I have a 5/6 story house on top of the red rocket gas station. its a small size settlement and I haven't ran out of any floors, walls, or roofs. Maybe its a bug

You can game this a bit by putting on Charisma boosting clothes and moving people to other areas. For example, I've only got 7 charisma normally (6 plus 1 from glasses). But when I throw on Reginald's Gear and a Militia Hat, it jumps to 11 and I was able to get up to 20 settlers in Sanctuary instead of 16-17 like normal.

They could make the settlement size limit like another setting in options-graphics (framerate, vsync, etc), so players with more graphics power can set it higher!

Or they could make settlement defense quests that ends with less graphically demanding walls around the whole settlement, since placing all those fence pieces is already a pretty dull affair that probably most would likely avoid when re-trying the game from scratch!

I have a feeling it is to prevent issues with saves. Every save has to keep track of every object you place and Bethesda had to assume that some people would go nuts with building huge fortresses everywhere and then saves would get huge and take forever to load or break altogether and the complaints would roll in. If I was a QA tester one of the first things I would try to break would be the settlement building aspect of the game since its the newest and most likely least stable addition. They must have found issues after a certain number of things was added and then put the cap in place.

I disagree the settlement parts of the game are some of the best, I love it. A combination of Minecraft and Fallout is potentially mind-blowing.

That doesn't make sense, because the size cap makes it an issue, that definitely isn't worth playing for probably especially those who build the fences around their settlements first! "Between the lines" the game tells you to build fences, because the must be there for a reason in the construction menus and you know already that there will be raiders coming ... And when it doesn't work, it's impossible to continue.

What happens when you take off the clothing? Do the settlers stay or leave?

The beta patches have raised the limit significantly.

If on PC, then download the beta patch, and/or a mod which raise/remove the building limit. On console, you'll have to wait for patch to come out of beta. I think it's just to prevent fps dropping too low, but we should be able to change the limit in-game.

It was with the beta patch 1.1.30 Update! And according to fixes in the newest patch they haven't mentioned it, so it's probably the same. Anyway since there definitely will be new patches and they say that save games probably won't work, testing will have to be a re-start from scratch every time. Too boring!

PC Win 7 64 bit, GTX 770, 32 GB ram

Note: (Everything around was scraqed!)

I have large settlements built in Sanctuary, Abernathy Farms, and Red Rocket with no problems and not even close to a limit.

Seems to be something that only happens to some people, certainly not everyone.

By the way, I don't think the Nexus "mod" is actually a mod. It's just a standard batch file used by any BGS game that is executed in the console to run console commands. You could type the same command in the console to get the same thing.

I think the reason why some people hit the object limit more than others comes down to scrapping, where you build, and what you build. Notice that size bars don't start at empty. All the pre-existing objects, even trees and tires, count against the size limit. If you scrap them, you free up space. People that start by scrapping everything will be able to build a lot more than those to scrap only what they need. Some settlements have much higher object limits than others, so where you build matters. Also the 'count' isn't a one for one thing, some objects count more than others and this seems to be based on the number of triangles involved in the object mesh. It takes a lot more triangles to build a round section than a square section, so those round parts will make you hit the object limit faster. It's unclear how things are weighted exactly right now, but as long as you don't build so much that you bring your system down, it doesn't matter too much.

The system itself is quirky. You can drop guns on the ground and scrap them to reduce your object count. It seems dropping an item doesn't increase the size count, but scrapping it will decrease the count. People that do a lot of scrapping on the ground could find they never hit the object limit. This trick can even let console players build forever... although, they'll hit their system limits a lot quicker than many PC players. The limits were definitely put in place to preserve performance and stability and seem targeted at the more limited hardware in the console arena.

The newer version of the object limit breaking mod is just a batch file of console commands. The earlier version is a memory hack. You might as well use the console batch file thing though as it saves you from having to type out four commands or so. I first used the memory hack once when I hit the size limit in Sanctuary to reset the count...and then realized I could preserve the limit by storing or scrapping unused objects, so I made a sweep for that. I haven't hit the limit again, but I'm about halfway there, so my town is currently around 1.5x the size limit and I haven't seen the slightest performance hit.

So what is your OS, RAM, Video card and what is your average graphics settings in the game?

I know you did not ask me but I run windows 7, have dual radeon graphics card, 32 gigs of ram and it's a laptop. I use the batch file mod that increases the size limit and I have no issues at all building whatever I want my build bar is completely empty at the castle and I have built heavily there. So I am not sure why you may be having a problem. I have also built heavily at croup manor as well no issues using the mod to up the size limits.

I know ArchGaden mentioned the dropping items trick, but I thought I'd make it clear for any other console users out there. Drop the item inside the settlement and outside of build mode. Go into build mode and either: scrap the item or store the item if you want to keep it, and viola! You now have more room to build!

I have begun using this on my second character to test the system limits vs. performance. I've easily added over 150 units to my build limit in Sanctuary and I have begun to notice an ever so slight drop in fps, for a few moments, as I approach sanctuary. If I fast travel to sanctuary, it does take a noticeably longer time to load than fast traveling anywhere else.

So yes, it does seem the limits were put in place for optimization purposes. But, with the amount I have added to sanctuary so far, and the slight decrease in performance, it does seem they went with being overly cautious with the build limit.

Hope this trick helps and sooths any worries of any other console users!

From what I've seen, they stay for the most part. I did lose one person in Sanctuary once (no clue where they went), but I've been running around in Armored Vest and Slacks and I still have 21 people in Sanctuary and 20 in the Drive-In, which is above my cap without clothing. Remember that supply line people seem to take up a slot in two places (which kind of svcks).

Win 8.1, 16gb DDR3 2133mhz, GeForce 760 GTX (4gb version), intel i5 4760k 3.4ghz 4 core CPU, and running off an SSD. I'm running 1080p and on 'high' settings with a few bumped up from there (mainly view distance stuff). I haven't had any framerate hitches at all yet, even with overbuilding, so I could probably run higher on some settings... but I haven't spent more than 10 minutes playing with options and it's probably good to spare a bit of performance for mods and crazier stuff I'll do with settlements. I'm surprised at how well optimized Fallout 4 has been for a Bethesda game.

Anyone with an already decent system looking to make an upgrade, I'd recommend SSD first. It's by the far the biggest upgrade I've ever had as far as a single part having the most impact on all around performance. Many games are terrible at texture streaming and an SSD will solve those texture load hitches. Loading of any sort becomes super fast.

As for me, a video card upgrade is my next target, but I'll wait for the first round of VR-mania to hit before I make a move there.

They only take up one space for me... in the town that sources them. I use supply lines to move unmoveable settlers quite often (ie, settlers with no special name that were created with a quest rather than a beacon and can't be 'moved'). I do this by assigning a settler to a supply line, heading to the destination, waiting a few hours, then catching the provisioner on approach and reassigning to a local duty. I've never had the numbers go wonky.

Here's a fun way to reduce the limit:

Throw random junk on the ground and scrap it. The game thinks you're scrapping items from your settlement and thus reduces your building limit. There, unlimited building limit.

Has this been verified?

yes, see the previous quote from this thread where it's explained more eloquently.

I regularly dump all my junk on the ground in Sanctuary to salvage it. I've noticed that while my build meter fills up at other settlements it is always near zero at Sanctuary and Sanctuary build is huge. I read somewhere that by constantly dumping junk in large volumes resets your build limit. Seems to for me at least.

Fill up your inventory with junk, go to a settlement at the limit and dump it all at one and see if it lowers the bar.

I know the feeling. I am making a mega structure at Sanctuary Hills and I found out last night that the sky has a limit to how high I can build. I'm also right on the edge of what I can do... Sad day.

Perhaps that is why the meter filled up quicker, because it seemed easier just to pick up stuff and put it unscraqed in the workbench, since the game scraqes it by itself when building something! So the game only allowed a very small (tiny) settlement! Anyway the bugs made it unplayable and boring, and it might not be worth trying a new game, if they aren't also making it easier to place all those wall around every settlement! Also if one knows what kind of attack to expect, it also becomes boring to build stuff, that knowingly will never have any use. So it is better with more unpredictable game dynamics in settlement attacks!

Yeah and that is fine for one fort. As I said if I was a QA tester the first thing I would look to break would be the settlement system and at the top of the list would be building overly elaborate and complicated forts at every location I could find. One or two elaborate forts won't do anything but having every location built up with a three or four story castles has to add to the save game size. We had problems in previous games with just simple ash piles from energy weapons causing save game bloat. This time around the game has to remember every tire and stick and car that you scrapped and also everything you added.

Another possibility is simply frame rate. This game was obviously developed with consoles in mind and perhaps having too many pieces at a fort cause the frame rate to drop on consoles. If you have a beefy rig then maybe there is no limit to what you can do. This is the option that I am hoping for because at some point after the GECK is released people will be releasing premade forts that I can just plug in to my game. I want Prydwens hovering over all of my bases and armies of synths patrolling around them.

The performance drop wouldn't be that great. Many console players are using the junk dump exploit to increase build sizes and aren't experiencing too many performance issues. Plus everything you delete doesn't have to be rendered.

One thing I would like to see is a mobile scrapping unit for deleting all that nice unmovable salvage outside settlement zones. I've even been trying to blow things up to move them in to settlement zones!

I don't like the premade houses but there is definitely things like protectotrons and wall terminals I would like to see in settlements.

the limit is 10+char but... maybe i have a bug but, i have 30 settlers at one of my settlements and im really happy with it:D