You get to build your home base the way you like and it produces good income. And I think once you're done with the MQ it adds something else to do.

I'm collecting power armor so I built a structure to house them.

This, you only get responsibilities if you do an quest to take over an populated settlement and you have to do an quest for this.

No responsibility for ones with no settlers, its simply an safe location where enemies don't respawn.

Think this even if true if you use water purification spawn.

You will need settlers to farm for vegetable stash.

I have done the midle way, done plenty of minuteman quests but mostly just fixed up setlements so they have enough beds, food, water and defense for people to be mostly happy.

Good point, I'll have to try using that!

However, do objects (e.g., lamps) orient properly (e.g., so the base is down)? I am guessing the mouse buttons can be used to rotate stuff along its vertical axis (the "yaw" axis) but what about the http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/images/pic5-1.gif

Well, whenever I pick up an object like a bottle of beer that is on its side it always orientates upright. Then I just set it wherever I want. I really haven't tried manipulating objects other than just picking them up and moving them.

Edit: Actually, I take that back. Picking up fallen over chairs and tables will work just as if you're building them. So, I would imagine it's the same for any object you are able to pick up in build mode.

So, FO4 is just a Sim City ripoff? Like, I want to waste game time on babysitting a dozen towns.

Op (and anyone else with the same question as to why people like this feature) is it really that difficult for you to get that people like different things then you?

"ripoff" doesn't seem right. I'm not even sure I'd say "Sim City like" is even right. It has settlements and building which makes it similar to other games that have such features, but sharing features or taking influences from other artistic works does not equate with "ripoff."

Nirvana shared a lot of similarities to Led Zeppelin (as did many other bands), as well as the Pixies, Black Sabbath, Killing Joke . . . but I don't think I'd dismiss Nirvana as "just a Led Zeppelin/Pixies/Black Sabbath/Killing Joke ripoff . . ."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJqQf5DObtY

Building things is very fitting in regards to your desire to rebuild your home world in a post-apocalyptic environment. We see settlements large and small, like Diamond City, etc., where people scrap whatever they find to build homes. So why not be able to do it your own?

Building things is fitting for a RPG. Through building a settlement, you perform tasks to earn XP and learn skills, the same way a RPG has you do under other circumstances.

Building settlements offers challenges that break the tedium you speak of. Settlements have different sizes and terrains, and you have to find creative means to build structures and accommodations for your settlers.

Because constantly running around killing things is boring. It's a diversion and your actually HELPING people by doing something other than just shooting things.

Sorry - I love the settlement building thing as do many, many others. To me it's fun, it's profitable and I like helping people. Sure, blowing the heads off of things is fun, but constant mayhem is not the way I play games, which is, frankly, why Fallout is the only FPS (sort-of) that I will ever play. GoW, CoD, etc... hold absolutely no interest to me whatsoever. They just bore me.

I mean, honestly, I have no reason to be killing 90% of the beings and people in the Commonwealth other than self-defense and I find it vaguely disturbing that a good 1/2 or more of the quests and side-quests I'm sent on are simply to kill this individual or that individual for reasons, generally, that I don't care about.

Honestly, I spend the majority of my time settlement building, settlement defending, resource managing and getting to know the NPCs rather than the boring main quests or the homicidal side-quests.

What, after all, have the supers ever done to me? I shouldn't even have encountered those Deathclaws - am I a fool to be there in the first place? No normal person would be.

Just sayin'. MHO.

At first I was thrilled to build a home.

Then after a few hours it looked so complicated and I could not put walls or fences the way I liked it, and I didn't knew how to manage settlers and it turned out to be just a big pain in the a$$. Even after watching videos explaining how to do it seemed like that.

So I let it go for now untill some better tools or mods for building settlements come out. Or did they allready came out ?

I haven't gotten too far into constructing massive buildings that some people make.

I really enjoy building pretty basic settlements:
I have an adhesive farm and do my tinkering at sanctuary and all that.

Rest of the settlements have an artillery piece
pretty stout defenses
A mass sleeping bag area
All are connected to supply routs scrap station
Castle and sanctuary are my water farms

It's pretty simple but I really enjoy it. Getting into building massive structures is tedious but setting up a basic settlement only takes a few minutes an if you have scrap stations everywhere it's not hard to find the extra loot.

I enjoy the legitimate effects settlement building has on the game - off much better if you do it with the Minutemen.

The effects are: caps generation, food/adhesive generation, artillery strikes, Minutemen call ins, etc

Basic settlement building is very rewarding. Even without the feel good aspect or the creative expression aspect.

I love settlement build so freaking much; I could do that all day without every leaving to go on an adventure. I can't answer why, I really can't, but it's like I'm creaitng something - something only limited by game-parts and imagination. I like to see how adventurous I can get with my designs and how awesome the base looks after the fact.

I'm sorry. I too hope they come out with something for folks that want the whole system simplified.

I didn't have too much trouble with it and have figured out how to customize and place almost everything when building, but it would have been nice, rather than spending a couple of workweeks figuring it out if they had just given us some direction!

Does anyone know if there are mods out there yet? There must be! I read that there are already over 100 out there. So we can hope.

I'm doing a play through right now where I rescued Preston and crew and then more or less didn't talk to him after that. I really enjoy building settlements, but I want to do so at my own pace. Currently I only have a few settlements built up, and because Preston isn't "activated" I can concentrate on slowly building them up the way I want, and make sure they have enough defenses not to be attacked before moving on to the next one. (I'm not sure the attacks would even happen with the minutemen quests not having started?). What I found tedious on my first play through was that I was continually bombarded with quests from my settlements, go find a kidnapped settler, go kill some raiders, go kill some ghouls, and they happened regularly and all the time. Now, they just don't. All my settlements are happy and I don't feel pressured all the time to drop whatever I'm doing and go help a settlement by doing a quest that has no meat on the bone (so to speak) isn't unique in any way, and basically isn't fun after a few times. Those quests were a mistake in the game mechanic IMO. I'd rather just work at my own pace, and now that I am I find that I really enjoy it. It's not a chore, it's a joy.

Why? You ask? Well, I think for me it's the sense of accomplishment when I have transformed a part of the wasteland into something I really like. I've been inspired by OPSco_ Specialist, nibblesps4, and some others around here to really be creative with it, and has resulted in some great looking stuff. So when I use the janky and limited tools I have available to make cool looking stuff and it turns out cool,...well... I could just stand around at the bottom of Sanctuary Hills looking at it when I'm done and bask in the afterglow of the accomplishment. It's a kind of high I guess, no Jet, no buffout, just high on accomplishment of making my artistic vision "real".

I also like the idea of making my settlements work "for me" instead of me working for them. Scavengers, Shops, and Food and Water are all being steadily worked at my settlements, and I am making caps and getting supplies and junk from them. The more settlements I build, the more I get, so as a game mechanic I can use to benefit my character I also feel it's worthwhile and "rewarding" (I actually get in-game rewards for it!)

I do agree though that even though the entire settlement building and defending, and questing, is really kind of put front and center of the game. For a supposedly "optional" part of the game they sure do a poor job of making it feel optional. IMO it's only "optional" if you do like I did on my second play through and just not start the minuteman quests or talk to Preston. Otherwise, yes mechanically it is optional, but in-game, you are more or less bombarded with things to do for the settlements (besides building). The game does a terrible job of PRESENTING the settlement features as optional, since from the beginning it is woven into the story and game play in a way that makes a player (especially a first-time player) feel like it's a main part of the game. At no point does the game tell you in any way that these settlements or their related quests WON'T effect the game, so we have NO WAY of knowing that is so without some knowledge of the game from the real world, or in-game experimentation. It just SEEMS that you have to do it. It is part of the story. Granted, it's part of the story you can ignore, but doing so breaks my immersion a good deal when I am playing the hero of the wasteland, and yet another settler gets kidnapped (by the same raiders in the same location where I killed them all before) and I just ignore it. IRL (funny yeah) I just don't think that's something the hero of the wasteland would do(and without using your imagination and RPing in your head, you can't really be anything but that in this game). And I think most of the characters you meet in the game treat you like you're not that kind of person either, to just ignore someone in need of help. So ignoring or not participating in this "optional' part of the game just doesn't FEEL right. Rather the game makes you feel like you HAVE to participate or you are a callous jerk, or not living up to who you are. The whole "optional" thing is just done really poorly in this case IMO.

That said, there are usually workarounds for things like that, such as not talking to Preston. You just need to play and enjoy the game YOUR WAY. That's one of the best things about Bethesda games IMO, they may be glitchy and buggy and sometimes make no sense, but they are flexible enough to let you play the game how you like. You just sometimes need to do a couple play throughs to figure out what you like and what you don't.

Before I read this, I'd like to say: WOW! Now that's a wall of text.

Now... gonna put on my spectacles and get started reading.

EDIT***

Okay - done. Agree with you mostly.

On this new build I'm doing, I just don't want to deal with the MM for the time being, but I feel guilty about leaving them just sitting there in the lobby of the museum (plus, I can't get past them to collect all my loot in the building - although I haven't tried to sneak yet).

From an RP perspective, what justification could I have to just leave them there AND, if I do leave them, why don't they just starve to death or die? Apparently they're incapable of leaving the building until I return, so....

Well you don't have to leave them, I actually brought them back to Sanctuary and just didn't talk to Preston past that first exchange. He gave me the Tenpines Bluff quest, which is still sitting in my quest log. I never completed it so the MM quests haven't gone past that. I feel like that's better than just leaving them holed up in Concord.

From an RP perspective your SS could feel like these idiots can't take a few raiders from a good position, so there's a good chance if you try to rescue them the'll get you killed. Can't find your son if you're dead.

You probably could sneak past them, I noticed people generally won't try to talk to you if your in sneak mode. Then just nab the PA off the roof and jump down.

It's only for cool creative people...norms won't get it

Seriously though if you don't think this is awesome then idk what to say- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls2Z3ic_PhM

I personally don't have patience to make something like that but it would be cool to have at one of my settlements....same with his Super Mario one- https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1393489833&feature=iv&src_vid=ls2Z3ic_PhM&v=34eOh35NUy8

Just ask the question the other way. Riddle me this: Why do people enjoy exploring, looting, and killing things? Why can't we just have a game about discovery, killing, taking, and consuming? There are many more gaming tastes than your own in the world. [edit - less provocative] Over the last few years there has been a general increase in creative games and creative elements in games.

Personally I enjoy the standard Fallout elements and the new building aspect as well. I'm looking forward to what the modding community has in store.

I think because the game doesn't tell you which quests are auto generated repeating quests, some players get confused and complain that Fallout 4 quests are repetitive fetch quests. But that's just those repeating quests. They should label them "repeating" quests.

Not everybody likes settlement building. I dearly hate it to pieces. Fallout has become a first person real time strategy game. No time to explore this marvelous new world I've found myself in. I have to go pound out some horseshoes all day long. I'll pass.

Rabbit

There's your answer.

Mostly so I have a place to stash all my loot and a bed to sleep in at various places throughout the wasteland...but also, because sometimes I get lost in it and come up with some really groovy stuff...like my comic book shop at Jamaica Plains with this epic lightbox sign on the roof:

http://i.imgbox.com/EZzFWRr9.jpg

WTF? Just because Sim City was one of the first city simulators, doesn't mean that all games that have to do with building stuff copied it.

We build stuff in REAL LIFE. So maybe, perhaps, Fallout 4 is trying to ripoff REAL LIFE! OMG!

You haters getting more ridiculous each day. You know what... this thread is just flame bait.