Settlements getting annoying

[jet4571]

The system is definitely flawed, You didn't show up? OK random magic dice roll time.

 

A nice change would be make defense count against the magic dice role Bethesda added for when you are not there. each 10 of defense adds that percent chance of no damage or lives lost. 100 defense and 100% chance of no lives lost or damage. Then if there is damage like a downed turret and you do visit have an NPC repairing it.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

The frequency of attacks is... irritating. I think I will likely forego some of the settlements next time around because, frankly, they're a hassle to maintain.

 

The attacks are nonsensical, too. I've had attacks on Sanctuary, which has turrets here there and everywhere, and is also my designated inactive companion and spare power armor parking zone, which consisted of three raiders with pipe pistols. I've also had attacks on crappy little two nameless goof huts where the opposition brought three rocket launchers and a frigging fat man to steal... I dunno, their dirt, I guess. You'd think that the weaker settlements would be more attractive to weaker opponents, and only the very toughest marauding freaks would choose to run the gauntlet of a dozen heavy MG turrets, half that many laser turrets, and seven unkillable NPCs most of whom have fully customized and upgraded weaponry. Actually, scratch that. You'd think that only scripted story events would dare to attack that. All the (insert attacking idiots here) ever accomplish is to kill one random NPC and make me figure out which one so I can reassign their duties to someone who hasn't been turned into worm food.

 

There are other things that bug me about the settlements... one being the inability to effect repairs on existing structures at the location. Okay, so I've reclaimed my home street and moved a bunch of people in... now why can't I so much as patch a roof (or a bridge!) here? I see people banging hammers on that yellow house all damn day every day, but nothing's changed apart from the guard posts and turrets that I put on top of the carport myself. Which things can and cannot be scrapped and/or cleared is wacky, too. Okay, so I can get all the downed limbs dragged off and chopped up... but I can't do anything about the overgrown grass and dead shrubbery that does nothing but block my defenses' firing lanes? Oi. I literally have a robot for that. Let him do his job!

 

Or how about this conspicuously missing gem: an assignment tracker in the workshop screen, with options to locate NPCs so they can be more easily assigned or reassigned! Or defensive tactics for NPCs! Being able to tell them to take up arms and fight or hunker down in a designated safe zone until the turrets and less squishy folks mop up the trouble... that would make all the difference. I'd love to be able to tell all the nameless fools to go hide in the bathroom and close the door so that I don't have to run around town like a headless chicken in the aftermath trying to figure out if my shopkeep is among the dead or just having one out behind the toolshed.

Edited November 18, 2015 by Wrath_Of_Deadguy01

[Vagrant0]

Yeah that's why I only concentrate on Hangmans Alley. It is my one stop shop for everything and if it comes under attack it is incidental.

 

I do though understand the frustration if you want to have everything running optimally. It'll be something I look into when I work on the settlement expansion mod. My intentions for the mod are to scale the boundaries of the settlement out for more building space when you reach population milestones and have it reset the build cap. This is kinda like any of those games where you need to build houses in order to increase your population or even Falloutshelter requires pop milestones to unlock buildings... hey now that's an idea...

 

I'll keep that in mind to block invasions when your defense ratings are exceeding the population by like 25-33%.

 

The problem with that is that the game AI gets exponentially slower and buggier the more NPCs you have in an area. This is an engine limitation more than anything which can be solved by modding, and is a limitation that has been present even going back as far as Morrowind. It's not as noticable these days since our hardware is exponentially better, but it still exists as a significant limitation. Between the AI limitations and the fact that there is a complete lack of organizational tools available to the player for keeping a population figured out, I wouldn't see a settlement larger than 30 people working very well. Have to remember, all those turrets are technically actors too, and share the same processing.

 

Really, the the issues here are that the game settings related to attack logic is broken, the merchant and farmer AI is badly set for longevity, and settlements lack organization tools. These factors are made worse due to bugs where resource values don't seem to load reliably, causing random bed, food, and water shortages and phantom happiness bugs.

[Raycheetah]

Is it even necessary to assign settlers to defense? Best I can tell (watching other folks' playthroughs), setting up turrets does not require settlers, and boosts defense quickly. Wouldn't it be better to build a cheap fence, set up gauntlets of automated death at the chokepoints, and assign those settlers to farming for adhesive crops, or as shopkeeps? =0[.]o=

[DimosZargarda]

A little off topic but I dont want to created a new thread just for this: Are all the settlements you create/defend considered your home, or do you get ONE settlement to call your home and thats it?

[jcdenton2012]

I've turned Sanctuary Hills into a true bastion. 21 settlers wearing combat armor and each carrying assault rifles. Metal walls, overlapping tiers of turrets three deep heading up the slope. And the turrets... rocket turrets, heavy laser turrets, and heavy machine gun turrets...

 

And yet, I don't show up for three raiders attacking the front gate, and lose like 4 people. This s#*! needs to be patched real bad.

[Vagrant0]

Is it even necessary to assign settlers to defense? Best I can tell (watching other folks' playthroughs), setting up turrets does not require settlers, and boosts defense quickly. Wouldn't it be better to build a cheap fence, set up gauntlets of automated death at the chokepoints, and assign those settlers to farming for adhesive crops, or as shopkeeps? =0[.]o=

The game does not respect walls or chokepoints. Enemies can still spawn inside walls and all your NPCs will run in the direction of danger, even if they have no weapon or anything worn. The benefits of having a guard post is in having an NPC who spends most their time near the perimeter who is more likely to have a decent weapon. Settlers can't be killed by enemies, but giving them armor will make them last longer before they go prone. Even with an obscene number of turrets, the accuracy of those turrets is usually pretty bad, so armed settlers are usually the best way to go as far as actually repelling an attack. The defense stat doesn't seem to be very reliable when it comes to preventing attacks from occurring. Have had settlements with more than 200 defense get attacked on numerous occasions. And of course you have to visit settlements any time they're attacked or else they automatically lose something. I'm thinking that like most other parts of the settlement system this wasn't tested very well.

 

 

A little off topic but I dont want to created a new thread just for this: Are all the settlements you create/defend considered your home, or do you get ONE settlement to call your home and thats it?

You get somewhere around 24-30 settlement areas depending on what factions you support and how much you do for them. There is also a house in Diamond City that you can buy. But, everything uses the settlement system. There are no more pre-set themed homes like with FO3 or Skyrim.

[thestigma]

The whole settlement system needs a major overhaul.

 

- The resource management game is very shallow and without any proper goals or challange as it stands. Good idea, but it's like they stopped the development at a prototype stage. It essentially amounts to a few trivial steps that you just have to run through before you get to play dress-up-barbie with the settlements - and I call it "dress-up" because essentially what you build doesn't matter at all. A single square room with some sleeping bags + slapping down some random waterpumps, crops and turrets mostly at random is likely to be basically just as effective as spending 10 hrs and 20 times as many resources constructing the ultimate fortress with elevated covered catwalks, full walls and multiple funnels, gates and chokepoints. Heck, if you aren't there to look at the battle happening then it seems like the game just uses the defense number and entirely ignores everything else. Which brings me to:

 

- The rading system is entirely broken (and without that working, settlements can't really work in a game mechanics sense). I mean really... enemies randomly spawn inside of your base. Whoever programmed this didn't even understand the most basic concept that enemies would have to spawn outside the build-able area? Just such a simple and basic mistake means that all that intricate defense you spent time building is entirely pointless.... That big and obvious bridge chokepoint in sanctuary is just a trollolol by the devs.

 

- Finally, the building itself. It is rough as as hell. Even if you know what and how to build - you have to fight the controls through each step. Nuff said.

 

It's a GREAT idea though. Even as shallow and broken as it is currently - I spend hours and hours on my settlements even though I know that it essentially is just a pointless waste of time. If the mechanics and systems around this actually worked in a meaningful way it would add so much to Fallout. Currently though it basically just amount to more fluff cosmetic customization.

 

-Stigma

[Merovign]

I built a really thoughtful defense and completely walled the area, and the bad guys just spawn inside the walls and *break plants* and steal my power armor and die in it - at which point it is *completely unrecoverable*.

 

I don't know that I've found a single thing yet in this game that is intuitive or well thought-out.

 

*If* the UI is sufficiently fixed before the GECK comes out, I will probably ignore settlements and the minutemen thing completely, because it's a huge time sink and it makes no sense.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Merovign

[Sozerius]

I don't pay that much attention to the 'settler' number, as that number magically raises up pretty fast to be honest - if I ever did lose any from an attack I definitely did not notice, but I was under the impression that you don't lose settlers to attacks (and when you are around they cannot be killed by enemies ie. they are immortal except to player attacks- your traps could kill them though) - I will go help a settlement if I notice and am not busy - I have to go back to places to micromanage my inventory and carry weight anyways so its not that big a deal, usually just takes a minute - and then fast travel back to whereever I was, usually after doing some buying and selling that I needed to do at the settlement anyways. ^^'