I'll agree that it seems to be amenities-based to a pretty hefty extent. Building storefronts that the settlers like and making sure everyone has a job increases it. Putting in powered lights to the buildings helps. Decorations helps as well. I just finished building a nursery to see if that increases the happiness - will report back with the results after I play tonight. My happiness for the settlement that I actually care about stays in the mid-80s.

I've also noticed some weird things that I can't really explain. Sanctuary started out as my main base and I spent a lot of time building it out, but the settler happiness never went above 78%. When I decided to move my home base to another location and broke everything down, I sent the settlers that had come in to the other place and just left the original named npcs there. I built out enough to sustain them with a little extra, and their happiness shot up to 86%. So apparently the four of them + the mr handy are quite happy without any other settlers there.

I'm also testing to see if there's anything to the composition of the settlers themselves. I have one settlement that is all female and one that is all male. I'm curious if Bethesda programmed in happiness points for when the sixes are mixed versus not, and whether an even mix (one man for one woman) makes any difference. Might be completely ridiculous to test, but they sure are banging us over the head with an agenda so I wouldn't be surprised. If it turns out to be the case, I also wonder if it's programmed in that certain npcs like certain jobs better than others - like the guys prefer security and farming, and the girls prefer running storefronts and hospitals. I REALLY hope that doesn't turn out to be the case, but who knows.

I've also noticed some buggyness with farming. I put down a whole lot of mutfruit trees figuring hey, they are worth 1 food so why not? At a certain point they stopped registering as being there. Physically I could see them, but they were not selectable. I had to remove all the selectable ones, fast travel out and then back in before I could remove those as well. I guess I hit a memory limitation or something. Now I'm not putting down more food than necessary even though I want half the zone to be an orchard.

Cool feature in the game and I like it a lot, but it could really use some tweaks, like the settlers actually suggesting things that would make them happier.

I can't get them above 80

Okay.. So i finally sat down and tried this achievement last night at The Castle as I already had around 9 tier three shops there. After hours over ringing bells:.. Giving away free bjs... Sobbing on my couch... Putting a band on my controller and crying myself to sleep I woke up to find the settlement happiness maxed at 97!

Turns out some video online is right... You MUST have 20 SETTLERS.. 4 assigned to food to make up the food requirements and 16 on tier 3 shops.

Then sit around watching the happiness go up once every real life hour (passed 90). I for some reason have 24 settlers at Murkwater.

I have made a GIANT two storey bazaar (top floor needing double-walled high ceilings to fit the ghastly stores; because let's make the most expensive stores the most hideous (Bethesda logic) for 20 tier 3 shops (all money made by selling cooking and drugs I've amassed in my one and only playthrough at level 64 - no cheating). This attempt is currently at 91 percent and rising. I pray this works.

But if I leave Murkwater the game thinks 43 people are there. Perhaps I'll build that many beds??? Can we find all the game testers for this release and sack, sack, sack. I feel like every AAA game released after 2010 has been riddled with game breaking glitches yet the prices stay the same. Anyone who gets the benevolent leader achievement before the settlement glitch is fixed deserves a special settlement addition me thinks!!

Testing our settlers for things that make them happy...seems Bethesda have turned us all into Vault Tec

Bars help. But adding nice seats, a jukebox, disco lighting and a pool table does nothing.

What's wrong with these people?

Oh well. At least I like my bar.

Here's some values from Sanctuary (They may be different in different settlements) that might help ya'll I don't have time to look into it right now cuz I gotta get to work. I didn't grab all the variables like there's some about vendors max money per update (think it was at 50).. If interested I'll post them all when I get back from work.

attackChanceBase =0.02
attachChancePopulationMult = 0.005
attachChanceResourceMult = 0.001
attackchanceSafetyMult = 0.01

attractNPCDailyChance = 0.1
attractNPCHappinessMult = .5

maxHappinessNoFood = 30
maxHappinessNoShelter = 60
maxHappinessNoWater = 30

HappinessBonusBed = 10
HappinessBonusFood = 20
HappinessBonusSafety = 20
HappinessBonusShelter = 10
HappinessBonusWater=20

HappinessChangeMul = 0.2
HappinessChangePerUpdate = 2

MinDailyUpdateWaitHours 0.2
MinDaysSinceLastAttack = 7.0
minHappinessChangePerUpdate = 1
minHappinessClearWarningThreshold = 20
minHappinessThreshold = 10
minHappinessWarningThreshold = 15

iBaseMaxNPCs = 10
iMaxSurplusNPCs = 5
maxBrahminFertilizerProduction = 3

Now that's interesting. Brahmin produce fertilizer?

You most likely know this by now, jaco, but if not: You can craft Cutting Fluid at a Chem Station - breaks down to Oil.

Yep, and while that helps a ton - unlike adhesives which can be made 100% organically from self-produced resources, the cutting fluid formula typically bottlenecks with the bone reagent.

So I pick up, buy, steal all the bone I can get, but unlike adhesives, it's not an endless supply. Between crops and giganto water purifiers, there's no real limit to adhesive I can make - basically the only question with adhesive is to not make too many because ironically the water used is lot more valuable to sell then over produce adhesive.

Unfortunately as long as there is no way to produce bone dust or whatever artificially, the oil production always caps out

I dunno, we have the settler summoning radio beacon...

Molerat teeth are my source for bone - plus I take any junk with oil in it from vendors. Carla is often around Sanc so it's a 15-foot stagger from my workshop.

Does anyone know of a vendor who will do shipments of oil?

The quartermaster on the airship does offer oil shipments.

I think settlement size plays a part in it. I have 10 beds for my 10 settlers, double their weight in food and water, 100+ defense (turrets and guard dog) and a walled in compound. Happiness started at 90 for me then was instantly on a steady "down arrow" decline. My size bar was in the yellow then after scrapping some stuff to bring the bar to green my settlement happiness was on the up again and has stayed that way since.

I have no decoration or anything except for a single ceiling fan for light above their beds and another single light in my armor room, both running off a large 10 electricity generator.

So you sell purified water for caps. You use caps to buy shipments of oil.

You buy one shipment of oil, then wait/sleep until the vendor has another shipment of oil available. I haven't tried it yet, but doesn't it work ?

I'm not going to go through the hassle to assigning each settler their own bed.. if they can't figure it out for themselves to pick beds I don't really care. I build the settlements and don't really care what the happiness levels are at once the basic resource requirements etc. are met. Happiness will drop any time they suffer an "attack" anyways so it always randomly drops down to 65 and goes back up to 82.

Yes but they don't always carry shipments of stuff. My level 4 general goods vendor carries an impressive amount of junk that breaks down into stuff I need but doesn't seem to carry "shipments" like Carla does. (Somewhat disappointing, I was expecting shipments of every sort) The "shipments" tend to cost more than the junk you can collectively buy to equal a shipment though, especially oil as there tends to be plenty of items on level 3 and 4 vendors that break down into oil. Not having the scrapper perk, Copper ends up being my rarest component and I still have 100 right now.