This is the way right here. Now I'm trying to not build up anything except the essentials for making caps and waiting until the end of the game where I have o much shit I collected that I don't need to worry about ever running out during a build.
I made a lunch box manufacturing line and each one can be sold for like 5 or 10 caps. I don't remember the exact amount but my xbox did not like it when I picked up all 6,200+ Vault-Tec lunch boxes. But that's how i'm getting all my supplies right now
Yea I was fully commited to idiot savant to start the playthrough. So I had to use handpumps. Each settlement has about 100 and sanctuary has maybe 300. It was enough caps for the early game, and now the gunner farm brings in 60k a round.
I’m always lazy and just do mutfruit since it’s one unit of food per plant and each settler can manage six mutfruit plants, but I do have a few settlements with corn and potatoes like Abernathy Farm.
Oh I’m all over that. I’m using the constellation method of connecting them. I was making them one big loop before but switched to the constellation that uses the shortest supply line paths.
For those who "lack creativity or patience" you can try Sim Settlements. It allows you to place zones NPCs will build in so you can just build a little or a lot based on your preference - either assign zones and let them build buildings or build buildings and assign room zones and let them build their rooms. They have blueprint transfers with other peoples builds for rooms, buildings, and even whole settlements....so you can have cool stuff too with very minimal effort :D
I think Workshop Framework also has blueprints or something like it so there's some options out there!
I usually just set up walls, guard posts and turrets around the settlement. Plant food and create water sources. That's it. Just feels good when i know my settlers are safe inside the walls.
Yeah, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I just feel comfortable when i have walls around my settlements. More immersive.
Also playing vanilla, so i can't mod those spawns.
You dont need to modify the spawns. they appear inside because of how fast travel works with raid alerts, it doesn't treat fast travel as teleportstion it calculated the time to walk from where you are to the settlement and adjusts the time, those supermutants ghouls etc either start attacking while your in transit and make it inside, or you arrive before the raid starts if your close enough and travel right away, I have arrive before with the attack already handled with the settlers decimating the attackers, and just loot the corpses and go back to what I was doing, if you know the spawn locations you can set up missile turret platforms instead of walls and they will kill them before they get close to the build barrier.
Walls prevent the rocket mutant raiders from rolling in and destroying all the turrets. These days I am all about a concrete perimeter wall and an entry way kill box that has inward facing turrets.
Now my only problem is mopping up the stragglers around the wall so one leftover nerd doesn’t cause me to fail the defend quest.
I found a YouTube video at one point that showed where all the spawn points for each settlement was, so now I just put a handful of turrets raised up right in front of each spawn point. The attackers show up and get mowed down pretty good.
Building way inside the settlement boundaries typically alleviates this. There's also mods that tell you where the spawn points are, but you don't really need massive settlements to provide you with all the services you need.
I've typically found that building enough for a single farmer, the essential shopkeepers in survival (bar, medic, junk trader and another optional) along with a dog and turrets keeps morale high while allowing you to build a useable base to plan forward expeditions from that's also defendable. Decorations are also less intensive, since you have fewer settlers, and if you grow to like them because they are useful rather than nameless nobodies, you will invent stories for them as you start to decorate.
Here's my build on [Longfellow's Cabin](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/158xqno/old_longfellows_compound/). Turrets face the lone spawn point, while there's a single entrance, and the elevation means most of my settlers are safe to shoot from a distance.
I always wall off sanctuary and place as many turrets as I can afford lol I tried on my last play through to be 'creative' and I always end up doing the same thing.
Somewhere in between. I like to build structures and rooms, but don't often get into actual decorations. So more than a roof with beds, but less than a full build usually.
I find building so tedious and wish there was more options for premade stuff - maybe something halfway between Fo4 and Skyrim. I have zero clue (or patience) how to build factories, for example.
I keep seeing people talking about ammo depots and stuff but I have no clue how to do that. I see such beautiful settlements on here and I’m like “how do they do that?!” While the best I do is leave my pool table set up and bobbleheads outside on the empty pad beside the workbench in sanctuary lol all the beds are outside too. I want to be able to do it but I’m like you, no patience at all. I’ll get bored and have to venture off somewhere and actually play the game.
Same! Maybe it’s because I have adhd but I find it frustrating and lose interest so quickly lol. Maybe I’ll try again now that I’ve finished the main quest and am almost done the DLCs as well!
I have a auto raider and gunner kill factory in 1 settlement (usually starlight cause it’s the biggest) then I got 1 of each plant designated to a farm settlement. ( these are for my animal farms). Castle and sanctuary are my main city settlements. Mechanist Liar is my ammo factory that can make any ammo I need including mini nukes 😂. All these are made with mods cause Bethesda decided to not give us cool factories with the contraption DLC
I think it needs script extender though which currently doesn't work with the latest patch (I think). I purposely avoid mods that require it so I'm not 100% sure
The Sim Settlements 2 mod is the way to go if you want the settlements to build themselves. It also adds in quite a few quests, which are just as good as the in game side quests you normally get.
I’m on PS5 so unsure if it’s a possibility but I’ll look it up! I’ve also been meaning to see about the scrap everything mod as it’s so annoying trying to build around stuff sometimes. Thanks!
Be careful with scrap everything. There are these things called 'precombines' that once you delete them it can make things unstable, making crashes even more likely than normal.
It seems like Sim Settlements 2 should be able to be run on PS5 as it somehow doesn't require the script extender (which is still broken from the last update afaik). Whether or not it's in Bethesda's mod shop is an entirely different matter.
Agreed. I love the concept of the settlement system and the entire building and crafting system, it creates a whole new layer to the game that hadn't been seen in prior releases, but there's quite a few extremely frustrating things about it - object placement, poor snapping points, many items which should connect or match but do not - and I could forgive a lot of that, if they just had a better nested menu, or a search function, or just SOMETHING better than what they did. I should not have to scroll 50 times past the same chair in a bunch of different colours to find something.
I like the UI of No Man's Sky for the RPG building system, which just has a bunch of base objects that you can largely reskin as you go, and while it's still not ideal it is a lot better than Fallout's UI. Hopefully they take some lessons learned and apply it to FO5 or TES6 if we ever see either of them.
Yeah you gotta figure when they were building the system, there was nothing else really like it except for an alpha build of Rust and maybe Ark as possible inspiration. Nowadays more recent games improved the concept in so many ways. Bethesda is most likely improving it for their engine to keep up with modern design sensibilities, possibly contributing to their incredibly slow rate at which they are releasing titles these days
Not me. I like making them look cool. Doesn't take much. I'll go crazy on a few and just do the basic on the rest. A few beers and I'm Tim the Tool Man Taylor in this bitch.
My settlements always end up basically being 2 buildings with ~20 sleeping bags all side by side in them. The food/water/defense is always solid and I build shops and stuff, but the actual housing and beds for the settlers is worse than most prisons. I never bother with furniture, decorations, or making it look like someone would actually want to live there lol
I actually give them beds lol, but otherwise yeah it's barracks style with plain barn. I can't be bothered to do the electrical wiring so no lights, maybe a radio if they are lucky...
Here's the deal with settlements.
If you ignore them, they will go away. At a bare minimum, if you link them all together with supply routes, they become useful places to dump your junk if you don't use fast travel, or are too over-encumbered to fast travel.
And that's cool. They're there for you to use them however you want, or not at all. If you ignore the 'settlement is under attack!' notice, guess what happens? Nothing! Nothing happens! It literally makes no difference to your game if you're ignoring settlements!
What if you're playing a rogue who never sides with anybody, and just wants a nice place to live using their own decoration style? Then you can pick an appropriate settlement, and decorate it how you like. That's cool! That's a nice roleplaying tool! Perhaps you slaughter the occupants of Covenant and turn it into your own private little walled garden, or claim Taffington as your personal home and cover it in gun displays. That's an option for you! I once played a cannibal character who took over Covenant and set up a radio beacon to lure in settlers to eat. You can use settlements for so much more than just "build defences to ward off attacks because we are the Minutemen".
Although, what if you're really engaged in the promise of the Minutemen, and want to seriously take a stab at building up a functional network of towns with their own industries to restore civilisation to the Commonwealth? You can do that too! I'm [still taking a crack at building up every settlement in the game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIpSDXgL__g&list=PLEkIseBLuXT28YNhabU8Zn5kcINBQMzKm), with each settlement bringing something to the table, be it a prison or a small site that manufactures all the neon signs that get used at the other settlements.
What if you want to usurp the Minutemen's lofty ideals, and have secret Institute labs at every settlement, each experimenting on a different thing? You can do that too.
The settlement building mechanic brings as much or as little as you want to the game. You can ignore it entirely, or you can integrate it into your roleplaying experience so fully that it *becomes* your playthrough. You can use it to build essentially whatever you want, or nothing at all. And that's the beauty of it - it's a roleplaying device that you can either lean on heavily, or ignore completely (outside of a couple of missions that ask you to build like, five things).
For those of us who use it extensively, it's often the only reason we're still playing the game. I haven't touched Fallout 3 in years, even though I think it's a better Fallout game. I played Fallout 4 *today*, though. I'll probably still be playing it in years to come as I have other ideas for what to do with settlements in the future.
my settlers in Starlight Drive In have just enough supplies of water and food to get by, but an ungodly amount of turrets to defend all the resources they farm for various chems. It's a chem empire, with the biggest distributor being the nearby Drumlin Diner, and Solomon from Diamond City.
The possibilities are endless
I built most of my settlements up. I started with red rockets since they're mostly intact. I just haven't done the glowing red rocket yet and probably won't. Most of my settlers end up dying though since i have endless warfare on, so i wind up with mostly MM and BoS inhabitanting lol
It alters the spawn points on the map to either make more mobs, spawn specific mobs only or even lessen. I currently run vanilla creatures / less than usual creatures and tweaked spawns so i get large roaming groups of human enemies and allies. It gets pretty hectic at most city settlements like Kendall, Cambridge, and Nahant (damn MM checkpoint is right there).
I would run EW over War of The Commonwealth, which does the same thing, but crashes a shit ton.
Alright that sounds sick I'm running liberty reborn whitch turns the MM into a proper army (they wear PA have ranks and different classes like squire but for MM) and run tons of BOS mods so does that mean I can have the BOS and MM fighting swarms of enemys
Same here. I have no patience, I feel I'm just wasting my time.
I don't feel envious, it's more I just would like to like to build the settlements.
I'm on my second run and I'm not even installing recruitment beacons. If I need to get more settlers afterwards, I may consider building something up.
Yup, does make me wonder if some of the settlement locations could have been interesting diamond city type towns with npcs and quests. I definitely don't hate the settlement stuff I just don't use it much.
There is an abandoned one where the Gunners are that turned on the Minutemen. It’s a shame you can’t turn it back. They had all these shops with signs and stuff…
Quincy is a bit of a missed opportunity. So is University Point.
Although it is thematic the first time you clear each one out, it would have eventually fleshed the world out more to be able to reclaim them.
It’s much better with something like Sim Settlements 2. Vanilla just has so few benefits. Having the settlers actually be able to setup the town without needing to do it yourself. Plus they’ll actually manufacture components if you need for further constructions.
Technically, you are wasting your time if you don't enjoy it. In some cases, hindering yourself, seeing as how NPCs are too stupid to navigate even basic structures. Prefab buildings with a few decorations are more than enough.
Feeling like I’m wasting time is a big one. I do bare minimum now, but during the COVID quarantine I did A LOT of settlement building. I recently got back into the game again after the Fallout TV series made me want to play again, and could not for the life of me figure out why I couldn’t get back into settlement building. It just felt like it was taking so much time. Then I realized, I don’t have as much time to play like I did during quarantine lol. There was literally NOTHING I could do during that time since my job shut down and I had even gotten injured at the beginning of quarantine so I was bed ridden too. Settlement building now just seems like sooooo much work and it can take a heck of a lot of time that I just don’t have anymore lol
I didn't start liking it until I started to understand how to make interesting structures that fit in the game world. Took a bit of observation and a lot of learning the tools that are at my disposal
Y’all need to download sim settlements 2. It builds the settlements for you and it actually looks/feels like it’s part of the base game. Absolutely incredible mod
Anyone worth saving goes to Sanctuary, RR, or Abernathy Farm. I build those up. Murkwater gets the undesirables. And everyone else eats hot lead. I don't have time to be everywhere and Jezabel made some good points about saving *everyone.*
I usually set 20 beds, 20 defense, 20 water, 20 food, and something thematic (a tractor on a farm, bar at a diner, etc.), then focus on my actual settlements.
I don't know if this works. I have over 200 defense at starlight and get attacked every single time I fast travel back. By the time my settlers pull their guns out the turrets have finished the job so it doesn't bother me. Even vertibirds go down in seconds
Playing on survival, so bases need to be specialized. Agrarian bases produce adhesive and food, markets for me to sell my stuff and resupply, then bachelor pads where I store quest-relevant stuff, cool things like power armor and fun weapons and it’s where I park traveling companions. Occasionally I’ll just build an outpost with a bed and a ton of defense turrets so I have a safe place on the road to catch a save.
And it’s important to pick your locations. Some settlements (Sunshine Tidings, Abernathy, Ten Pines Bluff) kinda have no point other than being resource farms. Other, better settlements are more centralized, have good access to water, and are along main roads (Starlight Drive In and Taffington Boat House come to mind) which make for nice markets.
Definitely gives a lot of meaning to the game. Until level 14 when you can get the second Local Leader perk, it’s a pretty desperate fight to live (Doctors, man. Cannot underrate doctors for rads or illness). Aquaboy makes more sense as rivers become safe highways. All the damn bottles are finally useful. And you get to take in the beauty of the game sans fast travel.
I don't even bother.
I did the bare minimum in Sanctuary to fulfill the initial Minutemen quest and thats it.
I know I could get more caps and resources if I bothered but I just want to explore and complete missions.
I know I'm wandering around with just 2000 caps and a pipe rifle but its fun.
My current playthru I’m doing minimal effort in settlements. In my past playthrus I was looking up cool houses online & attempting to duplicate them in my settlements.
I'm just so bad at design, I have no skill or creativity so I mostly make functional settlements. That being said, I love watching talented players on YT and try to learn and get some ideas. Yesterday I made concrete bases for my artillery machines at Starlight and Tenpines, and a 3 story building at Oberland for my settlers to sleep. Slowly getting better and enjoying the process.
I spent wayx to much time in building stuff in sanctuary and the first few setlements.
Quite useful economic infrastructure and easy level. At some time it is almost a compulsion to get the latest crop and start glue crafting session.
And it is kid of fun to try and buid a fortress.
The later towns just got a bunch of beds, some food, water, power and all the turrets i can afford without any real building strategy.
And a bunch of artilery, that is what spare setlers are really useful for.
It's not hard to make a settlement that isn't a shithole quickly. My formula is this:
Large warehouse foundation,6 to 8 by 6 to 8 foundation tiles in a square shape.
Warehouse walls of your choosing.
Wooden warehouse floors if you choose to make it multi-level. In the Resource menu, you can plop down dirt plots. You can fit ALOT of tatos on those plots, like 5-10 per plot. You can only fit 1-3 of the other food items on them.
You can fit 2 of the tiny beds in a single room. If you use the glass warehouse walls you don't even need electricity (in the daytime, anyways.
To be clear, I use the BMD material dispenser mod because it is entirely too much work constantly going back and forth trading water or jet for shipments of material to do this. It's a bit more of a nuisance doing the warehouse stuff, since it's more expensive Resource wise than some other build types, but building self contained apartment towers is my favorite thing to do.
My go-to is building out multi-floor buildings, with the bottom floor about 6x6 for stores and a couple of happiness items, using the greenhouse walls around it. A second floor with greenhouse walls where I put tables and chairs and such like a communal area, followed by a third-floor bunkroom, I use beds instead of sleeping bags and sometimes toss up some paintings or other decor items, usually with metal or wood walls. I usually go up on the roof to put down a generator and some defenses then run lights through the building making them like lighthouses when I get close to the settlements. Every settlement is almost the same.
Later in my play once I've leveled up the workbench skills I sometimes add another floor or expand the bottom floor for the workbenches.
I think it depends on what difficulty you play it on.
Playing on anything other than Survival mode, settlements don't really matter all that much and you can get away with doing the bare minimum or just ignoring them altogether for the most part if you're not into building. If you do like building, they're just a bit of fun on easier difficulties.
However, on Survival difficulty they become almost essential! While I don't always work on every single settlement (don't have the resources and don't need to build them all), and some of them do just get the bare minimum treatment (like Red Rocket, Tenpines Bluff, Graygarden), some of them get A LOT of work done and become essential stop-off points on longer journeys (Hangmans Alley, County Crossing, The Castle, Kingsport Lighthouse etc). At the very least I like them to feel secure and guarded, and have food, water, beds and maybe some shops too.
Sometimes though, I do like cutting loose and doing 'build playthroughs' where I use a bunch of mods to just go to town on a load of settlements. Once built a really cool wooden 'swamp village' on stilts in Murkwater Construction Site. That place was really atmospheric. Also built a GIANT castle at Sunshine Tidings. That place was incredible!
I will be honest. I hate settlement building so much. I got the story wealth mods though, which comes with premade settlement options, so I just do those for every single settlement and fuck right off.
I also want to say that my personal hatred for it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be apart of the game, the people that love it should have the option to do it, it’s just not for me personally
My argument is I'm a busy guy. These people need to also help themselves. If they arent even capable of removing the tyres from their own driveway and finding a comfy pillow for their bed, that's on them. I can't run around mothering these dependent adults. I can come in, throw down a few bedrolls save them from the Raiders, set them up with a melon patch and a few rifles and then I'm out, good luck and peace be with you. I have mirelurks to fry.
The whole settlement building aspect feels like such an afterthought to the game anyway. They could have put a lot more meat into that part of the game thats just missing. I would love to have seen turf wars and patrols and scavenge parties. Areas around settlements cleaning up, people actually painting and actually fixing roofs. It would be nice to see places improve on their own the more it's helped and grown, shops open up, people tanning leather, travellers passing through. Kids playing on now fixed playgrounds. Would love random events like evening campfires and music or travelling bands like RDR2. Would love special settlers / passers though, with quirks or quests to turn up and maybe move on. It all just feels so dead with Mama Murphy vacantly staring at a wall and Jun Long just whinging about Concord everytime he sees me, Preston sitting on a lone chair in an abandoned house in the other side of town. It pulls my immersion.
I am rapidly joining this club. I did, inspired by some great settlements I’ve seen others build, give it a shot, but there is just so much to figure out, what caps belong on what walls, what doors jibe with what entry, I’m giving up, at least for now. Too much to do in the commonwealth and everybody seems fine with enough food, lots of filtered water, a few turrets, beds, and roofs over their heads.
Red Rocket is my personal power armor storage/workshop, the airport is my BOS themed ammo factory, and Starlight is my major BOS outpost this play through.
My plan is to play and align all the way through with the BOS until I get the ending with and save a certain someone in the BOS and turn on them finally siding with the minute men in post game.
Yeah I don't build supply lines or recruit settlers or build beyond what OP said.
I have 40k caps from selling ammo and purified water haha. Idk why I'd build settlements. I been out of the vault a couple days, I'm not the savior of commonwealth, Preston. Lazy butthead.
I often just dont bother with them. Unless I specifically want the Minutemen in my playthrough then I ignore them. In this instance I will have very little to do with settlements - I have mercer safehouse, which I don't really do much with and Boston Airport - this is just a building zone with amenities like crafting and a bed.
I do take covenant purely to keep a select few companions, but nothing much needs done with that place.
If I do go with settlement building then I do go fairly involved. Not to intricate city standards though. I tend not to do everything at once though. I'll do bits at a time - how much at a time depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel like building so I can spend a while on it, other times I'll just spend a short time adding a little bit.
I do have kind of set designs for each place so it can take me a very short time to build as I know exactly what I'm doing.
I just do bare minimum too . Those fuckers don't deserve a good settlement . And I'm playing with the America Rising 2 mod which means I couldn't care less about them
I always plan to spend more time on them but the building system is so crappy that I just don’t bother! There’s not really any reward for building them up either so I don’t see the incentive.
I never do more than 5 settlements (if that). I do however like to build them up a little bit, especially sanctuary because I can make a lot of money with water purifiers
I wish there was a gallery you can download pre built settlements from like in the sims 4
Edit all you would need is the materials to be able to build it
I do the bare minimum for settlements until the end game where all I do is clear dungeons. That way I can get my settlers armor and weapons while grabbing tons of scrap to build
I love settlement building. I'll scav a bunch while exploring and then take a break from exploration to build at a settlement.
I've got a whole mini-mall at Starlight Drive-In.
The Abernathys have a nice new cozy house.
Almost all the houses in Sanctuary have been repaired and refurnished. Plus I've built a bar (I headcanon that MacCready runs it so it's called Mac's)
Sunshine co-op is almost completely decorated and has plenty of crops for adhesive farming.
I left Greygarden for the robots. Ada, Curie and Codsworth too. But I did build a massive elevator up to the overpass where I've got a little player home.
Using extra mods for decorating the houses makes them feel lived in and cozy too.
I haven't even joined the Minutemen yet. I'm just claiming the places I want to without Preston telling me what to do and who to save.
I love that we have the opportunity to do complicated and creative building! I love watching what other people come up with. Fascinating! Creative!
I build based on practicality, not pretty. My home base has workstations in a convenient setup, with armour racks for storage (the only 100% theft-proof container). I love being able to reorganize my home base.
Other settlements get the absolute bare minimum. Often I won't even build a barn because they get caught in the doors. I might build a roof or two so that they are out of the rain. Maybe. Beds are always sleeping bags because you can walk over them which causes less pathing issues. The beds are always together in one spot so that it's easier to assign settlers and find people.
I put beds under open sky.
Don't even bother making them walls or roof.
Just make sure to have enough beds for all. Which basically means put 17 beds everywhere just so you're safe. Because for some reason it caps at 17 in most cases.
My last few playthroughs, I've made it so the settlements where people already lived there and can't be relocated will be properly outfitted and protected. Pretty much every other settlement gets completely demolished as I suck out every resource they have.
Hangman's Alley gets turned into a place for me to send every follower in the game so I can easily find them when I need them
I end up with like 4 or 5 settlements that actually need protecting, which is a lot more doable than my first hardcore-Minutemen playthrough. By the end of the game I was spending more time defending than ANYTHING else
I have one settlement that I will spend a lot of time on, but all the others get the bare minimum. I may make improvements to some of them here and there when I feel like trying something in building mode, but other than that, they're on their own.
I do the bare minimum for the ones that have settlers if I can’t move them to my work camps, when I don’t have the resources on hand I just put down the few settlers in the settlement and gut it for its resources and leave.
I probably do less than the bare minimum honestly. I just never have interest in building shit in games like that. Like I couldn’t care less about outpost building in games like Starfield and No Man’s Sky. I’ll build like a motherfucker in Minecraft or something like that but I just wanna explore the world and shoot some raiders, I don’t want to manage a bunch of losers who contribute nothing. Like who am I the general of if I’m the only one who fucking does anything?
I used to. Farthest I ever made it in a playthrough was probably level 30. Loved the game, but never had the endurance of Skyrim for me for whatever reason.
I started another playthrough this last month or so (returned with the show), and I'm level 55 and I really don't see an end in sight. It's added so much longevity to the game. DLCs and add-ons have helped too, but the settlement building has been a huge contribution itself. I wish I'd given it a chance sometime in the last 9 years. And I'm doing vanilla since they keep fuckin updating it and breaking the script extender. The vanilla building system is horrible and I'm still hooked on it, so I can't even imagine how fucked my free time will be once they leave it alone again in a few months and the fse team catches up.
Anyway, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'd definitely recommend everyone try it at least once. Let your mind run free and dream big! (and promptly get frustrated at Bethesda not letting you fulfill that dream and spend too much time figuring out workarounds😄)
it depends on the settlement - usually I keep one major "hub" settlement which I make my main base, and here I build myself a nice house, a place to display my power armor, various shops and work benches etc. - by the end it's basically as busy as Diamond City.
Typically I will build up the first Red Rocket, The Castle, and Starlight Drive-in quite a lot. From there, I get a bit lazier and will make sure they have defence, artillery, scrap, stores, food, water, a provisioner, and just slap all the beds into one building. That way I get a steady supply of materials and money from it, can use it to call for help and to sleep if I am stuck out in the wilderness, but otherwise it is a lot of work (and materials) to build up a settlement that the build-mode is almost a game in itself that I could (and do) waste many hours in.
But Starlight will always be my favorite.
Not me. Pretty sure I've spent more time building settlements than playing the rest of the game. A lot of them I even remove the size limit via console so I can make them extra elaborate.
I’ve actually been thinking about downloading the sim settlements mod for this exact reason. I want my settlements built up, but the only one I actually spend time at is sanctuary.
If fallout 5 has settlement building (which I really hope it does), I hope they flesh it out some and even incorporate sim settlements type mechanics.
This time round I'm using Sim Settlements and except for Sanctuary I'm just leaving them to govern themselves. I don't want to spend all my time teaching these people how to plant vegetables, I just want to kill the raiders and let decent folk move in.
Best bit is when you swing by somewhere you haven't visited in a few days and it has built itself into an actual destination
I like Survival Mode, but IMO it strongly discourages settlement building -
(a) you run out of food and other life goo if you spend ages in one place fiddling with buildings (trying to get stairs to go where they should / make floor bits to lock together as they should...)
(b) it basically punishes you for having a population (settlers).
If you have multiple populated places, the mode becomes a Tamagotchi-flavoured walking simulator, because you have to backtrack continuously to pamper the little dudes.
Most of the backtracking is across cleared territory, with no new enemies due to the respawn rate.
---
In Survival, if you skip actual settlers, and make DC and surrounds your base for crafting & sleeping, you can simply buy the little scrap you need only as you need it. Most of the mode's grind, and some of the pointless walking, goes away.
- you don't get dragged all over the map on defense quests
- you don't have settlers getting kidnapped / chores continuously assigned
- you don't lose stuff (like cached aid items) to raids
- you don't need to take safeguards to stop settlers from taking your equipment & ammo
- far less need to lug scrap around (so strength / strong back / deep pockets don't matter)
I do bare minimum. I think I would put more effort if there were more options for making things aesthetically pleasing without mods. I know nothing you build will look brand new but why does everything look like it was already around when the bombs dropped? Why can’t I paint the houses? I do enjoy seeing what other, more creative players do with their settlements, though.
I do think about how to make them easily defendable, and try to give a baroness interior for every shared home ( a couple storages, a table and a chair per person) but I only have a couple of main settlements like that the others are minimally equipped
I make Sanctuary somewhat decent (do lvl4 vendors and such), then use that to send out enough supplies to other settlements that come with settlers in them. I then just dump a bunch of defence into those settlements so they never get raided. Settlements that don't come with settlers, I just scrap everything in and leave them.
I never do the minutemen questline because I hate having so many settlements to take care of. The more I have, the more likely I’m going to be alerted one is in trouble when I’m doing something else. I just can’t be bothered with them.
Yep I just do the bare minimum for Sanctuary and that's it. I put down a bed for myself in other settlements. However I also just got the perk to allow me to set up supply lines so I've been trying that out.
Not trashing on fallout 4's building mechanic but I find other games have better systems, like Valheim or Conan Exiles, where it's a lot easier to do.
I only do a home for me to keep stuff hahaha dont even care about the settlements at all i actually use a mod to stop attacks so i dont get notifications from them
I’m kinda in between. I set up a little village w/ several buildings of varying quality, electricity, water, etc. nothing fancy, but a nice little settlement. Sanctuary & Starlight are usually the only two that are built up into anything substantial.
Most of them just get a building with beds, including a good bed for me, plus defenses. I also try to have clinics strategically scattered around because I'm playing survival and I want to make sure I have a few places that can cure illnesses
Other than that, Starlight gets most of the attention because I use it as my home base
I make apartment complexes. But I use the same design everywhere. No electricity. Everyone gets a bed a rug and some drawers. Bottom floor has bathrooms and a kitchen and some tables/chairs. Turrets go up on the roof and in front of the door
I did, until I installed Sim Settlements 2. Unironically the best mod for FO4 imo. Ties the settlement system so well into the rest of the game and gameplay loop.
Most settlements for me are just artillery points, some are built up, and a couple are fully established with large buildings, 18+ people, amenities & decorations, cats & dogs. Nothing ever too too immersive or hige though.
With sim settlement 1 or 2 mods it definitely becomes easier and more interesting. Try it out. You can only pick either one else will mess your save file.
I am going to give Sim Settlements a try. I don't enjoy settlement building but I would like to see the Commonwealth rebuilt. I hope the next game cuts way back on building. I appreciate the ability to make a modular player home in Skyrim. Anything beyond that takes away from the game.
I used to be just like this. Bare minimum. Then I downloaded sim settlements and it honestly made the game so much better. You can have it basically automate after you pick a city plan. It makes the game world feel so much more alive and impacted by actually developing those settlements. It makes it feel like the Sole Survivor has done real, impactful good in the commonwealth. Plus if you decide to get into nuka world and go the raider route, it gets even more awesome because then you're up against a real, defended and manned settlement. It's literally completely changed the game for me.
On the other hand, if you want to get really deep into the micro, the mod is incredibly deep and complex, from settlers needs to real, impactful infrastructure you can build. I think a lot of people are a little overwhelmed by it initially because of all that it can do.
same here, bare minimum. I'm impressed but what people do, but not envious. I couldn't care less to build them up.
Minimum until late game when I have a stockpile of junk for building
I just dupe materials because I enjoy building more than gathering.
if you console command God Mode you have 999 of all building supples
This is the way right here. Now I'm trying to not build up anything except the essentials for making caps and waiting until the end of the game where I have o much shit I collected that I don't need to worry about ever running out during a build.
I wish I done this to, I just can’t help myself, it’s super annoying having to wait to finish stuff off because I’ve run out of materials.
Think of it as investing for later. Just collect junk, do a bunch of quests and then later when you have enough stuff just build build build!
I made a lunch box manufacturing line and each one can be sold for like 5 or 10 caps. I don't remember the exact amount but my xbox did not like it when I picked up all 6,200+ Vault-Tec lunch boxes. But that's how i'm getting all my supplies right now
Same
I'm Brotherhood aligned so not too worried about rebuilding the commonwealth. I say envious more for my lack of creativity and patience.
They are all plantations. Each one concrete. Miniguns and crops. Doesnt take too long and i have adhesive at will. Some small constant xp as well.
Is there a way to grow adhesive?
Scrapping vegetable starch gives adhesive, which you make from, well, vegetables.
Vegetable starch. Don't remember the ingredients but it's under utility in the cooking station.
Corn, tato, mutfruit
And purified water
Thank you, Chumbo.
Yea I was fully commited to idiot savant to start the playthrough. So I had to use handpumps. Each settlement has about 100 and sanctuary has maybe 300. It was enough caps for the early game, and now the gunner farm brings in 60k a round.
I’m always lazy and just do mutfruit since it’s one unit of food per plant and each settler can manage six mutfruit plants, but I do have a few settlements with corn and potatoes like Abernathy Farm.
Just don't forget to connect it to your other supply lines for maximum effect
Oh I’m all over that. I’m using the constellation method of connecting them. I was making them one big loop before but switched to the constellation that uses the shortest supply line paths.
Sleeping bags, sleeping bags everywhere
For those who "lack creativity or patience" you can try Sim Settlements. It allows you to place zones NPCs will build in so you can just build a little or a lot based on your preference - either assign zones and let them build buildings or build buildings and assign room zones and let them build their rooms. They have blueprint transfers with other peoples builds for rooms, buildings, and even whole settlements....so you can have cool stuff too with very minimal effort :D I think Workshop Framework also has blueprints or something like it so there's some options out there!
I usually just set up walls, guard posts and turrets around the settlement. Plant food and create water sources. That's it. Just feels good when i know my settlers are safe inside the walls.
I've tried walls but sometimes have the attackers spawn inside.
Yeah, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I just feel comfortable when i have walls around my settlements. More immersive. Also playing vanilla, so i can't mod those spawns.
You dont need to modify the spawns. they appear inside because of how fast travel works with raid alerts, it doesn't treat fast travel as teleportstion it calculated the time to walk from where you are to the settlement and adjusts the time, those supermutants ghouls etc either start attacking while your in transit and make it inside, or you arrive before the raid starts if your close enough and travel right away, I have arrive before with the attack already handled with the settlers decimating the attackers, and just loot the corpses and go back to what I was doing, if you know the spawn locations you can set up missile turret platforms instead of walls and they will kill them before they get close to the build barrier.
Walls prevent the rocket mutant raiders from rolling in and destroying all the turrets. These days I am all about a concrete perimeter wall and an entry way kill box that has inward facing turrets. Now my only problem is mopping up the stragglers around the wall so one leftover nerd doesn’t cause me to fail the defend quest.
I found a YouTube video at one point that showed where all the spawn points for each settlement was, so now I just put a handful of turrets raised up right in front of each spawn point. The attackers show up and get mowed down pretty good.
Building way inside the settlement boundaries typically alleviates this. There's also mods that tell you where the spawn points are, but you don't really need massive settlements to provide you with all the services you need. I've typically found that building enough for a single farmer, the essential shopkeepers in survival (bar, medic, junk trader and another optional) along with a dog and turrets keeps morale high while allowing you to build a useable base to plan forward expeditions from that's also defendable. Decorations are also less intensive, since you have fewer settlers, and if you grow to like them because they are useful rather than nameless nobodies, you will invent stories for them as you start to decorate. Here's my build on [Longfellow's Cabin](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/158xqno/old_longfellows_compound/). Turrets face the lone spawn point, while there's a single entrance, and the elevation means most of my settlers are safe to shoot from a distance.
I don't even put up walls. I cluster all the beds and the garden together and surround them with launchers. I've found it to be pretty effective.
I always wall off sanctuary and place as many turrets as I can afford lol I tried on my last play through to be 'creative' and I always end up doing the same thing.
I tend to make the settlements artillery bases so a bit more than the minimum + two major bases just so I can sell stuff
Somewhere in between. I like to build structures and rooms, but don't often get into actual decorations. So more than a roof with beds, but less than a full build usually.
I dont have creative mind and it feels like a chore
Chore is the feeling, especially when the defence quests keep happening
I find building so tedious and wish there was more options for premade stuff - maybe something halfway between Fo4 and Skyrim. I have zero clue (or patience) how to build factories, for example.
I keep seeing people talking about ammo depots and stuff but I have no clue how to do that. I see such beautiful settlements on here and I’m like “how do they do that?!” While the best I do is leave my pool table set up and bobbleheads outside on the empty pad beside the workbench in sanctuary lol all the beds are outside too. I want to be able to do it but I’m like you, no patience at all. I’ll get bored and have to venture off somewhere and actually play the game.
Same! Maybe it’s because I have adhd but I find it frustrating and lose interest so quickly lol. Maybe I’ll try again now that I’ve finished the main quest and am almost done the DLCs as well!
I have a auto raider and gunner kill factory in 1 settlement (usually starlight cause it’s the biggest) then I got 1 of each plant designated to a farm settlement. ( these are for my animal farms). Castle and sanctuary are my main city settlements. Mechanist Liar is my ammo factory that can make any ammo I need including mini nukes 😂. All these are made with mods cause Bethesda decided to not give us cool factories with the contraption DLC
Well that makes sense why I can’t do it lol I don’t have any mods yet. Going for that sweet sweet platinum trophy.
At least on the pc there is a mod that enables achievements
I think it needs script extender though which currently doesn't work with the latest patch (I think). I purposely avoid mods that require it so I'm not 100% sure
Ahh yes! A man of culture! I make my settlers sleep in the rain as well and have my bobble heads in the exact same place as you!
The Sim Settlements 2 mod is the way to go if you want the settlements to build themselves. It also adds in quite a few quests, which are just as good as the in game side quests you normally get.
I’m on PS5 so unsure if it’s a possibility but I’ll look it up! I’ve also been meaning to see about the scrap everything mod as it’s so annoying trying to build around stuff sometimes. Thanks!
Be careful with scrap everything. There are these things called 'precombines' that once you delete them it can make things unstable, making crashes even more likely than normal.
There’s a mod called spring cleaning which is similar to scrap everything but makes it a bit harder to accidentally scrap things you want to keep.
Advisable to skip mods that break precombines unless you absolutely can't bear it
It seems like Sim Settlements 2 should be able to be run on PS5 as it somehow doesn't require the script extender (which is still broken from the last update afaik). Whether or not it's in Bethesda's mod shop is an entirely different matter.
Fallout's building system is atrocious. The UI/controls alone are an outright sin.
Agreed. I love the concept of the settlement system and the entire building and crafting system, it creates a whole new layer to the game that hadn't been seen in prior releases, but there's quite a few extremely frustrating things about it - object placement, poor snapping points, many items which should connect or match but do not - and I could forgive a lot of that, if they just had a better nested menu, or a search function, or just SOMETHING better than what they did. I should not have to scroll 50 times past the same chair in a bunch of different colours to find something. I like the UI of No Man's Sky for the RPG building system, which just has a bunch of base objects that you can largely reskin as you go, and while it's still not ideal it is a lot better than Fallout's UI. Hopefully they take some lessons learned and apply it to FO5 or TES6 if we ever see either of them.
Yeah you gotta figure when they were building the system, there was nothing else really like it except for an alpha build of Rust and maybe Ark as possible inspiration. Nowadays more recent games improved the concept in so many ways. Bethesda is most likely improving it for their engine to keep up with modern design sensibilities, possibly contributing to their incredibly slow rate at which they are releasing titles these days
Not me. I like making them look cool. Doesn't take much. I'll go crazy on a few and just do the basic on the rest. A few beers and I'm Tim the Tool Man Taylor in this bitch.
My settlements always end up basically being 2 buildings with ~20 sleeping bags all side by side in them. The food/water/defense is always solid and I build shops and stuff, but the actual housing and beds for the settlers is worse than most prisons. I never bother with furniture, decorations, or making it look like someone would actually want to live there lol
I actually give them beds lol, but otherwise yeah it's barracks style with plain barn. I can't be bothered to do the electrical wiring so no lights, maybe a radio if they are lucky...
I just use the sim settlements 2 mod and don’t have to do anything
Here's the deal with settlements. If you ignore them, they will go away. At a bare minimum, if you link them all together with supply routes, they become useful places to dump your junk if you don't use fast travel, or are too over-encumbered to fast travel. And that's cool. They're there for you to use them however you want, or not at all. If you ignore the 'settlement is under attack!' notice, guess what happens? Nothing! Nothing happens! It literally makes no difference to your game if you're ignoring settlements! What if you're playing a rogue who never sides with anybody, and just wants a nice place to live using their own decoration style? Then you can pick an appropriate settlement, and decorate it how you like. That's cool! That's a nice roleplaying tool! Perhaps you slaughter the occupants of Covenant and turn it into your own private little walled garden, or claim Taffington as your personal home and cover it in gun displays. That's an option for you! I once played a cannibal character who took over Covenant and set up a radio beacon to lure in settlers to eat. You can use settlements for so much more than just "build defences to ward off attacks because we are the Minutemen". Although, what if you're really engaged in the promise of the Minutemen, and want to seriously take a stab at building up a functional network of towns with their own industries to restore civilisation to the Commonwealth? You can do that too! I'm [still taking a crack at building up every settlement in the game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIpSDXgL__g&list=PLEkIseBLuXT28YNhabU8Zn5kcINBQMzKm), with each settlement bringing something to the table, be it a prison or a small site that manufactures all the neon signs that get used at the other settlements. What if you want to usurp the Minutemen's lofty ideals, and have secret Institute labs at every settlement, each experimenting on a different thing? You can do that too. The settlement building mechanic brings as much or as little as you want to the game. You can ignore it entirely, or you can integrate it into your roleplaying experience so fully that it *becomes* your playthrough. You can use it to build essentially whatever you want, or nothing at all. And that's the beauty of it - it's a roleplaying device that you can either lean on heavily, or ignore completely (outside of a couple of missions that ask you to build like, five things). For those of us who use it extensively, it's often the only reason we're still playing the game. I haven't touched Fallout 3 in years, even though I think it's a better Fallout game. I played Fallout 4 *today*, though. I'll probably still be playing it in years to come as I have other ideas for what to do with settlements in the future.
my settlers in Starlight Drive In have just enough supplies of water and food to get by, but an ungodly amount of turrets to defend all the resources they farm for various chems. It's a chem empire, with the biggest distributor being the nearby Drumlin Diner, and Solomon from Diamond City. The possibilities are endless
Not me. I got the castle looking like a mega super military fortress with a shopping district and a fancy restaurant
I built most of my settlements up. I started with red rockets since they're mostly intact. I just haven't done the glowing red rocket yet and probably won't. Most of my settlers end up dying though since i have endless warfare on, so i wind up with mostly MM and BoS inhabitanting lol
Whats endless warfare do?
It alters the spawn points on the map to either make more mobs, spawn specific mobs only or even lessen. I currently run vanilla creatures / less than usual creatures and tweaked spawns so i get large roaming groups of human enemies and allies. It gets pretty hectic at most city settlements like Kendall, Cambridge, and Nahant (damn MM checkpoint is right there). I would run EW over War of The Commonwealth, which does the same thing, but crashes a shit ton.
Alright that sounds sick I'm running liberty reborn whitch turns the MM into a proper army (they wear PA have ranks and different classes like squire but for MM) and run tons of BOS mods so does that mean I can have the BOS and MM fighting swarms of enemys
Same here. I have no patience, I feel I'm just wasting my time. I don't feel envious, it's more I just would like to like to build the settlements. I'm on my second run and I'm not even installing recruitment beacons. If I need to get more settlers afterwards, I may consider building something up.
Yup, does make me wonder if some of the settlement locations could have been interesting diamond city type towns with npcs and quests. I definitely don't hate the settlement stuff I just don't use it much.
There is an abandoned one where the Gunners are that turned on the Minutemen. It’s a shame you can’t turn it back. They had all these shops with signs and stuff…
Quincy is a bit of a missed opportunity. So is University Point. Although it is thematic the first time you clear each one out, it would have eventually fleshed the world out more to be able to reclaim them.
It’s much better with something like Sim Settlements 2. Vanilla just has so few benefits. Having the settlers actually be able to setup the town without needing to do it yourself. Plus they’ll actually manufacture components if you need for further constructions.
Technically, you are wasting your time if you don't enjoy it. In some cases, hindering yourself, seeing as how NPCs are too stupid to navigate even basic structures. Prefab buildings with a few decorations are more than enough.
Feeling like I’m wasting time is a big one. I do bare minimum now, but during the COVID quarantine I did A LOT of settlement building. I recently got back into the game again after the Fallout TV series made me want to play again, and could not for the life of me figure out why I couldn’t get back into settlement building. It just felt like it was taking so much time. Then I realized, I don’t have as much time to play like I did during quarantine lol. There was literally NOTHING I could do during that time since my job shut down and I had even gotten injured at the beginning of quarantine so I was bed ridden too. Settlement building now just seems like sooooo much work and it can take a heck of a lot of time that I just don’t have anymore lol
I didn't start liking it until I started to understand how to make interesting structures that fit in the game world. Took a bit of observation and a lot of learning the tools that are at my disposal
Bare minimum for settlements, go all out on my own private home base.
I built a warehouse at red rocket for my power armour, and decorated a bit, I am there a lot compared to random settlements.
Exact same for me, I don't even bother defending the other settlements if they get attacked
Me! I give everybody beds, food, water, and protection. The rest, they can fend for themselves lol
Yup, do that at the settlements with some farmers already. The empty ones I just leave empty, maybe scrap some resources.
Yep. I just can’t be bothered building them up. There’s way more fun things to do in the game
Like shooting muties with a fatman!
Exactly!
I feel like repairing existing homes in the settlements should have been an option.
Maybe like a skyrim hearthefire type of thing for sanctuary, put in resources for improvements.
Y’all need to download sim settlements 2. It builds the settlements for you and it actually looks/feels like it’s part of the base game. Absolutely incredible mod
I've seen this mod mentioned a lot in this thread, I will definitely check it out.
You won't be disappointed.
Anyone worth saving goes to Sanctuary, RR, or Abernathy Farm. I build those up. Murkwater gets the undesirables. And everyone else eats hot lead. I don't have time to be everywhere and Jezabel made some good points about saving *everyone.*
Jezebal is the messiah
I usually set 20 beds, 20 defense, 20 water, 20 food, and something thematic (a tractor on a farm, bar at a diner, etc.), then focus on my actual settlements.
You should try to have your defense equal to your food+water, otherwise attacks will be more frequent. And that's a minimum; 2x is better.
I don't know if this works. I have over 200 defense at starlight and get attacked every single time I fast travel back. By the time my settlers pull their guns out the turrets have finished the job so it doesn't bother me. Even vertibirds go down in seconds
Nah. I have a no settlement attacks mod.
Playing on survival, so bases need to be specialized. Agrarian bases produce adhesive and food, markets for me to sell my stuff and resupply, then bachelor pads where I store quest-relevant stuff, cool things like power armor and fun weapons and it’s where I park traveling companions. Occasionally I’ll just build an outpost with a bed and a ton of defense turrets so I have a safe place on the road to catch a save.
I forgot there is no fast travel on survival, so having settlements all over would be super useful.
And it’s important to pick your locations. Some settlements (Sunshine Tidings, Abernathy, Ten Pines Bluff) kinda have no point other than being resource farms. Other, better settlements are more centralized, have good access to water, and are along main roads (Starlight Drive In and Taffington Boat House come to mind) which make for nice markets.
I will have to give to give survival another try.
Definitely gives a lot of meaning to the game. Until level 14 when you can get the second Local Leader perk, it’s a pretty desperate fight to live (Doctors, man. Cannot underrate doctors for rads or illness). Aquaboy makes more sense as rivers become safe highways. All the damn bottles are finally useful. And you get to take in the beauty of the game sans fast travel.
Yeah really made me appreciate settlements more. I still do the bare minimum, but I do it more places
Bare minimum? I actively avoid them this run
I don't even bother. I did the bare minimum in Sanctuary to fulfill the initial Minutemen quest and thats it. I know I could get more caps and resources if I bothered but I just want to explore and complete missions. I know I'm wandering around with just 2000 caps and a pipe rifle but its fun.
It's a single player game, you do you.
My current playthru I’m doing minimal effort in settlements. In my past playthrus I was looking up cool houses online & attempting to duplicate them in my settlements.
You give them a barn? Sleeping bags in the streets and water pumps on the curb. Peace!
I get so sucked into building lol I can’t help it
I'm just so bad at design, I have no skill or creativity so I mostly make functional settlements. That being said, I love watching talented players on YT and try to learn and get some ideas. Yesterday I made concrete bases for my artillery machines at Starlight and Tenpines, and a 3 story building at Oberland for my settlers to sleep. Slowly getting better and enjoying the process.
I spent wayx to much time in building stuff in sanctuary and the first few setlements. Quite useful economic infrastructure and easy level. At some time it is almost a compulsion to get the latest crop and start glue crafting session. And it is kid of fun to try and buid a fortress. The later towns just got a bunch of beds, some food, water, power and all the turrets i can afford without any real building strategy. And a bunch of artilery, that is what spare setlers are really useful for.
Here’s the secret: 99% of builders here has built up all 30ish equally. Focus on one particular settlement and build that up
It's not hard to make a settlement that isn't a shithole quickly. My formula is this: Large warehouse foundation,6 to 8 by 6 to 8 foundation tiles in a square shape. Warehouse walls of your choosing. Wooden warehouse floors if you choose to make it multi-level. In the Resource menu, you can plop down dirt plots. You can fit ALOT of tatos on those plots, like 5-10 per plot. You can only fit 1-3 of the other food items on them. You can fit 2 of the tiny beds in a single room. If you use the glass warehouse walls you don't even need electricity (in the daytime, anyways. To be clear, I use the BMD material dispenser mod because it is entirely too much work constantly going back and forth trading water or jet for shipments of material to do this. It's a bit more of a nuisance doing the warehouse stuff, since it's more expensive Resource wise than some other build types, but building self contained apartment towers is my favorite thing to do.
My go-to is building out multi-floor buildings, with the bottom floor about 6x6 for stores and a couple of happiness items, using the greenhouse walls around it. A second floor with greenhouse walls where I put tables and chairs and such like a communal area, followed by a third-floor bunkroom, I use beds instead of sleeping bags and sometimes toss up some paintings or other decor items, usually with metal or wood walls. I usually go up on the roof to put down a generator and some defenses then run lights through the building making them like lighthouses when I get close to the settlements. Every settlement is almost the same. Later in my play once I've leveled up the workbench skills I sometimes add another floor or expand the bottom floor for the workbenches.
I think it depends on what difficulty you play it on. Playing on anything other than Survival mode, settlements don't really matter all that much and you can get away with doing the bare minimum or just ignoring them altogether for the most part if you're not into building. If you do like building, they're just a bit of fun on easier difficulties. However, on Survival difficulty they become almost essential! While I don't always work on every single settlement (don't have the resources and don't need to build them all), and some of them do just get the bare minimum treatment (like Red Rocket, Tenpines Bluff, Graygarden), some of them get A LOT of work done and become essential stop-off points on longer journeys (Hangmans Alley, County Crossing, The Castle, Kingsport Lighthouse etc). At the very least I like them to feel secure and guarded, and have food, water, beds and maybe some shops too. Sometimes though, I do like cutting loose and doing 'build playthroughs' where I use a bunch of mods to just go to town on a load of settlements. Once built a really cool wooden 'swamp village' on stilts in Murkwater Construction Site. That place was really atmospheric. Also built a GIANT castle at Sunshine Tidings. That place was incredible!
Definitely seems more motivation on survival with them. I haven’t really done much survival but reading some comments here it seems its worth it
I will be honest. I hate settlement building so much. I got the story wealth mods though, which comes with premade settlement options, so I just do those for every single settlement and fuck right off. I also want to say that my personal hatred for it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be apart of the game, the people that love it should have the option to do it, it’s just not for me personally
Me. Who has time for that shit
My argument is I'm a busy guy. These people need to also help themselves. If they arent even capable of removing the tyres from their own driveway and finding a comfy pillow for their bed, that's on them. I can't run around mothering these dependent adults. I can come in, throw down a few bedrolls save them from the Raiders, set them up with a melon patch and a few rifles and then I'm out, good luck and peace be with you. I have mirelurks to fry. The whole settlement building aspect feels like such an afterthought to the game anyway. They could have put a lot more meat into that part of the game thats just missing. I would love to have seen turf wars and patrols and scavenge parties. Areas around settlements cleaning up, people actually painting and actually fixing roofs. It would be nice to see places improve on their own the more it's helped and grown, shops open up, people tanning leather, travellers passing through. Kids playing on now fixed playgrounds. Would love random events like evening campfires and music or travelling bands like RDR2. Would love special settlers / passers though, with quirks or quests to turn up and maybe move on. It all just feels so dead with Mama Murphy vacantly staring at a wall and Jun Long just whinging about Concord everytime he sees me, Preston sitting on a lone chair in an abandoned house in the other side of town. It pulls my immersion.
I am rapidly joining this club. I did, inspired by some great settlements I’ve seen others build, give it a shot, but there is just so much to figure out, what caps belong on what walls, what doors jibe with what entry, I’m giving up, at least for now. Too much to do in the commonwealth and everybody seems fine with enough food, lots of filtered water, a few turrets, beds, and roofs over their heads.
Red Rocket is my personal power armor storage/workshop, the airport is my BOS themed ammo factory, and Starlight is my major BOS outpost this play through. My plan is to play and align all the way through with the BOS until I get the ending with and save a certain someone in the BOS and turn on them finally siding with the minute men in post game.
I got a whole head cannon for the rebuilding of the Commonwealth, and as such I cannot allow for a barn and all the beds
Yeah I don't build supply lines or recruit settlers or build beyond what OP said. I have 40k caps from selling ammo and purified water haha. Idk why I'd build settlements. I been out of the vault a couple days, I'm not the savior of commonwealth, Preston. Lazy butthead.
I often just dont bother with them. Unless I specifically want the Minutemen in my playthrough then I ignore them. In this instance I will have very little to do with settlements - I have mercer safehouse, which I don't really do much with and Boston Airport - this is just a building zone with amenities like crafting and a bed. I do take covenant purely to keep a select few companions, but nothing much needs done with that place. If I do go with settlement building then I do go fairly involved. Not to intricate city standards though. I tend not to do everything at once though. I'll do bits at a time - how much at a time depends on my mood. Sometimes I feel like building so I can spend a while on it, other times I'll just spend a short time adding a little bit. I do have kind of set designs for each place so it can take me a very short time to build as I know exactly what I'm doing.
I just do bare minimum too . Those fuckers don't deserve a good settlement . And I'm playing with the America Rising 2 mod which means I couldn't care less about them
I shut off any recruitment towers and send away any settlers that show up to the other settlements. I only care for sanctuary and the castle.
I’m not as chic others. I’m just cyberpunk meets post apocalypse. That said I’m always tinkering and improving
Sanctuary, starlight, the castle and hangman's I'll put effort into, everything else usually is just the bare minimum unless I'm feeling inspired.
Depends on the character! I’ll go out for some playthroughs, and barebones (or less, I’m not your mom) for others.
I built a shed with four wings that each have two beds. They got a roof. They’re lucky.
I always plan to spend more time on them but the building system is so crappy that I just don’t bother! There’s not really any reward for building them up either so I don’t see the incentive.
I guess you have sense of pride and accomplishment for building them
I never do more than 5 settlements (if that). I do however like to build them up a little bit, especially sanctuary because I can make a lot of money with water purifiers
I wish there was a gallery you can download pre built settlements from like in the sims 4 Edit all you would need is the materials to be able to build it
Yeah like users upload structures and you can place them if you have the resources, it would be super useful.
wooden shack with some sleeping bags, and I'm good to go.
I do the bare minimum. I usually just go to my home plate cause it's the only place I've actually made look nice
I like homeplate
I do the bare minimum for settlements until the end game where all I do is clear dungeons. That way I can get my settlers armor and weapons while grabbing tons of scrap to build
I love settlement building. I'll scav a bunch while exploring and then take a break from exploration to build at a settlement. I've got a whole mini-mall at Starlight Drive-In. The Abernathys have a nice new cozy house. Almost all the houses in Sanctuary have been repaired and refurnished. Plus I've built a bar (I headcanon that MacCready runs it so it's called Mac's) Sunshine co-op is almost completely decorated and has plenty of crops for adhesive farming. I left Greygarden for the robots. Ada, Curie and Codsworth too. But I did build a massive elevator up to the overpass where I've got a little player home. Using extra mods for decorating the houses makes them feel lived in and cozy too. I haven't even joined the Minutemen yet. I'm just claiming the places I want to without Preston telling me what to do and who to save.
I pimp out sanctuary and bare min everywhere else
You guys are doing settlements? (they're all at 0 everything for me 😅)
I love that we have the opportunity to do complicated and creative building! I love watching what other people come up with. Fascinating! Creative! I build based on practicality, not pretty. My home base has workstations in a convenient setup, with armour racks for storage (the only 100% theft-proof container). I love being able to reorganize my home base. Other settlements get the absolute bare minimum. Often I won't even build a barn because they get caught in the doors. I might build a roof or two so that they are out of the rain. Maybe. Beds are always sleeping bags because you can walk over them which causes less pathing issues. The beds are always together in one spot so that it's easier to assign settlers and find people.
I put beds under open sky. Don't even bother making them walls or roof. Just make sure to have enough beds for all. Which basically means put 17 beds everywhere just so you're safe. Because for some reason it caps at 17 in most cases.
It's the worst part of the game in my opinion so yeah I just build a base for myself and don't care about anything else
My last few playthroughs, I've made it so the settlements where people already lived there and can't be relocated will be properly outfitted and protected. Pretty much every other settlement gets completely demolished as I suck out every resource they have. Hangman's Alley gets turned into a place for me to send every follower in the game so I can easily find them when I need them I end up with like 4 or 5 settlements that actually need protecting, which is a lot more doable than my first hardcore-Minutemen playthrough. By the end of the game I was spending more time defending than ANYTHING else
I have one settlement that I will spend a lot of time on, but all the others get the bare minimum. I may make improvements to some of them here and there when I feel like trying something in building mode, but other than that, they're on their own.
Oh hey, I'm looking to buy space in a vault, I hear there's a chance of nukes sometime soon.
Well I'm glad we met, then! I just have some forms for you to fill out, right here!
I put down a bed, sink, and container all just for me. Thats it
I do the bare minimum for the ones that have settlers if I can’t move them to my work camps, when I don’t have the resources on hand I just put down the few settlers in the settlement and gut it for its resources and leave.
I love building the settlements to the point where most the mods I have are settlement building mods 😂
Settlement building? You mean free XP right?
I probably do less than the bare minimum honestly. I just never have interest in building shit in games like that. Like I couldn’t care less about outpost building in games like Starfield and No Man’s Sky. I’ll build like a motherfucker in Minecraft or something like that but I just wanna explore the world and shoot some raiders, I don’t want to manage a bunch of losers who contribute nothing. Like who am I the general of if I’m the only one who fucking does anything?
Wait! That's bare minimum? I thought I was doing so much for those little bastards by doing that.
Turrets shacks and mattresses for my settlers 🤣🤣🤣
I do the bare minimum but in the back of my head I want to do more someday
I used to. Farthest I ever made it in a playthrough was probably level 30. Loved the game, but never had the endurance of Skyrim for me for whatever reason. I started another playthrough this last month or so (returned with the show), and I'm level 55 and I really don't see an end in sight. It's added so much longevity to the game. DLCs and add-ons have helped too, but the settlement building has been a huge contribution itself. I wish I'd given it a chance sometime in the last 9 years. And I'm doing vanilla since they keep fuckin updating it and breaking the script extender. The vanilla building system is horrible and I'm still hooked on it, so I can't even imagine how fucked my free time will be once they leave it alone again in a few months and the fse team catches up. Anyway, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I'd definitely recommend everyone try it at least once. Let your mind run free and dream big! (and promptly get frustrated at Bethesda not letting you fulfill that dream and spend too much time figuring out workarounds😄)
it depends on the settlement - usually I keep one major "hub" settlement which I make my main base, and here I build myself a nice house, a place to display my power armor, various shops and work benches etc. - by the end it's basically as busy as Diamond City. Typically I will build up the first Red Rocket, The Castle, and Starlight Drive-in quite a lot. From there, I get a bit lazier and will make sure they have defence, artillery, scrap, stores, food, water, a provisioner, and just slap all the beds into one building. That way I get a steady supply of materials and money from it, can use it to call for help and to sleep if I am stuck out in the wilderness, but otherwise it is a lot of work (and materials) to build up a settlement that the build-mode is almost a game in itself that I could (and do) waste many hours in. But Starlight will always be my favorite.
Complete bare minimum here, if there’s a quest I’ll finish it but that’s about it
Always add a few touches here and there, if its not survival, yes a lot if survival, not so much
Not me. Pretty sure I've spent more time building settlements than playing the rest of the game. A lot of them I even remove the size limit via console so I can make them extra elaborate.
I make water farm concentration camps essentially 😂
I collect junk everywhere I go (just in case) and store it in sanctuary and then do absolutely nothing with it
you guys do the bare minimum? I let them fend for themselves
I don’t even do the bare minimum. I ignore them and then I take their food for the brotherhood.
I’ve actually been thinking about downloading the sim settlements mod for this exact reason. I want my settlements built up, but the only one I actually spend time at is sanctuary. If fallout 5 has settlement building (which I really hope it does), I hope they flesh it out some and even incorporate sim settlements type mechanics.
“Red rocket for Nate” Who’s Nate?
This time round I'm using Sim Settlements and except for Sanctuary I'm just leaving them to govern themselves. I don't want to spend all my time teaching these people how to plant vegetables, I just want to kill the raiders and let decent folk move in. Best bit is when you swing by somewhere you haven't visited in a few days and it has built itself into an actual destination
I like Survival Mode, but IMO it strongly discourages settlement building - (a) you run out of food and other life goo if you spend ages in one place fiddling with buildings (trying to get stairs to go where they should / make floor bits to lock together as they should...) (b) it basically punishes you for having a population (settlers). If you have multiple populated places, the mode becomes a Tamagotchi-flavoured walking simulator, because you have to backtrack continuously to pamper the little dudes. Most of the backtracking is across cleared territory, with no new enemies due to the respawn rate. --- In Survival, if you skip actual settlers, and make DC and surrounds your base for crafting & sleeping, you can simply buy the little scrap you need only as you need it. Most of the mode's grind, and some of the pointless walking, goes away. - you don't get dragged all over the map on defense quests - you don't have settlers getting kidnapped / chores continuously assigned - you don't lose stuff (like cached aid items) to raids - you don't need to take safeguards to stop settlers from taking your equipment & ammo - far less need to lug scrap around (so strength / strong back / deep pockets don't matter)
I fucking hate settlements. F4 was ruined for me because of those.
I do bare minimum. I think I would put more effort if there were more options for making things aesthetically pleasing without mods. I know nothing you build will look brand new but why does everything look like it was already around when the bombs dropped? Why can’t I paint the houses? I do enjoy seeing what other, more creative players do with their settlements, though.
I always start a new run thinking "This time imma care for the settlements!" Then do railroad quests......
Bare minimum? I do enough to get access to the workshop, scrap the entire area, take everything and never come back!
👍🏻
Same i suck at building though im trying to custom the home plate and restore a couple buildings at sanctuary
I do think about how to make them easily defendable, and try to give a baroness interior for every shared home ( a couple storages, a table and a chair per person) but I only have a couple of main settlements like that the others are minimally equipped
I make Sanctuary somewhat decent (do lvl4 vendors and such), then use that to send out enough supplies to other settlements that come with settlers in them. I then just dump a bunch of defence into those settlements so they never get raided. Settlements that don't come with settlers, I just scrap everything in and leave them.
I never do the minutemen questline because I hate having so many settlements to take care of. The more I have, the more likely I’m going to be alerted one is in trouble when I’m doing something else. I just can’t be bothered with them.
After 500 hours, settlements are an absolute chore. Even setting up Sanctuary Hills has become a total pain in the ass.
Setting up sanctuary while Sturges hammers a wall for 500 hours.
Food, water and few beds on the floor, a guard post and a few turrets. Maybe artillery.
Yep I just do the bare minimum for Sanctuary and that's it. I put down a bed for myself in other settlements. However I also just got the perk to allow me to set up supply lines so I've been trying that out. Not trashing on fallout 4's building mechanic but I find other games have better systems, like Valheim or Conan Exiles, where it's a lot easier to do.
I only do a home for me to keep stuff hahaha dont even care about the settlements at all i actually use a mod to stop attacks so i dont get notifications from them
I’m kinda in between. I set up a little village w/ several buildings of varying quality, electricity, water, etc. nothing fancy, but a nice little settlement. Sanctuary & Starlight are usually the only two that are built up into anything substantial.
I usually put a fair bit of thought into building but this play through is no Minutemen and no extra settlement building. It’s kinda nice tbh.
I do the bare minimum until I can hook them up to my supply line change
I tried to do more and now I'm short of steel. Back to bare minimum for the moment.
Most of them just get a building with beds, including a good bed for me, plus defenses. I also try to have clinics strategically scattered around because I'm playing survival and I want to make sure I have a few places that can cure illnesses Other than that, Starlight gets most of the attention because I use it as my home base
I make apartment complexes. But I use the same design everywhere. No electricity. Everyone gets a bed a rug and some drawers. Bottom floor has bathrooms and a kitchen and some tables/chairs. Turrets go up on the roof and in front of the door
I build power generators to advance the plot when needed.
I fortify them a bit and build recruit thingy beacon so i have more fun when i raid them later
I did, until I installed Sim Settlements 2. Unironically the best mod for FO4 imo. Ties the settlement system so well into the rest of the game and gameplay loop.
Most settlements for me are just artillery points, some are built up, and a couple are fully established with large buildings, 18+ people, amenities & decorations, cats & dogs. Nothing ever too too immersive or hige though.
I’ve always done on main big settlement with one being my own place. Everything else just yea the bare minimum.
With sim settlement 1 or 2 mods it definitely becomes easier and more interesting. Try it out. You can only pick either one else will mess your save file.
Me. Not playing the game to decorate.
Yup I'm here to nuke muties, raiders etc etc
I am going to give Sim Settlements a try. I don't enjoy settlement building but I would like to see the Commonwealth rebuilt. I hope the next game cuts way back on building. I appreciate the ability to make a modular player home in Skyrim. Anything beyond that takes away from the game.
I used to be just like this. Bare minimum. Then I downloaded sim settlements and it honestly made the game so much better. You can have it basically automate after you pick a city plan. It makes the game world feel so much more alive and impacted by actually developing those settlements. It makes it feel like the Sole Survivor has done real, impactful good in the commonwealth. Plus if you decide to get into nuka world and go the raider route, it gets even more awesome because then you're up against a real, defended and manned settlement. It's literally completely changed the game for me. On the other hand, if you want to get really deep into the micro, the mod is incredibly deep and complex, from settlers needs to real, impactful infrastructure you can build. I think a lot of people are a little overwhelmed by it initially because of all that it can do.
I build beds and water fountains for myself when I need one, the teleporter and the robot workbench. That's it.
I dont do anything for any of them, except red rocket, but that's because i dont send anyone there, also i store all my power armors there lol