Current Events > Did you ever actually build settlements in FO4, or just sick ass mansions/forts?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The latter obviously.
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i dod just enough at the settlements and i always built up a fort at the rocket gas station near the beginning
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I only built when I felt like it outside of the minor necessity stuff. I actually enjoyed it as a lil break from the main game here and there
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Built some random stuff the first time, then only the necessary stuff to get all the achievements. Absolute least interesting aspect for me.

neither, just plopped down enough basic shit and beds or whatever so i could have settlers connect my work benches and gather resources. whole aspect was pretty lame
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I spent about 30 minutes trying to wrestle against the shitty UI and never touched it again
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I built towns!
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Weirdly enough, I really like cleaning up the trash in settlements like downed trees, tires, rubble piles, broken stuff.

First playthrough I was like yeah! I'll build everyone a nice little shack with a bed and a lamp but now I'm just wasteland garbageman and that's about the extent of it.
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Only after using a place anywhere mod because building walls & fences that hover above the ground or cant be placed next to each other without leaving a gap wide enough to walk or shoot a gun through ruined my initial experience.

Now all my settlements are pimped out fortresses.
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Schwarz posted...

Weirdly enough, I really like cleaning up the trash in settlements like downed trees, tires, rubble piles, broken stuff.

First playthrough I was like yeah! I'll build everyone a nice little shack with a bed and a lamp but now I'm just wasteland garbageman and that's about the extent of it.

Haha, I guess Im not the only one. I'm not even a 100% gamer. There was just something theraputic about cleaning up the settlements when you get to them.
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i'd just build bars everywhere
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In my current playthrough, I am working on a network of provisioners to spread across the Commonwealth. I want to eventually reach the castle and Vault 88. I keep my settlements relatively small - about 5 per settlement, with larger settlements being Sanctuary and the drive-in.
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Lost_All_Senses posted...

just something theraputic about cleaning up

Right? So satisfying to wipe each little bit out and run back through and think 'Well, that's slightly less of a shithole, yeah!'

I got a mod once that let you interact with/delete every piece of scenery in a settlement and man, I had to get away from that quick. Coulda sunk so many hours into that :|
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Built one fort, which would be my main base, at the old Minute Men base. It's basically complete. I built an actual settlement with a trading center at that inn/hotel.

I really, REALLY wanted to do something with the abandoned island off the coast that allowed for construction on the entirety of it - that would have probably been my "magnum opus," but I never got beyond brainstorming ideas.
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Schwarz posted...

Lost_All_Senses posted...

just something theraputic about cleaning up

Right? So satisfying to wipe each little bit out and run back through and think 'Well, that's slightly less of a shithole, yeah!'

I got a mod once that let you interact with/delete every piece of scenery in a settlement and man, I had to get away from that quick. Coulda sunk so many hours into that :|

I think they have that mod on ps4. I haven't used my Mod files a lot.
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I usually make a mansion fort at the gas station and make sanctuary hills a mega settlement metropolis.
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Alucard188 posted...

In my current playthrough, I am working on a network of provisioners to spread across the Commonwealth. I want to eventually reach the castle and Vault 88. I keep my settlements relatively small - about 5 per settlement, with larger settlements being Sanctuary and the drive-in.

I'm being a raider, so I have my guys take over other places, much easier.
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I was always abig fan of The Sims so I love the settlwnt building. I go waaay to far with it though.

Been building a kind of swanky, sleazy, mob run like town at Starlight. Got clubs, bars, an area with fights in a cage, and a casino. I made the drive in building (with additions) my main house on the second floor with a bar and a restaurant on the bottom.

Like I said, I go waaay to far with it. It's fun though.
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if you dont convert the overpass above that one family farm into a mega fort you're playing the game wrong
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dib153 posted...

if you dont convert the overpass above that one family farm into a mega fort you're playing the game wrong

I did lol
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One time I built the tallest tower I could on that gas station near the beginning. You could see it from a surprisingly long distance.

Then I crashed a Vertibird into it
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Not really. I tricked out Sanctuary Hills and then completely ignored other settlements. Thought the whole settlement building thing was kind of lame.
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Far Harbor had some really cool building areas. The Vault-Tec dlc ironically didnt give you anywhere near enough of a build limit to build a proper vault. I got halfway through mine and suddenly the game told me I couldn't place any more items. I hadn't even furnished most of it yet
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Sick ass forts with tons of protection and walled off completely settlers are pretty shit at protecting even when well equipped
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CADE FOSTER posted...

Sick ass forts with tons of protection and walled off completely settlers are pretty shit at protecting even when well equipped

At some point they patched in a mechanic where settlements have a chance of successfully defending themselves if you don't get around to intervening personally. The moment I knew this system was completely fucking useless was when I had a five-story concrete tower to serve as my Power Armor foundry, populated exclusively by Gauss Rifle-wielding armored soldiers patrolling from catwalks and windowsills with a couple decked-out Automatron sentry bots patrolling the grounds, and supplemented by a mod that let made all the doors into the tower inaccessible without a keycard...and they still couldn't defend themselves against a pack of raiders >_>

I know very little of that translates to the kind of cold hard numbers that the settlement auto-defense takes into account, but even then the feature's still borderline worthless. You have to have a defense rating over 100 to even have a reliable chance of a successful auto-defense (even with a defense stat of 200 its practically an even bet), and without mods that's a lot of resources wasted on turrets.
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i tried to make a kick ass fort in sanctuary but because of the slight incline on a hill the wall just looked fucked up so i kinda just gave up trying to make anything decent looking
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KnightofShikari posted...

i tried to make a kick ass fort in sanctuary but because of the slight incline on a hill the wall just looked fucked up so i kinda just gave up trying to make anything decent looking

You couldn't pay me to go back to settlement-building without the Place Anywhere mod.
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EverDownward posted...

I really, REALLY wanted to do something with the abandoned island off the coast that allowed for construction on the entirety of it - that would have probably been my "magnum opus," but I never got beyond brainstorming ideas.

I'm currently on my third attempt to create 'Vault Island' (for lack of a better name) on Spectacle Island, a high-tech city and research facility using Vault and Institute architecture pieces. The first attempt was my first modded playthrough, which ended in disaster. The second (pictured) was mostly functional, but not as expansive as I'd wanted; just the main tower, lab for Curie, and pool area. I packed too much into the tower, and it was a big memory drain. This time I've built the tower on a 5x5 grid instead of 5x8, and will be moving my personal quarters somewhere else. I hope to have upwards of eight buildings when I'm done this time, but we'll see how that goes. There's only so much you can get away with on consoles.





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90% of my "settlements" were a bed, a water pump, and a weapons workbench
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If it's not Mechanist's lair I just let Sim Settlements ROTC do all the work.
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CADE FOSTER posted...

Sick ass forts with tons of protection and walled off completely settlers are pretty shit at protecting even when well equipped

I'm doing a raider playthrough right now. The operators are fucking phenomenal at defense. They even set up checkpoints on the roads near your settlements you take over or subjugate. They defend settlers under their protection lol.

Also, I use a mod called pre-walled settlements, where a lot of them come with 9 foot high concrete walls surrounding them with only one entrance. Makes it easy to just stick like 6 turrets pointing at the entrance and call it a day lol.
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DuranOfForcena posted...

pres_madagascar posted...

dib153 posted...

if you dont convert the overpass above that one family farm into a mega fort you're playing the game wrong

I did lol

i always planned to make that the airdock for the Minuteman flagship i was gonna build to rival the Prydwen, the MMS Paul Revere

I made it into a gigantic sky base. The lower deck of the road was where all my power armor and work benches and stuff was. The upper deck housed my two story mansion.
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DuranOfForcena posted...

masterpug53 posted...

I'm currently on my third attempt to create 'Vault Island' (for lack of a better name) on Spectacle Island, a high-tech city and research facility using Vault and Institute architecture pieces.

sounds awesome, and those screenshots look great! this sounds pretty similar to something i was going to do on Spectacle Island but never got around to, only mine was specifically going to be a free teaching hospital and research facility and university, using mostly the Vault and Institute pieces. i was gonna have like resident dorms in the facility and a little villa for attendings, and high rise condos for heads of staff and management. and full hospital and scholastic facilities, with a basement and a secret sub-level for classified research. and a big atrium tower with stuff that would bring money in like a gift shop, deli, restaurant, hotels, etc. it was going to be "The Shaun and Nora Howard Memorial Teach Hospital, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, est. 2289".

Thanks! If this topic still happens to be floating around at the time, I'll post a few pics of Mk3 as its construction progresses. The tower's almost done, minus furnishings, and it's looking a lot better than last time.

I like your idea, it's pretty similar to the kinds of things to which I aspire in settlement-building. Too bad settlers seem to be the biggest RAM drain, so I can never have nearly as many living in a decked-out settlement as I'd like. The first time I tried Vault Island, I hit the wall when I got around to making the residential dorms like you mentioned. I just massively overbuilt it - three stories with probably 12-15 separate rooms. Apart from the inevitable freezing, the pathfinding AI just bugged out constantly. Even with a mod that supposedly gives a massive boost to settler sandboxing both horizontally and vertically, I've learned that anything above two stories is for player use only. Though you can still build pretty high, so long as you don't cram too much in vertically - I've got vault-style catwalks snaking all over the island, sometimes 3-4 stories above the ground, and settlers seem to use them quite well.
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masterpug53 posted...

EverDownward posted...

I really, REALLY wanted to do something with the abandoned island off the coast that allowed for construction on the entirety of it - that would have probably been my "magnum opus," but I never got beyond brainstorming ideas.

There's only so much you can get away with on consoles.

true, but there are a few tricks that border upon exploits to help you build better (tricks) and build more (might be "exploits")

for instance, you can clip walls into one another by placing a rug or doormat, placing a wall on said rug/mat, then when you highlight the rug/mat to position it the wall will register as part of the rug/mat while also only applying the rug/mats hitbox

theres also a build capacity bug/glitch involving dropping a ton of items and breaking them down and it somehow counts towards base capacity without involving building bits

also

just mod it on pc
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Made plenty of settlements, but eventually just started making forts -- no need for high charisma or any other nonsense. Once turned that garbage dump called Tenpines Bluff into a single Saruman tower with friendly yao guai guarding it, haha. There was no way to get up, so I had to make the fast travel point right on top.

It would've been nice if most of the buildable objects weren't weathered trash. It gets boring building concrete bunkers all the time, haha.
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dib153 posted...

masterpug53 posted...

EverDownward posted...

I really, REALLY wanted to do something with the abandoned island off the coast that allowed for construction on the entirety of it - that would have probably been my "magnum opus," but I never got beyond brainstorming ideas.

There's only so much you can get away with on consoles.

true, but there are a few tricks that border upon exploits to help you build better (tricks) and build more (might be "exploits")

for instance, you can clip walls into one another by placing a rug or doormat, placing a wall on said rug/mat, then when you highlight the rug/mat to position it the wall will register as part of the rug/mat while also only applying the rug/mats hitbox

theres also a build capacity bug/glitch involving dropping a ton of items and breaking them down and it somehow counts towards base capacity without involving building bits

I utilized both of those extensively in the dark days of vanilla, when the classiest wall option available was a damn Minecrafty block of concrete >_> Thankfully I've at least graduated to console mods like Place Anywhere (the single best mod available on consoles imo, and I don't say that lightly), and some other mods that remove the build limit, boost settler sandboxing, etc.

But when I say there's only so much you can get away with on the consoles, what I mean is that you can only push the RAM so far before it breaks. Settlers are a big drain, as is dense vertical building, electricity and lighting, highly-detailed decorative objects, etc. finding a good balance with all these things is key to keeping your framerate at or close to normal and not overtaxing the system.
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I only built up a few. I liked that place over the water with, like, a boat garage. Can't remember the name. Man, I never tried it after the dlc was around, i played it at launch
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I rebuilt that castle and had a really nice setup.
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Shotgunnova posted...

Made plenty of settlements, but eventually just started making forts -- no need for high charisma or any other nonsense. Once turned that garbage dump called Tenpines Bluff into a single Saruman tower with friendly yao guai guarding it, haha. There was no way to get up, so I had to make the fast travel point right on top.

It would've been nice if most of the buildable objects weren't weathered trash. It gets boring building concrete bunkers all the time, haha.

My most defended spot right now is staffed by strong, dogmeat with a stronger dogmeat mod and dog armor, six turrets, and a bunch of operators. No one fucks with me. My guys even set up checkpoints on the roads lol. I protect my people I subjugate too.
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