Water Farms - Settlers or no?

[Xenon The Noble]

I've not been adding settlers to my two water farms at Sanctuary Hills and Spectacle Island.

Why? because no settlers means no raiders, and the chance of raiders is based on water and food production of the settlement. No settlers and your water farm is never attacked. Add a settler and you got to build at least 140 defenses for a water farm that has a listed capacity of 1400/day, and even then you're at the 2% chance of raid level.

Makes no sense, I know. But you're playing a game where water cures gunshot wounds, so yeah.

Do you have settlers at your water farm?

[StinkyFish]

i dont have a water farm but wouldnt setlers kind of help?

[Charon]

Settlements and settlement attacks are one of if not the most annoying mechanic in the vanilla game. Once you have a few settlements you get raided every ten seconds (at least feels like it) and settlers don't really produce much of anything.

The solution: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/12430
No more or at least a lot less settlement attacks and settlements actually produce stuff and become an asset.

[Liquid Inc]

Originally posted by Agnet6075:

i dont have a water farm but wouldnt setlers kind of help?

All of the water producing items don't require settlers to operate.
Even the standard water pump somehow magically deposits water into your workshop without anyone around to do so...


That said..

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

Do you have settlers at your water farm?

No, I don't actually use water farms. In the end, it's an exploit that your abusing by doing so...
If your doing that for caps why not add yourself caps using the console and be done with it?

[Xenon The Noble]

I'm abusing the game by ... playing what's in the base game? What next? Killing raiders for XP is abusing the game? No. This is part of the game. They even drop heavy hints about it in Diamond City, where that kid sells purified water. Trading makes a lot more sense if you water farm. Otherwise, you'd never have the good for kewl weapons like Overseers Guardian and Spray and Pray.
Building a water farm is a game in and of itself. By judicious scrapping of Sanctuary Hills, you can build 3 industrial Water purifiers and 5 mini generators, producing a rated capacity of 120 water. So, you get about 80 water. Put on a suit, hat and glasses for +4 charisma, drink a beer for +1 and you're off to find Carla for more water and generator parts.
If you up your strength to 6 and take the pack mule perks, you can even fast travel to vendors being overloaded with water.
And you have to check your water farms once a day, cuz limits.

[Zes]

I have 25 settlement and I put 1 assaultron on each.. no bed no food no water still I receive 2 attacks at once.. very frequently.

[Xenon The Noble]

Originally posted by Zes:

I have 25 settlement and I put 1 assaultron on each.. no bed no food no water still I receive 2 attacks at once.. very frequently.

What if there were no assaultrons? I've had cows (by cow traps) for fertilizer at water farms, and never had my water farm attacked because there are no settlers, not even bots. There's been some turrets, but I think one of my turrets killed a cow, so there's that.
Of course, saving Garvey's hiney will ruin this: you can't send his ungrateful little troop to other settlements... not without a lot of rigmarole.

[Liquid Inc]

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

I'm abusing the game by ... playing what's in the base game?

By that logic, so is using the console... Every unintended glitch that makes things super easy is acceptable..

Water farming is such an easy source of caps that the one time i did it, i had so many caps i had literally nothing to buy with it (Not even counting all the ammo i had accumulated either)

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

Killing raiders for XP is abusing the game? No. This is part of the game. They even drop heavy hints about it in Diamond City, where that kid sells purified water.

Killing raiders is intended, having settlements full of cap farming water purifiers is hardly the same...

You mean, there's a store that sells purified water and that's enough of a thing to have settlement after settlement producing 140+ water?
Roundabout logic if ever i saw it...

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

Trading makes a lot more sense if you water farm. Otherwise, you'd never have the good for kewl weapons like Overseers Guardian and Spray and Pray.

you need water purifiers just to buy those? you spend every cap you find on minigun ammo or something?

I can buy those guns without requiring tons of water purifiers everywhere.... the only one i don't realistically manage is the Fat Man legendary in DC, but chances are by the time you do get 10k caps to buy it, you'll have acquired something else more useful, or it's just completely unfeasible if your in Survival since mini nukes weigh 12 each...

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

By judicious scrapping of Sanctuary Hills, you can build 3 industrial Water purifiers and 5 mini generators, producing a rated capacity of 120 water. So, you get about 80 water. Put on a suit, hat and glasses for +4 charisma, drink a beer for +1 and you're off to find Carla for more water and generator parts.
If you up your strength to 6 and take the pack mule perks, you can even fast travel to vendors being overloaded with water.
And you have to check your water farms once a day, cuz limits.

Your game your way i guess, but to me that just seems like setting the game to "walk in the park" difficulty and making the game super easy...

Where's the challenge of making your shots count? running out of ammo, or having to use tactics to take enemies down because you lack the ammo to kill all of them?

[Zes]

as a reply for your original question;

- you use settlements to make money
- you buy everything else with money (probably you have your lv 3/4 traders in one place)

+ so why bother with food production and deal with attacks..

AI Result: Go with non-settler approach ;)

[Docsprock]

Why not make all settlements 'water farms'? I produce water at every one of mine. I produce more than I need so it accumulates at every settlement.

I can see where it could be useful in the early game, but after hitting level 15 or so, caps are rarely an issue.

As far as attacks go, I like to beef up every one of my settlements to maximum population. Any settler without a specific job get assigned to guard duty. It increases the defense rating and is a great way to use decent armor and weapons that you cannot use yourself.

[Xenon The Noble]

Originally posted by Docsprock:

Why not make all settlements 'water farms'? I produce water at every one of mine. I produce more than I need so it accumulates at every settlement.

I can see where it could be useful in the early game, but after hitting level 15 or so, caps are rarely an issue.

As far as attacks go, I like to beef up every one of my settlements to maximum population. Any settler without a specific job get assigned to guard duty. It increases the defense rating and is a great way to use decent armor and weapons that you cannot use yourself.

I need caps to pay the farmers so I don't have to steal from them when I play the BOS, cuz that's on me and not the BOS. Mind you there's only four options on the screen, and the other three are not good.

I need caps because Preston Garvey says there's another "settlement", i.e. two people, 4 tato plants, a pathetic shack and a hand pump well that is going to be attacked by a half dozen supermutants. SS can't ask them to go to an established settlement, so he has to build defenses with two wood and one steel pronto.

The only other way I know of to get a lot of caps easily is to kill and loot BOS guys, which is what I was doing before I turned to Water Farming.

I don't make all settlements water farms because then they all get attacked. There's two or three good ones.
Sanctuary, because river
Spectacle Island, because ocean.
vault 88, which is inferior to the first two.

Max water/day at capacity is 1400, no sense building more. Get plenty of caps from just two. The other settlement sites are used for ... settlers.

[Liquid Inc]

-roleplaying aside- buying the food for the BoS gives the same negative happiness as looting them
You'd think it would be less unhappiness, or a neutral 0 if it was being bought with caps, but no.... flat -50 like looting it is

Originally posted by Xenon The Noble:

I need caps because Preston Garvey says there's another "settlement", i.e. two people, 4 tato plants, a pathetic shack and a hand pump well that is going to be attacked by a half dozen supermutants. SS can't ask them to go to an established settlement, so he has to build defenses with two wood and one steel pronto.

Loot ammo and sell it?

Get the scavenger perk and hold a few weapons (Pipe weapons can give copper etc.. and miniguns have a fair amount of steel) Good way of getting some components like screws, gears. Only thing you won't get is Oil, but that's not *that* hard to come by. A few flip lighters and your set.

Caps can be difficult if all your doing is building up settlement after settlement and fast travelling between, but with the scavenger perk and looting a place as you run between them, can give you a lot of parts you won't need to buy.