Here is my totally unmodded (just using the in-game Editor) Sanctuary Hills Settlement. (working on making a modded one; not tested it in game yet). I haven't put a beacon up yet; so no Settlers yet. (Just Misa; Codsworth; Dogmeat; Trashcan Carla and her Brahman).




https://imgur.com/a/rv5yS3b

Wow, that is really involved! I never to go nearly that much effort. Mostly I just put up walls around the settlement, and do some decorating in whatever building my current character is living in.

I want to move in.

Well actually, in game that is the only house I've decorated too = the Rosa house where the Workstation is. I liked it better than the Player house.

I haven't actually gotten any Settlers yet; have been really hesitant to get that started until I've done some things in game - because from what I heard; you have to kind of be at their beck and call every time they get attacked or unhappy; and everyone said even you staying away several days makes them unhappy! So if you have several Settlements, do you have to go spend three days at each one continuously throughout your game?

And what if you are at a crucial point in a quest and get that message that your Settlement is being attacked; I wasn't sure if I should leave them to their fate to finish the quest or race home to "protect them" (like all those laser turrets couldn't do that better than me running there from the other side of the Commonwealth, lol).

Oh, and someone said that the Settlers even get gripey if you give them each a TV because the TV's sometimes glitch and that ticks off the Settlers! So my Settlers won't be getting a TV, I'll have Misa dance to entertain them, lol.

So yeah, I've been a bit afraid of what all it would involve to start getting Settlers in there. I was kind of just enjoying playing with the builder for a while; and hoping eventually to get everything in order and working properly before starting that part of the game. I've been working on Sanctuary Hills (in game/without mods) for over a month now, so it has taken a long time to amass all this. I've been exploring the Commonwealth while avoiding any main quest stuff whenever possible; and Trashcan Carla sells bulk supplies for building; which is really handy since she tends to get stuck in Sanctuary (but her inventory continues to flip over regularly).

But on fixing the houses = some Youtube vid said that the Settlers wouldn't be happy with leaking roofs; broken windows; or foundations with no floor coverings. I tried all those "placing windows using the rug glitch" tricks, and couldn't get a thing to work well enough = so boarded up all the windows in my settlement, as much as I hated to do it.

The roofs was easy, those huge foundation blocks hid the trashy mess and actually looked decent; but the floors...not sure how to get a floor in there over those piles of leaves and junk that can't be removed. I tried wooden floor pieces = they were the perfect height to cover the debris, but extremely hard to place without the CK or hours of fiddling with the XYZ axis's.

I saw some cute checkered floor pieces in the Vault package, but haven't found them in my workshop menu at all; I have no idea how to get them.

On the water treatment plant and power station = I actually had just one purifier; one pump; and every single house had its own (very loud) 3 amp generator. The noise was terrible, I couldn't stand to even go near any of the houses to work on them; so decided the best thing to do would be to scrap all those little generators and make a few big ones instead. I put them down at the water with the purifier and pump so I wouldn't have to hear them either, lol.

The street lights act as conduits (except without the "area of effect that the other conduits have) = so wiring the town by running streetlights down the road was a given; then just running one wire from the street lamp closest to each house and putting a real conduit there made it all look better than those big pylons everywhere. (each house has a big pylon on their roof though).

Then last week some vid I saw said the settlers all drank at least 1 water per day; and that the purifiers and pumps have a day down times where they "rest." Something else I saw said Sanctuary would probably get 20 Settlers; so my one pump and purifier wasn't going to cut it. So last week I made that Power Station and Water Treatment Plant. (like an idiot; made the building first then tried to stick the machines in it, lol).

The building was kind of mish-moshed together; but I liked it too much to tear it down. In the end it worked perfectly = er...well, since no Settlers are there; I am just hoping it will work perfectly, lol. Not really sure it will; but hoping.

And this week I just changed over from machine gun turrets to laser = again, due to the loud racket of the machine gun turrets. The laser ones make noise; but not nearly as much.

By not letting the Settlers in yet; I've been able to do a lot more to fix the place up than I could have otherwise.

Oh, if you have any tips on what happens when you do start getting Settlers; (or things they gripe about, etc) = I'd love to hear them! Does the game actually ever tell you what makes them upset? I mean, how do you find out that they don't like TV's or no floors? Do they say something to the player and you just have to listen?

Bwaahaa! It was like trying to dress up a sow to look pretty, lol. I really hate that Bethesda didn't devise some script where the Settlers swept and the leaves and trash were removed from your house; or a script that would clean the debris off the roads after you set some Settlers out there with shovels or brooms.

It is kind of ridiculous that Bethesda thinks it is "Lore" that a place can never be cleaned up after 200 years. They could have saved us a huge number of resources in our Settlement cells by letting us scrap that stuff.

I know there are mods that fix that; but I've heard they all have issues with game bloat after using; and portal issues if you use them in the interior cells.

This "non-modded" Sanctuary build is what made me so anxious to dig into the CK and make a mod for my Settlements. The very first thing that I did was to shove every bit of that trash and debris below ground, tear off the roofs and bury them too,

... or that everybody only listens to traditional American music or post WWII music (says my heavy metal-loving character Janet Telia).

That actually is a question (and sorry while I go off-topic for a moment): Is the Fallout world supposed to be some sort of alternate reality in which they never experienced anything after 1945, and everything got stuck in a retro sort of phase up until the Great War? Or are all the things we experienced during the 1960s up til X also be included, but only towards 2077 did they go retro?

But yeah, I know what you mean about cleaning up, ha ha. After my FO3 main quest guy finished the Minefield quest, I decided to "move" a few NPCs into that neighborhood, up from Big Town. I wanted to add a merchant in Minefield, specifically. First thing I'm thinking: they want to have a home which is more pleasant. So I moved all the trash on the floor (and blood stains, yuck) out into the void. And added a nicer set of track lighting. And etc....


Yeah, this is what you just taught me, and from now on this is also what I've been doing, instead of deleting stuff outright.

Someone I think was a Dev from another game said about Fallout 4: you can add anything you want; but you can't delete anything in those Settlements.

So in my testing; I tried to use that "find and replace" function like I always did in previous games; but you can't use that in Fallout 4 on all items. Example: those dingy tables in Sanctuary Hills houses that can't be scrapped = they have a linked reference of some sort attached to them and can't even be switched for anything. So now I have to go back into my mod and switch those tables back and hope that clears up the issue.

Another is that little gate behind the Rosa house (the one with the Workbench in it). You can't swap that gate out with anything.

So I had to dump that mod; rename it to mark it as unusable (but kept it so I could reference the stuff I did right in it later) = and start a new mod (the new mod is the one with the static food in it).

Keeping the Sanctuary houses in a mod is the biggest problem; because they kind of suck up the place no matter what you do; but everyone who looks at a Settlement mod is always wanting it to be "lore friendly." I want mine to stay as close to lore friendly as possible; but...maybe the next step up, so I can stand looking at it, lol.

SPEW !!!!

Great looking settlement! Much larger and involved than anything I've ever made!

If you ever do get around to modding, there are mods that let you scrap all that garbage and get the resources from them. There is even a mod to fix the broken sidewalks and roads in Sanctuary!

Thank you so much!

I heard on some vid that Brahman raise the happiness level in your Settlement; so I built a Brahman barn in Sanctuary, lol. Here is some shots of it:



https://imgur.com/a/itClfBQ

Wow, that's a whole Brahmin pen! I never went to that much effort. I don't think Brahmin raise happiness, since the game considers them settlers. But they do generate fertilizer and increase your food yield. Dogs, cats, and gorillas do give a happiness bonus.

This is a great guide for Settlements

Oh, this is Awesome! Thanks for the Link !!!

I've only truly started tapping into Settlements capabilities in the past few weeks. I quite enjoy it, although obviously there are some improvements I already have in mind that should've been done. (Also, how the Oblivion do you get lights, TVs, etc. to work? I've only randomly gotten some lights to work at Home Plate before really diving into Settlements, but I don't know how I did it.) Overall, I like what I can do, but I still have to learn some stuff and still have a bunch of settlements I have barely touched. Fortunately, I have the console at my fingertips to just add components instead of having to incessantly scrounge for them.

I've also started to actually do something about unhappy settlements. Since there were so many other things I wanted to do, I really didn't care about it. But now I actively try to boost settlement happiness (and then of course the inconvenient "This settlement is under attack!" when I'm far away from that one). I think my favorite areas to build are Sanctuary Hills and Starlight Drive-In because there is so much space and freedom to work with. Nordhagen Beach has a good amount of that, too. It would be nice if settlements were more capable of improving themselves, though, so I don't have to keep running in to save the day.

I have a few screenshots, but I want to improve some settlements first before I start showing them off. But I like some of what I have come up with.

SubRosa would be the one to answer questions, she has been playing for years = I'm just starting out; and got anything I know off SubRosa or YouTube, lol.

I did notice that a lot of the lights/TV's you find in a ruined house/town are "statics" (won't work even if electricity is hooked directly to them). You can test them by placing a Conduit (wired to a Generator) near them; and if they still don't work then try running a wire from the Conduit directly to the light/TV/etc. If they don't light or work then = scrap them and craft your own lights/TV.

You won't need a Generator at Home Plate; it is already pre-wired for Electricity (but only in the front door area to just past the corner the Workshop sits in = the Electricity does not reach the back room). Somewhere right in that area between the Workshop and where the back room starts is a Conduit = a small metal spike sticking out (either on one of the walls or from the ceiling).

If you want Electricity to the back room area, you have to extend the wiring from that Conduit to wherever you want it to be by placing more Conduits wiring them to that original Conduit.


Home Plate does have a really deep ceiling beam between that original conduit and the back room; so you might have to run the wire to a "Ground (or Wall) Mounted Conduit" to get past it = or:

** You can sometimes get around this using tricks like the "Rug Glitch" (which actually works really well for this if you use one of the triangle shaped wall-signs). There is also supposed to be a "Wireless Wiring Glitch" I've seen many vids on how to do (but never yet been able to get it to work for me even once, lol).

Electricity can be tricky. Some objects need wires run directly to them. Others simply need to be within the radius of a power radiator. I don't mean a power source, like a windmill or fusion generator. You can find the radiators in the same section as the conduits, and they have to attached to a conduit of some kind. The vanilla radiators have a ridiculously small radius. I modded the game to increase it 10 times the area. There are mods on the Nexus that do likewise.

With items like spotlights or laser turrets that need electricity directly run to them, you have to start with a generator of some kind. You can make windmills with no Science, so that is what you will probably start with. If I recall, you select the generator and press space. That should give you a wire that you can attack to an object. If it is close enough you can run the wire directly to your device. Most likely you will have to create a series of connectors to move power around your settlement. You run a wire from one connector to another in a daisy chain, until you get to your end devices.

There are all kinds of connectors. Most are in the Connectors and Switches sub-section of Power. The main kind is the Power Conduit. It is just a little metal plug that you can run a wire to and from. There are also pylons, which are good for going over long distances outdoors.

There is also a conduit sub-section has a lot more as well. This is not to be confused with the Power Conduits. It is all pipes that power runs through. I like the conduits. Start with a Conduit Junction (it acts like a Power Conduit), and then attach a line of conduit pipes from it. I put power radiators at regular intervals along the pipe. Typically I will run a line of conduit down the lengths of two walls of a building. With the modded power radiators, that will power all the lights inside. Here is an example, with power coming from a windmill on the left, and running down into two lines of conduit

I have read that Power Pylons also give of a radius of power, like power radiators do. But I have not really tried doing much with them.

Pylons do indeed radiate power like the smaller pylons. I use the wooden pylons in to power up the houses in Sanctuary. I'll put two of them on the rooftops and string wire between them and all the houses.

Oh, running those small wooden pylons along the eave is a really good idea! Do you have them laying down or standing upright? I don't know how to angle anything in game like I can in the CK.

I used one of the smaller wooden pylons dead center in the back of all the houses in Sanctuary; (flush against the house) but it wasn't enough to power the house = had to put at least 4 wall mounted Conduit spike things around the outside of the houses too.


On those big pylons SubRosa is talking about = they work really well for that "Area of Effect" Electricity for lighting.

Example:


https://i.imgur.com/dFbvnMY.jpg


You can see the length of the gaps between them in the row of large pylons on the roof of this building; and the row of lights so far below it = those lights are powered only by the pylon's radiant Electricity.

Because it worked so well there; I tried using them on the houses too = put one of the big pylons dead center on each of the roofs in Sanctuary to run wires to the turrets there = was hoping the pylon would also supply ambient power to the lights in the house; but it didn't work = not sure why.

I am going to keep experimenting with it; see if I can figure out the problem. I'm really hoping to get rid of all the wires around the houses = was even considering toggling clipping and trying to run the pylons below ground, lol. (couldn't do it, "TCL" stopped working in my game on that last Steam update when the screenshots stopped working).

Two of them along the roof ridge usually takes care of the whole house. Sometimes the radius doesn't make it to the front door, though.

Okay, thanks! I'll add one to each house and remove all that other I put around the houses!

This used to always get me. When you use the TCL command, make sure nothing is selected first, otherwise it won't work. So click around a blank spot on the screen a few times until no refid shows as selected. Then try the command.

Aha!!!! Thank you so much for this tip !!!!! I so hope this works, I hate not being able to use it when needed!

Ooh, windmills? I wonder how many units of electricity they generate?

That conduit looks really good; I really need to find that and see if I can make it. It looks much better than the wires everywhere!

Windmills are pretty underwhelming in vanilla, IMO. They only generate 3 power. I've since found a mod that lets you select how much it generates (I use 10) and increase the speed of the rotation.

Only 3 each? yeah, that isn't enough at all. I'd def want to tweak that in the CK if I was going to use them. Even tweaked though; because of those horrible Sanctuary houses = might look better to build a "wind farm" on the fringes and run the power in like I've done now with the Fusion Generators. It would be a lot quieter than the generators, though (I think, actually haven't run across any windmills in game or built one yet).

This game has A LOT of noise pollution in the Settlements. I couldn't stand going into Sanctuary before I moved the generators to the far end away from the houses (and changed the turrets to Heavy Lasers = (which are still pretty noisy; but not nearly as loud as the Heavy Machine Guns).

I've been toying with making a mod for Sanctuary; but am torn over the houses. I can't stand the "Clean/Prewar" look of the Sanctuary houses at all; but = not thrilled with the post war Sanctuary look either. Those houses are so at odds with every other house in the entire game; they just don't seem to fit with the area around them at all. The houses in Concord look better, imho.

Anyone have any suggestions for a better house model to use in Sanctuary, I'm all ears! Nothing fancy; nothing too clean (but I do think it is ridiculous that after 200 years people couldn't pick up trash off their floors or sweep leaves out of their houses = that will absolutely be done in the houses in my mod).

I'll probably keep the Player house and Rosa house intact; just cover the outer walls with some other building material and possibly add a second floor to the Rosa house. (But the rest of the houses may be dumped, depending on if I can find something suitable to replace them).

** If I ever get it done and going to load it into my game = will probably customize the turrets to run quieter, too;

How about this mod for inspiration: Weathered Sanctuary Home.

It's basically a pre-war, un-ruined version of the player home, but with post-war textures. It and Sanctuary Clean Roads never leave my load order.

Quieter Settlements will reduce the noise from generators and gun turrets. Its been a standard part of my rotation for a long time.

I actually saw this mod yesterday for the first time (Weathered Sanctuary Home) and earmarked it for possible future use as inspiration since I'm keeping at least the Player and Rosa house intact. I really do like the idea of the intact exteriors looking worn/rusted/etc. (and that horribly shiny prewar interior being toned down to a normal appearance!!!)

That modder had an excellent idea; and I def got inspiration from it! It is def a better alternative than either the Prewar or Post war Player Houses!

I was kind of disappointed that the Author didn't finish the rest of the homes in Sanctuary with the weathered textures and prewar exteriors. In seeing how good a job she did on the Player House; I was inspired to finish out the rest of Sanctuary with those textures on the prewar exteriors if I can't find a better house style to use in there. It would sure be easier than what I've been doing = throwing up facades on all the exterior walls in Sanctuary piece by piece. Altering the textures and using intact houses would be so much faster and use so many less resources than what I've been doing!


On the "Sanctuary Clean Roads" = I've actually already done all this in my mod whenever I upload it. That was the easy part!

Oooh! I def want to check this out! I was just going to customize the turrets in my mod by turning off whatever sound they had going on and saving them as a new item with a new name! Thanks SR !!!!

Thanks for the tips! I just tried the thing with the pylons for the first time today. And it worked! I've really been delving into settlement building the last few weeks, but there are so many now and the populations are growing so fast that I needed to shut off some of the Settlement Recruitment Beacons to keep up.

I really didn't care much about settlement building before, but I'm actually really enjoying it now. Sometimes kind of hard to make realistic structures though (some of these would not be structurally sound in the slightest, but I tried using some supports from the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC to make it seem a bit more realistic).

I am loving having this thread to come to for advice, too! I've learned so much from it already!

Looks like someone beat you to it, mALX!

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/37597

This is Awesome! I like that they let you decide how much of the changes you want to make; and love most of the new textures they added = especially the wood paneling! (the tiles in the bathroom are still way too shiny; I prefer the post war textures to that overly shiny look).

Thank you so much for posting this, I really like this one!

I spent the night playing with houses to replace those in Sanctuary. Here are some screens of a few I've come up with = welcoming thoughts and opinions; suggestions; etc.



https://imgur.com/a/ffMIQab

If that was a mod, I'd have it yesterday!

I agree with you; I do like the look of those prefab exteriors; I think they suit what Sanctuary should look like better than the vanilla Sanctuary houses = and they sure cut down on materials usage! The only down side of them = not easy to set up the interiors properly for using them; the walls are all over the place.

It would be so much easier to just have an outside shell and make my own interiors. (which is what I was looking for; prefab exteriors with full walls (not invisible on the inside like all their "load door" houses are. The only ones they have are Static Collections; can't break them without issues (so I've been trying to find the major pieces Bethesda made the prefabs with so I can set up my own Static Collection house with a better interior).

Those two big red houses in the back of the Settlement need the exterior walls repaired; but the way the interiors are set up is Awesome! I really would like to use them; so plan to repair those broken walls and use them. (though I might change their colors from red and green to something a bit closer to the prefabs in the screens.

Oh, and the double vanilla Sanctuary house was just an experiment; but I didn't like it at all = left it in there to remind myself how bad it looked later when I'm deciding, lol. What I was actually thinking of doing instead of that was to change the exterior materials of the Vanilla Sanctuary houses to something a bit more in keeping with the rest of the wasteland; remove the roofs; put stairs in and build up a second floor right off the original base houses. That might work; and would look a lot better than just duplicating the below house and raising it up to make a second floor.

(I'll probably fiddle with testing that out tonight).

** on a different note: I did discover how they did the Navmeshing for the scrap-able objects like that fence I moved from the backyards and put up all along my Sanctuary road (that now NPC's and Brahman keep walking into since I moved it).

Bethesda linked the Navmesh to the scrap-able items by marking those triangles as "Initially Disabled;" thereby creating "gaps" in the Navmesh where all the scrap-able items initially sit. They become enabled when the items are moved/scrapped/etc; thereby enabling that Navmesh so NPC's can walk where the cars we scrapped once stood; etc.

When you turn on your Navmesh; you can see where they did them all = it shows up a bright-bright pink on the Navmesh.

Nabbed some shots of my room at the Castle, aka Minutemen HQ.

https://i.imgur.com/8e7ymi0.png

https://i.imgur.com/JENMn0V.png

https://i.imgur.com/XCDFiKf.png

Wow, that looks really cool. Must nicer than I am used to seeing the Castle look!

Holy Cow, this is AWESOME !!!!!

Could've sworn I took more pictures of settlements, but I guess not. Anyway, there aren't exactly impressive settlements, but it's what I have been building so far. I still have 2 DLCs that I need to get to expand the range of what I can build. I can certainly buy them full-price ($5), but I'm skeptical that they are worth that much for what little you seem to get.

Here is some of what I have been building.

Sanctuary Hills

Red Rocket Truck Stop

Spectacle Island

Spectacle Island - Main Building Interior

Starlight Drive-In

Starlight Drive-In - Aerial View

Nordhagen Beach

Wow, you are a real builder! Those structures you've made are Awesome!

I love all the outhouses on Spectacle Island. I did that with Red Rocket and Victoria's tugboat home.

I am never sure what to do with the Drive In. The radioactive pool in the middle turns most of my characters off completely. I was thinking of making it a lair for Loviatar. But even then I was not sure if I should live in the projection building, or in the building at the base of the screen. So I have never done anything with it.

You can scrap the barrels at Starlight to get rid of the rads.

I had no idea. I thought the radiation was from its own marker that you could not interact with.

Thanks! In many of my settlements, I've tried building community structures like the interior of the Spectacle Island building.

I also just ran out of space completely at the Red Rocket Truck Stop when I was playing just a bit ago. First time I did that. I added a little bit of stuff, but the shot I have of it here is pretty much its final look.




Haha, thanks. All the stuff you can add to settlements makes me a bit disappointed that settlers won't actually interact with most stuff you can make, like putting stuff in footlockers or playing pool or using sinks. (Granted, I don't want to actually see NPCs go to the bathroom, but you get my point.)

And yeah, what Kane said about the radioactive barrels. I happened to scan over the barrels when looking into the pool, so I scrapped them and put a Brahmin trough there (maybe some other stuff later). It's a similar thing with at least Vault 88, where there is a bunch of uranium and I believe some radioactive barrels that can be scrapped.

Nope! It actually works out pretty nice once you scrap them. The pool is big enough to drop an industrial water pump into it!

Boston Airport is easily the lamest settlement in the game.

While I was making some updates to my Nordhagen Beach settlement, I saw a couple of Mirelurk Hunters across the water at the airport. I figured I'd go waste them while exploring some more of the airport, because the last time I was there I hadn't really searched it thoroughly.

Lo and behold, I find a workbench! This is a neat little place, I thought. Small, but I'll make it a cool mini-town. The rugs that were still there from pre-War times could be like little streets. I was planning 5 two-story homes in my mind along with a little marketplace in the back. Sounds cool, right?

After making the first floors for each house, I started making the second floor. All of a sudden, I was almost out of room. I then had absolutely no space left, the other houses weren't close to finished, and I hadn't even put anything inside the houses yet. And then I found out there is LITERALLY NO SPACE FOR FOOD IN THE SETTLEMENT. And I do mean literally, because placing food is not even an option in the settlement builder menu.

After finagling some more with the place and finding out that I had to make a supply line in order to bring food there, I decided that it wasn't worth the trouble. So right now it is a ghost town. There are first floors, 9 beds, and a platform for my marketplace, but I can add almost nothing more to the settlement and it isn't going to be worth the hassle.

TL;DR: Boston Airport is absolute garbage as a settlement and none of you should bother with it.


Speaking of running out of room, Bethesda made that way too restrictive for some settlements and the amount of space to work with isn't distributed well across them all. Some places have plenty more room for me to do something with, especially some of the bigger ones, but it won't actually allow me to build much more. And then others have so much space left I don't know what to do with it (e.g. Spectacle Island). Dalton Farm, which I was just building on a few minutes ago, is a small or medium-sized settlement, but the settlement builder HUD is telling me I have loads of space to do stuff with.

Oh, and one more thing: Does anybody have their workshops menu on their Pip-Boy show incorrect stats for some of their settlements? Because I have been getting that quite a bit. For example, it said Nordhagen Beach had 32 people, no water, and no food, which wasn't even remotely true. But then when you go to the settlement the stats are fixed. What gives?

The bottom of the Settlements guide mentions that bug you have been having, and some ideas that might fix it. Likewise, they offer some console commands to increase the settlement build size.

Wow, I learned a couple really great tricks on that link! Thanks, SubRosa!