I totally enjoy the heck out of the settlement building part of this game... but a few things REALLY takes the joy away from me in this game that I didn't think it's intended... I may be wrong... but I believe this isn't what your vision lays... I have to stated first, I am not asking you to built your game taller to me, nor am I telling you how to built your games.... I just have a hard time enjoy your otherwise DAMN FINE art piece....

1. Under attack timing; I think the most annoying part of the game is to have a settlement built, fortified, walled, and have you fast travel in to the town and see a group of badies "spawning" in the middle of your town, making a mess and have you unable to help because you bought your guns from Mr.Tourgue(explossion), or Vloduff (sprays) and NOT want to turn your own towns people in to honeycombs... I had NOT waste time getting there, I fast traveled right when I get the MSG... but still get there too late... it was awful~ (also, I will always be late, if I received the MSG after fast travel) I seriously don't think having players built a town+ defense+ walls, and react to call of stress immediately, only to find them Fast travel to town to see cluster of badies SPAWN in the middle of the town... I believe you had made this intended to have a home defense game in mind; not "jump in to the cluster f*^&%"

*Can we have 1 full day to travel/prepare? like, an early detection? or can the bandies "declare war" or something?

*Can you actually assign a person in town to delay attack?

*Can we just have count down timer "freeze" for fast travel?

because I TOTALLY responded in a second notice! but it takes me (in game time) more than a minute to get there, and please don't tell me to load earlier save to intercept the attack... because F9 isn't a game mechanics...

2. Settlers management is a pain, because our interface is too beta-like... feels like a mod than something that belong to a robust game like this... not that it's bad... I LOVE the feature... but I can't fully control the running of the settlement... starters, I can't even select the crops sometimes! the detection/aim-box is totally off... sometimes settlers too... I can't start conversations with them either, only trade, and even that is primitive equipping settlers should be much easier than this... worse of all... the "aiming at the settlers to see their job light up" is only good in concept, when you have walls/buildings/actual facings in the way of the whole picture... this mechanics is dead wrong... I think we need better ways to manage/view/distribute in our settlements...

*need to see our settler's job(or not) have them glow in blue if they have no job assigned, have them glow in yellow if they are traveling between settlements, and if "commanding"/selected a settlers, his/her job will continue to glow even if you don't "aim" at him/her" to allow the indication to show even if the user is moving... or just have their job listed under their name in smaller fonts or something...

*fix the aim detection box for crops plz!~ it's hard to select, I am spending too much time re entering built mode to reset the rotation of objects when they should totally be model based, and not box...

*Please allow us to built and put things in a locker for the settelers to grab items/guns/armors on their own, and have them the ability to distribute/share, and dump the low end weapons to the out box (yes, a locker that have 2 compartment, one for in, the other for out... ) so we can scrap the junks when dumped...

Again... I am NOT telling you how to make your game.... but I am simply telling you my gaming experience that had kinks, and I felt really hard to have "fun" and also... I haven't had a good defense run in a month now... it's all been cluster badies in middle of the town... ever sense I stopped F9 the last day for every attack.... (I am somehow also getting some 2 attacks at same time MSGs.... REAL annoying... these are the 2 sets of settlement game portions I am REALLY having problems with... and the suggestions are just how I'd visualized if the mechanics were more/less polished/tested... I missed my town defense gameplay... for reals....

There's no Torgue and Vladof in Fallout 4.

As for the rest, yeah, I think Bethesda can make improvement around the game.

I fully agree.

I have spent hours and hours of fortifying Oberland Station and Zimonja Outpost , only to find out that the enemy came from within the walls. What's the point?

I love this game very much (as I did with Fallout 3, Oblivion and Skyrim) but if Bethesda doesn't solve this problem, I am not even going to bother to buy DLC's.

Settlements is great but need seriously improvements.

I play on PS4 and there are a few ways to "cheat" the system to build things in a more natural and fluid way.... but It's still a pain. I don't think we should be relying on rug glitches to position objects the way we want in the game. the collision system is a pain and turns simple things like putting a nuka cola machine inside a house a pain in the butt.

I have on BIG SUGGESTION for Building, and another HUGE SUGGESTION for Designate jobs/beds.

One of the major problems when building for me is the snapping system works... We're forced to select an object (let's say a shack floor) than place one... ok, than we need to walk around or move the camera or the object and pray that the game collision will understand the snapping position we want. My suggestion for a better design in mechanics here is that you could give us a better control over it. We could have a button to automatically snap the object to the one we're point to (if it's possible to snap those objects together of course... I'm talking about walls, floors roofs, stairs and so on)... since we already have an object selected, we don't really have to worry about selecting other objects or scraping/storing other objects... so we could have the scrap button (square on PS4) to toggle snap. Once the object is snapped, we could use those rotation buttons to change the orientation of the snapping, in relation to the current placed object, instead of using it just to rotate objects..... rotate objects freely should be something we could do when the object is freely and not snapped to anything, once it's snapped to something, we should be able to change orientation... instead of having to walk around or move the camera/object around until finally it's in the place we want. Since the current snapping system is based on the camera, sometimes we have a tiny tiny tiny... really tiny interval between snapping and not snapping.... and it's just hard to build structures that way.

Also the interface/mechanics to designate works and beds for the settlers is bad in my opinion. I can understand the "immersive" vision from Bethesda like: Hey, go talk to the person (I need you to do something/I want you to sleep in this bed) but since the characters don't really say anything rather than "Sure", and most important YOU don't say anything to them... the system seems a little unrealistic and silly for me.

The way it current works is by finding them or call everyone with that bell, than wait for everyone to show up (that is if they're not stuck on walls or on the roofs of Sanctuary Houses), than select one, and than start to run across the settlement and clicking on the job.... repeat the hole process for another person (That is if they didn't walk alway by the time you return there).

It would be easy and a better design to have a menu showing the list of settlers and their current job (Farmer, Vendor, Security), kind of like Fallout Shelter list.... and we could see and control who's doing what and also be able to assign people from that menu.

Just a easy info for us players, you know... since this is our input in the game... let us have this amount of control, instead of having a more hidden info and clunky mechanics for us to work out..... let the process be more fluid and easy... more intuitive.

Or they could just make the D-Pad you know incrementally clip selected object through things....Then have an alternate button change the function on the D-Pad..........Blam now you can place stuff exactly how you want it.

Kinda like using console commands on computer.

I play now for a long time, and had my share of settlement attacks. But the attackers never spawned inside the settlement. I had no Synth in my settlements yet, because this would happen inside the settlement, but all attackers (Raiders, Supermutants, Ghouls and once 3 Radscorpions) come from outside the borders.

I think that spawning in the settlement only happens, when you close the settlement in too much - if they cannot find a path they will spawn inside. If you look at enemy camps in the game (mutant and raider camps mostly), they are all build so, that there are ways inside from several directions.

I think the defensive walls are only coverage for defenders, and useful to break long lines of fire for the attackers, but not completely enclosing a settlement. So I leave gaps, and use the walls mainly as coverage. For example a attacker running towards the settlement cannot fire at the farmers working in the fields from far away.

Concerning attacks - as it was often said here: The message system is broken! Sometimes you receive no message at all, and later find out that things are destroyed in your settlement. If in the PipBoy the number of settlers is suddenly low (from 16 to 1), then you should travel to the settlement. The settlers are all here, but food plants, wells and MGs are damaged. (Some of this stuff will 'repair' itself, but it helps when you repair it in the build mode)

Most often there is no message if your character is in a position that the settlement which is about to be attacked is loaded as active cell. Often if you are near a settlement you will hear the gunshots, which is the only hint of the attack. But there seem to be situations, where you cannot hear the gunshots or mistake them for another battle - then you have lost, since no message will ever appear! This should be fixed.

If the cell is not loaded - i.e. if your are far away - the message will appear and you have time. The time is short, so fast traveling elsewhere or waiting/sleeping will make you loose the quest, but there is time enough to save, prepare and then fast travel. Fast travel takes time in the game - it can take hours of in game time to fast travel. The quest times allow for this. It may be even possible to run towards the settlement, but this is quite boring.

But all in cases where I received the message I could fast travel (and save and prepare before) and the attackers clearly where outside or at the borders of the settlement. Depending on the attackers this can go fast or slow. If there are Raiders or Supermutants they run fast, but Ghouls take their time. Sometimes you even see a group of attackers outside the settlement and the attack takes a while.

I think you should only get the message at all if you're a reasonable distance away. An attack on tenpines while you're in vault 81 should just be " I can't get there in time" and "Did they declare war? How do I know?"

A terminal would be nice to list all settlers and their position. Also showing open positions.

I only assign beds to traders and the ones handling artillery so they are not so far from station

Is it a way to have everyone draw weapons? had been nice to show how well armed they are.

I just want to know what I assigned someone to. I know if they happen to be standing next to whatever they are assigned to it highlights with them when viewing in crafting mode, but they are not always standing next to it. I mean the name of the Settler you assign to a trade route gets changed, so how about someone assigned to crops get their name changed to FARMER, or someone assigned to a guard station changed to GUARD, etc. I mean why do the generic settlers have to keep the name SETTLER? I understand the unique NPC's keeping their names, but when you start getting around 20 settlers at a settlement it gets about impossible to manage. Right now I'm making due by changing their clothes and making them wear various hats.

To much 'red collision' while building/moving items. There is already a mod that fixes this by just giving us a little more movement with items so we can actually build fences and such without gaps. It's become very frustrating trying to invent ways to get items to lay the way you want them to.

The attacks I'm not sure how to fix to be honest. Sure I want to be there for the attacks, but at the same time it doesn't make a lot of sense that I can warp to the settlement just as the attack starts. Maybe the assumption can be that they were holding them off until I got there? Maybe the enemies spawning within the walls could be explained by the battle had been going before I got there?

It's sad since the pre-release vids clearly showed the raiders going through a deathtrap trying to get into a settlement. Sadly this never happens in reality.

Build a siren in the settlement. Activating the siren will cause the settlers to pace around nervously with their weapons drawn.

for attacks, It would be nice to have fully walled settlements to have realistic sieges. Give those walls damage % and when they get breached, then they could get in to lay waste! Everything BUT buildings seem to have a damage % and stop working when it is reached giving us repair option.

would alleviate the unrealistic spawning inside settlement and give us time to reach them.

I think if most settlers have weapons they should be able to just defend themselves.

We absolutely need a better settler interface. We need to be able to control their jobs, beds, crops, armor and weapons from one menu.

Enemies spawning inside the settlements is incredibly frustrating too. Makes walls pretty pointless. One semi-not-really-workaround is to fast travel to a location near the settlement and walk the rest of the way there. I've never had them spawn inside the base when I do it that way but having the extra walk is a little annoying.

You'll get larger siege when your resource gathering is greater... I think the way they determent your defense needed is Water+food+energy because i had a settlement with 100 PT of defense and it's still red on my pipboy, because I had 4 large water purifiers, field of mutefruits, and loads of carrots, I sell water (2K+ per day) and also other foods too... I had a box built on top of EVRY settlement workshops to store farm-stuff+ water, when ever I visit a camp, my character uses food/water as currency instead of caps... too havy though... good thing I have strong back lvl4 eh? my point is... the attacks I get is LARGE, I am saying like 10+ sup-muts, or 20 Zs, or 8+2(ledgendary) raiders/gunners... IN THE MIDDLE OF BASE, because the game considered my character to be "almost too late" because I didn't react "in a minute notice", but I did! This is actually the greatest problem, besides the interface issue with settlement building... the traveling/reacting time for attacks, I WANT TO PLAY THE HOME DEFENSE GAME I PAID FOR~ I think it's NOT that hard... just give players more time to react, or have enemies spawn away from town when you get in to help... or... I think it's a easy fix?

actually, like I said, we should just have a place to dump gears in settlements,for auto distribution, and the weapons given to settlers should count as defense points... like +1DP (defense points) if you give pipe rifle/10mm, . shotguns/SMG/pipe snipers are 2DPs. Combat shotguns/rifle/snipers/lazer/assault Rifles are 3DP, and plasma/gamma/chain gun and beyond are 4DP, (+1DP more if weapon it's heavily modded) Zookas, and fatties that actually uses ammo should be 5DP, but when your settler change weapons, their DP will also change... it's counted as what's on their hand, melee too, from 1-3 depends on what weapon... Legendary should count for +1... I think, armor just give them better chance to survive... and don't count toward DPs

EXAMPLE:

the guy with a heavily modded chain gun set to patrols 3 towers, counts as 2DP each (or was it 3 each?), will produce 4+1 from weapon, and 6 from towers (plus towers give them covers too so they don't die too fast) he/she will produce 11DP with all she is tasking to do... make sense too... because a well equipped soldier is better than a turret, turret is there to "help" the people, not complete protection... right?

because otherwise... why do I deck these guys up for?

Oh one more thing, I WILL NEVER give my settlers grenades anymore, they wasted and hit me with cocktail fire bomb (3) and killed me when I jumped in to fight a rad roach! they supposed to save that for REAL attacks! dumasses..... -___-

we should totally have option to give the settler defenders flare gun to call for minuteman for assistance.... wait... I got to try that.... or just have a private minuteman army ready to defend towns, a septet recruitment just for defending/assisting...

My explosive assault rifle named 'Too Many Syllables' disagrees. NOW APOLOGIZE.

But I agree with a lot that has been said. I worked hard on the walls that surround Sanctuary Hills, and while I know they were going to be entirely cosmetic because of attacker spawns, I still liked making the settlement look fortified. Unfortunate that it doesn't matter.

And my goodness we need this as an option. Allowing objects to clip would make the settlement building ten times less a pain in the ass.

I like that idea a lot.. It would also be nice if it wasn't just for you but the NPC minutemen

I have had them spawn inside the compound also. It was annoying but I think I know why. I have turrets in guard towers and on every roof surrounding the settlement. There is no way raiders could get near the place. To create conflict, not just my guns mowing down the raiders outside, they spawn inside.

For me to get into them in any real way, I need a user interface to control my settlers and know who does what.

As they stand now, settlements are pretty much a gimmick, thrown in so beth. can say "hey look! it's something new for players in the fallout series! enjoy!"

They serve no purpose other then a spot to store your stuff and give you a very basic minecraft experience. There is no point in defending them (settlers are immortal, and even if every single crop, generator and water source are destroyed in the attack, it's not like the settlers will actually starve to death. Worst you'll hear is complaining about things until you fix it..IF you even bother to fix it)

Quite a few of the sites feature environmental/man-made junk/half destroyed buildings that you cant do anything with (be it repairing them to decent working order, or scrapping them outright so you have the space to place your own designs) and therefore just look ugly, regardless of what you can/choose to do w/ it. Since F4 isnt multi-player, we dont even have the excuse of designing sites to show off to other players except thru screenshots. Yay.

Just found spectacle island, and for a moment i was excited at having such a large area to work with..before i remembered what i typed above. Lost pretty much all enthusiasm to do anything w/ it, given that i still have sanctuary and starlight to mess around with if i feel like bothering, and that's just -2- sites out of what..30+?

Might be diff if F4 gave the player any real sense of long-term impact on the world, but it dosnt. Even if you build up every single settlement site F4 has to offer, connected them all via trade routes, made each one so defended it could probably bring down mothership zeta if it flew too close, got to max happiness, you wouldnt achieve ANYthing meaningful as far as the in-game story/world goes. Maybe a steam achiv, but thats it.

Maybe future mods will change this, or even official DLC..but at this point, i honestly am having a hard time trying to maintain enthusiasm for the settlement concept.

I second this and like the settlements, but do not take them too seriously. You can build a nice and useful infrastructure for yourself and defend it properly using turrets (I also have the Robot Defense Mod which should be official content).

Well initially the settlements were an easy way to get some EXP. Heck I think I went up a couple levels just playing around Sanctuary. Now I use them to role-play. I set up a couple really well made ones, then role-play them. One is set up as my Ghoul community. I put all my ghouls in Raider Leathers and Sacks and send them there. Another is a BoS base, with just a couple guys, all decked out in BoS gear and just guarding stuff. Another is used to supply food to other settlements with everyone in Farmer clothes and rag hats. The Castle is of course the MM base with a small standing army guarding over the HQ and 'the guns'. Different role-plays use them in different ways.