I've noticed that no matter what I do, I can never get more than 3 settlers to join once I build the Radio Beacon. No matter how many beds, defences, or resources I build, it's always 3 or less, and they always join immediately once I build the beacon, i.e more don't come if I expand the settlement. Is there a way to get more settlers?

For example I only got 1 settler at Sanctuary Hills, plus the 4 who joined from Concord.

I just flipped my radio thingy on and they flocked. It takes time.

Deploy the recruitment beacon and just wait. My Sanctuary now have 11 settlers.

Recruitment beacon will slowly bring in people, if you want to increase the number of setters that you can have in a settlement you need to have a high charisma. by default a settlement have have 10 settlers plus 1 more for each point you have in charisma so if you have a charisma of 10 you can have a total cap of 20.

Radio Beacon, quantity of food and water, defenses, power, etc. all seem to increase the settler attraction.

But the fastest way to hurry it up is to send NPCs from some of your larger settlements. As long as you don't turn their beacons off, you will never lack settlers.

You can also supply line them so every settlement benefits from the food (maybe water?) of other settlements.

Can you move settlers between settlements? How.

You actually need to move your settlers from other settlement to Sanctuary. For some unknown reason, settlers only come to your other settlement and not sanctuary itself.

This is what I do, I move them and than after a few days new settler will arrive at the outside settlement and again you move them to sanctuary.

Idk. Maybe the move button.

R if you're on PC. IIRC.

I'm 70 hours in and the number never changes once they initially come :/

They have for me. I have 20 in Sanctuary, which is the cap. Maybe a bug?

Go into Workshop mode, walk to a settler and on the bottom you will see the move command. After you select it, you will get to choose a settlement where you want to send them, just like with Supply Lines.

In my game, Settlers came to Sanctuary from their own accord. It is probably a bug in your game... though Sanctuary Hill in general seems to be a bugged settlement.

What I found out reg. moving settlers between settlements is, that you can only move settlers from settlements that you started at 0. For example I can move all my Drive-in people to sanctuary, cause they all came through the radio tower, but I can not move my settlers from the farms that have already been at that location from the start.

Yep same here. I've only put a radio beacon at Sanctuary. I sent one from another settlement, and it was up to about 11 last I looked, so that is 2 to 4 attracted guess.

If you look in the DATA tab of your Pipboy there is a "Workshops" page that gives you the breakdown on what settlements need. I had to build Sanctuary's defense up to like 50 before the little "caution" emblem went away.

I moved settlers to recruited farms as well, no problem.

I think you lack the option if you lack beds and/or other essential resources.

Moving TO recruited farms might be okay, I was talking about moving the original farm settlers AWAY from their farm. Wanted to try that, as I didn't like having so many diff. locations to overlook, but looks like the originals need to stay, or I need to try again

Started moving people to Sanctuary Hills, seems to be capped at 17 for me even though I have 25 food, beds, water, power, and 75 defence there.

That might be the current cap of your charisma points then? Should go up to 20 or 21?

Ah, that. Well, it would not really make much sense IMO as they have been there for ages, have families and call it home.

Yea...although for the 2 lonely settlers I imagined life in my Sanctuary hills to be a lot better than their little 2 mattress toilet house

Yes, it seems like Charisma affects how many settlers you can send. I was stuck at 16 in Sanctuary, but once I put on Reginald's Outfit (+3 CHR), a Militia Hat and a pair of Rimmed Glasses (+1 each), I was able to send a couple more.

The happiness level seems to make a big difference to the rate that new settlers come, or at least it has so far in Sanctary in my game. I got 1 extra quite soon after placing my beacon then nothing even though I had surplus food, water and beds and a good defence rating. Once happiness hit around 70 they started coming.

My Sanctuary's been at 80 Happiness for about 40 of my character's 70 hours of gameplay, it only increased from 5 once I ordered settlers to move from my other settlements.

There are also random encounters you can run into that will provide settlers. I ran into a group being attacked by raiders and I helped them. after the fight I talked to them and it gave me the option of telling them about a safe place to live and then it gave me the option of sending them to any of my current settlements. I thought that was pretty cool. other tips that I found work are make sure you have a surplus or food water and beds and that your happiness is above 50 with time the becon should bring in settlers.