Advice on Settlement Building

[icebreaker]

Hi guys, despite my level of hours on fallout 4 overall, I'm actually a noob when it comes to making settlements. Can anyone offer me advice on what I should make at the red rocket settlement?

[Kameraden]

To be honest, it's a trainwreck to work with, mostly because the ground is so cluttered with crap you can not normally get rid of without mods. Normally I build upon the back side so I can gain access to the roof, then build up upon the roof. Over all the building itself is junk. The Red Rocket in Nuka World is 20x better to build on because it's actually cleaned up.

They really seemed to want players to make it their personal home, being a very small settlement just outside a large one. But.. ya, it's junky, and uncleanable without mods. Which badly limits what you can do with it.

I've Read, that it's recommended to build a floor/base to build on, high enough to go over top a lot of the objects on the ground you can not remove. If someone wants to build around the over pass.

[HEREWARD1066]

Not much square footage for that site so you might want to consider using the roof. The road seems to get a fair amount of traffic so good defences will help you farm the dead guys for loot. Apart from the nearby cave the site has little going for it so I wouldn't put too much effort into this location.

[mainer]

I keep this settlement small, 6-8 settlers, as the area to build in is small. Build housing/beds on the roof accessable from the back, some crops NE & SE, one water purifier, and build up the defenses. It seems (in my games) to get attacked frequently. I never build a beacon here, but I do sent settlers to maintain my 6-8 pop level. Too close to Sanctuary to be of any real strategic use.

[OTIS]

My advice is to build one settlement, maybe on the island to southeast. A decent sized one with all the shops you need.

If Castle had more space I would suggest there. If the tunnel was considered part of the Castle and you had more space to farm and easier access to water (and could repair those walls better). It would be perfect.

The thing about Castle is that it come with a special vendor that sells the best gun in the game (including legendaries, for the most part). This would make it the ideal settlement if you can get around the space issues.

But after that one settlement, scrap the whole thing. You have your house and the shops already and the settlement system itself is crap, so don't bother with the rest. That's my advice.

Not to mention at one point in the game you actually will need a settlement of some sort to help you build a device needed for the plot.


PS.

To be honest I wish I could find a way to keep other settlers in my settlement out of the building I made for myself.

[ForevaNoob Wonemorturn]

A noob here, but settlements to me are more work than gaming... unles you mode them 100%. Which is also a lot of work...

[BlazeD]

Settlements are:
Bases to operate from (esp in survival)
Farms
Trading hubs

Decide which role each settlement best fulfills and build it to meet that job. Some settlements are too small to make good farms or trading hubs.

For all settlements with people in them you need 1 food, 1 water and 1 defence for each settler in addition to a bed. Build a restaurant in each populated settlement to keep happiness stable.
All your shops share each shops inventory so building armor / weapon stores everywhere is only good for income, not convenience (if you bought all the .50 from one shop all the shops are out of .50 bullets).

In large settlements or farms build a clinic as well as a trading post. You can build the gamut of shops in large settlements to generate caps, but i've never had such a problem with income to justify the expense and time.

Brahman and guard dogs count as settlers. Put a brahman feeder down to keep them from wandering all around the settlement.

Don't forget to build salvage stations in all your settlements.

If a settlement isn't producing its minimum requirements for food and water it will leech off other settlements that have a surplus as long as it is connected with a provision route.

Guards you post at guard stations will patrol from station to station.

[θάνατος]

pro tip: if you are not defending them in person you will take losses. if there is multiple attacks at once some will take losses. the best way to avoid raids is to store stuff in chests not in the workshop.

[Wanderer3292]

start small and work from there. when I would look at a settlement and try to envision what I want it to be, it seems overwhelming and I wouldn't know where to begin. my advice would be to start with a house. lay some floors down, build the outside shell, and then begin adding things to surround it, generators, turrets, etc. connect the empty areas as you see fit. it took me many different versions of different settlements to figure out how to get any settlement how I want them to end up. personally I like to make them somewhat realistic, so I usually build houses with wood and metal, and end up building concrete bunkers and vendor areas in different places.

[icebreaker]

Originally posted by Wanderer3292:

start small and work from there. when I would look at a settlement and try to envision what I want it to be, it seems overwhelming and I wouldn't know where to begin. my advice would be to start with a house. lay some floors down, build the outside shell, and then begin adding things to surround it, generators, turrets, etc. connect the empty areas as you see fit. it took me many different versions of different settlements to figure out how to get any settlement how I want them to end up. personally I like to make them somewhat realistic, so I usually build houses with wood and metal, and end up building concrete bunkers and vendor areas in different places.

And how do I get all the resources to do that? It seems like I'm always running out of steel.

[Claybot]

I always use the space under the roof, Start with laying out the floor, takes awhile to get things lined up, using large and small floor pieces. Walls and second floor, not much space under the roof when close to the garage for the second floor but lots the further away you are. Add stairs from second floor on each side for roof access. Put the generators on the roof along with your signal tower, turrets and whatever else you want. Plants on the Concord side of the garage, along with a couple of defensve areas. Enemies will generally come the Sanctuary side for some reason or the Oliva station side

[mainer]

Invest in the Scrapper Perk, it will give you more resouces when breaking down weapons/armor. Pickup everything to break down. Simple objects like clipboards(wood), coffee cups(ceramic), empty bottles(glass), and tools(steel) can add up. You'll become overloaded quickly, but you can walk to your closest settlement and break the suff down. If you settlements are linked, the parts become available at all the linked settlements. Keep an eye on houses/factories/ect that repopulate after a time. The junk will also (usually) repopulate as well.

You can also buy raw resources, such as shipments of wood or steel from some vendors, but can be somewhat pricey at first unless your charisma is high and/or you have the right perks that lower prices at vendors. Connie Abernathy at Abernathy Farm aslo sells shipments of wood.

[watchdog79]

Originally posted by ϴøʟ:

Originally posted by Wanderer3292:

start small and work from there. when I would look at a settlement and try to envision what I want it to be, it seems overwhelming and I wouldn't know where to begin. my advice would be to start with a house. lay some floors down, build the outside shell, and then begin adding things to surround it, generators, turrets, etc. connect the empty areas as you see fit. it took me many different versions of different settlements to figure out how to get any settlement how I want them to end up. personally I like to make them somewhat realistic, so I usually build houses with wood and metal, and end up building concrete bunkers and vendor areas in different places.

And how do I get all the resources to do that? It seems like I'm always running out of steel.

Get some settlers, build scavenging stations, let them work. They will each generate two random items per day. Each unassigned settler will generate one random item per day.

Mind, that the workshop has a limited storage capacity.

[mr_burble]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=587300895

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by ϴøʟ:

Originally posted by Wanderer3292:

start small and work from there. when I would look at a settlement and try to envision what I want it to be, it seems overwhelming and I wouldn't know where to begin. my advice would be to start with a house. lay some floors down, build the outside shell, and then begin adding things to surround it, generators, turrets, etc. connect the empty areas as you see fit. it took me many different versions of different settlements to figure out how to get any settlement how I want them to end up. personally I like to make them somewhat realistic, so I usually build houses with wood and metal, and end up building concrete bunkers and vendor areas in different places.

And how do I get all the resources to do that? It seems like I'm always running out of steel.

Buy shipments of Steel from the merchants. They're kind of expensive, though you can self-finance through the Water Pump "Exploit" by just producing tons of surplus.

For example, in Vault 88, ploping down a few T1 traders and then rigging up the Vault Tec Water Pump should provide you with unlimited resources to build, as every day you'll refresh a huge amount of Surplus water, which you can sell to your own stores and buy shipments of materials from. (This works in every settlement with ample water or room for ground pumps, but Vault 88 is the most intuitive)

As for actual building tips, I don't know how much help I can be. I'm very much in the mind that you should always try to create as natural-looking a structure as possible. IE: Something that looks like it was built by the developers, and not you. So my builds wind up looking kind of pedestrian, such as my Hangman's Alley Favella.