actually, I can name 2 that are WAY WORSE, Croup manor, Oberland station, and Boston air port!

Croup manor, and Oberland station: these 2 locations are both REAL CLOSE to water, but the borders are set to limit you to the access of the water you clearly need, easy to get, abundance amount, but locked away behind the thin, but invincible gree/red (depends on which side you are standing)... IF I was the leader of the minute man, and making decisions to keep my settlers alive and healthy (and rich like my character) I WOULD NOT PLAN TO HAVE MY CITY LIMIT AT THE FREAKING EDGE OF ABUNDANCE OF WATER, denying my thirsty settlers the access of ANY METHOD to obtain clean water... Oberland station is almost next to river, about 20 steps away, but somehow the minuteman command want's water pumper closer to the space consuming, only good for 2 beds, un-fix-able broken house.... which the settlement is supposed to be... Croup Manor is worse, it's RIGHT BY THE OCEAN, and yet, where the edge of the water is what the game decided to cut your natural resceorce... no water for the settlers then!

Boston Airport, you can't even farm in this one; no waer, and no plants... HOW AM I SUPPOSED to feed the settlers?

I think some people might be misinterpreting the point of the settlements. Not every settlement is meant to be a "full" settlement. It's actually a tiny, simplified version of SimCity or Civilization. Certain build zones are meant to be small...out-of-the-way...perhaps even invisible hideaways. Not a full-blown township, but just a waypost. A convenient place to drop off loot. A defensible area to fall back to if you intend to pick a fight with a behemoth. That sort of thing.

It plays into the ability to link settlements. There will be farms, preferably built in quieter areas with only light defense, linked to trading posts which are more about residential and commercial needs, linked to guard posts or forts located further out in "danger zones".

As I'm discovering on this playthrough, there are two sensible ways to play settlements. Turtle up and put all the resources you can into one settlement before expanding to a total of 2 or 3 huge bases. Or, have each settlement specialize in a certain production, get supply lines up and running as soon as possible, and try to spread defenses around evenly.

Each has it's trade-offs. One thing you DON'T want to do is arbitrarily start building without a plan. I would recommend players on their first run attempt the turtle strategy. Once you're familiar with the world map and where other build locations are, you can start to get adventurous more successfully.

in the same time, each settlements WILL acquire population, that will NEED food/water/bed/defenses to maintain, what I point out, these 3 could easily be great settlements, but we are cut off from easy, great resources by stupid borders that made no sense! and as the case of Boston airport, ZERO FARMING GROUND... does supply line transfer food/water? I haven't get that one yet, but from what I've heard, it's a nightmare to work with... I think even to mod that one with Planters mods of some sort...

On the other hand, I actually have a very good experiences with Hangman's Alley because it's location, and ESPECIALLY the way "Late enemy spawn", them badies don't actually spawn cluster in the center of base, but they spawn right outside! which made excellent defense game play, like a REAL siege.... except, they don't have to "knock down" our gate... they just have to "open" them... good thing it's a bottle neck....

Ha--! See? This whole settlement thing needs to be better documented.

If you have a settlement that is producing an excess of food, all the extra food is placed in the workbench. If workbenches are connected by supply lines, they share inventory. So any excess food produced in 1 settlement is then shared by all other settlements connected to it along a supply line.

I had the Sanctuary settlement up to almost 30 people. 4 were guards, everyone else was assigned to farming. I had settlements everywhere, but all of the food came from Sanctuary, Abernathy Farms, and Tenpines Bluff -- I didn't even plant crops at Abernathy or Tenpines; just used what was already there. I had piles of extra food.

P.S. -- In case anyone is not aware, 1 person can take care of 6 crops. So every time you assign someone to farm, they automatically assign themselves to the next 6 unattended crops. I think there may be a bit of an issue with the AI if you assign 2 villagers to the same crop, however. It seems to leave 1 crop somewhere that no one ever harvests. So I simply started throwing down crops in groups of 6, then assigning a settler to the last crop I planted. Ensures I never click the same one twice.

Yeah I figured this out last week. I did note however that even though Abernathy Farms was getting food from the supply line the settlers would still complain about food if the # food was below the # of settlers. Right now Sanctuary is my big farm feeding about everyone. I just added enough food to Abernathy for the settlers to stop complaining about it.

actually... I play like a slave trader... they farm for me, I get profit, my currency is water, crops, chems... nukes...

I also built about 3-8 scraping places because I think it generate scraps/junks? I didn't see my copper going up yet... but I can wait....I still don't feel like having 50+ junks more every day... is there a mod to see if we get new items? I just got a mod that allows me to make 25 waters/crops in to "shipments papers" which weights not much... the down side (up side?) is that I get some XP every time I make them, and I make ALOT....

Re the attacks, I just hit lvl 41 and have never had a settlement attacked.


Here are the circumstances:


1. I have only invested a bit in Sanctuary, enough to keep 8 settlers happy, adequate food, and a bit extra purified water produced. I think defence is 20-30, no higher. No extra buildings, no shops/vendors. Hapiness is 80%.


2. I technically "own" several others via quests but have done zero to them. They sit at 50% happy, original settlers and output.


3. I purposely did NOT do the "build the beacon" quest, which is an early offering.


I'm not sure if my small settlements are not yet a target, or if somehow #3 is the real key to getting attacked. Either way, I'm happy to not have to deal with the attacks, so I won't change anything.

The rate of attacks seem to be a measure of your food/water production relative to your defense.

Settlements in more dangerous areas seem to get attacked more often than others (so Sanctuary Hills gets attacked very rarely)

Also, if there are no people in a settlement, it won't get attacked, regardless of your water production there.

Hmmm. Sounds like it's a bug. I've encountered a few.

Doesn't surprise me that much.

I'm in my second playthorugh: I've had attacks, and I've had attacks with no (or a missed) warning. Last night was my first instance of a settlement being LEVELED, and - honestly - the more I experience it, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that Bethesda did a really sloppy job of this whole thing (sorry Bethesda: I preorder your games - the only company I will do so from - but this is a really poor implementation).

1) Oberland station was leveled. Every crop. every gun position. I had no warning. None. Not a missed warning (as I watch for them now, being on my second run through and all). Nothing in my misc quests. Nothing. Oberland had enough defense to hold its own, but - more importantly - I put Strong there and several guards with mini guns.

The lack of warning is annoying.

The fact that you've got a system designed to drag the player out of their current quest/dungeon to deal with an attack is bizarre at best. I love the attacks, I don't like being dragged out of a quest/interior building location, to do so.

It is obvious - plainly so - that settlement defenses are ignored; types/placement, etc. You're looking just at the settlement defense value and - I suspect - using this as a form of hitpoints. You tick the defense value down, you auto destroy things, and continue to do so until exhausted, at which point the player fails the quest.

It is clear that the volume of NPCS, settlers, and their equipment is not coming into play for these auto-resolve attacks. And that's just terrible.

2) You have a nag set up for when I'm over encumbered. Every 10 seconds it's there in your face. But you couldn't set up a nag for settlement attacks? No warning sound? No repeat message?

3) Why is my presence required there at all? Why can't a well stocked, armed, and defended settlement do their own defending?

4) Sanctuary was also under attack: as I was cleaning up Oberland, the numbers for Sanctuary didn't look right and so I fast traveled there on a hunch: sure enough, there were about half a dozen super mutants and the attack was clearly underway. Sanctuary has 140+ defense and less than 60 food/settlers etc. I don't mind the attack (again, there was no warning and nothing in my quest log), but half of the defenses were destroyed or damage. Dozens of turrets being fired at by 6 mutants (no legendaries), some of these turrets being 2-3 stories up and not actually facing any attack ...

It was at this point that I realized that you have a hitpoint system going on: Sanctuary - to you - has 148 hitpoints (forget the settlers and other factors, your program ignores them) and you were damaging those hitpoints (defenses) until I got there. Thankfully I got there half way through and the fight was THEN over in a few seconds.

This is, quite simply, just terrible, terrible design and implementation.

I keep wondering why I have to keep going to the settlement to help defend it. Rushed back to Oberland last night as they were being attacked by 6 Supers (one reg, one brute and two butchers and a master) and 2 hounds. I get there and they're all dead except the master and one of the ladies I gave a laser rifle to shoots him in the head and he falls dead at my feet.

Nothing damaged but a turret and one corn plant.

It's like the attack by 3 Radscorps that never even made it past the western area.

My settlers seem to be doing a perfectly fine job on their own, with support of my turrets. It's nice to have them thank me, but I can only respond sarcastically since I didn't really do anything!

it's auto "lost" if there is no Management.... having da Boss in a gang fight makes the world of difference

Funny... they don't seem to think of me as the "boss" at all. In fact, they barely seem to understand why I'm there at all, although, thank you for the assist seems to be their normal response.

"boss" in battle... other times... just the errant boy/girl... I think Preston too, "General, can you run to THAT settlement for me? they are in doo doo, looks like it's your dootie to 'settle' this one!~" dud, have you ever turn down a mission? population immediately drop! it's like you are running an Inn or something, if it an't 5 stars (legendary?) service... we're out!

Possibly.

In both settlements, I have used about 75% (give or take) of the available surface. At Zimonja outpost, the Gunners spawned near the workbench.

At Oberland Stattion, in the middle of the cornfield. One raider even managed to spawn inside the watch tower and came running down the staircase.

1.Change enemy spawns when settlements are attacked to outside the settlement somewhere.

2.Give us an option to place arty or a small minuteman barracks inside settlements.They patrol along provision roads and around settlements.

3.A placeable minuteman beacon/chest to turn raider and super mutant camps into minuteman barracks, really sick of clearing an area to come back in a day and find it full of raiders and mutants again..

4.The placeable scavenging station to work, it removes scraqe from settlements and around them , to improve my fps. Plus add a repair station to settlements. Or a placeable shack/upgradeable to do both.

5.Friendly Settlements have a big impact on the game world. Less raiders Super Mutants Gunners , untill there are none. And the New commonwealth is born.

6. The ability to change minuteman uniforms uparmor upgun ..exp, l have 2000 caps to spend on my minutemans gear preston. And here is some gear l found too.

Yeah some of the Settlement interface needs to be improved. I personally only have a few settlements with large populations like Sanctuary Hills and the Castle. Most of the small settlements I used recruitment beacon quests for I closed down as soon as they reached a happiness cap, usually 70 or 80.

I read on a post that having to many TV's and Jukeboxes can cause your settlement to glitch. The numbers would decrease like it was attacked but as soon as u warp in, everything is normal. Got rid of the luxury electronics and it fixed the bug for the most part. That's another reason I keep the populations at the minimum for most of the settlements. Some settlements aren't even worth trying to establish in my opinion like Costal Cottage or Hangman's alley. So for me It's best to keep just a few large settlements (20+) and try to zero out all the small settlements that don't have fixed settlers.

I think the system was designed intentionally so, that the player must be there. If the cell is not loaded because the player is far away, there can be no fight at all, and they did not implement a 'auto resolve feature' where defenses and weaponry of the settlers are compared to the attackers strength. This would be a purely scripted evaluation, not a real fight. It is possible to do this, but they seem to have decided against it, because they wanted the 'action', they wanted the player to participate.

I think, that the defenses and well armed settlers are only here to determine the frequency of attacks and to help you, when you arrive to defend the settlement. If you have a lot of defense positions, turrets and well armed settler it will be easy. This way the settlers become your temporary companions while fighting off the attack. It is a design decision.

If it were different, you often would only hear 'there is an attack', and 'settlers could fight it off', and many players would not find that very interesting. A solution in between would be fine.

I think, that the system should take into account, that you may be unable to respond. If you in a quest in an inside cell, you cannot easily fast travel. Since you can be attacked while in dialog, it may also be possible for a settlement attack while you are in dialog. They do not stop the engine while in dialog!

But this behavior may be a problem with settlement attacks.

I think that settlement attacks are simply radiant quests and work like a radiant quest: The quest is started, given to the player and the setup is done. The timeout is set to a very short time. Regrettably the quest start is not visible like other radiant quests, where you have sound and a big label popping up. You only get one small message, and it seems that this message often is suppressed by something you do, or that the quest does not start at all, since in many cases you not only miss the quest start, and do not see it under Misc Quests listing in the PipBoy, there is also no fail message. But the settlement is damaged. Maybe this cases are wandering monsters, and not the radiant quest, but the implemented mechanism how Monster versus Settlement is resolved (by damaging the settlement) still is active.

So - I think it is best not to care too much. I build defenses, but not perfect, it is too much work anyway with this awful interface. I put turrets, and set defense posts and settlers as guards. Guards are helpful if you go there to defend: They cannot die, and as long a they are standing they fire on the enemies and this way take pressure from you. And if I am somewhere doing an important quest I ignore the attack, since in the end in the worst case the settlement has many damaged things, but all the settlers survive and you can build up the settlement again. Some things - as reported in this thread and elsewhere here - seem to repair themselves. (Maybe this is some automatic repair from the settlers? Would be interesting to see if it consumes resources)

I think, that the entire system is hard on the limit what this engine can do. I am happy with the settlement attacks, and will respond in most cases, if I have time enough. I want to be able to end dialogs, put my character in a stable environment and prepare before I travel to the settlement. But there should be a more thoughtful resolve, if I do not respond, and the settlement attacks should happen not too often. If I have all the settlements (30?), it is not fun if I cannot do something else for an hour without an attack.

As always with Beth games, they tried to push the limit, and as always they did not think things through fully. I think this is also intentional - they want to see how things are received and how the work 'out in the wild' with many players. And then they will try to resolve things, which many people do not like or have trouble with. So I hope they will react to the many settlement issues, or the settlement concept will be stillborn. Soon there will be mods which disable attacks at all (one seems to exist already), but I would not want that. I think the concept is fine, but it needs some finishing touches, not only with the attacks but with many other things too.

What also needs work is the 'job and schedule animation' from settlers. Often the animation do not start. Also the path finding from settlers seem in sort of a 'relaxed mode'. Often I see settlers trying to walk from one guard post to the next, but hanging on a corner of the guard post they are trying to leave. The keep walking in place, with does look awful. But there are path finding algorithms which can resolve such situations easily, or no companion would be able to follow you. I think, that the engine tries to conserve engine cycles, because on weaker machines (or consoles) a full settlement may be too much to manage. I had a guard post built so, that I could not walk into it with out jumping. As a result the settler assigned to it kept standing in the middle of the settlement and doing nothing. As soon as I found this and corrected it, the settler started to walk to his post. NPC schedules seem to be done so, that if something hinders it the schedule is simply suspended. And if you arrive via fast travel in a settlement, the settlers will all just start their schedule. If you walk towards a settlement (i.e. the cell is loaded before you can see it) then the schedules are running and it looks better.

All in all the settlement system is a true innovation in this kind of game and I hope Beth sees enough interest to develop it more fully!

Hard to know for sure at this point. I'm still afraid of completing the quest in #3 (above) as creating a beacon seems a logical way to attract all types - both wanted and unwanted.

In any event, if anyone does not care for the constant attacks, then I suppose the only way to avoid them is to keep settlements small, and *maybe* not complete that quest. However, that isn't necessarily fun for those who like the idea of settlement management.

This.