Other than the occasional dead settler or maybe a broken corn stalk or two, that is. I've failed countless minutemen quests as well as calls for help from settlements being attacked simply because I have things to do and cannot be bothered with suddenly dropping everything and traveling halfway across the map every five minutes. So far as I can tell, failing quests or calls for help just does not matter. A new situation just pops up and the old one gets buried as if it never happened. Or am I missing something?

I just started ignoring them but have ignored about 8 or 9 so far. So far nothing except some damaged crops, pumps and turrets. No dead settlers yet. The only dead settler I've ever had was during an attack that I was actually at at Abernathy. Besides, who cares if settlers die. It's not like there won't be another dirty mongrel along any day now.

My solution: Never build up the settlements (other than Sanctuary) in the first place. There's nothing to damage.

I haven't tried it (but reading a few things in the menu) their happiness may go down and eventually you wont be their ally anymore and access to workbench and supply lines will be lost.

I've built up all of mine, I just have no settlers messing it up and getting in the way lol

At this point, I really don't care.

Settlement building and defending are a pain. I just leave them to their fate.

I honestly am unable to really do anything of note until the next patch fixes a quest (Xone, so it is in the works still), so I am actively trying to provoke an attack, and it is a royal pain due to poorly coded inventory system, I have missed attacks that haven't actually done anything, and showed up late and was still able to complete failed attacks, but most of the time they are only a temporary set back

I've tried it and exactly that happened. I've had a few settlements happiness go down to 0. One un-allied with me, but one day I came back and did a single quest and they re-allied.

Honestly one of my biggest gripes with this situation is that I'm asked to go far away (like the other end of the wasteland) to kill like three ghouls, when I don't want to explore that region yet. I'm making my way slowly and methodically through the wasteland--that's how I do it. These damn quests are forcing me to explore areas I'm not ready to jump into. It's annoying.

The output of settlements is based on happiness, so if you are still leveling up and water to sell and adhesive to make for use is still something you'd like to have available, then the happiness number being high is of some benefit.

If turrets have been damaged and need repair they don't add into the total defense, so it becomes a vicious cycle where you don't repair your turrets or your defense posts aren't manned because defenders die and the defense number drops below the combined food and water, and then the likelihood of attacks increases, and so attacks come faster and the defenses drop faster, and as that happens the happiness drops and the production drops, and then the settlement as a whole drops, all the while becoming more and more a nagging pop-up nuisance.

If you are willing to just let your network of settlements go, it's no problem, but if you think you'd like to have the network up and running, then the maintenance is at the lowest level when things are working best.

Again, once you have enough caps to just buy more of whatever, it might not matter any longer unless it affects the minutemen faction somehow.

I have found some shortcuts, such as, having one rather large settlement, like Graygarden, or Finch Farm ( Which both come with a built-in trader ), being the only one you ever have an active beacon located at ( and obviously not active all the time ), and every once in a while you can just stop by and use the Move command to send settlers to another settlement that has lost some settlers in an attack.

This allows you to ignore attacks and just make a note of which settlement you might want to check and repair the defenses on later, and if needed, move a settler if a guard or two died defending or a farmer was caught in the crossfire. This system also allows you to store all the weapons and armor you might outfit settlers with at your Beacon settlement so you can outfit and move the settlers whenever replacement guards or farmers are needed to match the defenses and food resources.

There is nothing that forces a player to maintain a settlement, and in my case several have been stripped of all resources and had all beds removed, causing nothing to attack there and no exclamation mark to ever appear in the pipboy settlement list. In the case of the Red Rocket station, Sunshine Co-Op and the Drive-In by Drumlin's Diner trading post I never set up anything in the first place and only used those for materials at other locations.

I always end up with everyone killed

decided one time to go back and actually help them and had to fight tons of Gunners... why would such a big army attack a small useless settlement?

It's also close to impossible to figure out, who of the people is a Gunner and who belongs to your settlement... :/

heres what I do. I leave 2 people in the settlement and make it as small as I can or leave it empty. give enough food and water and beds for 2 and leave it. I only pay close attention to sanctuary, red rocket, drive in, taffington boathouse and a few others, but most I only have maybe 2 to 4 people at most. Maybe 4 have any defense. I do what quests I have and never talking to preston after or listen to the radio.

I care more about broken items. It means a lot of resources to repair. lol

Settlers can just go die. Well, maybe not for the unique settlers.

Yeah things just seem to get broken which all that does is make you spend your junk, no big deal. I enjoy settlements but I will be happy not doing settlements in my next PT other than my home base. The only time I have had a settler die is if their a synth.