Hey folks,


I've been using the following strategy in building settlements and wanted to get some feedback.


1. Concrete Fence all around with a single large gate

2. Not using Settlers for defense, instead multiple turrets placed over gate

3. Just enough settlers on food

4. Fortifying Setller's armor (not weapons because they get unlimited ammo with the default pipe pistol?)

5. Assigning all non farmers to Scavenging units

6. Remapped all my provisioners so it's a single clockwise line across the map


Seem to get up to 80% happiness which is sufficient for now.


Thoughts?


Thanks!

I thought it was unlimited ammo if they have enough for 1 round (ie 500 rounds for a minigun)...

You know that mobs spawn inside settlements so walling/fencing them has no effect. And settlers come to fight anyways, so it's a good idea to arm them well, that is if your turrets alone don't finish off enemies in 2-3 seconds.

Yep about mobs, I'll place the turrets high enough over the gate so they have sufficient reach

And becareful with those concrete Cement Walls AI dont count this as Walls and will walk into it. I like those Cement Walls really but the AI Pathing is just horrible.

If you give settlers guns, you have to give them 1 bullet for it. This gives them unlimited ammo. Note that this isn't true for companions. They have unlimited ammo for their default weapon, but you have to provide them with an actual supply of ammo if you give them a different weapon, even if that weapon uses the same type of ammo as their default weapon.

Good to know about the 1 ammo tip, thx!


The AI walking into concrete has me worried, however I've had attacks and they seem to only come thru the main gate(?)

I've noticed this at the castle where I repaired the wall's. It just seemed to be Sheffield doing it though which I put down to him being a bit of a pisshead.

I haven't had any issues with settlers walking through concrete walls. I also wall in each settlement with concrete and make 1 gate but assign a bunch of settlers to guard duty. Ive only had enemies spawn one time inside Abernathy farm and the multitude of turrets inside tore them up in no time. Every other time enemies have spawned outside of my walls and never lasted long enough to get to the gate.

I have five settlers and Dog meat plus buddy the robot at Red Rocket and I reached a happiness of 93. I built 8 missle turrets on the roof and fenced of any gaps around the perimeter. Only one radio and a bar and an aid station. They seem happy enough..

The AI can't pathfind it's way out of a wet paper bag, it's one of my biggest gripes about settlements. That, and they never close doors behind themselves.

Hugely annoying, and the 2nd one is a security risk in the case of the settlement's main gate.

@ QuantumCurt: companions only use up ammo for non-default guns if they're your ACTIVE companion. If they're just chillin' somewhere, the game treats them like a normal settler. I gave Danse an AR and 3 bullets, he never needed more.

Any reason to explicitly get Settlers to defend? Using Turrets instead to maximize Settlers on Scavenging benches... They'll start defending automatically

I'm up to level 70 and have never built any walls, other than using pre-existing walls in places like Covenant and The Castle. As others have mentioned, enemies WILL get in whether you have walls or not, sometimes logically (such as radscorpions and molerats coming up from underground), but sometimes not so much. Just assume any spot can be potentially attacked, and thus place your turrets and other defenses strategically throughout your settlement, especially if it's a big area.

Have more water than your number of settlers, and you will get surplus purified water deposited to your workbench. Purified water may be useful later on.

General stores, food & drink stores, clothing stores, and clinics raise your settlement's happiness, but weapon stores and armor stores do not. But build stores of all kinds, since they earn you income. Over time, you'll be amazed by how much you earn. Don't be surprised if your stores earn you several times more than what you find on your own.

Though we have no definitive proof, we think higher level items of all kinds yield more happiness than their lower level counterparts. I.e. beds > sleeping bags, water purifier > water pumps, level 3 store > level 1 and 2 stores, etc.

So you want to build water purifiers (more happiness) whenever and wherever you can, since not all settlements are located near a body of water.

Supply lines may disappear, which is most likely a bug. So if you "daisy-chain" supply lines, and you lose one line, the whole chain may be broken.

Same with routing power to turrets (higher level turrets require power). If you daisy-chain their power lines, one damaged turret will render all turrets in the chain inoperable. Route every turret to a power pylon or conduit individually.

Scavenging stations are not very useful in my experience. Your most needed resources are wood, steel, copper, and oil, and scavenging stations rarely help with those or maybe they just never get enough. Wood and steel are especially important, since you use them by the hundreds when you build a settlement. There are lots of trees to scrap in most settlements, so wood is less of a problem. But I'm often low on steel, and have to find them the hard way: collecting junk from the wasteland.

As others have pointed out, equip your settlers with better armor and weapons. Also, have a large population. A good fighting force should be good in strength and number.

Watch out for settlers who can't get to bed (https://youtu.be/2auJ5qT0bso), and beds that become mysteriously unassigned (https://youtu.be/8kONA3uCfd8). Both may be bugs, but both lead to loss of happiness which you have to fix.

1. Place a carpet on the floor of the sleeping area/shack floor.

2. Make a Bed that a Settler will use, test this at night before step 3. Assign a Settler to the Bed.

3. Place a Radio on a Table near the Bed, make sure to not block access to the bed.

4. Wire up the Area/Room with lighting.

5. You want a Provisioner, a Doctor, a Food Vendor, a Trader, and a Farmer, a Srapper can help. Six Food from the Farmer feeds Everyone.<--- forgot a Clothing Vendor so don't bother with a scrapper.

6. All Settlers need Assigned Beds. Extra Beds available improve Happiness.

A couple of thoughts.

Be careful placing the turrets.

Bear in mind that the turrets may do more damage to your scavenger benches than the enemies will.

So try to keep them out of their line of sight.

As some have said there are settlements where the spawn points are inside the build area.

Also at higher levels the foes take out your turrets with grenades and missiles and the mutant hounds run really fast and make a bee line for your improvements.

I have a lot of scavenger benches and over time they do build up your resources.

Great stuff, thanks for all the feedback!

I arm my settlers with the best equip. available. They will not only defend the settlement but foray a couple of hundred yards away to take down baddies. My entire settlement chased three radstags for two hundred yards killing two and the third escaped. Nothing was funnier than seeing a girl with a pony tail wearing summer shorts and carrying a minigun chasing these creatures.

I do not build walls anymore....they are a waste of resources and not needed. I dont even put up missile turrets (level 64), they simply end the battle before I can even see the action.

It is, has seen provisjoners shoot with miniguns for a minute on one round.

They do well with automatic weapons for this reason, energy weapons has the benefit of showing you the location of the enemies.

I prefer to use the mesh fence myself and then mostly to block of an direct path from typical spawn or attakk direction and into it and generate lanes of fire.

One problem with solid fences is that the settlers will move to attack the enemies, mostly they do better if staying at an distance and shoot to support the turrets.

My first strategy is to add more food or water if needed then get up some turrets on locations with good field of view and fire.

Next might be to build more housing if needed.

if getting attacks I try to defend that directions with fences and more turrets. say two of the bridge modules with an heavy laser on and a fence making an long way around.

Theres nothing you can do to stop your settlement from being wrecked if you dont show up. Walls/Foundation can help stop damage when you are there to help but it still is not needed. Everything that breaks will be auto-repaired within 24 hours. Sometimes immediately, sometimes you have to wait till the next day and come back. But you dont have to spend resources on repairs.

So really settlement defenses can be ALOT more open and organic than you would think. I really enjoyed just laying down a single row of foundation and have that be 2-3 stories tall. Turrets and generators up top, Beds on the bottom. Crafting/scavenge area somewhere in between. I put the vendors out front along the wall(which helps keep them from bugging out). Crops and water pumps near the wall under the protection of the turrets. If you build your "wall" away from any spawn points then nobody will ever get close enough to even shoot anything.

Towards the end of the game I was considering getting rid of my turrets or switching them out for crappy ones. Letting my settlers do all the work. Hand out plasma rifles, mini-guns.

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I started out trying to build real settlements though. Walling off places. Then I got the idea to just stuff all the crops/water/power into an enclosed box. But none of that helped and just created tons and tons of headaches for myself trying to make settlers do stuff they didnt want to do lol.

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The other piece of advice I would give is to control your population. Make sure your settlement beacon is not a hub for power flow but an offshoot so you can TURN IT OF when you want to. Once a place gets to a size you want then shut the beacon down. I was running around with boosted charisma gear and or drugs for buying/seling and stuff and this made some of my places go beyond 20 people, that was a level I was comfortable with. Having to lay down beds for 25-30+ people svcked.

Walls are a waste...except for aesthetics, sometimes they just look cool. I had a great walled Sunshine Co-op once and my settlers all swarmed outside to get the bad guys, so yeah, gave up on walls.

I set up 2 elevated platforms usually on opposite sides of the settlement with turrets, so that they set up a crossfire and cover each-others blind spots.

I always build a single bunkhouse and scrap any beds in pre-built locations so that I can be sure there are no issues with beds.

I always make sure any missile turrets are pointed away from the settlement with no line of fire into the "inside" of the settlement. That is, after I was almost wasted by friendly fire running from a radroach while in build mode. (insert loud heartbeat here)

If I have a personal retreat in a settlement I usually make it so that there's no way into it without jumping. Since settlers don't jump they can't get in and steal my stuff.

If you need steel you can buy up to 4 shipments at a time from Diamond city surplus. Interestingly I found out that the robot and the woman have different inventories (they don't share the same inventory, it's duplicate) so if you wait until night time and the robot comes out to sell you can buy another 4 shipments of steel (8 total). (Same goes for their shipments of fertilizer and plastic if you are making jet for caps.)

The newest beta patch now shows what settlers are assigned to, or if they are unassigned. I still like to dress them up according to their job though, and give them good weapons. Makes it easy to see newcomers when they show up.

I also give my provisioners high grade combat armor, heavy hitting weapons, and equip them with mining helmets so if I ever need to find one I just wait for it to get dark and look for the bright mining helmet light.