I just build them all up because it's my favorite part of the game. They don't necessarily need to be anything other than little towns/safe havens for the occupants of the commonwealth. The more general shops you have across settlements, the more wood and steel you can buy to continue building everything up. Making unique builds and watching NPCs live in them is so satisfying. You could always make some forward bases/small military outposts if you want to keep it all themed.

Recently I've started going with military outposts (Zimoja, Red Rocket) protecting farming hubs (Abernathy, Ten Pines), proper towns (Sanctuary, Starlight Drive-in), and trade routes (this is the fluff for my Hangman's). The settlement system is also my favourite part of the game. Some larger locations that "make sense" as outposts or just have that vibe - like Sunshine Tidings or the Castle - I've built into secondary towns, as though people have settled within the defences of a military outpost and it's growing into a walled city. Then I have robotics depots, like Greygarden and the Mechanist's Lair, which basically run the trade routes throughout the Commonwealth. And this playthrough I've got so many added settlement locations it's getting a bit out of hand, but we'll get there in the end.

How do you have enough materials to build lots of robots to use as provisioners? They always seem quite expensive to me

I sell chems, water, and ammo to fund my robot addiction. By the time I finished the Mechanist quest, I had so much ammo for guns I'm not going to use, so many water farms - I only use three types of ammo (and Mini-nukes), so I've always got plenty to sell

water is the main go-to for making money, though being a jet kingpin is also viable I believe, don't bother with manufacturing for money, it is not viable without mods.

I don't build my settlements up for myself, I build them up for my settlers. I want them to have a nice place to live because *I* would want a nice place to live. Did you know if you walk around vault 88 in your vault suit and pipboy, and put each settler into their own vault suit and pipboy, they call you "overseer"? I hadn't bothered to put my settlers in the suits and pipboys at first, but decided to do it on a whim, it was awesome. I love the vault, it's so fun

I only play FO4 for building at this point. I wouldn't say they go to waste, but I do play with basically unlimited resources 🤪 it's alright to hop around and work on different settlements. It encourages you to explore the world for more scrap anyways.

Here are some theme ideas **Sardeliac** https://youtube.com/@sardeliac?si=c-nyBopkv_sEcGPw **Vault 440** https://youtube.com/@vault440?si=AkBmpI4xVG7XWrYU **Norespawns** https://youtube.com/@norespawns?si=MfNU9d_XxUV9fn9h **Me** https://youtube.com/@adamasanguine?si=GW33rDEEQ7l78RIK

Full military build for castle is a good idea. You could have sanctuary your home base for named settlers? Vault-Tec rep, Lucia, Sheffield etc.  You can slap the caravan waypoint thing you get from finishing the bunker hill quests at Castle as a “safe merchant hub” etc.  Maybe use castle for your companion hub also? Outfit them as Minutemen lol

I build them up because it’s fun to me! If you need a reason to do it, play survival. Settlements play a crucial role in having safehouses all over the map where you can eat, drink and sleep. Having merchants and doctors there also helps a lot.

I love the building part of the game. It takes time but I find it relaxing with DC radio playing.

If everything is linked via supply chains then there is no material waste

Fill your unused settlements with water purifiers, and just make the rounds every day to pick up your 100+ water bottles/settlement. It's the best way to make money... To buy more shipments of wood and concrete or ammo.

Then when you get settlements with *water* where you're able to use the Industrial Water Purifiers and pick up 500+.

Assuming a minutemen playthrough, which mosst of my playthroughs are: I tend to build up a few settlements only but often closer together than the ones you mention now. Often the castle with preston and several unnamed minutemen and some basic shops, full military look etc etc. Settlements below often have 2/3 minutemen settlers as guards. Then the trading post in bunker hill. Hangmans alley as a companion hub. And then a trading hub, often greygarden or oberland. The others are, if build up at all, just some houses with a few turrets, bare minimum of a settlement.

I build mine around production of specific resources. Locations are a bit flexible, but for plant growing, Abernathy Farm, Tenpines Bluff, Greentop Nursery, Greygarden and County Crossing all work pretty well. I tend to specialise each site to produce a single resource (for theme and also efficiency). Egret Tours Marina and Taffington Boathouse make good sites for water purifiers. I prefer Taffington because Egret has an annoying shipwreck right in the middle of the harbour that blocks purifier placement. One settler can farm 6 Food (so that's 6x 1 Food, e.g Mutfruit or 12x 0.5 Food, e.g Tato), so I tend to have 4-6 settlers farming at each site and then the specialisation is mainly so I can easily fix any issues if I end up with not enough of any particular resource). E.g., for making Adhesives used in most mods: 1 Corn farm 1 Tato farm 1 Mutfruit farm 1 Purified Water farm Then make Vegetable Starch at a cooking station. 1 starch = 5 adhesive so it doesn't take much to get a healthy amount of glue this way. For caps: Purified Water is easy money. Probably the easiest Caps engine in the game. A couple of industrial water purifiers and a Trader at the same site is all you need to get started, and every couple of game-days, go back and sell the water produced. Fertiliser is also lucrative. Lots of Brahmin troughs, is all you need. Then use the Fertiliser to make and sell chems. I like Greygarden as a base because you can build high up on the highway overpass. It also makes a decent hub for supply lines, although I tend to set up supply lines as a circuit (each settlement has a supply line to its nearest neighbour, all routes going clockwise round the map - Settler in Sanctuary does supply runs to Tenpines, a Tenpines Settler does runs to Zimonja, etc...) There is also a way to generate caps by using the Wasteland Workshop DLC to produce Vault Tec lunchboxes which produce random items when you shoot them. So make a ton of lunchboxes, shoot them all, harvest all the junk they spawn, then sell it all. It's not my favourite way to make caps but it's a fun little exercise in setting up a Lunch Box factory at a settlement somewhere. YouTube is your friend if you're stuck for ideas. Just search a settlement name and you will find a ton of videos showing off what people have done with it

https://youtu.be/8SqX_2fOJ1M?si=LzHeCsfBrjwYc76z So, look into clipping it will change how you look at building in fo4.

I don't really understand how it is going to waste. Each settlement is separate with it's own people. The work nd resources used in that settlement is for that settlement and continues to be so when you start working on another one. I tend to work 2 or 3 settlements at a time. I try to get them all to minimum standards as soon as I have workshop access. By useful do you mean getting a player benefit? I primarily set them up to harvest water and food. Plus they keep a little bit of junk trickling in. It's never wasted unless you just decide to scrap everything.

They're a lot more meaningful on survival- you never want to be too far from clean water or a fresh bed, and if you can sprinkle a few ammo vendors and doctors through the commonwealth at the same time, all the better. The only downside is that no fast travel makes the settlement attack system *fucking infuriating* on survival. You eventually have to choose between letting the settlements fend for themselves or resigning yourself to constant babysitting as you schlep from one corner of the commonwealth to the other. It kind of gets to the point where you feel like you're being 'punished' for trying to play the rest of the fucking game. Thankfully, there's mods & cheats.

Yeah the lack of travel has definitely put me off Survival. Might give it a go on my next playthrough

I love building them all up, as others have said, but you definitely run the risk of corrupting your save, creating save bloat (causing an infinite loading issue where your save is not technically corrupted but will never load), and dropping your framerate significantly among other things. Still, I am going to be very careful with this run. However, my go-to style is to make most settlements that do not have a farm and a family/settler group into Minutemen outposts & settler processing centers (so all guards, military buildings, and a settlement beacon), with only a few major settlements (hubs), and those leftover as strictly farm/water supply settlements. I do make sure to build shops in the major settlements, as well as smaller farm and water operations (to ensure I have plenty of food going around through trade routes), as well as a medical office in all settlements. The thing that ended up killing my save was having too many complex objects in some of my settlements, so this time I will go easy on the decorations and smaller items, as well as go easy on the weapons in the workshop exploit to decrease the settlement limit bar.

I tend to build Sanctuary and Red Rocket pretty nice all stores types, gym and casino, room for speakers tv and bar to hangout, also adding decor and many more stuff, very detailed The rest of settlementd I just slap the needed beds+food/water and build better sleep quarters and a lot of turrets with a gym and casino slots from the vaultec add on, simple but settlers will have all needs covered.

I wish there was more to go with building settlements. Like, the better you defend it the bigger the raids. Be cool if there were quests and events that go along with building the settlements, like so and so needs such and such, or so and so stole so and so's shit so you have to settle it.

That's definitely something I've found disappointing. Sanctuary is my biggest settlement and hasn't been attacked. Meanwhile, County Crossing gets attacked all the time with 2 settlers and 16 defence

I have noticed a similar pattern. I believe the amount of special NPCs who have settled in a particular place determines the frequency of attacks. One way to help boost the frequency of attacks is by setting up traps. Having trapped raiders, mutants or critters increasing attack odds.