I'm on PS4 and I have a 5 story fortress in Sanctuary Hills. Can't do 6, though. You just need to manage stairs. You can do it pyramid-style and take them back down as you're done.

At least you can view routes you have set up on the Pip-Boy map. I forget the button (I'm on PS4) but you can see lines across the map showing the routes. It doesn't show the current location of provisioners, though.

I got fed up with it, too much hassle to manage defenses and other stuff in dozen or more locations across the wasteland. And thus i abandoned a three dozen hours old save. Yes, all my decisions are as calm and well though out
So my policy now is to say screw you to Minutemen, and every quest given by a location that has a workbench.

I'm here to play as a murder hobo, not a murder mayor.

i enjoy being able to build up the settlements. i enjoy that i can form it. i enjoy seeing the commonwealth becoming a better place, based om my actions.

but..

i hate the fact that my settlers are empty Drones that don't do anything with out me.

- i love if the settlers slowly improved the walls and doors.

- i love if the settlers slowly stocked up on junk from the surroundings as i cleared them out of bandits.

- i love if i only made the plan of the house and then the settlers slowly build it up and improved it.

- i love to have a feeling that my settlers were actively doing something other then just stand around and wait for me to carry another generator and a recruitment beacon to a new settlement before anything happened.

- i love if i just placed the location for a "random" Store and then slowly see it stock up and become bigger as more and more settlers cam into the settlement and started to use it.

- i love to get quests from them about special bandit gangs that keep raiding them and see it grow bigger when i have solved the "problem" - you mite even add that i was able to convince some of the bandits to be protection for the settlement instead of raiding them.

i believe my frustration is i see a giant potential for settlement building and cleaning of the commonwealth as a bonus objective. and maybe the settlements can changes looks depending on what faction you ally with. ( i have yet to complete the game so there might be some story part of the game that i have yet to see that mite make this impossible. but hey here is for hoping.

and if done right the player will have the choose of investing into the settlements for safer wastelands but get extra quests to compensate for the lack of monsters and in the long run a bigger return in the caps and materials invested into the settlements. but it will still be a viable way to play to completely ignore the settlements and just go for the story

anyway this is just my 2 cent. that for reading

That is an awesome tip - and I can go you one better. Keep the hats for fast visual ID, but for specifics add a piece of customized Armor that you've named - more than enough character space for South Guard Post or Tato Farmer 1, for example. Then all you have to do with a given settler is trade with them and look at the armor. That said, I don't know why Bethesda has made settler management such a pain.

My own gripe is around settlement raids. I'm mystified as to why Bethesda gives us free rein to build our Apoco-Castles with pretty much any defensive set up we want, only to spawn bad guys right in the middle of our settlements. I spent (admittedly, of my own choice and knowing I lacked vital info, such as where attacks will come from) about 20 hours setting up a perfectly impregnable perimeter at Sanctuary, pretty much to the limits of the build area. It incorporated natural features. It was grounded and clip-free. It was magnificent. It was a testament to the adaptability of Man against all adversity.

And it was a total waste of time because Raiders just spawn right past it.

Look, I know I share half the blame for not informing myself sooner, but when FO4 said "build a settlement", I had visions of Megaton and Rivet City dancing thru my head. I anticipated unlimited creativity and inspired defensive layers.

Instead, due to the spawning, all my settlements are now exactly the same - a single tower, one point of entry, ALL settler things up there (beds, stations, traders, power, etc), farming is done directly below and the bottom layer is all guard posts and turrets hanging down from the superstructure. I have pretty much ignored all existing features and put my own towers in from scratch. And it's already boring and there's no way I'm going to do this all over the Wasteland - I've decided that Sanctuary will be my only actual settlement; the others will be used as waystations for me. I'll move new Settlers to Sanctuary till that's full then everyone else will have to make due with a sleeping bag under a roof tile with a turret on top of it. I'll even seal my stuff behind walls and just move them in Build Mode if I happen to stop by.

Last thing, part Settlement-related and part RP-related - Why can't I take possession of a new settlement by force? For example, sure, I can go recover a locket for Farmer Abernathy. Or, for significantly less risk, I can just waste the Abernathy trio right there and then and all of their stuff is mine, from the lint in their pockets to the roof over their heads to their cat (who I would immediately rename "Cuddlesaurus"). Pretty much everything in the Wasteland was taken from someone else - why not land? It's no less believable than "Oh, you recovered my dead kid's locket? Wow, here, have access to everything I own and take control of the day-to-day of me and my family, Almost-Total Stranger!".

TL;DR - Name Settlers' armor after their job to keep track of them; change raid spawnpoints to outside the settlements to make our design choices relevant; Give us the option of taking a new settlement by conquest.

You are a smart person. Thanks for that idea!

Whats that size bar at the right? Is that for objects?

Yep, that is the object limit bar. When you fill that bar, you've reached the object limit and won't be able to place more without resorting to arcane arts (ie, memory editing or a proper mod that hasn't been made yet). All scrappable objects count in that bar though, so to help a bit, you can go around looking for every little useless barrel, cinderblock, dead tree, ect to scrap.

-Clipping for outer fence parts.

-Certain larger parts that only count as 1 towards settlement size. Eg. 4 large floors together as 1 floor part or 4 large flat roof as 1 roof part.

I really like the game. And i guess the settlement thing is entertaining enough. Its purely for roleplaying if u ask me.. You can make some caps with the system i guess.

But oh my god does the building svck! I have played quite a lot of building games, but this "editor" just is god awful.

U can work your way around some of the problems and creative players can make cool looking things, but its just huge mess and incomplete. Its just feels they added it in the last minute so they could say we YOU CAN BUILD SETTLEMENTS NOW!

I just think if u add these sort of ambitious systems to your game u absolutely need to make them work.

Oh god amount of bugs with the system. Its so frustraiting spending hours with the [censored] editor building things and making sure your settlers have food water etc.. Just to see as u travel somewhere your settelers happines is goin down because systems bug out and say i dont have beds!

Dont try to defend it. IT just svcks and is not up to bar with rest of the game.

I dont know are they goin to patch the system or what, but if they consider this settlement/building sys. as the final product. im just goin to puke, and never touch it again.

Or maybe they think modders will fix it, which they probably will ,but thats no excuse.

There is a huge potential in this!

And dont even get me started on the resource and settlers managment. Just huge oversight.

I think it would be quite cool if they added some things for the terminal. like checking number of idle workers,rate of surplus resources just.. something.

Im not ringing that bell doin all that [censored] runnin around in editor mode check where any settler is stationed its just frustraiting.

Of course theres ways of clothing them diffrently and everything but i dont want do it like that.

Thers no way to tell which trade route is certain settler assigned and uhh..

I just hope they make major fixes for Settlement building and settler managment.

Other than that i just love the game. Had a long session yesterday doin various things. Investigating abandoned facilities. Exploding raiders to pieces. Hunting. Exploring back alleys of boston with my green friend Smash smash...

Hundreds of hours of content in this game..

I knew this is how settlements would turn out, not polished or fleshed out really. Just looks like a big mod that's not complete.

And I knew people would complain. Almost wish they'd not have wasted there time with it honestly as it definitely looks like they integrated it way to much into the game itself and not a side thing as it should've been.

Making settelers and their jobs visible in workshop mode would be god send. Adding special clothing is a great ideal until they do something. Can anyone tell me if all your resources are shared in the supply line or is it just the stuff in the workshop? It would be nice to build a big farm to feed all the settlements that are under your care instead of having to build a seperate farm at each. It sounds disheartening that you spend hours building up defenses only to have the bad guys appear in the middle of you settlement. Need a security check at the front gate.

It is just the stuff you put in your workshop that is shared.

So the food/water needs are separate to each settlement.

Cheers.