Confused about how settlements, shops and happiness work

[Sanctus]

Just started playing Fallout 4 recently, now have a few shops going in my settlements and have some questions about how this settlement system works, any help would be appreciated:

1. After setting up 4 mid-tier shops in Sanctuary, happiness went up to 75, but has gradually dipped to around 50, and there seem to be fewer settlers than before. There are no current deficits in any resource. Any reason for this? Do I need a resource surplus, or more entertainment sources?

2. Does happiness affect shop income?

3. Do I need idle settlers to use the shops and propogate income? Or should they all have jobs?

4. Is there a sweet spot for the amount of shops you should have based on your population?

5. Should I make a surplus of defenses/resource generators or does that not make any difference?

Thanks ahead of time for any tips

[red255]

1. Resource production =/= resource, if you go and take all the tatos and make glue out of them the settlers don't have anything to eat. make sure they have something to eat.

also sometimes being idiots they cant find their beds. because bethesda. Each shop is +1 happy, regularlly they max at 80 happy if their needs are being met, so you need 20 happy to get to 100. which is mainly saying buy the DLC and give them all cats or something.
Or don't stress it.

2. Happiness effects worker production. which probably includes shop income. I don't really have shops for the income, I have shops for the shops.

3. they should all have jobs, I stick idle slaves on the scavenge workbenches.

4. Shop inventory is shared by type of shop across all settlements, I generally have one settlement with all the shops and the rest just do other things.

5. a surplus of water generators will add up purified water in the workbench which can be collected or use to craft vegetable starch or whatever. a surplus of food allows you to accumulate food for making vegetable starch or whatever. extra stuff goes in the workbench, settlers eat from the workbench, one settlement can feed other settlements thru supply lines. supposedly.

Defense should be greater than or equal to food +water production. otherwise there is an increased chance of enemy raids. I don't highly stress it though.

[Sanctus]

Very helpful, thank you for the reply. Wish there was a better tutorial for this stuff.

Regarding supply lines, do you need to, for example, send 1 settler from Sanctuary to Tenpines and 1 from Tenpines to Sanctuary for a full link, or does 1 settler set up a mutual supply line?

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Originally posted by Serephus:

Regarding supply lines, do you need to, for example, send 1 settler from Sanctuary to Tenpines and 1 from Tenpines to Sanctuary for a full link, or does 1 settler set up a mutual supply line?

Just 1 for a full lnk. And you can daisy cnain them. One from Sanctuary to Red Rocket. One from Tenpines to RR (or opposite). One from Abernaty to RR. All can see each other.

[Bored Peon]

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_4_settlements

Read that web page. That includes the people giving out the wrong advice.

Originally posted by red255:

Each shop is +1 happy,

That is not how bonus happiness works. Bonus happiness is combined between all items then divided by the population. This is then added to your target happiness. The current happiness you see in game is exactly that the current happiness average fo all settlers. New settlers arrive with 50 happpiness.

Originally posted by red255:

3. they should all have jobs, I stick idle slaves on the scavenge workbenches.

Idle settlers only affect recruiting chances, it does not affect happiness.

Scavenging is also the worst job to give a settler because the cap on finding anything is so low.

All unemployed settlers will collect one random junk item per day, which is automatically added to the workshop inventory. A settler assigned to a scavenging station will instead collect two random junk items per day. Once the total number of junk items (including crafting components) in the workshop reaches 100 + (population × 5), no more junk items will be added to the workshop in either case.

So a settlement of 8 is like 40 items in the workshop then they find nothing.

Originally posted by red255:

Defense should be greater than or equal to food +water production. otherwise there is an increased chance of enemy raids. I don't highly stress it though.

That is a good rule of thumb regarding attack chances. The mium chance is 2% per day, then that settlement can not be attacked again for a week (excluding Automatron attacks and cage attacks.)

Regarding happiness a settlement needs a minimum of 1 defense point for every 4.5 points of food production otherwise you get the safety penalty to happiness.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by anders31:

Each shop is +1 happy, yup this is wrong. But the numbers 10,20,30 etc are correct.

Scavenging is also the worst job to give a settler because the cap on finding anything is so low. -NO. How else do u get resources? Scavenge yourself. U need to empty workbench of junk when it reaches about 100.

Regarding happiness a settlement needs a minimum of 1 defense point for every 4.5 points of food production otherwise you get the safety penalty to happiness - NOPE only 1 defence per settlers for happiness.

First of all, that has to be the worst quoting job ever.

Originally posted by anders31:

How else do u get resources? Scavenge yourself. U need to empty workbench of junk when it reaches about 100.

You wont reach 100 from scavenging with a settlement of less than 20 settlers. The scavenging cap is 5 tems per settler. This is taken directly from the Creation kit, it is not wrong. So how do a populaiton of 12 settlers get past 60 to reach that point of 100 that you empty it?

As to how you get scrap, you sell your paste, jet, etc settlements make and buy it from vendors. Bring is back form clearing locations etc. Scavenging stations are completely useless. Notice I didnt say bottled water....

If you do a search you can even find a few topics where people did experiements using values of items collected scavenging versus growing crops to sell.

Originally posted by anders31:

only 1 defence per settlers for happiness.

This is wrong as well. You can check it yourself through the console commands "getav.safetyrating"

I have over 3400 hours played and I mostly do settlements as you can see by the screenshots in my profile. I know exactly how the entire settlement systems works.

[Von Shadowsong]

Something I learned, especially if you're trying for the Benevolent Leader achievement (100% settlement happiness), is that the happiness meter resets every time you fast travel to or from Sanctuary. I use the Red Rocket as my fast-travel point and just hoof it from there.

There are happiness-producing objects you can use if you have the Vault-Tec DLC, and your settlement's defense should be 100 or higher. Other than that, make sure there are enough beds/food/water for everyone and you should be good.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by anders31:

Garbage

Yeah. I am going to just ignore you. I am not going to sit there and try to figure out wtf you wrote inside a quote of me.

If you can not figure out how to do a quote, then whatever arguement you have over game mechanics is probably wrong anyways.

Originally posted by Von Shadowsong:

the happiness meter resets every time you fast travel to or from Sanctuary. I use the Red Rocket as my fast-travel point and just hoof it from there.

Wrong. Happiness is not affected by where you fast travel to. That is a bug or normal happiness behavior. Hard to say which without more information from the console.

Happiness has 3 values:

Actual Value - The one you see in the workshop which is na average of all settlers happines.

Target Value - This is all these happiness added up form all conditions (ie 80+bonus average.)

Happiness Modifier - This is for temporary buffs and penalties that apply to the target value. Bonuses being something like completed a quest for that settlement, penalty being a settler died or a defense failed.

The way actual value works is the average happiness moves towards the target happiness. The bigger the difference between the numbers the faster it moves, the smaller the difference the slower it moves.

Then you have the rounding issue with happiness. If your target happiness is like 84.3 then your actual happiness will raise all the way to 84, after reaching 84 it will go back down slowly to 83, which is stupid and confusing. That downward rounding off and movement will cause the warning triangle to appear in the data when there is actually nothing wrong.

Then of course to cause more confusion you have data corruption, this like to reduce values to 0s, double populations, short values of beds, defense, food, water, etc.

[Doombringer]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

You wont reach 100 from scavenging with a settlement of less than 20 settlers. The scavenging cap is 5 tems per settler.

Caps are:
Food: 10+1/pop
Water: 5+0.25/pop
Scavenge: 100+5/pop
Fertilizer: 10 (1/brahmin/day, max 3/day)
Caps: no limit (max 50/day)

Once a cap is reached or exceeded, production is turned off.
(You will get the full days production if you start under the limit though.)

from workshopscript.psc
If you open console, click on a workshop, then type: sv
and page up you can see all these in game too.


Happiness:
Checked for each settler. Robots require nothing and are always 50 happiness.
Bonus from workshop items (Bars, Clinics, etc.) are divided evenly between all settlers at the settlement.
Food: +20 (max 30 happiness if missing)
Water: +20 (max 30 happiness if missing)
Bed: +10
Shelter: +10 (max 60 happiness if missing) (this means having a roof over your bed)
Safety: +20

So base 80 happiness if the food/water/defense rating and number of beds with a roof over them is equal or higher than the number of non-Robot settlers.
(Robots will bring the average down since they are always 50 happiness.)
Every settler at a raider settlement (Nukaworld gangs) gets -3 happiness per food produced at that settlement, max of -50 each.

[Bored Peon]

I knew the scavenging cap was low. Couldnt remember the exact numbers so I used the wiki.

LOL. I quoted it right, but said it wrong because I missed the 100 on the webpage due to the funky word wrap.

[Donna Pinciotti]

I am also pretty new to fallout 4 so have been researching some stuff and I came across a video that says not to have robots at settlements you want a high rating at, because robots only have 50 happiness whereas humans have 100. So the robots actually bring down the happiness of the settlements even if they are...fully happy.

[red255]

So if scavenging is a bad job what would you put the extra settlers doing?

seems like if you have 20 settlers the cap is 200 which over 30 settlements is 6,000 pieces of junk.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by red255:

So if scavenging is a bad job what would you put the extra settlers doing?

seems like if you have 20 settlers the cap is 200 which over 30 settlements is 6,000 pieces of junk.

Yeah I been having an off day. To give you an idea of how off, the turret at the Gunner Tollbooth near Drumlin Diner just one shot me.

While your cap of junk is 6,000 that is not your production. Out of 20 settlers if you had 5 at each of them at each scavenging you production is 10 items per settlement. So it literally would take 10 days to reach that cap if it is empty. Then of course once that cap is reach they do absolutely nothing.

You also have to keep in mind that it is really easy to have enough crap in your workshop that you are over the cap. With even a settlement of 40 which is a 300 cap is literally nothing. For my games I am a packrat, so most my workshops will literally have THOUSANDS of scrap in them.

For it to be empty then that means you have to constantly make trips to all those settlements to collect the junk. This means carry a bunch of crap around the Commonwealth to a central location, because I am going to assume you are going to place that junk at a settlement connected by a supply chain, otherwise collecting it is pointless.

Now you also have ZERO control over what they find. They could come back with useless scrap you do not even use. This useless stuff could pile up in your workshop simply because it isnt used even through a supply chain.

Other jobs they could do is ANYTHING that gives happiness. Happiness affects your food production, your food consumption, and your recruitment chances. On top of that as Doombringer pointed out there is no cap on how many caps a workshop cna have, only how much a day.

Also keep in mind stores are NOT unique. You can have multiple stores of the same type. Stores also get to a snowballing point where you can build a store just of a few days caps.

I prefer starch production. What a lot of people do not realize is starch dont sell for ♥♥♥♥, but if you scrap it into 5 adhesive is sells a LOT higher. On top of that I can literally stop at any settlement and drain the connected food supplies which saves me from playing fetch or mule. Making the starch also provides xp where as the scrap scavenged might.

Other things I do is grow food to feed cages. I then kill the mobs and can then take the meat and cook it for food supplies or sell excess for a profit.

Then I can take that money and buy EXACTLY the stuff I want instead of getting whatever rng decided to give me for scrap. Which usualy consists of buying up fertilizers, and flamer fuel to make jet fuel to sell at a huge profit.

The money generated by settlements is very small compared to what I make selling excess ammo, aid stuff, and cooked meats. I do not sell bottled water on any kind of massive scale. At most my Sanctuary settlements get maybe 2 water purifiers only to keep me with enough water to make glue.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Donna Pinciotti:

I am also pretty new to fallout 4 so have been researching some stuff and I came across a video that says not to have robots at settlements you want a high rating at, because robots only have 50 happiness whereas humans have 100. So the robots actually bring down the happiness of the settlements even if they are...fully happy.

You forget the average of happiness. One robot for every 20 settlers you have is barely going to make a dent.

For example, if you have a settlement with 20 settlers and 90 current/target happiness then having the 21st population being a robot is only going to drop that to 88.09, so you are only going to lose 1-2 happiness depending on the rounding cycle.

20 x 90 = 1800 + 50 = 1850 /21 = 88.09

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Halcyform:

Settlement happiness is most affected by amount and type of food available - assuming you have the other essentials covered like beds and water.

Brahminshit. The game only cares about if there is food or not happiness wise. As to which food gets eaten first it is always tatos. Which is why if you want to make glue you need to try to make extra tatos.