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So here's a rough draft of ideas for fleshing out Settlement building some. It's skeletal and not quite complete, but any input/criticism (constructive) is welcome...

Practical Stats
There are three Practical Stats in the game: Coolness Under Fire, Occupational Training, and Authority. These statistics are used situationally to model practical training/understanding the character has gained over their lifetime. Each stat starts with a Rating of D. Whenever a character gains a Promotion in any of their Lifepaths, the Lifepath will note which, if any, Practical Stats that can be raised by the character. Furthermore, all characters roll 2d6 at the end of character generation. If their result is 7-9, they gain a +1 bonus to put in any Practical Stat and if they roll 10+, they gain a +2 bonus that can be placed in any two stats (or the same stat twice).

Coolness Under Fire: Represents ability to withstand stressful physical confrontations. Coolness Under Fire (CUF) is rolled whenever stressful situations arise during physical conflict (i.e. gunfights, battles, melee, etc.) Failure on CUF rolls will often lead to Stress Damage to the character, Mental Traumas, or Suppression. More details in the Combat Section.

• Promotion Option for all Military, Gang Member (Crime), Prisonr (Crime), all Intelligence, and all Police lifepaths.

Occupational Training: Represents practical knowledge on how to maintain infrastructure and help others learn to do so. Occupational Training (O/T) is used to help maintain/rebuild a semblance of society and keep Discontent from ravaging a Settlement. Utilizing one's Occupatoinal Training to direct others greatly reduces free-time for a character. A character making weekly O/T rolls must devote at least one shift a day to this work. O/T rolls can also be made in the field to repair/maintain larger pieces of infrastructure left over from before the Twilight War (e.g. restoring a power plant or water treatment facility). These rolls are made in conjunction with Stamina, Medical Aid, or Tech skills and can benefit from any Specialties that the Referee deems appropriate.

• Promotion Option for Combat Support (Military), Combat Service Suppport (Military), Burglar (Crime), all Blue Collar, all Education, Doctor (White Collar), and Professor (White Collar) Lifepaths.

Authority: Represents ability to effectively organize and maintain social order. Authority is rolled to whenever the character is trying to manage a large group of refugees/settlers. A character making weekly Authority rolls must devote at least shift a day to this work.

• Promotion option for Officer (Military), Police Officer (Police), Detective (Police), Hustler (Crime), Agent (Intelligence), and Manager (White Collar) Lifepaths.

Settlements Skills
Settlements have two Skills that represent the overall health and well-being of the community. They work like other Character Skills and are combined with O/T or Authority rolls for special effects.

Cohesion: Skill that is rated from D to A. Cohesion is a measure of the overall morale of the Settlement and how well the population gets along.

• Authority/Cohesion: Each week, someone devoting time to the esprit de corps of the camp can make an Authority/Cohesion roll. Success on this roll will reduce the Discontent of the Settlement by 1 per Success rolled. This roll can be pushed, but any Mishaps reduce the Supply of the Community.
• Occupational Training/Cohesion: This is used to help rebuild/maintain a level of infrastructure lost during the Twilight War. Every week, after spending 1 Supply, this roll can be made to offset difficulties that have arisen from a Collapse in the Settlement. Success on this roll will stop a single Collapse from happening this week, or end a Collapse previously gained that is still ongoing. It cannot undo permanent losses (like from Flight or Mutiny), however. This roll can be pushed, but any Mishaps further reduce the Supply of the Community.

Population: Skill that is rated from D to A. This represents the overall size and skill-base of the population in a given Settlement. Note that this is not linked to specific numbers of people. A D-rated Settlement could be large, but relatively unskilled while an A-rated Settlement could be a small number of highly skilled specialists that are part of a larger group of refugees.

• Authority/Population: Each week, after spending 1 Supply, a character can make an Authority/Population to divvy up work for the refugees/settlers to accomplish. Each Success rolled on this can be devoted to Shifts of work in any of the following areas: Facility, Upkeep, Gathering, Keeping Watch, Scrounging, Foraging, Hunting/Fishing, or Cooking. This roll can be pushed, but any Mishaps further reduce the Supply of the Community.
• Occupational Training/Population: Passive roll that is used to handle fair and equitable distribution of resources to a Settlement. Each week, this roll helps ease the stresses of living in a Settlement on the edge. Success on this roll reduces any Discontent damage from Shortages by 1. This roll can be pushed, but any Mishaps reduce the Supply of the Community.

Skills for a Settlement can be increased by spending Supplies as if they were XP or through role-playing/mission rewards (e.g. after saving a group of refugees from marauders, if they are convinced to join a group's settlement, the group could raise either the Population or Cohesion by 1 step). Spending Supplies to increase a Settlement Skill can only be done once per Month and can only increase a given Skill one Step.

Settlement Capacities
Discontent: Discontent acts like Hit boxes for a Community, representing the emotional and physical well-being of its members. A Community has a Number of Discontent boxes equal to the average of the O/T die sizes for the characters running the community. If a Community ever suffers more Discontent than they have available boxes, then the Community suffers a Collapse. Discontent can be lowered through the use of the O/T or Authority stats. Also, whenever a Shortage is resolved, reset the Discontent of a Settlement to 0.
Supplies: Supplies act like Stress boxes for a community. Community demands will deal damage to the Supplies available. Supplies must be gathered in the field or provided from Facilities. A single Spare Part (of any type) or three Rations can be instead converted into two Supplies for a Settlement (this is a one-way conversion, Supplies cannot be turned back into Spare Parts or Rations). This conversion can only be done at the moment a Spare Part/Ration is discovered/foraged/hunted/scounged. If a community ever runs out of Supplies, then the community suffers a Shortage.

Collapse
A Community Collapse is a breakdown of the social order of a settlement, similar to how Stress and Mental Traumas work. If a Community ever takes more Discontent than they have available Discontent Capacity then the community will break down in some way. Make a 1d10 roll on the following table to determine the effect of the Collapse on the Settlement. Most Collapses stay in effect until resolved with a O/T and Cohesion roll while some are permanent (or have a time span in their description)

1. Goldbricking: -1 to Population rolls
2. Dissent in the ranks: -1 to Cohesion rolls
3. Petty crimes: 1 Supply damage per week until successful Authority/Command roll is made or a culprit is found
4. Tensions are high: Each week a CUF/Cohesion roll must be made, if failed, a brawl breaks out injuring some folk and/or damaging some equipment
5. The Blues: The first success on any Authority/Cohesion rolls to reduce Discontent is ignored for four weeks.
6. Sabotage/Dereliction of Duty: A Facility or Vehicle is damaged. Damaged facilites cannot produce until half (round down) of their build requirements are re-applied. Damaged vehicles have their Reliability reduced one step.
7. Crime: A major crime (murder, assault, etc.) occurs in the Settlement. Everyone is unnerved (reducing the maximum Discontent boxes by 1) until the culprit is found.
8. Hoarding: All Supply costs for O/T and Authority actions are doubled.
9. Mutiny: Reduce the Cohesion by 1 step. If this takes the Cohesion below a D-rating, then the Settlement completely dissolves.
10. Flight: Reduce the Population by 1 step. If this takes the Population below D-rating, then the Settlement completely dissolves.

Shortage
Shortages are long-term conditions that can only be relieved by specific missions to alleviate the Shortage. This can be used to drive the plot for a game as the PCs work to relieve shortages for a Settlement. When a Shortage happens the GM will determine what the Settlement needs and it will be on the PCs to find a way to meet the need. Shortages continue even after Supplies are added back to a Settlement. Only specific conditions set by the Referee can end a Shortage.
Each week a Shortage is in effect, the Discontent of a Settlement goes up by 1. A Settlement can suffer from multiple Shortages at once, increasing the Discontent appropriately each week. If a Shortage is ever resolved, immediately reset the Discontent of a Settlement to 0.

Some interesting ideas - I’ll have to go through them in more detail before I give a view.

Are they inspired by Dungeon World’s settlement generation process? (Which I think would be good to adapt to T2K now that I think about it, including the use of fronts / emerging danger and threats)

Some interesting ideas - I’ll have to go through them in more detail before I give a view.

Are they inspired by Dungeon World’s settlement generation process? (Which I think would be good to adapt to T2K now that I think about it, including the use of fronts / emerging danger and threats)

I don't think they're really inspired by anything in particular. I tried to build a system that worked within the existing T2K framework (mimicking Hit/Stress boxes, Mental Traumas, etc) while giving some specific talents to PCs and uses to allow Bases to operate without the PCs taking all the work on... Now, they devote some shifts during a week and can have the refugees do the work while others spend time maintaining the peace/supplies.

It's meant to bolt on rather than replace what's in the Base section... just extra stuff you can do.

Plus I really thought that civilians not getting anything from a Promotion during character generation was uneven... I thought the best idea would be to give civilians skills in maintaining/restoring social order/infrastructure... that way they're bringing something to the table in survival.

This is pretty clever, on the whole. I like how it uses mostly familiar mechanics and terms. I wish they were actually a little less familiar because I think it is a unique mechanic that deserves it's own consideration.

I had a hard time parsing the Practical Stats part at first, and on a second review I'm not sure I like adding these aspects to characters. I'm not sure what size settlements you were thinking about, but I'm imagining full towns and villages, and these stats as presented seem to give outsize power to PCs and individuals. On my initial reading I thought they were stats of the settlements themselves and I think I liked that concept much better. I do like the motivation of giving PCs, especially civilian background ones, a tangible purpose in this system. It strikes me as a useful and meaningful "downtime" activity, which is something I've been abstractly bolting on myself more and more.

Unlike characters, I think it should be explicitly possible for "skills" to go both up and down in response to events or just over time.

The scale of spare parts to supplies seems way off. But again, maybe I'm imagining settlements of a much larger scale than you are.

Manually assigning out shifts of work resulting from successes on an authority/population roll seems clunky and unnecessary to me. It would be much easier if they had a standard plan, and the roll only influenced how effective that is, or the output of that plan only deviated following an event.

Having relief of a shortage reset Discontent to 0 potentially creates some perverse incentives, and immersion-breaking. Although upon re-reading it seems that shortages are the only source of discontent, which is weird, but I guess invalidates my comment here?

Like I said though, some good ideas here for supporting a longer-term campaign in the same area!

I had a hard time parsing the Practical Stats part at first, and on a second review I'm not sure I like adding these aspects to characters. I'm not sure what size settlements you were thinking about, but I'm imagining full towns and villages, and these stats as presented seem to give outsize power to PCs and individuals. On my initial reading I thought they were stats of the settlements themselves and I think I liked that concept much better. I do like the motivation of giving PCs, especially civilian background ones, a tangible purpose in this system. It strikes me as a useful and meaningful "downtime" activity, which is something I've been abstractly bolting on myself more and more.

Yeah, I went back and forth on that. In the end, I landed on making them character stats to kind of create the possibility for the types of stories you see in post-apoc fiction... the protagonists are the shoulders on which the masses of refugees hopes rest upon. Since it was meant to bolt-on to the existing Base Rules, which are 100% only about what the PCs did, I thought this was the best way to both satisfy my discontent about a missing piece of mechanics for Civilian characters and create something that mimics stuff like "I used to be a civil engineer" or "I know how to work a hydroelectric dam" that you see often in post apoc fiction.

Unlike characters, I think it should be explicitly possible for "skills" to go both up and down in response to events or just over time.

Yeah, this definitely could use some more fleshing out... this was a first, high level stab... beyond Collapse causing Skills to change, what other suggestions do you have?

The scale of spare parts to supplies seems way off. But again, maybe I'm imagining settlements of a much larger scale than you are.

Another good point. Once again, this was meant to work alongside the rules as presented in the Base Building section of the players book and keep it fast and loose enough to not need to re-balance things like Scounging/Scavenging and the like. It would definitely need a balance pass or two, but the idea that converting Rations/Spare Parts to Supplies was less about real-world parity and more about creating a risk/reward mechanic within the existing ruleset without needing to re-invent the wheel. The fact that when you find Rations/Spare Parts you can instead turn your find into Supplies means that you didn't break down that truck for Vehicle Parts and instead found that the Tractor Trailer was destined for a Target and was totally untouched, providing Supplies for the community.

Manually assigning out shifts of work resulting from successes on an authority/population roll seems clunky and unnecessary to me. It would be much easier if they had a standard plan, and the roll only influenced how effective that is, or the output of that plan only deviated following an event.

That's not a terrible idea... I just figured giving out Shifts worth of success would let the players determine what was needed at the time... a Rota probably does the same thing more quickly... need to think more.

Having relief of a shortage reset Discontent to 0 potentially creates some perverse incentives, and immersion-breaking. Although upon re-reading it seems that shortages are the only source of discontent, which is weird, but I guess invalidates my comment here?[/qupte]
Shortages happen when Supplies run out. Supplies run out when you try to use some of the "Moves", from some Collapses, or when you Push any of the Settlement rolls and get Mishaps. Everything is interconnected. It definitely needs a few passes for balance.

Again, I think you just need to settle on what the scale/goal is. If you see the Settlement as 20 people in a fort, then I think your decisions are supporting that just fine. The lens I was looking at it through is more like a village of 1000, or larger. And from that perspective some of that stuff just didn't feel right. A place that big should have a life of its own beyond the PCs dictating things, and with limited ability to change it. The smaller it is, the more likely a single PC can make major changes.

I do agree there should still be a place for a PC to contribute and influence even a very large settlement. That just means treating them as "help" or some similar mechanic, rather than the whole dice roll. The possible effect gets smaller the larger the place is. The same would be true of supplies.

Ever played Rebel Inc Escalation? It's a counter-insurgency game that's on a different scale than what's being discussed here, but it has some pretty cool, straightforward ideas when it comes to quickly simulating this sort of thing.