Hey everybody,

So i've never been too into player housing or the housing DLC that Skyrim has. I didnt build up my settlement just to boost stats, i guess i kinda RP'd it and made it so that buildings and object placement made sense. Like i created a bathhouse knowing that the NPCs would never use it. I put a foot locker or table near every settler bed knowing they would never use it. I put a stove, make a kitchen like area and some cafeteria-like tables nearby again knowing that the settlers will probably never use it. Right now i'm building all my stores and made a mall area where i have a clinic room and then the stalls. I was gonna do this neat idea where the second floor was gonna be like a food court with the food and drink stand and then a table and chairs all over the floor.

BUT

I dont know if its a pathing issue between the location of my crops and all the items i've laid out for them to use or if the AI is just terrible. But all my crops are next to your original house in Sanctuary Hills...right next to the garage. The settlers work on the crops all day and when it starts to get dark out they all just stand there in the crop area not moving around. Then at midnight they all go to bed. Some of the unassigned NPCs will stand behind that house that has the workbenches. It looks like they are trying to reach one of the "hammer animation" thingies that i had deleted.

So anyways...like i was saying could this just be a pathing issue? should i try moving my crops or maybe moving to a different settlement? or is the AI just bad? i havent built up my food court yet but now i'm wondering...whats the point? if i build it and no NPCs ever go over there or no NPCs ever interact with the shops then why bother?

Yeah, it's just terrible AI. It's the major flaw (aside from various bugs) that totally undermines what should be a great addition to the game. Once the fun building process is done you're left with empty headed drones who can't even perform basic tasks. Just makes the whole thing a bit hollow really.

I don't know if after patches the AI got worse , but in previous gameplays , I accidentally fixed that in Sanctuary , make a bar/restaurant , and place chairs(or stools) and tables , they seem to stay near a bar after the working time , and if there is chair they will sit in them .

\when you have less chairs than settlers it's funny to see them "fighting" for a place to sit .

Not that I wanted to pimp my vid ( again..ugh) , but you can see what I mean in my Bunker Hill settlement video.

Yeah. The lackluster AI also makes the more "authentic" decoration/building completely pointless. There is absolutely no point of placing any decorative items on display etc. because none of the settlers is going to eyeball/observe/comment on those anyway. The only thing they will do, is knock over every single item to the floor and eventually kick those somewhere inside the world geometry. Same goes for fridges, dressers and such, because they take their stuff (if any?) magically from the workbench.

Also the fact, that there is only a couple of "jobs" to assign the settlers to is kinda immersion breaking. Why can't i assign a settler to gather/bottle water from the purifiers/wells? Why can't i assign a settler to maintain livestock/fertilizer? How about a mechanic to maintenance/fueling the generators/turrets/tech overall? No, no and no.. They "just happen", like "it just works". The settlers are just utterly stupid drones cursed by a AI suitable for a potato.

The AI path finding is also completely broken, and sometimes they just stand there doing nothing (AI proprably trying to figure out it's own existence or something), and randomly teleport to rooftops etc. (in many cases just after standing on a table for no reason whatsoever) Also in some of my large settlements (houses with 4 floors+), they just spawn in thin air and rain down to the ground (seemingly breaking their legs). Concrete blocks seem to be a nightmare to the AI path finding also, based on the fact that the settlers/companions just keep trying to walk straight trough those. So good luck building those skyscraqers from concrete blocks and on the process making the AI go even more broken (yeah, it's possible). Personally i completely stopped settlement building because of these things, just because half-assed seems to be a suitable word for everything around settlement building.

Edit: Not to mention something as simple as plants can seemingly almost break the whole game. The slog, for me at least, seems to be a danger zone when it comes to planting/storing crops. There are times when i can just store the same plant for seemingly infinite times without it actually disappearing (crashing the game after a while). Also there are times when the turrets spot something and go ape[censored], and after few seconds the game crashes. This happens only in The Slog, and i have only 8 heavy laser turrets coupled with 8 missile turrets placed on top of small wooden platforms, that are placed evenly around the outer edges of the wall surrounding the whole settlement (made from wooden walls, upper floors, wooden fence), wich is neatly snapped just a little bit inside world geometry. This is also one of the smallest settlement builds i have, so i don't understand why it's so broken.

All this headache is on PS4 btw.

That ! It's the most annoying thing on the AI bad programming.

It's irritating see them trying to go through walls , or even laughable when I move a piece of concrete and someone was inside the block ...

Thats kind of a bummer about the AI...like i know its bad but like you guys said it makes decorating kinda pointless. Wille i was actually thinking something similar too about how there arent a lot of things to assign settlers to. Gather food, defenses and shops is all i think. Maybe if the process of building or scrapping stuff actually took time and required settlers to do. You set down the framework of a building and once you commit to it then builders come in and build the frames, walls, ceilings and stuff.

I didnt want to mention it too but companion AI in general is just lame. After i posted this i played FO4 a bit and me and Macready were going against a Raider camp. Mac was being a bit noisy so i told him to stay back and i stealthed my way through the camp. I only got a short ways away from him when i hear him getting attacked by a guard dog. I sneak back and i kinda just watch to see if he can handle the dog by himself. He couldnt kill it...a single guard dog...the other Raiders werent even alerted it was just the one dog and it beat Mac. Comps that cant beat a single NPC by themselves, cant scale a wall, cant jump down it and i dont know what else. What makes it even more frustrating is that i see enemy NPCs doing all sorts of crazy stuff and i look at my Comps and wonder why they cant do the same thing. Just earlier today i saw a melee gunner make a flying leap off of a platform. Mac was behind me and the gunner was going towards him so i got to see a good side view of the jump. He didnt just drop down 5 feet he like lunged off of the platform had his arms up in the air and everything. If that had been a companion they would have walked to the edge, watched me jump off and they would have ran 50 feet to the left or right to go down the stairs.

...maybe next playthrough i wont go to Concord, i'll play as a hermit and i'll forget about companions.

Yep. My Spectacle Island settlement, inspired by the YouTuber "Jug" agrees. It covers almost the entire island, and the highest point touches the upper limit of the build area. Still, everything is put together to "make sense" and have a logic to it. The insides of the concrete skyscraqer are made with steel prefabs, so that the AI settlers and companions can't interact with the outer concrete wall. So it helps a little bit, but on the outside it happens with the concrete wall surrounding the building itself (spaced 1 block away from the building, and completely surrounding the citadel/tower).

Yeah, it kinda (currently) is. Don't get me wrong, i sure would like to decorate etc. too, but after about 500+ hours fighting with the game mechanics and lackluster AI, i just gave up.

OP make the bar and put tables and stools around it. assign someone to work it. At 9pm, they will all congregate at the bar until midnight then go to bed. Works like a champ!
also, if you are in build mode, the settlers will just stand around at 9pm for whatever reason. just exit BM and they will find their way around.

Also, if someone from Bethesda just happens to stop by and eyeball this topic, while fixing the collision detection and path finding issues with concrete blocks, you know to make them act as walkways (top) and walls (side), why not add a elevator to the game while your're at it. Building a nice concrete skyscraqer is nice and all, but actually having to run all the way to the top to reach my power armor collection is kinda taking it's toll. Maybe one of those boat/steel cart elevators allready in the game, and have the R3 (on PS4) to switch between rotation/lenght of the elevator? My character doesn't do exercise and is extremely lazy Also a button to "shoo" away brahmin, and tell the settlers to move out of one's way would be most welcomed.

Edit: Just realized that making the concrete blocks "solid" would most likely destroy 90% of my electrical wiring (inside the blocks), but if it would help the AI path finding, i could live with that.

I don't know how crowded your places are, but mine do just fine. They all go to restaurants at evening, although freezing in one spot may occur from time to time.

I can experiment with placing a bit, but i have this gut feeling that if i put 10 crops with wide spacing in a plot and then put 5 chairs 50 feet away, also with wide spacing between each chair, that my 5 farming settlers wont go from one to the other after their work is done for the day. I did make a nice organized bunkhouse with several wide entrances leading to the inside of it but watching my settlers go inside for the night to sleep is painful. And if its a second story bunkhouse then forget it. Gonna change it from an internal bunkhouse to an external instead where the outside leads right to the inside of their room. I used to have open bays with just rows of bed (with plenty of spacing in between) but i wanted to do private rooms for settlers with double sized rooms for couples like the Longs. But getting them to go to their assigned bed in an organized manner is a headache. If someone gets their shoelaces caught on the stairs then you have a whole line of people waiting. And eventually if their script doesnt progress it seems like they reset and go back to tending crops or their shop at 2 in the morning.

Yep.

You see, for my settlers, I always give them yellow beds, place it in a wide room in a row. Doesn't matter if the building is towering or not, as long as the beds are placed in extra wide space, they're all good.

But once I used to make a small apartment at Sanctuary, which means each floor has one block of room (similar to your private room idea) for one or two settlers and they always get stuck in the staircase until sunrise. Some managed to sleep, others just went stupid. Even Marcy stuck on the small canopy on the outer part of a wall of the third floor. The pathing was totally screwed up.

Great...now the settlers wont shut up about how i rescued them from a raid on Sanctuary Hills. Did some googling and this seems to happen a lot. I think i'll go ahead and shelve this save game and play that hermit now.

On Graygarden i tried a different approach. Still a tower house (3x4) with five stories, but used concrete blocks only for the base of the building. Every single bed (8-9 per floor) has a complete block of space, and the top floor (bar) extends out to the bridge. There is also a nice shagwagon apartment up there on the bridge. In this case it seems that i eliminated the bed issue with settlers. So having excess beds placed with enough space around them seems to help, and i have only 22 settlers in Graygarden coupled with 37 beds..

they need to give us access to those elevators that NPC have. like the gunners and a few raiders I ran into.

That would be very nice indeed.

I decorate home plate

Its amazing...Piper doesn't knock anything over, everything is clean and looks nice and I get to enjoy it! No problems with it at all

I think that the NPC settlers would have trouble using those as well. Even if they are on a timer and go up and down every few seconds with lots of wait time in between. I've actually tried making double wide stairs but it still doesnt help. I'll just stick to creating single story buildings i guess.

I noticed my settlers have no problem helping themselves to weapons out of lockers/toolboxes...it's the only place I stored molotovs at Sanctuary and one raid there goes Cait, lobbing firebombs around inside the area I have set up with food stands and stores.

Then I go to Abernathy Farm and Lucy of all people decided she needs a minigun to harvest melons.

True. But for personal use.

It seems Sanctuary is bugged. My settlers also still bringing up the attack that happen in-game-days ago.

I also used to transfer Settlers to Sanctuary and when I did that, everytime I visit Sanctuary, one must vanish and suddenly kidnapped.

Finally got around to testing out placement...

The crops are right next to my old Sanctuary Hills garage as mentioned before. I put a couch+table+TV with power about 20 feet from the crops. Food and drink store with 3 stools 20 feet from the crops and 20ft from the TV setup. And a picnic table+radio+2 chair 20 feet from the crops. At 8pm they stopped working on the crops and went idle and at 9:15pm they are still idle. I also started that fresh playthrough i mentioned about doing a hermit character and only doing settlement building for myself. But i went ahead and got Garvey and his friends into Sanctuary Hills but I'm only going to have enough food and water for them not going to have any default settlers coming in. I put all of their beds into the house that has the power armor stand and workbench (not my house) and behind it i built 6 mutfruit crops with 2 chairs about 20 feet nearby. As expected they dont use the TV i have for them inside and they dont sit on the chairs in the back that i have for them. Pretty much just confirmed what i already thought would happen.

I guess thats enough settlements for me. And the companion AI is starting to get on my last nerve so i'm about to just go lone wanderer perk on both of my playthroughs.