All of these are fantastic ideas. Mainly;

-A cleaner UI

-Better settler management

-Fixed spawning locations

-Console use of no clip

-a storage container for settlers to automatically get weapons/ armor


The only thing that I could add is an unlimited resources build mode. Achievements disabled of course, "free mode" would give you access to u limited amount of resources so that you can build rather than have to constantly raid hospitals for copper!

All of these are fantastic ideas. Mainly;

-A cleaner UI

-Better settler management

-Fixed spawning locations

-Console use of no clip

-a storage container for settlers to automatically get weapons/ armor


The only thing that I could add is an unlimited resources build mode. Achievements disabled of course, "free mode" would give you access to u limited amount of resources so that you can build rather than have to constantly raid hospitals for copper!

All of this.

Plus, it might be neat to have the "private" homes function as a sort of faction-specific gateway to unique goods. Now that you're a "member", you'll receive occasional visits from "special" traders, unique missions and correspondence, maybe some cool new Radiant quests or something. Perhaps more of a reason to invest in these particular housing options. (Although, I like them just fine as a private nook to store your stuff. Works as is, too.)

A lot of good points in this threat. UI, build parts, radiant quest and settlement where not really done at release. I really wonder if there was a rush to release the game.

What I really miss though is the ability to have someone produce something. Wouldn't Bluffs be a good spot cut wood? The wood wouldn't need to magicly appear in the workshop. Just sell shipments at the general store in connected settlements to simulate that this isn't communism.

A list of things that I like to see from Beth themselves (aside from those things already mentioned):

- The ability to power houses so all spots inside a house are automaticly powered as long as the house is conncected to enough power.

- Outer walls that can be used on uneven ground.

- Tilting the ground for crops

- Evening the ground for looks

- More effiecient power generation (I hate having to spam large generators to power a few turrets that don't svck)

- Invisible guard posts. (only seen in worshop mode) They are much easier to place and naturally fit in. For example having a guard guarding the market doesn't give of that prison vibe.

- The ability to build static "Covennant-style" walls around all major settlements.

- Clean vanilla building options. Crafting the best armor known to mankind and still being unable to build little more than shacks don't go well toghether.

More MM stuff but still belongs to settlements:

- More named characters either appaering naturally along with settlers or settlers turn into a named character by becomming more important.

- Taking the castle shouldn't be the only way to make the MM properly return. Building a radio is pretty easy for the SS and havin a hundred settlers ready should be enough.

- Quests inside settlements to aquire cool new stuff to improve settlements.

- Big projects for those who want to go crazy. (Building a fusion reactor, Getting a quarry, building a casino, repearing old world energy facilities, ...)

- Research instead of just personal skill. Personal skill should only act as a shortcut.

- Delegation of defence. No reason for doing all or any of the work eventually.

- Someone in charge of settlements.

- Oposition of other splinter MM groups under their own leaders. Not nessecarily call themself MM.

- Settlement tiers. For example outpost, village, town with more max popluation unlocked at each level (manual unlock to intentionally keep a settlement small) with increasing needs to be happy. An outpost should be "happy" (80) with all regular needs fullfiled while a town needs some vendors and a place to sozialise.

- "Someone in charge" to talk to everywhere. No more random settlers complaining. (I like good hierarchie)

- Well, nation building eventually. Weird to have a faction called the minutemen without the ability to build a nation. Meaning that there is the need to build a place to meet on a regular basis among other things.

I mentioned a lot of this stuff in other threats but I felt it was worth mentioning it in this context as well.

I love all of your points. I really have a hard time beliving there are even that many raiders, mutants and gunners in the commonwealth to get killed. I think eventually only certain battlegrounds should be left. Raiders would transition into jukies, criminals, mobsters operating in the lower levels of civilization leaving only smaller gangs in the commonwealth.

Cleared out locations could also turn into places for scavengers, ambitious buisnessmen, hiding criminals.

There was a game (I don't remember which but it is well known) where you could pacify the map bit by bit. Each time after an area was weakened by the player the option to start a last stand situation for the enemies in that area appeared.

I highly doubt that Bethesda will revisit the basic mechanics though. They haven't really done that once a game was released. They would have to put a lot of effort into creating a new system to manage changing locations. I am not sure if they really will do that when they can just make another adventure dlc or a simple settlement dlc.

Settlers do do jobs that need doing even if they are not assigned to anything. I think they work more efficiently if assigned a task. We do need a clear way of seeing what each settler is assigned to at-a-glance, however.

While we're on the subject, something I have been wondering is why was the size limits set so small? I'm on Xbox and I've done the size limit exploit to reset the 'size' bar twice at the castle with seemingly no ill effects. The games still running fine(or as any Bethesda game would be expected to), my Xbox hasn't exploded or anything, so why, initially, were they set so small?

There ought to be some reward for building and maintaining settlements - something that feeds into the rest of the game. Maybe a "Karma" system that leads to some perks, maybe an XP builder, or a unique settlement product that cannot be found elsewhere in the game.

Even if there is no "reward" system, there ought to be some automatic process that adds to the immersion - something that makes you feel that building settlements is progressing the story. Why not have settlements, once past a certain point , develop themselves? The rate of development could be tied to happiness or some other player controlled factor, but it would be great if, for example, the settlement slowly cleared its trash and repaired its buildings. Perhaps the settlers could clean up and begin to appear in better clothes, or be seen using the shops and clinics - or even generate some kids!

Alternatively - if auto-upgrading settlements is too complex to code - perhaps the settlers/ minutemen could use their new-found stability and resource to takeover and renovate some of the other locations in the game. Wouldn't it be great if, for example, you got an achievement announcement that your settlers had refurbished a hospital, or a school, or a new shop (- or done anything for themselves)?

Honestly, I would love to see settlements expanded into a sort of post-game sandbox. My guess is that there is much more to come. My fear is that Beth is going to introduce some horribly executed "multiplayer mode" or something with it.

I'd much rather see a Civilization-like wargame between the player's faction and the factions that exist after the game's conclusion. Perhaps you get 150 days to build up your defenses and form alliances/eradicate enemies -- then some new faction will invade and you see how long you can hold out. (Kind of like the whole "Invasion of the Empire" thing in the Sword of Damocles mod for Mount and Blade. You'll automatically lose in the end, but it's fun to see how many of the @#$%! you can take down with you.) Could be a super-mutant army, rogue band of Brotherhood soldiers, Deathclaws overpopulated, or an actual alien invasion might be cool. Either way, it would add a more focused gameplay element to the settlements and create an "ending" for a character. You can trigger this "endgame" style of gameplay by raising a banner or something in your base, then the timer begins.

I can see auto-upgrading being very problematic, there would be endless complaints about the game building the wrong stuff, or in the wrong places.

I do think that the settler limit needs to be expanded to at least 20 + charisma, as a general rule - although who really knows what it is, as charisma + 10 seems to be a bit rubbery and perhaps location dependant.

One thing that could work is a 'settler limit increase' perk in the charisma tree - you start with charisma + 10; first perk increases that to charisma + 15; then charisma + 20; finally charisma + 25. That way, it won't be unrepairable for people whose rigs/consoles can't cope with expanded settlements. The same could be done for build limits.

Rewards: There are rewards in the game already, but not done well. I do not know, if they were intended this way, but if you begin to build your settlements, there are Minuteman patrols, which you can meet, and you receive the flare gun, so you can call patrols. But they do not level with you, and they do not become better or more numerous when you have more settlements.

It could be that this was meant as a reward, and it would fit. Yet - I am level 36, have 7 settlements, around 45-40 settlers in the settlements and from time to time I see a patrol with 2 Minuteman, both level 1. This is a bad joke. Maybe they have given up on this, because if you try to follow them, they seem to have no plan at all, and soon they hang somewhere. It is painful...

But here is a mod 'We are the Minuteman' which tries to do this better (I did not test it yet, because I do not want to use mods until a game is better developed and known). Maybe it helps

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/6443/?

I think, that this could be a way to reward for many settlements. It should not make the player OP, but really - level 1 Minuteman in the mid to late game??

while all these ideas are good, bethesda won't really do anything to change things. They most likely will fix a few bugs here and there, but not much else. They will leave most things to modders. sadly anyone on a console will be SOL for a long while.

Normally, I would say probably so, but I don't get that impression here. I get the distinct feeling that the whole settlement idea was supposed to be far larger and was cut short. Local Leader feels like it's just a base-level perk, supply lines don't feel like they're implemented fully, and there are so many build locations in interesting places that it feels as if there were supposed to be different sorts of settlements that fulfilled different roles.

The interaction between the player and the settlers (the amount of direct control we're given over them) also comes across like it's "missing" features. I'll be keeping my eye on the DLCs.

I would definitely anticipate a couple more layers of perks being added.

At this point settlement defense is completely meta, like it was a very late and untested addition.

I was honestly worried that would happen when they annonced that it would be completly optional. First to be cut content. Fallout 4 felt like a rushed release anyway although it kind of works which is why people re still putting hundreds of hours into it.

The real challenge with settlements is integrating them meaningfully into gameplay (which I feel they already are, however basic that "meaning" is -- they're useful!). This 100% custom building is something that players have been dreaming about for a long time. The system may be a bit underwhelming now compared to the influx of building & crafting games to hit the market over the past few years, but to think of what we have now in a Bethesda world...that's very cool.

I think they needed to get a (huge!) game using their established structure out on the release date, but they didn't want to pull the plug on all of the building stuff either. The next step is to tune the interface and incorporate more "gameplay" into settlements. And I don't mean more half-baked Radiant quests to rescue arbitrarily selected settlers or kill the nearby foozle. I'm talking social unrest -- sitting court for settlers that committed crimes -- settlements seceding if they become too large/productive -- factions getting involved.

I think we should have to cope with losing settlers because the BoS shows up to take recruits, or making agreements to pay settlers as tribute to halt Super-Mutant attacks.

Well later in the game it seems that they don't mean anything at all.

I've got three that I've actually built up and made happy, lots of crops and settlers. Then one that's basically empty and I transfer all my ghoul settlers to. Another I've done nothing to other than add some DEF to, got three settlers and one's running a trade route. The Castle which is set up basically all DEF and artillery, about 12 settlers. Then one more Hangman's Alley, that is just artillery for central Boston, two settlers dressed as MM manning the artillery and two dressed as BoS guarding the gates. All these are connected to trade routes.

I have found that if I just ignore these, just let them go and focus on other things, nothing really happens to them. Sure one may get attacked ...but that doesn't really do anything. I can go these and everything is broken, but I think with time those items get fixed anyway so I really have no incentive to pay attention to them at all. Even the 'Adhesive' crops I don't bother with anymore as I have plenty now. Selling water, well I don't really need caps.

To be honest I'm not sure I want it to be much different. I like being able to just put all that on a back burner and do other things.

Thanks for this.

I had posted above that I had managed to avoid any attacks, but probably jinxed myself as Gunnerson Beach (sp?) got attacked just now. Guess I made it to lvl 43 without an attack, so that's pretty good. Still unsure what triggered it though, as the Beach settlement was still untouched, i.e. never upgraded.

My next question though was going to be "what happens if I ignore the attacks"? I want to hang onto Sanctuary, but was curious what would happen if I just ignored attacks on all the satellite settlements. Looks like no big deal after all - nice.

Red is dead. If there was only one thing I could change about settlements, I wish they'd do away with red placement and allow fine adjustment to your structures without having to type modpos xyz in the console all the time.Look at what I was able to achieve with this house.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/367408151962151010/DF6448960CF5101D53E69A9C68C8F9240BCBF86E/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/367408151962150833/B919EC92569F68502AE6365C04CDD03810F2BB7C/

No more floating structures or awkward gaps, flat floors that don't look like they'd trip you in real life, I can properly fix the holes in walls and (most) roofs.

If you don't go and you fail to rescue a settlement, fast travel nearby and walk to it and it should still be up and running. I've personally never noticed enemies spawn inside but they can get through stupidly small gaps and doors...they always tend to come from one direction for me.

Changing your fast traveling point to an good firing position is an good idea have I learned.

having an overview over enemy spawn points would also be nice, at some settlement enemies spawn at your fast travel point.

Always wondered what the siren did. Never built one. What is the point of it?

I really don't know, but I think it just sets all settlers into "combat mode". They'll wake up / stop working, draw weapons, actively look for sumpin' to shoot.

still wondering... are we getting some fix on the settlement phase? I am hoping for a patch soon.... PLEASE DEV......

*perhaps some fix with smiling Larry? I been trying to get this guy last week.. WHOLE week!

no result.... so I have to ignore the ONLY encounter save I have.....

* I assume all the other spacial merchants are like that too? or are they less buggy?

I started a thread a while ago asking if anyone actually employs any of the LVL 4 merchants besides the Vault Tec Guy. No one responded.

I think none of them work. At least I have never heard of anyone actually employing any of them.

Vault-Tec guy will just frustrate you anyway. He says the same big long line of crap every time you try to interact with him to buy something. Quite annoying. He is a "general store" guy without actual tier 4 merchandise. He has a couple of unique items in his inventory, but nothing to write home about.