I like exploring. And doing quests (since they lead to more exploring). And finding cool loot. And cracking terminals to get the background story of all the emply (and not-so-empty) buildings I find. And watching Super-Mutant suiciders blow up in nuclear glory as I shoot their backpacks. I'm playing slowly as time permits, and am only at maybe level 14 at the moment, and haven't yet bothered going to Diamond City.

I'm enjoying the game so far, but I have absolutely zero (0) interest in starting a Settlement. I did start one at Sanctuary, but only enough to learn how the system worked, and I then proceeded to setup a basic crafting center/home base at Red Rocket and haven't gone back to Sanctuary since (except where the main story required it).

Which brings me to my question: is it possible to complete the game and ignore the settlement system? I've been trying to avoid spoilers, but I'm getting the impression that at some point I won't be able to move forward until I have something "substantial" set up at Sanctuary.

It's not a game killer for me (I'll do the minimum necessary to move the story forward), but I really like the "Lone Wanderer" aspect of the Fallout games, and babysitting a bunch of semi-helpless civilians just doesn't sound all that much fun to me. I understand I'm missing out on a big part of the game playing this way, and may explore it in more depth after my first playthrough, but for now I just want to see what's out there and find as many locations in the game as I can first.

It's not required. The minutemen are a faction you can use to align with any of the other factions. They are not tied to the main story beyond that. As far as i know you can do the main story and not involve them if you choose to.

If you played NV then it's a bit like the tertiary factions there. You dont actually have to do the quest to ge them on your side.

As far as I am aware of settlement missions are totally optional. Preston may give you minutemen missions if you talk to him, but you can ignore them. Bethesda actually recommends not focusing on settlements until after you completed the game.

You need to at least build the telliporter to finish the game.

Nice spoilearama

I have not built a settlement as I did not see the necessity.

The twist reveal of teleporting to the moon and reenacting the Battle of the Sea of Tranquility to shut down the Railroad's synth brain-controlled Moon Laser was supposed to bea surprise

Thanks for the info, guys.

This is exactly what I was thinking of, actually it's not a spoiler, unfortunately. I don't know much of anything else about the story, but I did see someone building that in a stream I was watching before I realized what I was seeing

You'll need to join one faction or another to finish the game, but that faction doesn't have to include the Minutemen (settler faction).