources generated by Industrial Plots will be placed in Virtual Storage as long as space is available either at the settlement or anywhere within the Caravan Network.
Resources can also be donated directly to Virtual Storage by the player through the Donate section of the City-Planners-Desk.
The Virtual Storage system is fundamental to Sim Settlement 2's economy, and exists to allow production to be balanced with construction and maintenance costs.