What constitutes a "settler"

[Winter Thorne 696]

The company log shows messages about settlers, but it beats the heck out of me what triggers them.  It's not that they built something, it's not that they've stepped foot on the island.  Anyone know what's triggering these?  I have a feeling they could be a lot more helpful than they currently are, and prevent us running all over the place looking for beds and pillars.

[Sinappia 49]

We noticed that sometimes rafts seem to trigger it as well. Beside real structures ofc. But I think there must be something else triggering it as well. Got the message as well when someone was doing a treasuemap - and i watched them the entire time. they did NOT place anything.

[[GP] Guybrush Threepwood 626]

Pretty sure it is based on placing a single structure for the very first time. It provides the co-ordinates. Maybe they just removed the structure soon after.

I know I place a ramp on one island to reach a treasure map then demolished it straight after. The location was recorded in the owners log.

[Sinappia 49]

2 hours ago, [GP] Guybrush Threepwood said:

Pretty sure it is based on placing a single structure for the very first time. It provides the co-ordinates. Maybe they just removed the structure soon after.

I know I place a ramp on one island to reach a treasure map then demolished it straight after. The location was recorded in the owners log.

Not only. 100% certain rafts can trigger it as well. saw a guy approach one of our islands with a raft park it and wam we got the message with the exact coordinates of the raft. He did not place any structures.

[Winter Thorne 696]

Someone in game was saying that it was triggered by any contribution to the tax bank.  I saw the settler message and the person was there gathering mats....didn't build anything.  But you don't see the message from someone just doing a map, even though the gold goes into the tax bank, so who knows?  There's a person who has a base on our island, and you'd think they'd count that as a permanent settler, but we still get occasional messages that he has become a settler, and the count goes up and down with no relation to when he's actually there,

[Meerkat 33]

I don’t think it’s from placing a structure. What would be the point of placing and demoing structures? I get this message too often. 

I figured it could be from dropping anchor, but the contribution to the tax bank is something that I haven’t thought about. That could be it as well. 

[Velius 19]

Pretty sure it is any caused by any player entering the claim radius, whether they set foot on land or not; whether they build/interact or not. It's basically a radar ping when someone who is not in the controlling company enters the vicinity. I do not believe that island territory ends at the shoreline, but extends a bit beyond, so any passing rafts would trigger the message.

[Winter Thorne 696]

2 hours ago, Velius said:

Pretty sure it is any caused by any player entering the claim radius, whether they set foot on land or not; whether they build/interact or not. It's basically a radar ping when someone who is not in the controlling company enters the vicinity. I do not believe that island territory ends at the shoreline, but extends a bit beyond, so any passing rafts would trigger the message.

But we've had people do that and not received the settler message from it.  We have friendly neighbors to the south who come over all the time and they never become settlers.  It has to be something more than that.

[DocOlds 20]

If the person already has stuff on your island, it will give the message as they enter and the coords will be to the stuff they had placed not where they enter.

[Sinappia 49]

The System seems very inconsistent. And I wonder if they are working on it. We currently get the settler-message on a daily base from our settlers that are with us from day 1. they are not doing anything diffrent than they did before. not building anything new.

at the same time - when we got raided recently, we only got the message from the first guy (they built several stuff) and not once any message for the 19 others.

and then we get messages from ppl we see from start to the end till they leave the island and they don't place anything.

[Martyn 246]

It's a buggy broken system.. that's all it is.

[zottel 297]

Throwing stuff also triggers the Message 

[fiz 5]

It seems to be a good thing to know, when there are new settlers on your island.

But the information in the company log seems to be just random. Sometimes we get the message when someone builds something, sometimes not.

Like everything in ATLAS, it could be nice, but the devs just did the half way for a useful feature - a great pity.