How do Settlements & Building actually work?

[Basharria]

Haven't found a really satisfying answer.

I like building, crafting, making my own fortress. I don't like the idea of babysitting settlements or having to recruit/defend groups of NPCs, especially over multiple settlements. In other words, "customizable player home" vs. "playing a 3D version of the mobile game."

From what I've heard, the system is not optional. Questlines, the story, and such expect you to be building and creating settlements, you have to defend them constantly, make more of them, and micromanage swarms of faceless NPCs.

Am I right in assuming this?

[watchdog79]

Unless you play for the Minutemen, you do not need to touch the settlement system ever, with the only exception being the building of one generator and a multi-piece device late in the story.

Unless you really want to, you do not have to bother with the settlements.

Other than that, there are plenty of mods that change the settlement system, deactivate the random attacks, add items that fulfull the basic needs so that you can concentrate on building a theme, allow you to rename your settlers and many more.

And there is the Sim Settlements mod group that is still growing.

[paugus]

No, you aren't right. You can beat the main story without settlers, and you can complete something like 95% of the game's content without touching settlements.

They are atrocious in terms of being self-sufficient. You will literally have to go plant new crops for them if raiders come and stomp their corn and tatoes. If they are thirsty, they will merely wait for you to come and build them a water pump. If they are under attack, they will almost always lose without your intervention.

That being said, you can totally still BUILD without getting settlers. Just don't build recruitment beacons, boom, problem solved.

[dogg]

There are existing farms and camps that will offer their workbench for a favor, or if you take the Minutemen or Railroad path, some will become available through quests.

Either way, after setting them up with basic needs (beds, food, water, power, defense etc), you can pretty much ignore them unless you want to help if they get attacked.

They can be nice little sanctuaries in a Survival mode game, and can be linked by travelling provisioners to share materials.
They can be set up with functioning merchant stores, bars, clinics etc.

Or you can just blow them off entirely :)

I happen to like them.

[Basharria]

These answers have been very helpful. It feels like such a weird system.

The cheat item mods seem sort of useful, if I ever wanted to work on them without being constrainted to the constant need to fulfill their arbitrary needs. I'm disappointed that they aren't naturally self-sufficient, it makes the lead character seem like some sort of god herding sheep.

[ronr42]

With only a couple of minor exceptions where the game quest dictates that you build a certain item, you can build whatever you want to in any of the settlements or none of them.

Other than when you follow the questline for the Minutemen and send the settlers to Sanctuary, you do Not have to have settlers in your settlements. Just Don't build a recruitment beacon and no settlers will show up.

There are a few settlements that have up to 5 or 6 settlers there when you arrive. If you don't want to deal with keeping them happy just don't do their personal quests to obtain the settlement.

For example; I have Spectacle Island as my main home. I've increased the build budget for it to where there is no limit as to how much I can build. I've spent OH, maybe 200 hours building and decorating on the island and I have Zero settlers there. I did send 2 companions there but, they don't eat much. :)

[MortVent]

Mods will help... settlement supplies unlimited (can't really look right now) removes caps on food/water/scrap/etc being collected. But it also allows you to change the attack options, including totally disabling them(which I do, got tired of large numbers of attacks and repairs... but I do build some defenses for rp as well as wandering groups) There are likely other mods that change the attacks, or add auto-fix options to settlements (so you don't have to be hands on)

[่่่่]

there's another settlement that needs your help, I'll mark it on your map

[MortVent]

Originally posted by RAУAPOLO I❤YouBellatrix:

there's another settlement that needs your help, I'll mark it on your map

scary thing is.. I exiled him to outpost zimjoa... so the settlers themselves started giving me the quests.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Bash:

I'm disappointed that they aren't naturally self-sufficient

They are. You don't need to provide them any food or water, they will get it on their own. They just get a happiness boost if you build them an easy source of it. Making a farm is as easy as plopping a few growing plots down, the settlers assign themselves to farming and grow and manage the crops on their own. Anything they don't eat goes into the workshop where you can take it and sell it or use it. Water is even easier, just place a pump, power it, and you are done. A single one of the better pumps will provide enough water for any size colony obtainable in the base game.

If they are attacked, you don't need to defend them, that's optional. They will win almost every time if you build proper defenses, if you ignore their defenses and they lose, then some of the items take minor damage and have a small resource cost to be repaired. A settlement has a 2% chance per day to be attacked if setup with reasonable defenses, each day is an hour if you don't sleep or fast travel, so attacks are very rare unless you build settlements in every single location on the map.

The system is super easy to deal with, you can spend a lot of time on it if you want or just ignore it.

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by Bash:

How do Settlements & Building actually work?

Not very well.

Beyond serving as a way to get past the 'adhesive gate' in the early game (where you need adhesive to mod weapons and armor and you don't have any) there really isn't any game purpose to them beyond gaining access to their workbenches for the MM questline. And once you've got 8 tagged you don't need anymore.

They are, essentially, a seperate game within the game - basically playing dollhouse - and you can completely ignore them with no real consequences if you choose.

[Vinnie Mack]

settlement building is totally optional. Anyone telling you otherwise either doesn't know how to play the game, or are fanboys from other sites (the F4 forum is a feeding ground for Vegasfanboy trolls). As for settlers, just ignore them. They ask you to do someting, walk away. Preston is incredibly irritating, so leave him in Sanctuary and never talk to him again. If a settlement wants you to do something to open up the settlement, and you don't want to do that, kill all the settlers and take over the settlement. If a settlement gets attacked, ignore it. I have done all of these things in my playthroughs.

If you land up hating settlement building, just head off into the sunset and choose to do something else.

[Tyrant]

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/21872/?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Dj4m_uj5s