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.
 * 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


 * 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.
 * 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 extra.
 * 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.

Mat Exploit 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.

Console: TCL 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.

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

Console: modpos 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.

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

Bugs

 * While away from a settlement the Pip-Boy's Workshop section on the Data screen may show stats like Water or Beds as 0 regardless of actual values and may show an erroneous number of settlers. The settlement may experience the expected negative consequences. Returning to the settlement fixes the issue temporarily, but fast traveling away may cause it to recur intermittently. It is frequently related to TVs, jukeboxes, or stores. Fixes and workarounds include:
 * Scrap all TVs and jukeboxes including pre-existing ones.
 * From the building menu, store and then replace any stores.
 * Store and then replace water producing objects.
 * Place all beds and generators on top of player-made floors.
 * For very close settlements like Sanctuary Hills and Red Rocket, an issue in one settlement can cause the bug to manifest in the other.
 * As a temporary workaround, leave the settlement a distance on foot before using fast travel, such as going inside the Vault 111 fence before fast traveling away from Sanctuary Hills.
 * Settlers may complain about a lack of beds even when there are enough, including as a dialogue option with the trader at a general store. Happiness rating will suffer as a result. To fix, move all beds onto player-created flooring, and then for any settlers who have not claimed a bed, use the Command option in the build menu to manually assign them.
 * After 2 AM all settlers with a bed should be in them except for those assigned to guardposts, artillery, or as provisioners on supply routes. Any settlers still wandering after this time likely need manual assignment.
 * On PC, to keep settlers stationary during large numbers of manual assignments, open the console with the ~ key and enter the command . Hit enter, and then ~ again to close the console. Clipping will be toggled off, freezing the settlers in place and allowing the player to move through objects, but still allowing bed assignments to be made on any beds that existed before the tcl command. Repeat the command when finished to toggle clipping back on.
 * Due to a previously mentioned bug, sometimes the Pip-Boy may display settlers as being 0. If the settlement has an active recruitment beacon it may recruit new settlers during this time. Upon visiting the settlement again, the count is corrected but the new settlers remain, resulting in a settlement population over the Charisma-based limit.
 * If a distress pulser is dropped on the ground in a settlement and then scrapped using the building screen it will permanently emit a distress signal. There is no way to fix this as of patch 1.2.
 * When defending a settlement that is under attack, the miscellaneous objective might mark itself as "completed" before all enemies are killed.
 * After successfully defending a settlement from an attack, if interacting with any of the settlers, they will proceed with their "thank you" dialogue speech, but never actually finish.
 * After successfully defending a settlement from an attack, interacting with any of the settlers could cause the player character to be stuck in an infinite dialogue camera. The player character can walk away, but will be unable to press any buttons other than Toggle, Crouch or Options. One can fix this by passing through a section that leads through a loading screen (Diamond City for example), but may prove difficult since the pip-boy button for fast travel is also disabled. The only reliable way of fixing this issue is to reload a save.
 * Items placed down appear visible, but may not have loaded or registered properly. Furthermore, one can't even interact with said object and just pass through it.
 * When called upon to defend a settlement, sometimes all aggressors may be killed without a successful completion message and traveling away results in failure. In this situation Console commands may be used to successfully complete the defense. After saving the game for safe measure, find the corpse of an attacker. Corpses of settlers who were synths will not work for this purpose. Open the console. Click on the corpse, type "resurrect", and then close the console. The attacker will be brought back to life and can be killed again, completing the defense. If doing so once does not work, drag the corpse within the settlement construction boundary, then repeatedly resurrect/kill up to ten times. This triggers the completion of the defense.
 * In some attacks a lone synth settler may be killed before other attackers spawn, and the quest does not complete successfully. Resurrecting the settler via the console does not work as the resulting settler is not aggressive. To solve this on PC, after saving the game for safe measure, open the console and issue the command "sqt" without the quotation marks. A list of all active quests will be displayed. Use Page Up to scroll back and look for an appropriately named quest, such as "" or . In some cases the quest name may no longer show after the synth's death, so reverting to a save before visiting the settlement may be necessary. Using the quest name, issue the command where "questname" is the name of the quest (i.e. sqs WorkshopSynthInfiltrator01). The quest stages are displayed as well as the current stage it is on. Use the number for the final stage of the quest in the command  to end the quest successfully (i.e. setstage WorkshopSynthInfiltrator01 1000). Close the console and the success message should appear on screen and the quest should no longer show in the Pip Boy map and Miscellaneous quest section. Note: You can revert save verify the quest name and stage, then load save after killing synth and then use the console command to complete with success.
 * Since this bug is caused by a lone synth attack, a much easier and less convoluted way of solving this problem is to save your game, open the console, and type . If this does not complete the quest, continue with, , and so on until the quest completion notification is obtained. Reload your game and enter the command. Voila! All credits for this fix go to the person who wrote the initial fix above. This is just a simpler way of doing it.
 * when you have several settlements connected, Pack Brahmin may spawn inside buildings and will be unable to leave
 * After choosing 'barter' at a user-created settlement shop, the trade window may open to two blank lists (player and NPC inventories are empty), where the NPC has 0-6 caps and nothing can be done except exit.
 * Possible Solution: Exit trade, open your Pip-Boy and make sure your inventory is open to all. It is likely to be currently open to Misc Items. Then try to barter again.
 * After fast traveling away from a settlement, the level of a Heavy Machinegun may regress to 1.
 * After assigning a settler to a settlement shop at certain settlement locations, they may not become a store owner, but instead say generic settler lines.
 * Settlers with a coded routine may continue it at the expense of an assigned job. This occurs mainly with original settlers from before a settlement is unlocked, and some named settlers. Examples include Sturges or Marcy Long rarely being present at a store if assigned (though still bartering from wherever they are), robots at Graygarden tending plants regardless of assignment, and original settlers in Greentop Nursery assigned to guard posts spending time sitting in chairs inside the house, while new settlers assigned the same roles do not. For assignments like guard duty where being in the correct location matters, a new settler may be a better choice.