One thing none of us mention is that, if you have a relatively high intelligence or if you have Idiot/Savant, it's a great way to grind levels.

Sorry - just thought I'd throw that out there.

Maybe a better word would be glitched as hell but it is somewhat broken. Are you seriously telling me that my 200 Def metal wall settlement with 16 settlers equipped with heavy combat armor and armed with laser, plasma and automatic weapons always losing to a few ghouls and rag-tag raiders without my presences is not broken? I mean what is the whole point of even building defenses at all if that is the case.

it doesn't help that the pipboy feeds you false information. For instance my pipboy keeps saying that I only have 6 beds in one of my settlements when there is clearly 20.

Usually when I fast travel to those locations, the error in the pipboy is fixed. Still it's just annoying.

Sorry, don't have those issues. Now that I know the spawn locations, don't overbuild and balance my resources/settlers/defenses better than I did on my first couple of playthroughs, I seriously don't have any issues. I will get the occasional incursion and go to investigate and everything is fine.

As to the numbers being off, I solved that issue by not have active televisions in my settlements (there are no stations, so what do I need to TV for?). My numbers are inevitably accurate. The only place that has ever been an issue has been Sanctuary and that rarely happens any longer.

I have noticed that, the fewer actual beacons I have, the less likely there are to be problems. I just gather everybody at Sanctuary and distribute from there. Once I have more than 5 or 6 I activate a second and use the same methodology.

Either I am vary adaptable or the game was designed to function that way. Either way, it works for me and I'm going to go even more in depth with my settlements on this, my 4th playthrough.

It didn't surprise me in the least,it's already been proved that games with building aspects(or even an entire game built around that building type gameplay) can be very popular,they haven't taken any risk.Beth aren't pioneering here,they're just copying others and carrying on from player work in modding...badly i might add.But even badly,it can still be fun and engaging,i can only imagine how great this apsect to their game could have been had more effort and time been put into it.

(Agreed with the rest,i only bought 3 large releases in the past 24 months,this,witcher 3 and Bloodborne,i was a battlefront and battlefield maniac but luckily i don't pre-order and dodged the bland and stripped down Hardline earlier on and the cheese filled Battlefront this month I have a lot of fun on my wii u games and ps store indie titles )

What isn't to like about building a plantation house and watching your minions out in the fields all day? I've just built my Starlight version of Tara, in the 'old queenslander' style, and given each of the houses there power and lighting, and I'm about to put in a second street of houses, so there's either two or one person accommodation.

They cough up the grub and the caps, I cough up the services and accommodation. I'm now generating enough caps across four really well developed settlements that I don't have to loot for income.

The bottom line is that there is a sense of personal achievement from settlement and house construction, outside of game defined achievements. Finish a quest, and it's nothing really, except to you...everyone has done it, or will do it; Build a really decent settlement, or really cool player home, and other people will congratulate and respect you for it. On top of which, the amount of personal reward you get is directly related to the amount of effort you put in, there's no arbitrary standard imposed by the game...but the benefits of that effort are tangible, for the most part. Happy people, good services and amenities directly impact on the amount of caps, junk and foodstuffs you generate, plus, the more developed and happier the settlements are, the more probability that they will spawn Minuteman patrols in the settlements and neighbouring areas, which in turn help pacify those areas and, I think, add to the defence of the settlement by decreasing the likelihood of attack (not sure on this, only just seeing this happening now after really boosting up my core settlements).