So I am looking for a settlement location to be my Fortress of Solitude. Crafting stations would be nice as I am not sure I will focus on CHR with this guy, but not required I suppose. I could do all my crafting on the Prydwen, assuming I can store junk there in those benches to craft with (can I?). Will be going BoS btw. I have bought Home Plate before but the area just felt too cramped and I need a place to show off all my PA's and such.

The location needs to start off with no settlers there and I won’t be recruiting anyone. I am not aware of any place just getting random settles except those locations where you are asked to clear it because they have friends that would like to move in. Honestly if you clear those locations without the quest to do so I am not sure if those friends still show up or not. I would not be surprised if they do.

I might try selling water so a water source would be nice. Not required but at least water pumps do not require someone to be assigned to them.

No plans to grow anything as there will be no one there to work the field anyway.

A central area would be preferred, which is why I am not just using Red Rocket. Thought about Hangman's Alley, but it is a tight location and no water, but it could work I suppose.

Not sure a about attacks. Do settlements get attacks if there are 0 settlers? I suppose I could put up some turrets anyway regardless.

So what settlements would meet this criteria and that you liked building up? Thanks.

The island to the far east would prolly be best. It's been done by a few folks already with the pyramid style - also inverted pyramid.

I used Greygarden for a non-settler playthrough.

-You can build to the top of the highway for a nice overview.

-Easy to just fence in the whole place and live on the highway (there is even an empty bus you can use)

-The place comes with robots that do gardening, giving you a bit (not much) access to mutfruit, corn and tato's. Buy a Brahmin from Kelly and fertilizer you have as well.

-One of the robots is a merchant, nothing special, but you do get a discount after doing the quest for the place

-Robots don't need beds and they don't go around saying silly things and keeps to them themselves (e.g. you will never find them rumaging through your stuff!)

Only real downside, is water.

Red Rocket is never a bad idea. All benches available, plus all the nearby scrap in Sanctuary means you can fortify it pretty well. If not there then, Taffington is nice or Outpost Zimonja.

Egret Tours Marina is nice, as well. Spectacle Island as mentioned above.

Love me some Kingsport Lighthouse.

I like the location but I wasn't sure about the robots. I've used the place before and the robots apparently still count towards the settlers count. Don't know if that means it will get raided or not and would rather not have to bother with that. Maybe with enough defenses and the next patch I can finally ignore those anyway. I do like building up to the highway.

Red Rocket I've done to death. That lighthouse though I never thought of. I was planning on trying to go with no quick travel, just running and vertibirds so it's location might be a problem. That kind of tosses the island out also. But yeah the lighthouse is cool. I'll have to check out what it's build area is like on one of my old files where I've cleared it.

Happy to help.

I'm mulling this over myself right now, with my current run. I've yet to pick a permanent domicile, and just have everything shoved into the Sanctuary work bench.

Even without settlers you will get raided, when high enough level, but only when present. I haven't had any problem with raids on greygarden, 2-3 times or so, and I was around level 54-55 at that point. I guess Greygarden is sorta out of the way, and doesn't hold much value with no human settlers. Great thing about the robots, is that they more or less work 24/7 and doesn't bother one, especially if building on highway, then they are just little busy "ants" down below (kinda nice as well, because the place doesn't feel empty or abandoned)

But there are plenty of places to try

Spectacle Island: I made a penthouse 4 stories above the hightest peak of the island. It's a nice getaway but it got boring so I sent settlers there to start making caps for me. Their settlement is off the coast and a concrete permimeter with 4 defense towers and 8 missile tourettes. It only gets attacked by mirelurks. So far no raiders, robots or supermutants. Now there are 20 setters, 70 food, 100 water, 120+ defense. I just watch the settlers kill the mirelurks as I chill in my penthouse when I have to defend it.