Abernathy farm is broken.

[CapNKirkland]

Playing console, vanilla.

I cant get any if the settlers assigned to any jobs anymore. I cant even get settlers to move to different settlements.

Is it because I have too many people?
With max charisma, chrisman clothing and chems I was able to get 33 settlers to Abernathy. At first the settlement worked fine, I was able to assign them all to farming vegetable starch crops, but didnt plant enough to assign all settlers.

Now that I have enough crops down, they wont assign.. they wont even mormve to other settlements.

How do i fix this?

[Charon]

Sanctuary, Abernathy and Red Rocket are usually referred to as the triangle of death. If the game has to load all three of them at the same time and you have a lot of stuff built bad things start to happen.

Might or might not be the reason.

[Zes]

Try makimg scavenging stations and assign settlers to them, remove all plants and plant then 6 by 6 units (food units, not literal count) and assign settler one by one after each planting session

but as it was said above ^ those three settlements have a bad reputation, things will be broken soon enough again.

[fmalfeas]

The game defaults to loading all three settlements at once. Thus, after delivering the Quincy Crew and giving the locket back, I pretty much only return to build enough turrets to reduce attack chance, and then that's that for them. I'll do my actual settlement stuff at the drivein, or the co-op if I want to stay in that general region. But I'll avoid those 3 settlements.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to make all three in one loading area, and make Sanctuary and Abernathy have so much stuff and area was WRONG.

[Zekiran]

Abernathy is notoriously slow to assign anyway, I usually cap at like 25ish there because of that.

Strongly recommend against using it as a main settlement in any way.

[DouglasGrave]

Did you deal with the original beds at Abernathy Farm, removing/replacing them using either glitch selection or console commands? I'm guessing not console commands if you're not playing on PC, but it is also possible to fudge the build system into grabbing them. They can cause some issues because they're not properly defined for settler use. The original beds may also work better if the settlers are manually assigned to them, even if you don't remove them.

Abernathy Farm is also one of a large number of settlements where some areas of the site aren't properly defined for all constructions, so you can get issues if you build the wrong things there. In Abernathy's case, it affects two full foundation blocks of thickness on the north corner, and everything south or east of the map icon's south-eastern corner on the Pipboy map.

It most notably affects vendor stands, bells (to attract settlers), caravan trader outposts, and brahmin troughs (both types), and if they're having issues can slow down assignment in general. It can also affect machine gun turret levels, but Abernathy doesn't have much variation potential there anyway since it's a low-level area, and I don't think the turrets cause problems like assigned objects.

I did a thread to record the information if it sounds like that:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/3810661398174199221/?tscn=1692152950

[RabbitRidge]

Originally posted by CapNKirkland:

At first the settlement worked fine, I was able to assign them all to farming vegetable starch crops, but didnt plant enough to assign all settlers.

Now that I have enough crops down, they wont assign.. they wont even mormve to other settlements.

How do i fix this?

I'm not qualified yet to offer core advice as others have, but did you remove (in practice, this means storing in the Workbench) the glitched unassignable (appears to be assigned initially but doesn't stick) existing Tato plants before building out (just a rookie hunch, perhaps something to do with it).

[DouglasGrave]

For use on console platforms (where you may not be able to readily use console commands to remove them), it's possible to grab the Abernathy Farm beds with a selection glitch you can use in build mode. I stumbled across the selection part when rapidly cleaning a settlement once.

You stick an object between yourself and the bed, select the object, and then quickly spam both the select and cancel/store buttons as fast as you can a couple of times so that you remove the front object and grab hold of the bed behind it before the game system realizes it's invalid. It usually takes a number of tries because it's done so fast you're hoping to randomly get the timing right and grab the bed without also immediately deselecting it.

Once you've got hold of the bed, you take it to some removable flooring you put somewhere nearby for this purpose. When you try to put the bed on it, it will appear invalid with a red outline, but if you wave it up and down while spamming the select button, there will be a brief moment you can hit where it's green and can be placed. Once the bed is on the flooring, removing the flooring also removes the bed.

[RabbitRidge]

Maybe it's because I'm on PC, but I haven't experienced any problems with the existing bedding at Abernathy (just problems with the existing extra Tato plants upon ownership of the settlement). I have additional settlers and send all of my available companions there too (I keep zero population at Sanctuary, restarted the game because I hated dealing with the Minuteman crew...I'll release them on my terms when I'm ready in the later game).

[fmalfeas]

I think the lesson to take from all of this, be it the triangle of death, or bugged beds or bugged tatos, is to go live at Sunshine Tidings or the Drive-In.

You shouldn't need to exploit glitches or use the console to make a settlement work.

[RabbitRidge]

No lesson for me, I'm as happy as a tick on a fat dog (so far compared to a lot of other games I've played in the past).

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by fmalfeas:

I think the lesson to take from all of this, be it the triangle of death, or bugged beds or bugged tatos, is to go live at Sunshine Tidings or the Drive-In.

You shouldn't need to exploit glitches or use the console to make a settlement work.

The actual "triangle of death" problem doesn't normally occur unless you've modded the game or made other adjustments to have those three settlements loaded together. The default loading distance isn't sufficient to involve all three, though you could have trouble if you've severely overbuilt at both Sanctuary and Red Rocket, since those are much closer (as overbuilding always risks; having two or more settlements involved just makes it far worse).

On the other hand, the badly-set beds and border settlement regions that aren't defined properly for vendor stands (amongst other items) are problems in even an unmodified game, and on those I very much agree. It shouldn't be necessary, yet it is.

Funnily enough, Sunshine Tidings Co-Op is where I discovered the selection glitch, when I was hurriedly throwing chems and other useful preexisting items into storage and accidentally grabbed a desk that you can normally only scrap. And so one fudgy error in the game can be used to fix another.

[RabbitRidge]

As someone new to the game and not using any mods, I have zero interest in settlement building at this point and simply want to explore the world. That will probably change with more experience, but this is why I keep only one settlement with any population at all. In any event, Fallout 4 certainly does its best to keep you sidetracked from any planned goals, even with just that!

I can see why someone with 33 settlers is expected to be engaged with vendors and such at that location, although he states all are assigned to farming:

Originally posted by CapNKirkland:

At first the settlement worked fine, I was able to assign them all to farming vegetable starch crops, but didnt plant enough to assign all settlers.

Now that I have enough crops down, they wont assign.. they wont even mormve to other settlements.

[fmalfeas]

Originally posted by RabbitRidge:

As someone new to the game and not using any mods, I have zero interest in settlement building at this point and simply want to explore the world. That will probably change with more experience, but this is why I keep only one settlement with any population at all. In any event, Fallout 4 certainly does its best to keep you sidetracked from any planned goals, even with just that!

I can see why someone with 33 settlers is expected to be engaged with vendors and such at that location, although he states all are assigned to farming:

Originally posted by CapNKirkland:

At first the settlement worked fine, I was able to assign them all to farming vegetable starch crops, but didnt plant enough to assign all settlers.

Now that I have enough crops down, they wont assign.. they wont even mormve to other settlements.

The big thing for a settlement use if you don't really care about settlements is this - Get 4 plants each of tato, corn, and mutfruit. That'll support 8 settlers. If you need more food, stick to those 3 plants, split the same way.

Those are the ingredients for Vegetable Starch, AKA, Adhesive. Any settlers not assigned to crops (which should be most of them) should be on Scavenging Stations. Throw down a water purifier (this is part of why the drive in is great, because it has water for that), and a bunch of heavy machinegun or regular machinegun turrets. Effective, and low requirements.

Now, your villagers will grab random junk, and make the stuff for glue. You just need a cooking fire/stove to make the glue. Your scrap and glue can be used to upgrade your gear. Especially the glue.

[CapNKirkland]

Originally posted by RabbitRidge:

As someone new to the game and not using any mods, I have zero interest in settlement building at this point and simply want to explore the world. That will probably change with more experience, but this is why I keep only one settlement with any population at all. In any event, Fallout 4 certainly does its best to keep you sidetracked from any planned goals, even with just that!

I can see why someone with 33 settlers is expected to be engaged with vendors and such at that location, although he states all are assigned to farming:

Originally posted by CapNKirkland:

At first the settlement worked fine, I was able to assign them all to farming vegetable starch crops, but didnt plant enough to assign all settlers.

Now that I have enough crops down, they wont assign.. they wont even mormve to other settlements.

The only reason I'm even building settlements is for vegetable starch.

[Relic62]

The main issue mentioned above is the beds in Abarnathy, I notice once you get access to the workbench the Abarnathy's stand around outside at night and do not move if you leave the original beds intact. Use console commands, disable or (markfordelete - you have to leave the area after for this to work) and build new beds for them and make sure they are undercover not in that back area which is not covered correctly. I usually have a pop of 20 there and no issues, tho I never put settlers in RR, just clean it up and leave it empty.

Sanctuary usually gets a pop of around 35 again no issues, the only thing I have noticed is when footing it to Sanctuary from Abarnathy I sometimes get some jerkyness, stuttering due to the amount of stuff loading in, in that area.