Fallout 4 Settlements

In Fallout 4, the Sole Survivor can build and manage their own settlements at various sites around the Commonwealth. The new workshop interface is used to place and connect pre-fabricated structures as well as individual pieces (walls, floors, roofs, etc.) letting the player character construct their own home base(s) as they desire.

Once built, these settlements can be customized extensively. Inside buildings and structures, furniture, decorations, and lights can be placed for aesthetic purposes; outside these structures, the player character can plant crops, create water and power supplies, and tend to the defensive needs of their new settlement. To accumulate resources for their settlements, the player character can scrap most interactive inventory items.

Once a settlement reaches a certain size and/or the player obtains necessary perks, they can invite others to set up shop at their base by building unique resources such as the trading post, which adds a vendor NPC stocking some of the best in-game items. It is also possible to establish supply lines between settlements to share resources and inventory among them.

Settlements require constant maintenance with NPCs tending to more basic functions such as crop harvesting. However, without this, crops will fail and equipment will need repair over time. The player character will have to use the workshop and have the required junk to complete the repairs. Walking up to a damaged or failed item while in workshop mode, the player character will be offered a selection to scrap/repair the observed item.

Most of these sites can be obtained during the Minutemen quests; however, others will require visiting them and completing location-specific quests.



Settlement sites
 There are 30 discoverable/unlockable settlements in total, most are obtained by completing an objective or killing hostiles/residents in the area then opening the workshop. Those include:

Legend:

Armor workbench Chemistry station  Weapons workbench  Power armor station  Cooking station

Necessities and dependencies
These stats need to be maintained to sustain or stagnate the growth of a settlement. Each necessity would also act as a dependency on other necessities; i.e. people need water, food, beds and protection to live long and prosper.
 * People
 * The population of the settlement. People are required to collect from resource units and man objects the Sole Survivor builds. Each settlement has a default max population of 10 settlers plus each point of Charisma the character has, which has a base max of 21 before factoring in extra charisma from armor and consumables (the theoretical limit could be much higher once power armor charisma increases are calculated). A radio beacon is generally required to attract more settlers, but one can send companions to settlements and can recruit a few non-companion characters to join the settlements as well.
 * Note that increasing populations and lower happiness scores will increase the time for new settlers to arrive using the radio beacon.
 * Dependencies: water, food, beds, defense, radio beacon


 * Food
 * How much food the settlement is producing. Increased by placing food resources.
 * Dependencies: people, water. Crops will die without water.


 * Water
 * How much water the settlement has.
 * Dependencies: people, power (only with water purifiers)


 * Power
 * How much power is available for the settlement to use. Power required for turrets, traps, lights and some furniture (TV).
 * Repair Generators after attacks, they are a main target
 * Dependencies: n/a

(Note that the defence values do not directly correlate with actual combat efficiency. A Mk. 5 machine gun turret can kill enemies several times faster than a Mk. 1 heavy machine gun turret, but will contribute less to the settlement defense value)
 * Defense
 * Measures how defendable the settlement is, based on traps, guard posts and turrets one has. Advisable to have a defense rating at least the sum of the food and water ratings. These defenses will have to be repaired from time to time.
 * Dependencies: people, power (with certain turrets and traps)


 * Beds
 * The number of beds in the settlement. The settlement needs one bed per settler to keep the settlers happy.
 * Some settlers need to be assigned a bed. Check for insomniacs in the middle of the night and send them to bed.
 * Settlers will automatically assign themselves to beds as they are built. In settlements with preexisting beds, such as Abernathy Farm (4), Tenpines Bluff (2), and (especially) Covenant (9), settlers MUST be assigned to these beds- they WILL NOT automatically assign themselves. Interestingly enough, the preexisting beds in some settlements, such as Sunshine Tidings Co-op, will automatically be assigned a settler as they are recruited. Even though these settlements (such as Covenant, especially if you kill everyone) reflect a proper amount of beds in the building overlay, settlers will frequently comment on the bed situation and the happiness of the settlement WILL be negatively affected. If your settlement meets the needs of the settlers but happiness is still low, travel to the settlement, enter build mode, and walk around to see if the beds are flagged as owned or not. In settlements with a large amount of people, manually assigning each settler to a bed can become difficult, time-consuming, and is ultimately unnecessary unless you are having the problem mentioned above. In rare cases, beds are flagged as owned and settlers cannot be assigned to them at all. To fix this problem on PC, simply enter the console, click on the preexisting bed, and type and build a new bed in its place. An easy fix to this problem on both consoles is building an additional amount of beds equal to the number of preexisting beds. If there are more settlers than beds, it is possible that very few settlers- if not any- will assign themselves to a bed unless the total needs for all settlers are met. It is a good practice to scrap/disable/ignore all preexisting beds in a settlement and build new ones in their place to avoid this problem from the start.
 * Dependencies: n/a


 * Happiness
 * Morale of the settlement. Influenced by meeting basic needs and providing trading posts. High happiness increases the productivity of settlers.
 * Dependencies: beds, trading stands, food, water, defense, lights
 * One may lose control of a settlement that is very unhappy.


 * Size
 * Shows the amount of objects that have been placed by the player character within the settlement, as well as the maximum amount of objects that can be placed through the Settlement interface. Every item existing or that you build takes up settlement size. If your settlement is built out/ full and you want to add on something, you need to take down a few mailboxes, light poles, trees etc.
 * It is possible to bypass the in game size limit of settlements by dropping junk items to the ground and scrapping them manually. Each scrapped items refunds a small amount of allotment points allowing you to build more objects. Be warned however, that depending on processing power, placing large amounts of objects in any settlement will cause a lot of frame rate issues and lag while in that settlement.
 * Dependencies: n/a

With the Local Leader perk, food/water and junk resources can be shared between settlements connected by a supply line allowing the player character to quickly build out new settlements or even specialize them.

Related perks

 * Gun Nut allows for the creation of more advanced defenses.
 * Hacker is required for the creation of Terminals.
 * Local Leader allows for two settlements to have a Supply Line, sharing resources. Rank 2 of the perk also allows for the creation of vendor stalls and crafting stations.
 * Armorer is required additionally to build Power Armour crafting stations.
 * Science! is required for the creation of assorted advanced power-focused structures.
 * Cap Collector allows for level three vendors to be created. Local Leader rank 2 must also be taken to craft level three vendors, and Medic must be taken for level 3 pharmacies.
 * Medic is required for the creation of pharmacies. Local Leader rank 2 also must be taken, and Cap Collector must be taken for level 3 pharmacies.

Unlockable settlement items
Have a look here for further items Advanced settlement items

Stores
¹ - Adding the appropriate expert trader will unlock the level 4 merchant

² - Can also be labelled 'Bar' depending on localisation.

Budget settlement (Sanctuary)
Build supports 20 settlers, minimum 12. When setting up camp, place the medium generator, water purifiers, and recruitment radio beacon close together. The generator can support all 3 items by itself. Each settler can maintain 6 units of food (6 Mutfruit or 12 of any other plants), so 4 settlers can maintain 24 Food. Settlers that do not maintain plants can be set to guard duty. Each guard can man 3 guard posts, so 4 settlers can man the 10 posts. Mutfruit plants can be obtained at Greentop Nursery, Graygarden, or Warwick homestead. Minimum Cost Alternately, the player character can build x7 water pumps, at a cost of: The disadvantage of water pumps compared to water purifiers is that the purifier will add purified water to the workshop inventory, a benefit to player character's health and can be a renewable income source.
 * People - x1 Settlement recruitment beacon
 * Beds - x20 sleeping bag
 * Food - x20 mutfruit (requires 4 settlers)
 * Water - x2 water purifier
 * Power - x1 medium generator
 * Defense - x20 guard post (requires 7 settlers)
 * 12 settlers (supports 20)
 * 200 wood
 * 64 cloth
 * 117 steel
 * 20 mutfruit plant
 * 18 copper
 * 14 rubber
 * 8 ceramic
 * 4 oil
 * 3 screw
 * 3 gear
 * 2 circuitry
 * 2 crystal
 * 28 steel
 * 7 concrete
 * 7 gear

Advanced Settlement Building Techniques
There are some ways to get around the clipping of settlement objects with each other and preexisting objects in the world to allow you to build more sophisticated structures. These can all be done without mods however some will require using the game console. See Fallout 4 console commands for the full list of console commands.

You can achieve this by placing a small door mat down and then placing a larger item like a wall on top of it. when you select the mat by holding down the select button it will also pick up the items linked on top however the collision will only be enabled for the floor mat, enabling you to potentially clip the larger object into other objects provided the mat isn't clipping with anything.
 * Mat Exploit

The console command tcl will disable clipping to yourself. It will also turn off clipping for any objects you place down or select while in this mode, allowing you to put other objects inside of it. If you have an object placed that you want to put another object inside of you simple select that object then deselect it to disable it's collision. You can then place down an object inside of it. Once you remove the collision you will also remove the ability to select that item. To restore collision simply enter tcl into the command again to reactivate clipping. You can enter tcl again to go back into tcl and begin removing collision again.
 * Console: TC

This command is best used for junk wall placement to allow you to join the sections of wall together.

Modpos will allow you to move any object in the game that is selectable within the console. To target an object simply click on it when you have the console open. Modpos will require you to specify an axis and also an amount to move an object by. Because you are forcing the object to be moved through console this will ignore all collision and will allow you to move the object anywhere you wish. Each unit of movement is quite small and you can get a high degree of accuracy.
 * Console: modpos

Some sample distances:


 * 1 full size floor object length = 256
 * 1 full size floor object height = 15
 * 1 upper shack floor object height = 22
 * 1 wall height = 202

While Modpos moves a selected object a given distance, Setpos moves it to specified x, y, or z coordinates. Both ignore any clipping including with the original environment. Setpos is most useful when dealing with an item that snaps to another and the game will preview the object in the correct position but will not place it there. For example, you can get the coordinates of a wall while it is in the preview location, then place it on the other side of the floor in an allowed location, then use Setpos to move it back to the preview location already placed.
 * Console: setpos

To use it, open the console while the object is snapped into the preview position. Click on the object and get its x, y and z coordinates in that location with:

Close the console. Now place the object elsewhere in the same orientation, parallel to the final destination. With the object placed, open the console again, and with the object still selected use the following, replacing # with the number shown by Getpos for that axis.

If you need to scroll back up in the console to get the coordinate, the PageUp and PageDown buttons may be used.

When you're building big settlements, often you are confronted with a full size bar. This means that, according to the game mechanics, you can't place another item in your settlement. A quick work-around can help you to easily reduce your settlement size, which enable you to place more items.
 * Unlimited size


 * 1) Place the weapons in the workbench
 * 2) Remove the weapons from the workbench
 * 3) Drop the weapons on the ground
 * 4) Enter workshop-mode
 * 5) Click on the weapons, and store them in the Workshop

Doing this will reduce your settlement size, and enables you to build bigger settlements.