Share Your Settlement, please!

[Content Consumer]

Fallout 4 has an interesting settlement building mechanic, and I quite enjoy playing around with it. I've always been fascinated with castles, forts, etc. - particularly with regard to defense and the repelling of attacks. Skyrim gave me a plethora of places to look at, and make plans on how to attack and defend each area.  Castle Volkihar and Fort Dawnguard in particular drew my attention. I even wrote up a medium-sized document on how I would have designed Fort Dawnguard and the entire valley better, complete with pictures and diagrams, but never finished it, because I think I'm the only one interested.

Fallout 4 is no different - Covenant, Diamond City, etc. all make me look at them and ask myself "how can I best attack this place, and how can I defend this place from attack?" I should have been an architect or engineer or something, instead of going into a dead-end field like computers.

Fallout 4's settlement building stuff, unlike the crap I wrote up for Skyrim, probably interesting for other people, because now it's an integral part of the game. It can get to be a bit of a slog, micromanaging a dozen settlements, but aside from that it's pretty fun. Of course, I'm a big fan of building huge houses and castles in the Sims, so...

Anyway, I am looking forward to reading about how viewers like you prepare your settlements for the inevitable raider or super mutant visitors. Feel free to include pictures, screenshots, diagrams, or just text, but please tell me how you design these things!

 

I'll start, because I'm arrogant like that. I may even make up some maps and flesh this out some time. I'm primarily talking about defenses, but please don't stop yourself there!

 

Sanctuary

Sanctuary is an oddly-shaped bit of ground, with a bunch of extant structures that are hard to build around and difficult to use. As settlements go, it's a fairly good size, with good access to water, but putting up defensive walls is a bitch. You've got a lot of hills to contend with, making linked walls difficult, and the interior is chock-full of stuff that stops you from putting your foundations down where you want them. You can't really bisect it, because settlers tend to wander into places they aren't supposed to go. Overall, I prefer to build elsewhere.

 

Sanctuary, V1

On my very first save, I went and put up foundations and walls all along the outside perimiter, with two entrances - one leading to the Vault, and one leading to the bridge. I put turret clusters at regular intervals along the outside wall, and extra guard posts at the entrances. No defenses inside, because why would you do that?

This beehive-style construction ended up being a mistake. Raiders and Gunners and the like tend to attack from outside, but Super Mutants for some damn reason spawn inside the perimiter. Most of my turrets couldn't see the inside from where they were sitting, so it was up to me and my few low-level, pipe-pistol-wielding settlers to repel the attack. Not good, I lost a couple generators and most of my crops.

This game tought me two things - One, defending the perimeter is great, but make sure you've got internal defenses too. Two, put your turrets off the ground, because melee attackers make short work of anything they can reach.

 

Sanctuary, V2

My second attempt was pretty much like my first. I got rid of the extra entrance near the vault, closed it off, and put turrets inside. I was making good use of the extant structures, which I had not previously done, using them as settler barracks, generator rooms, etc. It was pretty cool, actually, with a designated market space, recreation areas, etc. Defense-wise, it was fine, but I had to scrap it because of a myriad of other problems, such as settlers not being able to find their beds and happiness plummeting. 17 settlers and 38 beds and they're still complaining? No thanks. Also, I had pretty much reached my max size, and there wasn't enough room to put a mortar (!). So screw it.

This game tought me one thing - settlers are fucking stupid.

 

Sanctuary, V3

My third attempt cut the settlement in half. I put a wall from the edge of your starting house all the way down to the water, and around the perimeter. I didn't put any turrets on the outer walls, because what's the point? What are the enemies going to do but wander around out there, easy pickings for a sniper jumping from rooftop to rooftop? Defend the one entrance, ignore the rest.

The problem with this one was that many of my settlers, Garvey, Codsworth, etc. persisted in wandering around the outside of the walls to the empty part of town and just standing there. I think I understand why - the AI tries to centralize the location of people, and I put my wall right through the middle of town, essentially cutting what the game thinks is valid living space in half.

This game tought me one thing - it's really easy to overthink stuff.

 

Sanctuary, V4

My fourth and current attempt makes good use of mods and cheats, particularly Spring Cleaning and the scrapall console command. Fuck the vanilla structures, I'm tired of messing about. I scrapped the entire settlement and built my own structures. This one is working pretty well. I've got two buildings - one with a rec area, crafting, sleeping, and interior courtyard with all my crops. The other building is a small, standalone, walled-in water purification plant. I didn't try to wall the entire place in, or even ANY of it - the main building sits right in the middle of the grounds, surrounded by a lot of open space.

I've got turrets set up on the building's roof in various places, so let the idiot settlers wander the town, I don't care, they're all under the cover of lasers and missiles. Serves 'em right if they get caught in the crossfire.

 

Abernathy Farm

Nice shape and size, though the hill makes it a little difficult to deal with. The central building is a convoluted mess of crap. I'm sure Spring Cleaning would make short work of that, but I haven't gone that route yet. I usually just wall in three sides, put a couple of turret platforms on the fourth, and call it good. Long lines of sight mean the turrets can see pretty much anywhere an attacking force can get to, so there's no need to go overboard putting defenses in nooks and crannies.

 

Boston Airport

Haven't done this one yet. I don't even know the extent of the building area. I should really do a BOS playthrough some day.

 

Bunker Hill

Haven't done this one yet either. No idea just how much you can scrap and how much you'd have to keep, but all in all it looks like a horrible place to try to build. A warren of crap, difficult to defend from the outside and almost impossible to defend from the inside.

 

The Castle

You don't have a choice with this one. Double-stacked concrete foundations blocking up the holes in the wall. There's nothing that can reasonably be done other than that. I mean, sure you can do other things with the place, but you'll feel bad about it. Mortars on the corners, and surround the rest of the place with metal walls, and it actually starts looking defensible, as long as you ignore the fact that these high walls were already destroyed once before. Orchards on the tops of the walls, sleeping quarters inside the walls, crafting areas, generator rooms, recreation areas, and market in the courtyard. I've built this place up twice now, and I can't see myself doing anything different.

Protip - don't use scrapall here. Bad mojo.

 

Coastal Cottage

Haven't done this one yet, but it looks pretty average.

 

County Crossing

Easy enough. Good access to water, and not too much in the way of vanilla structures you'd have to build around. I just slap a wall around the outside, put a pair of turret platforms up, and call it good. (For future reference, when I say "turret platform" I'm talking about a concrete foundation, made taller by four walls and a roof, topped with a turret on each corner, or possibly only three corners if the situation calls for it).

 

Covenant

I've only done this once, and it's a bitch. The vanilla structures aren't scrappable, and neither are the outer defenses. The wall is pretty good, and well designed, but you can't really put your own turrets in, because they fight with the vanilla unscrappable turrets for some damn reason. The buildings tend to lock themselves, and they're cluttered with stuff you can't scrap. The only stuff that's really scrappable is some of the furniture inside and part - not all, but only PART - of the little room outside the walls, leaving a bunch of crap sitting in midair if you try. All in all, this one sucks to build. I'm not even going to get into the associated quest.

 

Croup Manor

Only done this once, but it's a bitch. Full of ghouls that keep respawning inside the perimeter, and one big building that's tough to build around, it's hard to get an outer wall anywhere, and you can't do without the outer wall because there's nowhere to put any turrets inside. The buildable area isn't big enough for my tastes, and while the house itself is big enough for a sizeable population, there's nothing for them to do because you can't put a decent market or farm anywhere much.

 

Egret Tours Marina

Haven't found this one yet.

 

Finch Farm

Aside from the associated quest, this isn't bad. Like many settlements with people already in it, the settlers can't be moved around, but that's okay. It's got a big area, perfect for a large farm, and it's relatively flat, making it easier to just put a couple of turret platforms around and don't bother with a perimeter wall. I haven't looked at the highway above the farm, because at the time I didn't even think about it, but after building at Graygarden I'm looking forward to trying this one again just for that (more on Graygarden later).

 

Graygarden

I like this one, for a variety of reasons.

While Mr. Handies (Handys? Handy's'? Hanshotfirsties?) aren't any real good at combat against anything except radroaches and mole rats, they don't need to be, because I always focus on the turrets to defend my settlements. It's got a big building area (bigger than you might think ), but most of it is rocky hillside, and you can't do anything with that, which essentially cuts it down by half. Slap a wall on the back end of the greenhouse to prevent anyone getting in through there, and put a couple of turret platforms up, and Bob's your uncle.

The great thing about Graygarden is the freeway sitting above the place. The first time I built here, I ignored it, because who would've thought you could do anything with that? But the second time, it occurred to me that settlement perimeters only go X and Y, and completely ignore the zed. So there's actually quite a lot of buildable area up top, in places that you can't actually reach without walking a long damn way around. I honestly haven't done much with the freeway, but I figure you could put a barracks up there, probably connected by a long, easily fall-offable stairway, you'd have to rename the place "Broken Leg Garden" but it'd be fun. What I did was just put a couple of turret platforms up there, including one on the other side with a pair of missile turrets overlooking the river, just so any raiders, ghouls, or mutants who think about walking along the road or railway bridge way down there can get a nice surprise.

 

Greentop Nursery

This one's irritating to me. You have to put up a perimeter wall, really, and there's no good way to do it. Turret platforms just aren't going to cut it, and while you can technically put turrets up on the greenhouse or the roof of the building, they look really funk from the ground because they're just sitting on air. Like Graygarden, slap a wall across the back entrance to the greenhouse, and another wall all the way around the outer two sides of the main house to stop anyone from shooting the place up, and then just basically deal with the rest as best you can.

 

Hangman's Alley

Haven't done this one yet.

 

Home Plate

Ugh. This one is irritating, just because there's nothing much you can do with it. I use this place to store my bobbleheads and magazines, and otherwise ignore it. I do like the fuse box, though. Shame there's nothing you can really do with that much power. It's not like you need any of it for defenses, and most lights don't take any actual power (just radiating connectors), so the whole place is mostly useless. From a role-playing standpoint it's absolutely perfect, though, so as soon as some decent RP mods come along I'll probably make more use of it.

 

Jamaica Plain

Haven't found this one yet.

 

Kingsport Lighthouse

Like Graygarden, I really like this place, both for construction reasons and non-construction reasons. Taking it from the resident evildoers is a real bitch, because those damn gamma guns do more damage than super mutant behemoths, but once it's clear it's pretty fun.

The house in the middle is nothing to write home about, though it makes for a decent barracks. I put a generator cluster on the top floor and used it to power pretty much everything. A perimeter wall is difficult to build here, and in truth mostly unnecessary - a couple of turret platforms on the landward side is enough, and a couple of freestanding shotgun turrets down on the dock takes care of respawning cultists. My main objection to the spot is that once you kill everything off, the lighthouse stops producing light for some damn reason - I'm guessing that the glowing feral at the top was the source of the light. Still, slap a bunch of white freestanding lights up there and link them to your generators and you can make an approximation of a lighthouse.

There's a lot of wasted space with this settlement, due to the rocky cliffs and the dock, you can't do much with that stuff. It's hard to find good places for turret platforms down there too. I guess that, if I look at this logically, it's really not the best place to build, but I can't help myself - I love lighthouses, docks, and ships, and this place has it all. :) :)

 

Murkwater Construction Site

Haven't found this one yet.

 

Nordhagen Beach

I'm ambivalent about this one. It's pretty flat, with good lines of sight, and you don't have to worry about trying to build around a bunch of vanilla structures in your way. Putting up a perimeter wall is easy enough, at least along most of the edge. Turret platforms take up the rest. In truth, I'm not sure that any sort of perimeter wall is even necessary.

My problem with it is that I'm just certain it's going to be attacked by a Mirelurk Queen someday, and those things stand tall enough to easily take out even the tallest turret platform. I don't want to build a perimeter wall along the shore, because it's really uneven and tough to do, so I'm pretty much stuck.

Defense-wise, this one could be either really good or really bad. For everything else, it's actually pretty good. Plenty of water and arable land, plenty of space to put living quarters, a market, a recreation area, etc.

 

Oberland Station

Not much to say about this. I tend to scrap everything, put up perimeter walls (easier said than done thanks to the uneven ground), slap a farm down, and use the tower as a generator room. I leave two entrances, at each end of the rail line, and call it good. You don't need much in the way of defenses for this place, it's too small and square to need much more than a single turret platform, and maybe a couple more turrets at the entrances.

 

Outpost Zimonja

You'd think that a smallish area with a pre-existing structure, natural cliff walls, and some decent flat ground would be a fine place to build. You'd be wrong.

There's no real way to get a perimeter wall up, so you're pretty much forced to rely on turret platforms. Raiders spawn at the camp nearby like clockwork, so you can't even visit the place without triggering an attack. Much of the area (without Spring Cleaning or similar mod) cannot be scrapped, meaning you're stuck with some stupid extant construction. The cliff can't be built on, and it overlooks the whole place, so enemies can attack from there and there's jack shit you can do about it. You can wall in two sides pretty easily, and there's enough space for some decent crops, but there's no water so you have to spend some space on pumps, and about 2/3 of the place is almost completely unable to be defended.

As a player-only residence, it'll be just fine. As an actual settlement, you can do better.

 

Red Rocket

Hard to say whether this is good or bad. It's a smaller area, but it's got plenty of farming land once you clear the place out. The structure is pretty fun to deal with, and you can use it as a barracks, crafting area, or player home easily. Two of the four sides are useless for farming, and the area under the gas station roof is likewise pointless unless you use it as a market or something. You can make good use of the hedges as natural barriers, but I usually end up ignoring them. There's no water, but there's plenty of space to put pumps, even if you often have to finagle them into odd spots.

One interesting thing - it's close enough to Sanctuary that any turret platforms on the far edge of either settlement can actually help cover an attack on the other one. Red Rocket was attacked by ghouls once, and the turrets in Sanctuary did a lot of damage before the ghouls even reached Red Rocket's wall.

Protip - don't use scrapall here after you've been building in Sanctuary (and vice versa). I don't know how the scrapall command works, you'd think it'd confine itself to the settlement area, but I guess it goes by cells instead, so you can easily scrap some stuff you didn't want to in Sanctuary over the river. The same does not seem to apply to Outpost Zimonja / Tenpines Bluff, so I guess they're far enough apart.

 

The Slog

Haven't found this one yet.

 

Somerville Place

This one irritates me. It's got a huge buildable area, and despite the hill it's easy enough to put in a defensive wall, but it's just too far away from the rest of the world for my comfort. It's all psychological - Somerville is no more or less likely to be attacked by more or less powerful creatures than anywhere else, but it always seems like a lost cause to me.

The first time I built here, Mac the wandering bartender set up shop just outside the buildable area, I thought he was part of the settlement. I ended up setting up a big turret cluster down there to guard his bar, and the next time I come by he's gone. Fucker.

 

Spectacle Island

Haven't found this one yet.

 

Starlight Drive-In

This one would seem like the ideal place to build. A huge, flat area, with a structure on one end and what amounts to a combined defense wall and barracks or storage area on the other. Not a lot of farming land, but good access to water right in the middle. All in all, it's pretty good, but the sheer size, like Sanctuary, makes me want to overbuild, putting the whole thing in a perimeter wall and setting up some huge buildings. I tend to burn through my space budget pretty quickly here.

The projector building is, like the Red Rocket, oddly shaped, in this case too oddly shaped to get much use out of it. You can't slap walls on the windows either, because the roof is too short. You can use the extended area to put turrets, but they can't cover the entire place, so why bother? I usually end up putting my outer wall just shy of the building and then ignoring it.

 

Sunshine Tidings Co-op

This one is hard to build in. It has a decent size, and two of the extant structures are big enough and in good enough repair to use, but there's a lot of rundown structures that you just can't do anything with. Maybe use them as sleeping places. I keep coming back to this one, trying to finesse it just right, but overall I'm always frustrated by the hills and buildings you can't scrap and have to build around. I'd also like to keep the robot around, but once you scrap his computer he runs off, so you've got to keep the computer too, which eats into your size budget a bit, and I'm anal enough I hate that. It's a tradeoff for me.

 

Taffington Boathouse

This one is irritating. The house makes for a fairly decent sleeping area, as long as you ignore the fact that the roof is gone. You can't put any sort of decent floor down in the boathouse, so its utility is almost nil. It's tough to get any sort of perimeter wall around, and even if you do it's still pretty open to attack, enemies can just shoot around the wall into the house area because the wall can't go very far out into the water. The dead cows make for annoying hazards to building, because like all physics-enabled corpses, if you have the misfortune or bad judgement to build over the top of them, they'll stay quiet for a while, biding their time until you feel confident that you've done a decent job building the place up, then they'll start spazzing out and knocking against the floor or walls like you've got ghosts haunting your place.

 

Tenpines Bluff

This one may seem irritating at first, but it isn't that bad. I always just scrap everything and end up building one big structure across the west side, then put turrets up on the roof to cover the entire area, and ignore any sort of perimeter wall. No water here, but plenty of buildable land, even though some of it is taken up by a pair of poorly-placed structures. Spring Cleaning + Scrapall is your friend. Don't try to make use of the ruined house - much like County Crossing, trying to use things like that is an exercise in frustration.

 

Warwick Homestead

I haven't found this one yet.

 

 

 

That's it for me. I do have a couple more things to say:

1. When building, I recommend using the scrapall command, even when it takes out some vanilla stuff you'd rather leave in. It really helps cut down on your size usage, and gets rid of stuff you'd otherwise have a tough time finding or easily scrapping.

2. Turret platforms are, usually, better than perimeter walls. They take up less of your size budget and can cover a wide area. I tend to make perimeter walls too, but that's just because I'm an illogical ass.

3. Guard posts are pointless from a defense standpoint. Settlers assigned to the post will abandon it the instant anything attacks, just to run out into the middle of the area where they can get shot at more easily. The only reason to use guard posts is if you like to see people patrolling the area - set up two or three around the outside, and your guard settler will spend his time wandering around with a gun out, adding to the feel of the place.

4. Your defense rating means shit. Despite what the game tells you, a settlement with a high defense rating is no more or less likely to be attacked than one with a low rating. I have settlements with 6 food and 200+ defense being attacked, and settlements with 24 food and 0 defense being ignored. It's either a bug or an oversight. Maybe a patch or mod will fix it.

The reason to use defenses isn't for the number, it's for when you do get attacked, you'll want some help defeating the attackers.

5. Several of the smallest generators take up less space and produce more power than one of the largest. It's better to use the smaller ones, even though they cost more resources to build than a single large generator.

6. I am using, and can highly recommend, the following mods:

Snapable Power Armor Workbenches Plus Optional compact station, because I like snappable stuff.

Spring Cleaning, because in vanilla even after you scrap everything possible, a lot of your settlement budget is still being used. Also, some vanilla non-scrappable stuff is just in the wrong damn place.

Generator - Fusebox. This one is a real cheating mod, but it's also a hell of a lot easier to deal with than the dozens of generators needed to power a bunch of defenses.

Simple Intersection helps a lot with putting foundations in slightly better spots, and it also helps with a couple of other minor things like small walls fitting better. It's removed a lot of my frustration at not being able to put walls where I want.

Shaikujin's Better warning for settlements being attacked is a much, MUCH better way to be told your settlements are being attacked than a debug.notification, since ignoring or forgetting about an attacked settlement can lead to your generators, turrets, and crops being destroyed the next time you go there, lower happiness, and (so I've been told) the settlement going rogue.

Longer Power Lines is an absolutely essential mod as far as I'm concerned. No more putting power poles or other connectors all over the place, now you can stretch your lines as far as you need to. There's still a limit, of course, and your lines still sag so you will need to put poles around, but not as many nor as close together. I'm using the 2x length verson and it's working just fine for me.

Quieter Settlements is another essential mod for me. Generators (if you're not using the fusebox mod) are very, very loud, enough so that my method of making a cluster of small generators can give you a headache if you spend any time near the area. Turrets too.

Brighter Settlement Lights is a handy little mod, especially nice at night. Used to be, if I wanted an area lit up at night I'd have to put a dozen construction lights and industrial lights surrounding the place, but now two or three is enough.

 

 

[AsariX]

It requires a mod, but I use Stackable Concrete Foundations almost everywhere now to build walls. As soon as a gap starts showing beneath a wall, I plug a new foundation layer beneath it, while lowering the top level of the wall. So my walls are 1-2 blocks high everywhere. I do use quite some stairs on my walls to go from one part to the next if there's a difference in height.

I also have a tendency to clean up roots and stuff with scrapscrap.

 

In some locations, like Oberland Station, where the ground goes down quite steep into one corner, I even made the wall three blocks high, with my "house" level with the "top block". Beneath the building, there's still enough room to walk around, plant food, and whatever.

 

The creator of the stackable foundations mod made quite a few other useful things, and most of his mods can be found in his compilation mod (including the foundations). Only one warning: don't ask him to make anything, especially not any retextures!

[Content Consumer]

It requires a mod, but I use Stackable Concrete Foundations almost everywhere now to build walls. As soon as a gap starts showing beneath a wall, I plug a new foundation layer beneath it, while lowering the top level of the wall. So my walls are 1-2 blocks high everywhere. I do use quite some stairs on my walls to go from one part to the next if there's a difference in height.

I also have a tendency to clean up roots and stuff with scrapscrap.

 

In some locations, like Oberland Station, where the ground goes down quite steep into one corner, I even made the wall three blocks high, with my "house" level with the "top block". Beneath the building, there's still enough room to walk around, plant food, and whatever.

 

The creator of the stackable foundations mod made quite a few other useful things, and most of his mods can be found in his compilation mod (including the foundations). Only one warning: don't ask him to make anything, especially not any retextures!

 

Ah, yes. I'm tracking several of those, I've been meaning to try them out, and some other mods too. Thanks for the compilation link.

[DocClox]

My approach is a little different.

 

My Sanctuary build was to set up beds in existing houses, drop a trio of water pumps, a row of mutifruit, and then I driopped three heavy turrets at various points along the road.

 

That was about it. Preston Garvey and his motley crew were happy enough no one seemed particularly interested in raiding. So I repeated the formula for just about every settlement I found. Take care of the basics, find some useful looking turret sites, forget about it.

 

Eventually, populations started to rise, despite my lack of interest. Every now and then a settler would buttonhole me long enough to ask for more food/water/beds and I'd spend some time adding resources. Not long after that the raiding started.

 

Much to my surprise, my slapdash defences were generally effective. I found that a couple of heavy machine gun turrets will drop most raider assaults before I get a chance to find the raiders. This was helped by my habit of storing surplus weapons and armour in the workbench - settlers across the commonwealth had been taking advantage of my supply lines and helping themselves to upgrades.

 

Where it didn't work, I started paying attention to spawn points and adding defences there. At Zimonja I put a couple of concrete foundation blocks on the hill overlooking the main spawn point and added a quartet of turrets and a couple of guard posts so defenders would have some cover. At Sommerville Place I just stuck the things on the roof of the house. When the synth infiltrators started I added sirens so the settlers would go to high alert. Never found a living infiltrator since that point. Quite a few dead ones though.

 

I think I'd have hit problems with the approach sooner or later - I never had a deathclaw attach, for instance, and charred ghouls are tough enough to withstand a lot of gun turret fire. Still, I retired that character at around that point, (lvl75 and MQ complete) so I can't say.

 

Current char is optimised for tasks other than settlement building, so I'm currently leaving them all at subsistence level. The next one, I think, is going to focus on settlements and see about doing them properly from the start. That should be interesting.

[Content Consumer]

My approach is a little different. 

That's what she said. 

My Sanctuary build was to set up beds in existing houses, drop a trio of water pumps, a row of mutifruit, and then I driopped three heavy turrets at various points along the road.

I've stopped using the existing houses for beds, because it always seems my settlers can't get at them for some reason. I've read it's something to do with pathing, which I can totally believe, the pathing in this game seems roughly default A* quality.

I'm starting to wonder if I need all that water - do you need 1 water per settler, 1 water per food, what? Water never seems to go into the red unless there's zero of it. Maybe the whole purpose of lots of water is just to get the purified water from your workbench, and there's no other reason for it? I'll need to do some testing.

 

That was about it. Preston Garvey and his motley crew were happy enough no one seemed particularly interested in raiding. So I repeated the formula for just about every settlement I found. Take care of the basics, find some useful looking turret sites, forget about it.

That's what I should be doing, but I can't stop myself from trying to make every settlement look like a fortified town instead of  a little open village. I seriously can't stop myself - I mean, I get itchy when walking into a settlement that looks exposed. I've finally trained myself to use turret platforms in place of defensive walls in some spots, but only when I really have no other choice, or when it looks good.

Aesthetics trump practicality every time.

 

Eventually, populations started to rise, despite my lack of interest. Every now and then a settler would buttonhole me long enough to ask for more food/water/beds and I'd spend some time adding resources. Not long after that the raiding started.

 

Much to my surprise, my slapdash defences were generally effective. I found that a couple of heavy machine gun turrets will drop most raider assaults before I get a chance to find the raiders.

I used to use heavy machinegun turrets exclusively, then I moved to heavy laser turrets exclusively, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Some enemy types are more resistant to energy attacks (lasers), for example. Also, the quality of the turret is randomly generated when you plop it down - I've found that it's entirely possible to get a heavy machinegun turret that does less damage than a normal one. Solution: pray to the RNG gods, then store the turret and put it down again, it should reset.

I don't like missile turrets much - they do a lot of damage, and explosive is nice, but that'll damage your own equipment and settlers too.

 

This was helped by my habit of storing surplus weapons and armour in the workbench - settlers across the commonwealth had been taking advantage of my supply lines and helping themselves to upgrades.

Seriously? They do that, change out weapons from workbenches? That's really cool! What about armor?

What about stuff stored in non-workbench containers, like drawers and such? I don't want them taking my legendary multiple-launching fatman and mini nukes...

 

Where it didn't work, I started paying attention to spawn points and adding defences there. At Zimonja I put a couple of concrete foundation blocks on the hill overlooking the main spawn point and added a quartet of turrets and a couple of guard posts so defenders would have some cover. At Sommerville Place I just stuck the things on the roof of the house. When the synth infiltrators started I added sirens so the settlers would go to high alert. Never found a living infiltrator since that point. Quite a few dead ones though.

I didn't even think about spawn points. Obviously there are going to be spawn points, invaders won't just spawn anywhere. Duh. Slap myself.

 

I think I'd have hit problems with the approach sooner or later - I never had a deathclaw attach, for instance, and charred ghouls are tough enough to withstand a lot of gun turret fire. Still, I retired that character at around that point, (lvl75 and MQ complete) so I can't say.

Current char is optimised for tasks other than settlement building, so I'm currently leaving them all at subsistence level. The next one, I think, is going to focus on settlements and see about doing them properly from the start. That should be interesting.

That's what I'm doing with this one - my last couple of games, I just went at the game randomly. A few BOS missions, a few railroad missions, a lot of settlements, and I've never gotten past Kellog's brain memory dream dump thing. This time, I'm going the Minuteman route whole hog, settlements and supply lines. I think I'll probably get irritated with the micromanaging required after a while. I'll see.

Future plans include a full BOS playthrough, full Railroad playthrough, and full Institute playthrough.

 

[DFSL]

My favorite settlement is Taffington Boathouse. I even made it the de facto capital because most of my supply lines end there. I built additional housing against the borders and covered the rest of the perimeter with the concrete walls provided by Homemaker. Patched the holes in the main house placing Homemaker walls and roofs and then setting them into the ruined ones using the "setpos" and "rotate" commands. I patched the floor of the boathouse using the same method and then transformed it into a machine room by placing two large (45 power) Homemaker generators. The most irritating thing however is that, even with 132 water, 60 food, 120 power, 234 defense, three emporioum stalls and more than the double of beds needed the happiness never ever goes beyond 83 points. The NPCs are ungrateful bastards.

[Content Consumer]

My favorite settlement is Taffington Boathouse. I even made it the de facto capital because most of my supply lines end there. I built additional housing against the borders and covered the rest of the perimeter with the concrete walls provided by Homemaker. Patched the holes in the main house placing Homemaker walls and roofs and then setting them into the ruined ones using the "setpos" and "rotate" commands. I patched the floor of the boathouse using the same method and then transformed it into a machine room by placing two large (45 power) Homemaker generators. The most irritating thing however is that, even with 132 water, 60 food, 120 power, 234 defense, three emporioum stalls and more than the double of beds needed the happiness never ever goes beyond 83 points. The NPCs are ungrateful bastards.

 

Homemaker, eh? I'll check that out too.

I haven't used setpos / rotate to get things where I need them to go, mostly because I have limited patience for doing stuff like that. But it's certainly effective, I'll grant you.

As for the happiness, I remember reading somewhere that getting it above the mid 80s requires your constant presence. And not just in the settlement, either - you have to spend like two days (in-game), not waiting or sleeping, just standing there, within a certain radius of your settlers. I think even one settler will do, but the more you surround yourself with the faster it goes. Try building a bell and bringing them all to you, do it repeatedly and maybe that'll get happiness up there?

Also, I think the medical stalls increase happiness the fastest, food and drink stalls second, goods stalls third. At least, it seems to increase faster with medical and food. Could be my imagination.

[Gameplayer]

Precise object moving and rotating

 

Home Maker

 

OCD decorator

 

Insulated Pylons and Conduits (this is for precision work on what gets lit rather than having power bubble bullshit)

 

Those are what I use from the Nexus.

 

I've only really gone to town decorating Dockside but also did some basic work on Tenpines Bluff, Sanctuary, and Abernanthy Farm.

 

 

Done a crap ton of work on my Dockside   Taffy Boathouse (my bad) , just about each area is super awesome!

No really.

 

I intend on using a SaveGame Location copier that's being developed to Pull/hack the location out and place it into a New starter save game....So that other people can just you know play as normal and show to the Dockside and have a cool ass location.

 

Its probably unusual that I spent so much time decorating the Exterior but every part of the outside has some décor like skulls, tires, and various bits to help make that wall look like something cool.  A lot of interior spots have the same treatment, and also I wanted to make parts look reinforced like hey we're getting shot at hide here type stuff.

 

I did have my roof covered over in turrets originally but I wanted to have an actual roof instead, also I re-worked the different floors so the building I made was less of a box and had porches with nice spots for a BBQ grill and were ppl could just hang out on sunny afternoons.

[Content Consumer]

Insulated Pylons and Conduits (this is for precision work on what gets lit rather than having power bubble bullshit)

Looks like this one shuts off the radiating power, which doesn't really bother me... but how then do you get your lights to turn on? Or are you limited to construction lights?

 

Done a crap ton of work on my Dockside   Taffy Boathouse (my bad) , just about each area is super awesome!

Those are cool screenshots. You put a lot of work into this! Very complex, looks a lot better than my crap. Looks like it actually fits, this is something that could have been in vanilla. Only better.

It looks actually way complex - are you using a mod (or console) to uncap your settlement size limit?

 

[Gameplayer]

 

Insulated Pylons and Conduits (this is for precision work on what gets lit rather than having power bubble bullshit)

Looks like this one shuts off the radiating power, which doesn't really bother me... but how then do you get your lights to turn on? Or are you limited to construction lights?

 

Done a crap ton of work on my Dockside   Taffy Boathouse (my bad) , just about each area is super awesome!

Those are cool screenshots. You put a lot of work into this! Very complex, looks a lot better than my crap. Looks like it actually fits, this is something that could have been in vanilla. Only better.

It looks actually way complex - are you using a mod (or console) to uncap your settlement size limit?

 

 

 

Insulated Pylons,

Well what I intend to do is run a wire to those light switches...So I can shut off lights in each room

 

Hey thanks! 0/

Its really complex, might not even work on low end computers...I have no idea really.  For the most part I just really wanted to make the places look functional and secure.

 

I used a BAT file to give myself like 3X the budget but then I started using God Mode in console.

Precision mod is a hotkey file that allows me to use arrow keys in the developer console to place every object how I want it.

Can even move stuff out of bounds.

 

I'm almost finished with this build and at that point I'll just upload it to Nexus and wait for the Settlement Ripper to be out of BETA...Then anyone can use it in any new game.

 

After that I will work on Tenpines, already have the basics all in place so from there its just adding the bits and bobs to really make it come to life.

 

 

More Notes,

Insulated Pylons run across the 3rd floor exterior they are well hidden but this allows me to get power lines to where ever I need power without lighting up every single part of the structure...So when I put in switches players can control lighting.

 

All the doors you see are actually functional and allow the player to open them, these function as window's...So you can get more natural lighting into your building during the day or shut them to make the room feel secure.

 

Many walls have extra bits like sandbags, tire barricades, and even extra wood fencing n wall pieces to bulk out sections that might come under fire during an attack.

 

Guard Posts are built right into many sections of the building some are entirely scratch built using HomeMaker's GuardPost Matt.

 

A lot of area's of the structure have roof pieces added to provide shade and also block the rain (when its playing correctly  )

 

I figured out that, settlers would get caught under the floors in the water, so I sank Concrete Foundations in all the spots that settlers would get caught in and that corrected the issue.

 

I also used wood floors with Precision move so that the floors would be the same inside the 1st floor with the Bar....It had been a hodge podge of flooring before that, but now it looks nice.

 

The road was at first totally walled in but I figured out that Caravans would get caught up, so I pulled back my walls....This worked out really well the Door mostly stays closed unless I leave.

 

There are a ton of scenes that I didn't include in the shots,

Full Chem station with lots of bits...

Bar area has a enough spots for every settler to have a seat and throw back suds.

Guard posts facing the Supermutant settlement across the River and the guards do settle into those posts and keep an eye out for trouble across the river.

A whole lot of storage stations and scrap stations have extra bits and help make it look like the scavers are really stocking up parts for more buildings.

Junk Wall sections have reinforcement with extra tires and sandbagging just on the inside...Also I ran insulated Pylons and Conduits on this wall to power all the turrets and construction lamps.

 

At night, the settlement perimeter is the only thing that's lit up and its done so that you cannot see the guards at their posts...You only see just what I want to be seen and that's the spots leading up to the walls of the settlements.

 

When its finished the building can have lighting so the player can turn off all the lights inside...You know so bad guys cant shoot at people in the building.  The pool table will have figurines laid out so it looks like a map/warroom.  Player room will have bobblestand, weapon racks, and some extra living details...Just haven't gotten that far yet.

[Content Consumer]

So, I finally got to:

 

Coastal Cottage: Not bad. A little small, and I mean it's got some buildings that aren't much fun to deal with, and very uneven ground, but aside from that it's perfectly fine. I'm a little leery of the hole in the ground. I'm sure nothing will actually spawn there, but it's a psychological thing - it looks like a perfect rear entrance. And I'm not into anal.

 

Hangman's Alley: Not great. Only three entrances, and one of them is chained up, so really only two entrances. Easy to defend. But it's got a lot of problems. Any spawning raiders or mutants nearby (and there are a lot) frequently cause any arriving or already present settlers to wander out and fight, often dying for absolutely no reason. There's not a lot of buildable area, and some of that is taken up with crops (also not much), so you have to build vertically, and there's not much space for that. BTW - I was wrong, all settlements do come with ceilings. It's just that Greygarden's ceiling is pretty damn high. Also, no water here, so you have to rely on pumps and again there's not a whole lot of bare dirt to go around.

All in all, Hangman's Alley is very defensible, and a perfectly fine settlement for about three people, max. And you have to keep replacing settlers lost to hostile forces. And woe betide any poor settler you send here as a provisioner, they march off to their doom knowing they are martyrs to the cause.

 

Jamaica Plain sucks. That's about all I'll say for it. It's decently sized, but it's got almost no space for crops, no water, and there are buildings everywhere that make putting up defense walls a pain in the ass.

 

Spectacle Island: I'm ambivalent. It's got an interesting sidequest of sorts, and it's got plenty of building room. Bigger than Sanctuary. But I don't like the layout much. Plenty of farming space and water, but I'm just not feeling this one. Maybe I've been playing settlement builder too long. Time to go do something else for a while, come back and see it with new eyes.

[xenic]

This one is.... I forgot the name.  But it's an odd little plot in ghoul infested area. My build space was kind of limited but I put my turrets up high and they have a near perfect firing angle for every approach. Not the typical way I build though.

 

[DocClox]

That's Jamacia Plain.

 

I keep meaning to get my turrets organised like that. Never seems to happen though.

[xenic]

That's Jamacia Plain.

 

I keep meaning to get my turrets organised like that. Never seems to happen though.

Yeah, that's the one. Thanks for naming it. It would have taken me forever. Sadly, there's not a lot of building allowed at that location. That building, some beds, a few crops, and those turrets are mostly all that's there.

[Content Consumer]

This is the sort of thing I like to do with my settlements.

Or, I can't say that I actually like to do it, I just can't seem to help myself. It's a debilitating psychological condition, I'm sure I'll eventually need therapy.

 

This is the Red Rocket. You can sort of see it from Sanctuary.

 

Here we are a bit closer, getting a full view of the front of the, uh, fortress. Complete with gauss, plasma, and heavy assault turrets.

 

Surrounded by high concrete foundations topped with metal walls, it's pretty much impregnable to any attacker that posesses an IQ south of 30. To smarter beings, just dig under the wall.

 

There are a couple of holes in the wall, where I couldn't put foundations, due to the shape of the extant building. I was originally going to turn this area into sort of a shopping center, because when you've got an imposing, impregnable fortress, the best thing to do with your population is to keep them outside the walls at all times, vulnerable to attack, because you're either a sadistic NPC hater or possibly just too dumb to think about things like that until the last minute.

 

Just inside is where I ended up putting the shopping center.

 

Comes complete with a garden. A diet consisting entirely of mutfruit and carrots may be lacking in essential vitamins and nutrients, but at least it has this going for it: boring blandness. Don't ask me how the plants grow without sunlight.

 

Upstairs we have the generator room, and not much else. Beds originally went up here, but settlers kept falling off the stairs and breaking their legs, so I put them inside and emptied this out.

 

Missile turrets on the back corners, to utterly ruin the day of innocent bloodbugs feasting on a dead cow.

 

And a guard post overlooking the entrance, because when you've got a defense rating of 200+ courtesy of dozens of missile, plasma, bullet, gauss, and laser turrets, of course you need a +2 defense guard post complete with a settler who has his very own little pipe pistol. For that extra edge.

 

[Benmc20]

Here's mine : http://imgur.com/a/t6Ea5 (beware : 44 screens in this album !). Situated at the drive in, nots of place to make all you want.

 

4 buildings (and the workshop) :

- the already existant coffee vendor (not really done anything in it, just put the generator on top of it)

- the main house

- the greenhouse

- the wharehouse of sorts

All this place is surronded by concrete walls(the giant screen is keeped out, didn't wat to use it) and only one closed entrance.

 

Mods used :

- Homemaker

- Alternat Settlements

- Snap'n Build (roofs, windows, doors)

[DocClox]

So, in stark contrast to CoCo's detailed defensive build, this is the main housing and services block at Sanctuary Hills.

 

 

I had originally intended to have the concrete foundation block be a support column running up through the building. But then I discovered that I'd put one in the wrong place. And in fact missed another one entirely. And I couldn't get the ladders to work quite right either when I did this ... so eventually, I thought "what the hell, let's roll with it".

 

It does have some decent quarters on the top floor where I have integrated shop & bedrooms, staffed by female vendors wearing Diamond City Surplus outfits from the Commonwealth Mini-Dresses mod. (With ballistic weave on the outfits and armed with plasma weapons, just in case). And there is quite a nice glass ceilinged observation lounge on the top floor with a comfy chair, reading light and side table. I'd add an overdue book and a Quantum Cola, but I suspect the settlers would half-inch them.

 

Next up is a private bedroom and bar with nice lighting and Piper assigned to barmaid duty while wearing something scandalous.

[Content Consumer]

So, in stark contrast to CoCo's detailed defensive build, this is the main housing and services block at Sanctuary Hills.

 

 

 

Pics or it didn't happen.

No, seriously - I can't see the image. I wanna see! You show me yours...

 

It does have some decent quarters on the top floor where I have integrated shop & bedrooms, staffed by female vendors wearing Diamond City Surplus outfits from the Commonwealth Mini-Dresses mod. 

 

I like to put everyone in Commonwealth Shorts outfits (for the girls) and Eli's short mechanic outfits (for the guys).

There's a totally legit reason for it - it's hot outside! Middle of December and the weather hasn't changed, I just felt sorry for them and decided to put them in cool clothing.

Nothing to do with prurient interests.

Nope.

 

 I'd add an overdue book and a Quantum Cola, but I suspect the settlers would half-inch them.

 

As far as I can tell, NPCs are a lot better about that kind of thing in Fallout 4 than in previous games. Oblivion was particularly bad about it - for a while, I stored everything I owned at the Priory of the Nine, but the knights there kept stealing and eating things. Like poisoned apples, because they're just so damn smart.

I keep everything in Sanctuary in Fallout 4, in a smallish room next to the main sleeping quarters and rec area for the whole settlement, and nobody's touched anything yet.

[Content Consumer]

Slightly different at Sunshine Tidings co-op (Mercer Safehouse).

 

An overview of the settlement. I went really small and simple with this one, because I can't be arsed to actually do anything with it.

 

As is my wont, I put up a couple of minigun turret emplacements...

 

Including a bunch as far forward as possible to guard the idiot Caretaker who fucking refuses to go inside the goddamn walls.

And he complains that there aren't any beds here either, even though I put eight of them in - which actually makes sense, I suppose, since he isn't in the bounds of the settlement so maybe the check to see if there are any beds is turning up zero.

 

Nothing much else - generators in the main shed, beds in the side building, and all of the tumbledown buildings ignored.

Oh, and a blatant piece of advertising, because when you're a part of a super-secret organization under constant threat of extermination if anyone finds out where you are, publicly placing big flags with your logo on them is a really bright idea.

[DocClox]

Pics or it didn't happen.

It's on imgur, and they've apparently blacklisted LL. So you need a referrer extension to hide the fact that you're viewing from LL And I need a better image hosting site.

 

You can probably paste the image address into the nav bar on a new browser tab and have it work.

 

i.imgur.com/1SruXOe.jpg

 

[edit]

 

Does anyone know ... if I was to "accidentally" murder a settler, I gather the other settlers turn hostile.

 

Is that just for the one settlement, or for all of them?

 

Not that I'm thinking of sending all the males to one designated gulag and then periodically culling the inmates just so I could use all the other settlements as my own personal harem. The thought has never crossed my mind. Just, you know, hypothetically?

[Content Consumer]

 

Pics or it didn't happen.

It's on imgur, and they've apparently blacklisted LL. So you need a referrer extension to hide the fact that you're viewing from LL And I need a better image hosting site.

 

You can probably paste the image address into the nav bar on a new browser tab and have it work.

 

i.imgur.com/1SruXOe.jpg

 

[edit]

 

Does anyone know ... if I was to "accidentally" murder a settler, I gather the other settlers turn hostile.

 

Is that just for the one settlement, or for all of them?

 

Not that I'm thinking of sending all the males to one designated gulag and then periodically culling the inmates just so I could use all the other settlements as my own personal harem. The thought has never crossed my mind. Just, you know, hypothetically?

 

 

That building really needs some rocket engines mounted underneath. You're building your very own spaceship!

 

I *think* it's just for that one settlement... I've killed settlers before, but always reloaded after doing so. I can't imagine the hostility spreads to other settlements.

 

I read that if you kill the settlers at a place where they already are (i.e. Finch Farm, Abernathy Farm, etc) it counts as completing the associated Minutemen quest, so I doubt the hostility spreads to other settlements.

[Content Consumer]

 

Not that I'm thinking of sending all the males to one designated gulag and then periodically culling the inmates just so I could use all the other settlements as my own personal harem. The thought has never crossed my mind. Just, you know, hypothetically?

 

 

 

 

I haven't tried the mod at all yet, but it looks like Better Settlers has an optional bit that turns all settlers female. Probably easier (and cheaper in terms of valuable expended ammunition) than the whole extermination gig...

[DocClox]

I haven't tried the mod at all yet, but it looks like Better Settlers has an optional bit that turns all settlers female. Probably easier (and cheaper in terms of valuable expended ammunition) than the whole extermination gig...

Aww... that seems like cheating somehow

 

Then again, it probably is a lot less work.

[Content Consumer]

Just thought I'd make a quick note - if you haven't tried the Craftable Castle Wall Patches mod, you really should!

 

This screenshot doesn't really do it justice - the seams aren't really noticeable at all at ground level - except in the corner patch on top, which is honestly about the same as the rest of the castle's seams. There are some bricks sticking out a bit, but it's easy enough to ignore.

[ShivasBane]

This my Red Rocket. As yet unfinished.

 

This is the Starlight Drive in. Also a work in progress.