Best Settlement Location in Survival?

[Foxhound]

I know the "best" place to build is arbitrary or up to opinion, but I feel torn on which settlements I should expand on. I've been using Taffington Bloathouse for my purified water farm because it's semi-central (still a chore to go back and forth to Diamon City) and has a lot of room to build industrial water purifiers, but quite frankly, it looks pretty ugly in my opinion and doesn't have a lot of space to build an elaborate setup of land structures. With that being said, anyone have any better suggestions? I looked at Hangman's Alley, but I think it is too small to do anything interesting with.

[Chro]

hangman alley should be treated as an "outpost", just some workbenches, food and some water production, personally i like to use Starlight Drive-in and Sunshine Tidings Coop for some city building

[Ilja]

Early in the game, I like Starlight and Hangman's Alley most.

Starlight is my trade central, making most money from all of the settlements. (I try to build them all.) Provisioners from other hub settlements are coming there, so it even looks like a busy place, which is growing to compete with Diamond City.

Hangman's Alley is a small place, but in very good location. It is the best place to drop all the junk from Downtown area, to be used by other settlements.

I once made it just a PA location, with minimal amount of settlers, mostly manning protection.

Last time I tried something different and made a proper night club area, where provisioners and citizens of DC could come and relax in relative safety. DC guards are manning the area just nearby, so it isn't too far fetched idea that DC settlers would bother to come ther for drinks and pass out to few extra beds I added. There was 1 big bar downstairs and 2 smaller bars above (bar and drink stand.) Happiness was quite high.

[kdodds]

For Settlements, especially early game, Starlight, hands down. Now, if you're just looking for a place to cool your heels with resource drop off, crafting weapons and armor and food and chems, Homeplate. You've a bevy of vendors nearby for trade, plus Cricket just outside on occasion, and Noodle Cups aplenty (counts as food and drink). Something to consider, especially if you're just looking for settlements as resource reserves.

[Solomon Hawk]

@Foxhound,
If you're looking for a lot of space to build with room to spare ..
it won't be easy to get there on survival, but it would be the place to go.
Build Big and elaborate if you want.
Spectacle Island.
(There is a FatMat launcher on the tugboat there which supplies power to the tower at the workshop station). A good bug-smasher for that Mirelurk Queen that'll spawn when you turn on the power at the tug boat.

[darkdisciple1313]

I like Starlight because you can put up some pretty decent walls around the entire area with little interference from environmental blockages. I plan on making something similar to one of the smaller cities eventually. I think it probably works for whatever difficulty level on chooses as well.

Hangman's Alley, as noted above, also has a decent funneling set-up that allows for the player to keep invaders to only a few ways inside, plus you can expand upwards instead of outwards. I use Hangman's as a jumping off point for other nearby areas that inevitably show up on radiant missions as well.

Unfortunately, in terms of aesthetics, there isn't a single place that will look as pristine as one might desire. Even finished, my Starlight settlement still looks like it formed out of a trash dump near the slums in Rio. It looks better at night, but not by much. There are mods, yes, but still...

[Foxhound]

Originally posted by Solomon Hawk:

@Foxhound,
If you're looking for a lot of space to build with room to spare ..
it won't be easy to get there on survival, but it would be the place to go.
Build Big and elaborate if you want.
Spectacle Island.
(There is a FatMat launcher on the tugboat there which supplies power to the tower at the workshop station). A good bug-smasher for that Mirelurk Queen that'll spawn when you turn on the power at the tug boat.

Built there before when I played on PS4, but yeah, it isn't practical for survival, or at least at the moment.

[Solomon Hawk]

Originally posted by Foxhound:

Originally posted by Solomon Hawk:

@Foxhound,
If you're looking for a lot of space to build with room to spare ..
it won't be easy to get there on survival, but it would be the place to go.
Build Big and elaborate if you want.
Spectacle Island.
(There is a FatMat launcher on the tugboat there which supplies power to the tower at the workshop station). A good bug-smasher for that Mirelurk Queen that'll spawn when you turn on the power at the tug boat.

Built there before when I played on PS4, but yeah, it isn't practical for survival, or at least at the moment.

At least one perk you can definitely use to mitigate a lot of radiation damage .. especially while swimming through waters is the Aqua-Boy perk. It's a good one to unlock early on during survival. At least with that, you can get to the island without having to consume Rad-X or take Rad-Away.
The primary drawback to it though, is the rad storms. There's no place to hide there except in an environmental suit. You'ld have to piecemeal transport a set of power armor but you'ld have to walk the bottom to get the frame there.

[Foxhound]

Originally posted by Solomon Hawk:

Originally posted by Foxhound:

Built there before when I played on PS4, but yeah, it isn't practical for survival, or at least at the moment.

At least one perk you can definitely use to mitigate a lot of radiation damage .. especially while swimming through waters is the Aqua-Boy perk. It's a good one to unlock early on during survival. At least with that, you can get to the island without having to consume Rad-X or take Rad-Away.
The primary drawback to it though, is the rad storms. There's no place to hide there except in an environmental suit. You'ld have to piecemeal transport a set of power armor but you'ld have to walk the bottom to get the frame there.

I use the aqua boy perk but what I mean't was that it is too far away. I'll probably set up some kind of water purification farm that I vist once every few hours (real time) in the future because going there and back a lot is too much of a chore.

[Solomon Hawk]

Originally posted by Foxhound:

Originally posted by Solomon Hawk:

At least one perk you can definitely use to mitigate a lot of radiation damage .. especially while swimming through waters is the Aqua-Boy perk. It's a good one to unlock early on during survival. At least with that, you can get to the island without having to consume Rad-X or take Rad-Away.
The primary drawback to it though, is the rad storms. There's no place to hide there except in an environmental suit. You'ld have to piecemeal transport a set of power armor but you'ld have to walk the bottom to get the frame there.

I use the aqua boy perk but what I mean't was that it is too far away. I'll probably set up some kind of water purification farm that I vist once every few hours (real time) in the future because going there and back a lot is too much of a chore.

I can't argue with that. It is quite the road trip.