my suggestion would be like this :

- display all settlers on the workshop UI + current assignment + weapon + armor value

- be able to select any settler from this UI ( no more searching until u find them ) so that u can issue commands where needed

- an icon on the game UI that shows when a settlement is under attack ( currently u have to check quests - miscellaneous every time )

bye

Those all sound like sensible suggestions. It's so annoying when I'm looking for somebody to harvest some crops and I have to go wandering in and out of all the houses to try and find an available settler.

Man the entire time enjoying the settlement building (I hope it becomes a staple of the series) I felt like at the same Time bethesda was sticking a middle finger in my face while I tried to get those [censored] corners to [censored] sync up!! Beth heres to hoping that you add to settlement building in future dlc

I've run out of wood and am too cheap to buy some so I just keep getting settlements, stealing their wood and using it to build an older settlement, leaving them without any wood and all by themselves for months at a time.

I am such a bad manager. Right now I'm scavenging County Crossing and Finch Farm for resources so I can build up Hangman's.

Thousands in steel and a couple hundred wood is not doing me any good. I NEED WOOD!

When I don't get an attack message and find a settlement destroyed I decided that I will "cheat" and do God Mode to repair it (which is still a tedious waste of time regardless). Hate to resort to things like that just because of a buggy system but I work too hard to get resources and build to not have a chance to avoid the attack.

Something else I'd like to see is the ability to scrap all the corpses lying around. Most of them are containers so it should be possible from a game engine standpoint to remove them. I don't really want to get any resources from them, just bury the damn things. It's deeply creepy to see your settlers happily bedding down beside decomposing corpses.

Well bone can be very useful if you are looking for oil, and oil is very useful if you are making a lot of turrets. I still can't get over the fact that we can't loot a skeleton for bones?!

Oooh...I didn't know you could make oil from bone. I hadn't looked deeply enough into the chemistry paths, cause oil's a resource I'm often looking for.

Yeah my first character would never touch human bones so mole teeth were about the only source of bone I had. Next play-throughs I said screw that I need that oil so I grab all the bone I can. It's the 'utility' craft in the Chem station, forget what it's called exactly.

Make Cutting Fluid - it's in your cooking options.

Finch Farm lady sells wood, I buy all my settlements need from her, built farms/water purifiers when ever you can... when there is water, clear the bottom, and built/spam them, expampl: My Sanc. have 6 Industrial grade. my currency is water/food, I am rich as hell....

Rare, and needy Material issues: (again... wood was not the problem, you have plenty, and you can buy them eirly on in game)

Copper: Good Neighbor's Robo assassin merchant have shipments, you get 25/day (you spawn in that town FACING it(i will not call it a "her"... she's creepy)

Nuclear Material: Kill with plasma gun ALOT, or use "Rad" legendary mod, to kill... most goo corpse have, Vault 81 lady some times have, and Blow up Suiciders, they'd have, you don't need 87 Mini nukes anyways like I have.... I don't know what to do with them....)

other tagged stuff, buy junks from Diner lady with Jet addicted son, and DON'T EVER ROB CARLA, because these 2 people will most of time show up at the Diner and you buy junks from these 2 to get cheap materials...

Good to know about Finch farm. I'm already rich as midas anyhow, so that's not the issue.

I buy when I'm in the area, but I'm cheap. I never go to Diamond City (although I should since I own the house and have yet to do anything with it) so those vendors are rarely used.

I'll get it eventually. I'm in no hurry.

The only place I had any trouble with running out of wood was the Starlight Drive In settlement before I had supply lines. Seriously, what the hell makes the Minuteman think this is an appealing spot? Though it seems inexplicably popular. I find that empty beds fill up faster than anywhere else.

Hangman's Alley is another miserable settlement location that fills up fast. I guess it's an easily defendable spot and it's close to Diamond City but that's about the extent of its appeal. Wouldn't any sensible settler prefer Sanctuary Hills or Sunshine Tidings co-op to these miserable places?

The major thing for me is it should let me clip walls through the ground if it is not 100% flat they end up floating in the air and I should be able to have the wall make a turn at something other than 90° if I want.

The wendy-houses aren't my favourite part of the game.

Yes - my settlements are fairly small. In a first run through (I started a new character, when I was at level 28) I had 8 settlements, but none of them very big. Maximum 15 settlers and accordingly water + food. So around 30-40 defense maximum.

There is a problem when things become bigger. I am now level 30 and one settlement is at 17 settlers. I have 6 settlements now. I ignore Sanctuary, because I permanently receive quests from there, and I do not want this much settlements at the moment. Especially because their requests are purely random, so they keep sending you far to the south near the Glowing Sea. And I do not want settlements there at this time! It would be better if you could build settlements at your own speed and so, that they can support each other, i.e. beginning from Sanctuary and spreading out.

Despite that, sometimes the entire mechanism is unreliable, or buggy, or intentionally totally random with nasty side effects. For example, I was around level 12 or so, when I arrived at my new settlement Oberland Station (2 settlers, 3 water, 8 food). They had only one turret at this time (defense = 8). I was on my way north toward Red Rocket. Just as I passed an attack happened: 2 Radscorpions and one Legendary Glowing Radscopion!! A bit too much for one level 12 character and 2 settlers. I was lucky enough to have enough chems and a good weapon, and the attack happened directly under the turret. So I could win, but it was hard. Now - was this a settlement attack, or not? It probably was a random event I think, because the settlers thanked for the help 'against the Raiders'...

In another settlement a random event spot is near, and so often events happen. Mostly this are 3 dogs or 2-3 Raiders. My settlers (15-17) can defend themselves. I never had a defend quest from this settlement yet. But two times things were destroyed, turrets and plants. I suspect, that the game does not know if an attack is an settlement attack (planned by the system) or a random wandering in of some enemy NPCs. Both can only happen, if the cell is loaded, but if the player is far away, obviously every attack on settlers will destroy something, even if so weak, that they do not even enter the settlement boundaries. This is extremely unsatisfying and frustrating.

Others here report heavy attacks with higher player levels, and extremely high frequency of the attacks. This is clear, if you look at the mechanism, which (probably) was used.

Consider this: Lets say there is a probability for each settlement to be attacked. This probability is somehow calculated from food, water and defense (and maybe other values).

If the probability for a given settlement is 10% calculated every game day. This settlement would be attacked every 10 days average. If you have 30 settlements, then you will have 3 attacks per game day on average! If you have only one settlement, every 10 days. I think, that the attack probability should be somewhat mitigated if you have many settlements, or you will become tired of the defense quest rather fast...

Also - as very many things in this game - this is completely undocumented. It is unclear what to do, besides a strong defense, which will help, but not always. It is unclear what happens, and why: Red Rocket is sort of my home base: 0 Food, 0 Water, 16 defense (I built 2 turrets) and 0 settlers, 1 bed. Despite that it is attacked often (mostly 2-4 super mutants, once a Deathclaw). I never receive a quest and it seems to happen only when I am present. Could be wandering monsters. Does this count as an attack? I had several times damaged turrets. So what?

The entire system is undocumented and does not really work in a way you would expect. It seems totally random and illogical sometimes. And this is bad, since after a time players will not care, because you can change nothing. Not the ideal thing for a new game feature...

I really hope, that beth looks over this. I do not really trust in mods, they often do things I do not want...

*This 1,000%. I've even posted something about this. Pleas Give us a container to share goods with settlers. Let them distribute stuff accordingly. I shouldn't have to dress each one like a baby.

I am 100% sure that everything listed here will become available in a mod very soon after the CK is released. Especially frequency of attacks. I will, say, though, that if you avoid fast-traveling, the frequency is much more manageable. I think this is a similar issue to the frequency of Vampire attacks on towns in Skyrim. I never had even the slightest feeling that they were overdone, but I never fast travel. It's a bit harder in FO4 to avoid it though (running loads of junk back to base for drop-off), and now that I've started using it on a more regular basis, I've noticed my attack-on-settlement frequency has gone up drastically. Didn't happen during my first playthrough when I built the bare minimum for settlements and never fast-traveled once.

I would also like to second the idea for a terminal that lets you assign/reassign villagers to tasks. That is the perfect solution.

ok.. i recently discovered that even if i do not repair damage, if i linger long enough it seems to auto repair...

i recently had EVERY object that can be destroyed in my hangmans alley destroyed because of a glitched Synth attack. just a single synth settler who died in a instant because of how heavily armed the entire town is since i have it like a raider outpost of my own.

well long story short after trying everything to get the attack to suceed while i was there, yes everything, well at least everything i can do on console, i left and let it fail..

why? because i have already had a large number of experiences with settlements self repairing after i arrive... and sure enough, everything repaired itself... all generators, mutfruit trees, water pumps, spotlight, turrets. everything that "broke"

i dont remember it always working like this but the save does have 10 days of accumulated time on it... a lot of things are starting to break down.

I'm trying to understand the logic behind some of the locations that Bethesda chose as a potential settlement. Sanctuary Hills, Starlight Drive-in and Abernathy Farm are examples of settlement locations that make sense, but seriously, who's dumb idea was it to make places like Hangman's Alley or Costal Cottage into a settlement locations? Coastal Cottage is by far the worst location for a settlement I've seen thus far. I'm not just talking about the awful bulldozed houses or huge holes and that it has limited spacing, but the fact that it's at a steep incline makes it nearly impossible to build a lot of things without it looking like those objects are floating in the air or sticking out.

Coastal Cottage is fine.

Just put down the floor foundations to level some of the site.

You can put a roof over the hole in the ground and put beds there.

When I go there I always kill the Deathclaw that resides in the adjacent gully.

Hangmans alley is also good if you build multi-storey as you can then gain access to the roof of the adjacent building and take a shortcut to the noisy mutant neighbours.

This existed in Morrowind, then vanished. I would love to know why. There seem to be so many people that want corpses to be permanent, and I can't understand why for the life of me. I want them to be gone. They're an eyesore.

Like the two corpses over the bridge just outside of Sanctuary. No one EVER moved them? They never got dragged away by dogs...or buried by the villagers...or eaten by a deathclaw?

I'll eventually just use the "Disable" command on them, but there should still be a game mechanic for removing corpses manually. (And ash piles. After the work modders did to fix that in Skyrim...I can't believe Bethesda did not incorporate the fix into FO4.)

LOL! Everyone always wants it the other way...

This is a lesson for all software developers. Options. Don't "dictate" the way a program will function. Add options.

It would have been fairly easy to implement an automatic settler upgrade system. It could have been handled by introducing a simple script that "awarded" them a new piece of armor every so many days. Or a workbench option to have settlers equip better weapons and armor when you rang the town bell. Or pre-determined inventory customized to each "type" of NPC (melee, pistols, lasers, etc.) that you just "purchased" at the workbench with caps or junk. There are so many ways to do this.

OR...if a player wants to,

They can go around dressing and undressing villagers in the street. (Put on the red dress, Sturges! Put it on!! DON'T MAKE ME DO IT FOR YOU!!!)

_______________

From my experience, whatever basic gear most villagers show up with is fine. Weapons included. They can't hit jack anyway. I take my guards and customize only their gear with the best stuff I can spare. It's usually more than enough.

I'm beginning to think some of the trouble is a badly designed base defense. I've noticed, whenever attacks occur, the enemies tend to appear from the same direction every time. It creates a sort of "gate" that you can defend. It always begins on the bridge at Sanctuary, it always comes from the northwest at Tenpines Bluff, it always comes from the southwest at Drive-In...those are the ones I know well enough to argue.

I have defended Sanctuary successfully from the beginning of my present playthrough by simply walling off the bridge. I have a guard post on either side of the gate, a search light and a Mk I turret on either side of the door (outside the wall). 5 people are on Defense (counting Codsworth and Preston.) Nothing has gotten through.

Tenpines bluff, I have three settlers there. There is single Mk II turret facing NW on a concrete block with short walls on either side. Right by the shack that's already there. That's it. Nothing has gotten through.

I also never fast-travel unless I'm dumping a load of junk...so that might have something to do with it. Maybe if you FT to an attack, enemies spawn behind your "walls".

I've seen people claim that if you wall up your settlement completely so that there is no path it can be entered by, that's when they will spawn behind your walls. My walls aren't that good so it hasn't happened to me--I leave gaps and just make sure I've got turrets and guard posts wherever I have a gap. I suspect most people do fast travel when they're defending though, out of fear that they might get there too late, if they don't.

Thus far, I've found the settlements have defended themselves fairly effectively with minimal input from me. My settlers are more efficient at figuring out where the attack is coming from than I am. I will say with respect to Sanctuary that while the attack did come from over the bridge, some of the raiders ended up getting past my bridge defenses and circled around, getting into one of the houses that I use as part of my defensive wall. It wasn't that difficult to contain them there, though, but I hadn't realized before that it was possible to get into that house from the other side.