That's not the type of water purifiers that are being built though. They are making large metal machines that require electricity to run.

Diamond City is also a representation of a larger whole, or do you really think a "city" is made up of about 20 NPCs?

In my game, Diamond City has a whole lot of people living in it who are skilled at a great variety of things. It only appears to have about 20 NPCs due to system limitations.

My point is that you don't need to take everything at face value. It's fine in your game if you do, of course, but it's also fine and much less limiting to see a lot of what we visually see as just gameplay representations of things going on in the background, similar to how the actual Commonwealth in our world is many times bigger than the representation of it we are given in game.

So let me ask you, just what do you think is going on inside that water purification machine? In all likelihood something very similar to my three bucket system is happening internally. The electricity is undoubtedly needed because the purifier has to pump the water from the source to it's top layer of filtration.

No, I don't think a settlement is 20 NPCs, but I do think that since society was thrown back to survival levels, there would be a huge shortage of educated people. For that matter, in the game you'll occasionally hear NPCs complain "I wish I could read."

Sure, people in vaults like Vault 81 will have education and skills, but that doesn't seem to have spread to the settlers. I mean, Sturgis is probably the most talented guy in the crowd of the original 5, yet he can't build beds, water pumps, set up lights,, make Mama Murphy a chair, or plant crops. How many engineers would be in that crowd, eh? ...and where would they have learned their trade?

It's been 200 years since the bomb. Diamond City even has a Science Center. There are schools. There are still pre-war books. There's a lot of illiterate people in our society too, but that doesn't mean that everyone else is the same or that all the settlers are unskilled or ignorant of everything. The supermutant kidnap various people to assist them with things that require brains and dexterity, so our Sole Survivor could very well gain similar help, though without necessarily the kidnapping part.

Again, if you want your society to be very unskilled, low-tech, and largely ignorant, that's fine, but I also think it's perfectly reasonable to see things in different ways considering how very different individual people can be.

And I really have no idea what goes on inside those water purifiers, but I would be willing to bet I could find a settler who could help me figure it out....at least in my game.

Wow...this is a great conversation! I can't figure out where to respond, so I'm picking this one simply because it feels more like it addresses the source if the issue. (I've snipped to keep the length of the post down.)

I did study a lot of mythology (mythologies, actually), and it is a very academic discussion in the end. (Which is kind of the biggest hurdle to overcome.) It's actually an interesting interpretation to think about Fallout 4 as a mythology in and of itself, but it's a hard argument to make as a valid interpretation of the game. A "myth" is a story that was once part of a real-world, actively practiced religion: one that has since fallen out of practice and is now dead. We call the literature that survives from these religions a "mythology". To refer to the games of Fallout 4 as a myth is cool...considering the potential literary perspective of them being stories told to far future generations within the game world, perhaps a culture that develops untold years after the world recovers from the nuclear holocaust. (Similar to the way the Mad Max films are portrayed.) It's just that the game never introduces this perspective, so the interpretation is left as being very cool conjecture.



To call the sci-fi world portrayed at the beginning of the game mythological is an error. It's not the 40's or 50's; it's 2077. This is established. We now have to willingly suspend our disbelief and accept this "alternate-reality" of our own recorded history to accept the premise of the game. Which is fine! And it works! It also creates impossible barriers to those looking for a "down-to-earth" level of immersion, though. Fact of the matter is -- we didn't discover the secrets of harnessing fusion as a power source, creating safe fission power sources, went along the digital path instead of the anolog path with technology, and never developed power armor or fought wars in space. (We have so many logistical problems keeping 20 people supplied on the ISS as it is -- putting a single regiment into space, let alone with the added weight of friggin' POWER ARMOR, would bankrupt every single UN nation on the planet. And they wouldn't be coming back.)



The game is neither mythological, realistic, nor a simulation. It is neither 2001: A Space Odyssey nor Gravity. It is Stranger in a Strange Land or Animal Farm. It doesn't attempt to scientifically explain how and why Michael is able to wave things into non-existence, nor why it's pigs and horses can talk, it just uses these elements to heighten the effect of its allegory and social commentary. Fallout is 100% satirical anolysis of the human condition, represented by a ham-fisted, fantastical view of nuclear technology-gone-wild. I simply have to accept that there is power armor, and plasma weapons, and giant chameleon deathclaw monsters, and radiation won't kill me slowly if I eat mirelurk cakes -- or I'll miss the point of the game: societal satire.

This misses the point of using "nuclear fallout" as the premise and focal point of the game. Nuclear material degrades by half-life. This means that it never stops being radioactive. Once you introduce it, 300,000 years later -- it's still radioactive. Napolean created mechanical chaos. He upset society in his misguided attempt to "make the world France". It caused pain that lasted for at least a few generations. But then it healed.



Fallout 1-4 explore the question: "How many times can we do this before we finally do something to ourselves we can't recover from?" And it answers this with a simplified (and rather conservative) view of global nuclear devastation. Imagining we don't annihilate the surface of the planet with thousands of simultaneous nuclear blasts, kill all organic life on the crust, create a nuclear winter that rains real-life fallout across the globe for hundreds of years (not 80), and eventually destroy the food chain resulting in complete organic desertification of the crust and the oceans, ending in a permanent ice age with irradiated permafrost as a foundation...what would life be like?



Here, we see the game use "radiation" as a symbolic representation and constant reminder of humans finally doing something that we can't take back or rebuild...and according to the game..."nothing changes". Dark stuff.

Plus, we do have organizations set up to safeguard food supplies and water -- we call them "governments". Raiders do enjoy alternative lifestyles. Many of those Kenyan pirates hitting international cargo ships are driving Mercedes and Bentleys. Many ISIS members are extremely wealthy individuals with numerous homes and properties. We, as Americans, live in this sheltered understanding of the world being civilized here, but chaotic there. I can safely say (first-hand experience living abroad for nearly 10 years), that while "standards of living" in America are generally very high -- society in America is a hot mess. Of all the places I've lived (including a few areas very close to war zones), there is corruption, greed, and ignorance everywhere -- but I have never come across a society as readily violent and dangerous as America. (You don't run the risk of getting shot by a teenager during a gang fight in a shopping mall anywhere else on the planet. South Africa is not too far behind, though.)

This hits on a true issue with the game, but has nothing to do the the premise. It is something Beth needs to work on in the future. Their titles (since Oblivion) tend to aggressively railroad players down pre-determined paths. Then sort of cram the consequences down players' throats. It can leave you feeling like: "But if I had just been able to do 'XYZ' -- I could have resolved this!" It's just so hard to script a branching storyline.

This section is supporting what I said point-for-point, unless one of us is misunderstanding the other. My argument is the mechanics of gameplay are "whatevers". It does not matter if they make scientifically explainable sense -- they're in place to paint a picture and set a mood, heightening the social commentary. They also worry about gameplay balance and providing variety. Can you actually make a nuclear grenade from a tin can and some soda? No. But who cares!? These things are so cool!

I can forgive Beth these particular details. You have a valid point. But the time and resources involved in going back to retexture all of these pieces again, simply to add "clean-er" looking versions would have resulted in diminishing returns (both financially and for the gameplay). It's a nice accent, but it doesn't really add a mechanic or help the player complete the game. Plus, the expense of paying texture artists to handle this would have been a quite high for no real additional sales. (Plus, modders are going to do this anyway. [PLUS, the modders will do this as part of higher-fidelity texture packs, so people that care will wind up just overwriting the Beth textures in the end, anyhow.]) It's still a business, in the end.

You can see it in your game anyway you want to, and it won't bother me at all. Just sayin, eh? but as it regards this 2000 cap house we're supposedly discussing, let me say this. I bought the place, scrapped most of the junk out of the interior, and I now have one quite large room, and one smaller but completely bare room that contains a workbench.

Now, I like the place okay, and it's handy to drop stuff in that I do['t want to sell or carry, but... What I'd really like to be able to do is build dividing walls to create two or three rooms out of that large one, put in a cook stove, and a wet bar that doesn't let the booze fall through the shelves to the floor. I can't do any of that. Nor can I find even one of these educated settlers who I can pay to do it for me. I'll bet you can't in your game either, unless you've got it modded.

That is where the frustration begins. Out in the boonies of the Red Rocket, I can turn the place into a fortress with as many rooms and walls as I can envision, and all the comforts of home, but in the very center of "urban society" and these skilled artisans who live there, I can't even get a working stove or fireplace.

Now on *this* I can fully agree! I want to be able to build more things for both my 2000 cap house *and* settlements. What some people seem to be suggesting in this thread though is that we shouldn't be able to have these nice things because our SS isn't capable of building anything better than crap. Well I argue that my SS *can* build better than crap because even if she doesn't personally know what to do or can do it all herself, there are others in the community who can and will assist, especially if they are also going to be living in that settlement.

But yes, we should have fireplaces, refrigerators, sinks, bathroom mirrors, walls and ceilings without holes. (Even if they're made from scrap, I can't imagine people would *intentionally* riddle them with holes.) We definitely need to be able to build interior walls, including inside the 2000 cap house. (Those shouldn't have holes in them either.)

It's just that in my game, it makes perfectly good sense to be able to do these things and so yes, I want more of these options to be included in my game.

Nice! Well said.

All games have limitations in one aspect or another. I think many people posting here are looking for a game that lets them design whatever they want to build completely according to their own vision, without any limitations being set by an established world. That wouldn't be a Fallout game, that would be a creative tool. Granted -- it would be brilliant to have that as a part of any game, but that wasn't the point of Fallout 4. Settlements are a feature within a larger title. (A relatively small feature, too. You can do a lot with it, but I would say it was probably 1/10 of the development process.) The rest of the game needed to be built, as well. Can't have it all.

On the whole, I'm getting the distinct gist that people would like to see more visual designs included in the items you place down in the world. That might be worthwhile DLC for Bethesda to think about creating. Maybe "Construction Packs" themed along one of the factions...or something along the visual designs they introduced to decorate the house in Megaton for Fallout 3.

Normally I'm into these long winded discussions, but reading through the last couple pages, I come up with only one thing:

If the game were realistic, it would not be fun to play, for the simple reason: the world might well be devoid of people.

I really just want the option to build both a trashed looking settlement, and a slightly less run down looking settlement.


Maybe have a few nice things so I can create an upperclass neighborhood, then a shanty town area. Oh, and maybe a clean looking clinic so people don't look like they'll get sepsis when going in for a splinter...

YOU'RE KIDDING! Really? Every time I've stored something in the workbench, it seems to disappear entirely, so I figured it had been scrapped or something... I'll have to give that a try!

Nice summary. That's the issue with realism vs. Fallout in a nutshell.


Oooooo...you have me worried now. I did a lot of tweaking. I might have added something to one of the .INIs that made this possible. Hang on...

I'm wrong! I lied! I didn't mean to. I was mixing up two different things in my mind. I accidentally scrapped the cooking station at one location, and couldn't rebuild it, so I went back to a settlement that had one, got the ID through the console, then manually placed it at the other location so I had a cooking station back.

I think I was confusing that with discovering that I could manually haul building supplies (wood, steel, bone, etc.) from one location to another that wasn't connected.

Either way, if your location has a Workbench (the red one) that will allow you to build all of the other crafting stations as long as you have the perks for it. Just manually load that Workbench with junk, and build away. You can also use the "player.placeatme" command to get certain crafting stations. Once they're in the world within a build zone, you can move them around like normal.

Yeah, I went and tried you notion, and once again everything Ibuilt and then stored in the worksho just vanished. I didn't get the materials back, and there was no sign of the stored item anywhere. Bummer...

So, then I gathered up wood and steel, and went back to Home Plate to see if I could build a wall inside. The answer is "No freakin' way".

When I open the workshop inside home plate, there is no shack icon on the row. I get the light bulb, the painting, and the overstuffed chair for normal icons, and my little mod icon for making junk items in the workshop. There is no way to even get to the part where walls and such are.

Welll back to the drawing board.

You cant build walls in there. Period. No way to do it. I don't know why you want that. I love the "open-concept". Look at my screen-shots:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1579586-the-2000-home-in-diamond-city/?p=24808798

For exactly the same reason you don't want it. Some people don't like an open concept and love separate rooms.

I can't thank you enough for posting that info. The place is starting to come together nicely and feels homey. I have my walls now. I'll post some screenies when it gets a little more finished... I can't add weapon and armor benches, cuz I don't have the "local Leader perk at all. But really, with benches right outside the door, it's not that big a deal. I'll get the perk eventually, I'm sure. I'm only level 22.

BTW, your pics look great! Mine likely won't look anything at all like that, I'm not so much into clutter, and my places are always a bit... Spartan, I guess. The only amenity I insist on is a bathroom that's enclosed, and a working bed.

It really is quite simple. While debates about player proficiency abound, the argument that the SS wouldn't have the skills to mix concrete ( I do - 1 part sand, 1 part cement and 1 part water mixed and poured into staked plywood form-work) these aren't really relevant to a character that can do anything and everything - it's science fiction fantasy. Where I have a problem is with the story and what is or is not game lore in the Fallout 4 community.

My game is heavily modded. By the time I'd finished with Concord and built my first settlement I could no longer accept the disconnect between the driving motivation of the story and the game mechanics so I searched for mods that would rectify this. When you approach my settlements they are beacons of light in the darkness with wall to wall carpeting, beds with clean sheets, walls with glass sheeting, statues and ornamentation, and the kind of architecture we associate with palatial homes. However, it wasn't easy since most mod authors share Bethesda's confusion and think that the SS wants to live like a raider or super mutant. Consider the couches, just as an example. These were designed to evoke a sense of revulsion in the player. We walk into a ruined building and it's not just battlefield rubble, there is 200 years of dust, dirt and garbage overlaid with dead bodies, blood, gore and human waste. What the game can't give us is the smell but the SS reminds us when he tells Piper, "You are living in rusty shacks and killing each other... and the smell". and, sitting underneath all of this filth perched on fractured floorboards and covered in gore is a couch - it's fabric is torn and it has turned brown from 200 years of ingrained filth and toxicity. The couch was designed to revolt us.

The GAME has just convinced me that as well as clearing out the feral ghouls and super mutants maybe putting a flame thrower to that couch would be a good idea to prevent the spread of plague and then they go and put that same couch into my build menu. So, what is the SS really about? Up until very recently, he lived a life much like ours living in suburbia with normality. Nothing in his history points to an individual that would revel in rot, filth and decay although a player could invoke a so-far, hidden psychopathy. However, for the majority of the Fallout 4 community, our fantasy is to save the world by destroying the wrongdoers and saving the innocent by replacing their degradation with the one thing we have that they don't - a living memory of a clean, beautiful, peaceful environment. That is, no more "rusty shacks", no more "killing each other" and no more "smell".

So, my problem isn't just with Bethesda's confusion when I paint a set of power armor, stand back only to discover that the paint job instantly faded on the metal to be barely discernible, it is with the player community that believes that creating more 200 year old garbage to house settlers, in some way satisfies game lore or maintains the "post-Apocalyptic" theme. The SS doesn't want to maintain the "post apocalyptic" theme - that's the story or am I alone in this?

I must apologize for hijacking the conversation which was about the difficulties associated with Home Plate. I truly enjoyed your response to me, Plebeian, concerning mythology. and I agreed with much of your anolysis, there was enough that I disagreed with or felt required clarification or amendment like the fact that my Napoleon comparison was valid - Settlers 200 after the bombs in Fallout 4 would have recovered from the trauma and they would have adapted as Piper has clearly done. Or the fact that creating new housing item textures was never an issue - they are in the game already as was evidenced by the pre-war opening scenes and by not giving us them to build but giving us the gore-soaked furnishings instead, Bethesda has created a disconnect. However, a full response to what you have said would be unfair to those who have come here to discover how to cope with the problems of Home Plate.

Yeah, well the truth is that it's not mixing the concrete that is difficult, it's making the Portland Cement...

I understand where you're coming from, and I agree that the things in the workshop for us to build are largely unacceptable, but I think my reasoning is a bit different from yours. I can see the SS would remember clean sheets and all that goes with them fondly, and would no doubt like to have all the nice clean things he/she used to have. However, I tend to believe that the urge to create walls without holes and roofs that don't leak would take some priority. For one thing, it's easier to create a sturdy wall out of lumber than it is to create a clean sheet from 200 year old cloth. Just thinking of the lye soap that would probably be the order of the day nearly brings me to tears... Did you ever try that stuff?

Time and knowledge are the main limitations to recreating the old life. Does the SS really have time to make lye soap and go wash his clothes in the river with that soap every day? Does he know how to create cloth or leather from raw materials to recover that old couch? ...and does he have the time to grow the cotton, run the spinning wheel, weave the cloth, and sew the material into the desired configuration?

CAn he tan the hides to make the leather, or is he just going to sew old leather armor together to make that couch? Aside from the knowledge, the time is a major restraint, and that is one reason why large families were popular during more rugged times. the kids could work... the SS doesn't have a large family, although it seems the settlements tend to function like a commune, which is to say badly. One person does it all, the rest get the benefits... Just like a real commune!

Regardless of my last post I just had to comment on this. It appears that Americans never had Dad make concrete paths in the garden or pour a concrete barbecue in the back - I was playing with concrete and cement when I was five.

Everyone who criticizes my points wants to drag realism out of the cupboard when it suits them and then quickly bury it when it doesn't. The game is pure fantasy. I've never seen a gun in my life except in the movies so gun mods and armor attachments would not be in my repertoire and given the fact that the SS didn't have a workshop or a tool shed it is highly unlikely that the SS could build anything. What the SS could or couldn't make or build is not the issue and using realism for an argument as to why he can only build dressers with broken drawers is a sham. The disconnect is in the story, not the setting. The SS hates the fact that the world is still living in rusty shacks and says this to Piper. This is a story element. so, making rusty shacks for settlers is a complete character reversal. That is my point.

Actually, I wasn't criticizing your post or your points... Nor am I actually dragging in realism other than obliquely. The question of why would the SS build rusty shacks really is a question of why Bethesda's developers THOUGHT the SS would be building rusty shacks... I have to presume they believed that the SS would use whatever was available, and the reasons why that was all that was available are in the reasons I laid out.

Bethesda wanted (wants?) to keep the Fallout series in the post apocalyptic phase. If people are constructing palaces, and sleeping between clean sheets,and wearing fine clothes, that does not say "post apocalyptic" to most people. It sounds more like "The Burbs" than Fallout.

The thing that throws us off is that notion that the Fallout universe is pure fantasy... it's not, it's a blend of realism and fantasy twisted to suit the needs of the story and the develpers ideas of how this universe works. What that means for you and I is that realism actually works sometimes, and pure fantasy actually works... sometimes... anolysis of both is necessary to get any idea at all about what is really going on in the Fallout Universe and why.

Bekkilyn, you shouldn't even need to defend this. What your character can build or not build is a non-argument brought up by the desperate to defend the stupidity of painting armor to look faded and scratched. It's a game and in this game our characters can save the world, unite or destroy the factions and wave an alien blaster in the face of some idiot telling me about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. What people can do in this world is the staging set up by the game and the NPCs are a part of that staging. What I can do, however, is not grounded in any realism and is not a part of that staging at all. In reality I can't make a teleportation device or travel through the memories of some dead guy just because I have some of his brain matter so arguments about sticking to reality are a complete sham. And, because the SS is a fantasy hero who can do things mere mortals can't if he/she is making walls with holes in them it is because that is how he wants his/her walls. I don't and everyone I know would rather sleep on concrete than in one of those blood covered beds.

ROFL... Come on Neildarkstar. I know you aren't being serious. You can't be. There is no realism in this game, anywhere not even in the concepts it is fictionalized upon like our history of technology, a recognizable culture or even an established genre of fiction. In this latter sense this game has less realism than Skyrim or Morrowind but that's ifne. I find it creative and intriguing.

You are not defending your points. "Bethesda wanted to keep the series in the post apocalyptic phase?" No they didn't. They introduced a main character whose sole motivation is to heal the world. He hates that people are still living in rusty shacks and he says so. "If people are constructing palaces, and sleeping between clean sheets,and wearing fine clothes, that does not say "post apocalyptic" to most people..." no, it says story development. Thirty or so areas were set aside for the SS to make his mark upon the world. If he is simply going to create more raider-style settlements then there is no story. The world was a mess, the SS woke up and killed a lot of folks but the world was still a mess. No story. Without change there can be no story.

As for your "SS would use whatever was available" argument, he's chopping down trees and buying shipments of timber so if he can make a dresser why is he making one that is broken and 200 years old. He is buying shipments of steel and melting down screwdrivers and wrenches, how in h^^^ does he manage to make an airplane wing part while trying to make a roof? And how does the "available materials" argument explain why my freshly painted armor looks like I painted it 200 years ago? I don't agree with any of your points because I believe the entire crafting and building components were tacked onto the game without any real discussion with those who wrote the story. I think it was all a miscomunication and no one could be bothered to fix it.

I think the main problem here is that Beth simply decided to use existing game assets for the build stuff rather than make a new set that actually looks like someone made it from scratch. I think Beth (or the modders) could EASILY (given enough time) make a bunch of unique (not pre-war and NOT Raider) "home-made" looking chairs & tables etc. I would think they should primarily be somewhat rough unfinished wood items.Rough but NOT filthy and gore covered. And why in the world are TVs an item we can "build"??? Why would do that even if we could? There are no TV broadcasts! The radios I get though.

Fair enough. I guess I just watch too much HGTV and DIY. Open Concept is the buzz-words on all those home shows. And when we built our current home (we converted a pole-barn) we designed and made the kitchen/living room area this awesome open concept.

I do use home plate.

It's a cool apartment to show off bobbleheads, magazines and other collectables in various displays. With some old world vibe decorations I kind of use it as a "vault dweller" museum/showcase. Role playing et all.

Also, without using specific construction methods that make settlers unable to get to storage containers, or not having settlers in a settlement, it's one of the few places where no NPC's go unless invited. That makes it one of the few places where it's actually safe to store loot in containers. NPC's will take stuff from containers if it's something they can use.

Concrete-like materials were used since 6500BC. If Neolithic pre-metal mankind could devise concrete, surely post apocalyptic 2077 Fallout mankind can.

It doesn't have to be modern day industrially manufactured concrete in it's various forms for specific applications.