I know the community is somewhat split about settlement building but the truth is that it is a huge feature of Fallout 4 and is likely to be improved and expanded on. I have 15 suggesting for quality of life improvements as well as new stuff.

Quality Of Life Settlement changes
1. Settler Job Title – Once a settler is assigned their name would take on that job title. SO you assign someone to a guard post they would be named “guard” and so on.

2. Clear description of what is affecting happiness and anything that increases happiness would have a tooltip or a smiley face beside it or something.

3. Birds Eye View – press a button and see the settlement you are working on from a zoomable bird’s eye view. Would be very handy for placing defenses walls and for building multi-story structures.

4. Selective Builder – another button you hold down to toggle. It would allow you to only edit within the construction tree you are currently in. So if you are in “structures” you could only select/move structures around. Mainly this is so that once you’ve built structures and inside adding decorations/features you wouldn’t accidentally select/move walls and such that you have already set.

5. Community Armory/Wardrobe – While arming your settlers can be fun and even rewarding if they come under attack it is very time consuming. I would like to have a miscellaneous craftable container – you can put weapons and armor into that settlers will pick up of their own volition. Clearly not a good container to store your own items in!

6. Player Accessible Scrapping Station – I would like to see an expanded use for the scrapping station. A player can now go to it and put any item with components to be scrapped (currently some clothing items can only be scrapped by dropping it on the ground then entering workshop menu and scrap it that way). Also, scrapping items at the scrapping station has a random chance of increasing the scrap from items – this is increased partially by luck and heavily by the scrapper perk (to add desirably to this perk).

7. Smoother Fence Construction – as it is now you have to place each individual part of a fence. I would like it if there was a selection that allowed you to place the anchor of a fence and then “run it out”. Not entirely sure how to describe it but if you’ve played any RTS game you’d know what I am talking about.

8. Smoother Farm Planting – Similar to fence building. If you have say 10 corn you currently have to place each one individually. I would like to be able to place one and then drag across or “run it out” as before and it would place as many as I dragged out in a perfect line (provided there was farmable dirt there).

9. Larger/different power sources – In the Castle I have about 10 different generators of varying sizes. I would much rather have a 1-2 very expensive/high science requirement powerful generator that I run wires out of.
10. Greenhouse. Here you could plant rare things like blood leaf etc.

11. Entertainment structures – These would be happiness boosting structures of various types. Dancing, movie theater, etc. Tons of options here. Arenas are another possibility. Could start with boxing ring, then go all the way up to small areana – you could task a settler to capture nearby wasteland creatures and bring them to the Arena, would be kept in cages.

12. More defensive Structures – Would like to see wood/concrete bunkers added. Would also like to see different sizes of spotlights – especially one that has multiple lights on a pole.

13. Pre-Fab houses. Small structures that have small amenities built in and 1/2/3/4 bed options. Increased happiness over randomly placed beds.

14. Salvage all houses – Currently you can only salvage collapsed houses. I would like to also salvage standing houses/structures in settlements.

15. More Wall Mounts. I guess this could already be in the game but I would like to mount virtually every creature in the game. Deathclaw heads, Glowing one arms, Yao Guai rugs etc etc

Excellent !! I said all these same exact things to myself .. and a few more..

Being able to repair the already existing homes or structures would be a nice element..

Being able to "sweep" up the ground or floor in existing structures.. nothing worse than having crap still on the floor I know its part of the artwork that makes the game but hell you have the cleaned up versions in other parts of the game.. use those.. it goes from dirty to clean.. poof.

Add a housekeeper function to the game.. assign or have a Ms. Handy in each settlement.. adds defense and happiness with ability to clean too!!! MAKE TECHNOLOGY work for you.. did you hear there is a settlement that is run by machines..lol

Be able to make you companions.. be able to be assigned work..

Another idea.. be able to make the settlers.. be able to be knowledgeable in some way or form.. be able to hire a teacher or read books feature to be a better barter or store handler.. its seems ho they POOF become knowledgeable about healing people or curing people.. its kinds *shady*..if you ask me..lol

and lastly.. add the element of being able to build like green houses and dig a pond or water resevoir.. hell it rains in the damn game.. have those collect enough water. to be able to build water purification machines in settlement not by water..

My take would be.. click build a water resevoir.. assign people to built it.. come back later see a progress bar.. once its complete.. you then have wiat for it to rain.. say something like.. hope it rains today.. and then come back and its filled..

how the pool in one settlement seems to be a good startling point to use that engine to build these into the game.. swap out the artwork and you have the same thing..lol

I+My suggestions..

Make the "security rating" have a clear effect on the constant spawning minuteman quests. Worst idea in game was the never-ending quests.. There should be an option to temporarily not accept quests or not have them so frequent.

For fun, since there is already fertilizer in the game, let you apply it and have a nice green lawn. I hate to bring it up, but a mining community might be nice for revenue. (DON'T ACTUALLY MINE THE ORE!) Just build a mine, assign a settler and collect ore.

Option to build a secure, lockable locker/building for your stuff ( Powerarmor)

These are all great suggestions. I especially like #6. Armor and guns contain some of the best scrap in the game. Armor is basically the only scrappable source of leather, so it's worth picking up. Scrapping it all is incredibly time consuming though. Dumping it into the scavenging station to be scrapped by the settler assigned to it would be great.

On the quests: "Complete" them, but never turn them in. I've learned that settlers that offer quests tend to stand in certain spots within a settlement, and having the build menu active essentially causes all NPCs to not react to you except the random comment they may drop in your presence.

Also, I'd like to add to the list one simple, ambiance related addition to settlements - I want some background "crowd pvssyr" the more people there are in my settlement. It drives me freakin' nuts to be walking through Diamond City or my own settlements, they're full of people, but they're dead quiet. Sure, there won't be the number of NPCs to suggest a large crowd of overlapping voices, but it still adds to the atmosphere.

But seriously... renaming settlers to the task I've set for them would be a massive QoL improvement. That whole list is incredible in fact. I'd also add giving us some method to disable snap functions, a more reliable snap function, and even allowing SOME degree of clipping for assets. We're dealing with scrapped together crap shacks. If I want a wall to clip slightly through another wall, I'm not really going to notice there's no holes in either wall. Especially with fences. Anyone that's even remotely interested in game design should understand clipping is a natural occurrence in world/level design. I don't think too many players will be heartbroken if there are no built in guides denying them the placement of a wall or decoration simply because a single nail in a board passes into another wall ever so slightly.

Lots of great thought there guys. I especially like the crowd pvssyr suggestion. It would be fairly easy for them to implement and would add ambiance - especially in the sense that an established settlement would now sound prosperous.

Saw it in some other posts:
16. Robot security - this could be partially tied to the robotics expert perk. Without robo expert perk you could place the various models of protectrons But say at rank one of robo expert you could then place assault trons and at rank 2 place security bots.

I would like to stress that I'd only one thing was ever changed/added to settlements it would be #1 - settler job titles. Not that hard to implement and it would add so much.

Along the Job title. Rather than automatically assigning a job title I wish it would automatically assign a random name to a settler when they join your settlement and you can create a custom title for the settler.

Why not have both? Settler either already has a name or gets one generated when becoming part of the settlement.

Starts out "Settler" "John Brown". Then you assign him to farming and his title is then "Farmer" but you would have the option to change it.

And +1 to settlers having random names. Would feel a bit more real than everyone just being settler...

Don't want the snap disabled as there is no need. Just have to be careful and it works fine.

Same with clipping. You can already have many things clip through many other things, so there's really no need for separate functions for it. If you have not yet discovered this, keep at it and you'll find plenty of stuff that clips through walls, groundwork, trees, etc. I'm not talking about the use of foundations to aid clipping although they are there, too. I'm talking about the fact that snapping things together allows items to clip through things they otherwise cannot clip through. That's also why it's bad to disable snapping (along with the fact that disabling it would destroy symmetry and probably make the entire system unworkable from a coding viewpoint).

One thing I'll add, though: half-sized wall sections. We have half-sized floor sections, so why not walls? While we're at it, half-size roof sections, too.

How about the ability to define planting areas, and your farmers/settlers could plant food themselves, based on the region or your supply lines? Also, have them harvest food and put it in the workshop for you (assuming this doesn't already happen - it's hard to keep track of stock over multiple settlements and time). Maybe create additional settler roles, like hunter, someone who can go out and bag game based on their gear.. mole rats and such if poorly equipped, or all the way up to yao guai if they're well-armed, etc. Or forager, collecting plants in the region that can be used in crafting recipes.

I will add a few things that're really pissing me off now.

Building:

1. No undo function. Why?
2. No Concrete buildings. Why?
3. No windows. Why?
4. Unable to get rid of damaged buildings in Sanctuary. Why?
5. Unable to repair damaged buildings in Sanctuary. Why?
6. Unable to craft stuff WITHOUT HOLES. Come on, ever since man has figured out how to melt metal down and all that crap, man has been making metal pieces without holes. BUT in FO4 where laser guns go pew pew, mankind is not smart enough to melt it all down to reshape/craft them to have NO HOLES?!
7. Why is there no snap to middle of ceiling option for the ceiling mounts? As a precision Nazi, I ABSOLUTELY hate it when ceiling mounts are off center. Due to parallax error, when the player views it from another side, it's not in the center.
8. No Hotkey function to enable snap and disable snap.
9. Snapping does not work when you want internal walls so that you can divide the house into rooms.
10. No gravity. Things should not be floating in the air.
11. No weight concern. Structures should not be built on walls and should have proper support for the amount of weight they're supporting. I'd like to have a more realistic building thing where supports are needed. A simple alert (like highlighting the affected part in a different colour) should alert if the building would topple over or collapse. Rubbish buildings built on rubbish SHOULD topple over. Give it some time, maybe 10 minutes or so, and then the unstable crap should topple over and become worthless scrap. If it hits anything on the way down, that's destroyed too. Domino houses.
12. All the rubbish trees/shrubs that can not be removed now should be scrap-able.
13. All the rubbish on the floor that can not be removed now should be scrap-able.
14. Players need to be able to scrap bodies and skeletons.
15. Player should be able to scrap stuff everywhere and not just in the settlement area to get materials. Trees. Concrete blocks. Sign posts. Lamp posts. Raider/Gunner bases, etc.
16. Player should be able to build stuff that're in perfect condition. No crappy crap like now.

Settlers:

1. A list with all the available settlers should be made so that the user can assign settlers to do whatever without needing to hunt said settler down.
2. Newcomers that go and help with the farming when all food items are already being farmed removes the original farmer of the item from the farming that item and therefore, the original farmer is not operating at full capacity. When the player asks the newcomer that is farming to do something, the original farmer does not farm the food item(s) that's lost to the newcomer momentarily. There should be a button with notification to tell whichever farmer that's not operating at full capacity to farm whatever food item that is not being tended to.
3. Please, make them shut up with their rude comments and make them realise that the player is the benefactor and they should kiss my feet because I built everything for them to stay in, farm, trade, etc.
4. The settlers should stop behaving like the player is an unknown character after the player is "allied" and can start building in the settlement.
5. The Radiant Quest dialogue should be fixed. If the player is not a General, the player should be addressed as "friend" or something similar. If the player is the Minutemen's General, then obviously they should address the player as "General".

Btw a lot of what you are asking for is already avilable on the Fo4 nexus in few mods(you will need to use a few to get all things since no single mod inlcudes everything jet), so about 50% of your desired things is already avilable via mods even without GECK relase all of it will be possibile after GECK comes and done relativly fast after its release.