As a new subscriber I apologize if this has already been covered but I was thinking wouldn't it be great to appoint a settler as a sheriff of sorts for the settlement they reside in. Even appoint a couple deputies. I know it's a game but after hour upon hour of toiling away building these people defenses, walls, bars, beds etc you rock up and they don't seem to have a clue who you are and wander around helping themselves to each others stuff.....and yours!!!

You walk into the likes of Diamond City and steal something you are turned into swiss cheese in seconds. I thought that if you could appoint one person as your Sheriff, a couple deputies (scavange whatever uniforms you see fit to identify them) it would feel a little more together. Chuck a building up for him as a detention centre, job done.

The locks thing though...jeeeeez! You create a settlement, provide everything they need and treat yourself to your own little house kitted out with work stations, bed, lights, decor etc and after heading back to your own pad after a day on the wasteland you find someone in your bed, the magazines on the display rack on table tops and stuff pinched off of shelves. I have even tried fencing off the doors to my place and just move it when I get back yet these people still appear inside!!! All I ask is an option to lock up my own place.

An exellent idea (-;

Something similar in minutmen threads has been mentioned, being able to promote people. Certainly being able to appoint a sheriff (perhaps one of the guards) would be good?

Lockable containers is a bain though thats stuck with us, I solutioned this by having by home base somewher else than my settlements.

I have a mod which have lockable doors but I have noticed that it sometimes won't help since the settlers will teleport themselves into the locked room/building if there is something inside that they want.

Yeah, I love the way they help them self to my stuff in my Sanctuary house and then just drop it in the street lol

Exactly yeh. Choose someone who lives there, activate workshop and assign them to the Sheriff Office (like a stall) and have a cap on deputies depending on the population of the settlement.

Ive never had settlers helping themselves to my gear or anything. If they did though...BOOM.

Anyhu I love the sheriff idea, reminds that one time you could appoint a sheriff in NV. I dont think they would add that to FO4 though, such a shame too

I have atleast one Sheriff/Deputy in each of my settlements. They wear Drifter outfits with some form of militia hat or fedora. I posted about it in the "how would you run the minutemen" thread.

They don't actually do anything though do they?

My Preston is dressed up as a Postman in Sanctuary, I have yet to see him as much as deliver a postcard

Well, what I started doing was putting the settler assigned to defense some armor and a weapon superior to the pipe guns they tend to have by default. This way he/she stands out from the others in both appearance and combat readiness. I've been partial to the militia or minutemen hat for headgear.

And the locked doors thing? I agree... But, I'm on PC - lol - so I can lock doors and things using the console, but I don't keep anything precious in settlements. My stash is safe at Home Plate in DC.

This is a fantastic idea. Setting up a mini-governing body at each settlement would definitely assure I don't have to keep going back and finding people I'd assigned to work the crops instead futzing around with other things or sitting their butts down on the sofas and doing nothing at all (a problem I've seen several times already).

As for lockable doors, I just discovered last night that if you make a settlement of Covenant, the doors of 3 out of the 4 buildings lock every night by themselves, and the settlers are left outside in the nighttime weather. You have to physically go to Covenant every night and unlock the doors for them for them to be able to sleep in the beds (otherwise, they rotate the bed sleeping arrangements with the other settlers within the 1 building that isn't locked at night...and this lowers their happiness factor substantially, because some of them are cranky that they can't sleep). There's no way to put something in front of the locking doors to jam them and prevent their locking (I tried), and you can't pass the keys to those houses off to settlers so they can unlock them on their own. An irritating bug, needless to say.

I put all my valuables that I want to keep (MacCready's outfit, Hancock's outfit, the Silver Shroud outfit, the Grognak costume & sword, Zeke's leathers, etc.) in my house at Home Plate in Diamond City. You have to buy this place to make it yours, but it's worth the caps, because no one can enter it but you and your companions. It's pretty much the safest place in the whole game for your stuff.