I decided to make a run at getting the Benevolent Leader trophy. Over the course of three hours I set up a large settlement, made sure it had adequate food and water, lots of clinics and and traders, lots of decorations, an impenetrable defense. Then I settled in and started sleeping 24 hours at a time.

I watched the happiness rise to 98 and figured "it won't be long now!". Then slept again and woke up to find the happiness at.... 73. It dropped 25 points for no reason at all, overnight.

Screw this. I have more than 100k caps and 20k pure water stockpiled. The settlers can all freeze, starve and die for all I care. I don't need them.

I have no idea who designed it, but a Gatling laser fixed the problem for me.

If you want the trophy I think the best way to do it is with as little settlers as possible. Look on Reddit for a guide, M8.

Cheers~

Mods are the only reliable way to do this. Tactics that I have heard that worked is getting all the settlers at a location working at a Tier 3 Clinic while stocking a bunch of food and water for them, but using a mod will grant you the achievement without doing anything more than build 1 clinic or whatever item the mod uses.