Settlers, Settlements, and stuff

[Chemist18]

After playing Fallout 4 for a while, I've come up with several questions about Settlers, Settlements, and Shipments. Rather than create a bunch of threads I figured one would do.

 

1. Shipments - Any time I purchase more than one of a specific type of shipment, only one will convert to the resource when placed into the workshop. The remainder stay "Shipment of ...". I've seen videos demonstrating the duping technique which involved multiple shipments. I've googled this issue without much satisfaction. Mostly, people ask about it and others tell them it's not happening. Right now my guess is you can purchase one of each shipment type per day without issues. Anyone have any other experience with this issue?
2. Settlers and Equipment - Settlers seem to be uniformly low level. I've seen discussions of equipping them with better items. I will typically at least re-equip any guards I assign. Which brings up the next part of this. If I take away a Settler's pipe pistol, give him a Combat Rifle, does it matter. If it matters, does providing the settler with a modded Combat rifle provide additional benefit? Same goes for armor. Leather, Metal, Combat, Light, Sturdy, Heavy, Modded, Unmodded.
3. Planting Crops - This may sound silly but I'm an Anal-ytical Chemist by occupation so... I have a couple mods that make building a settlement easier. There's one unfortunate side-effect, I can put plants too close together and placing them in neat rows is very difficult. Has anyone discovered a simple way to plant in a nice grid? I've tried using the 1/2-wide floors but when I move the floor it inevitably brings a couple plants with it.
4. Settlement attacks seem pretty pitiful. I use Sanctuary Hills to product Purified Water to sell and grow corn, tatos, and mutfruit there for making Vegetable Starch. Right now Santuary Hills has a population of 12, 680 water production, and 30 food production. So far the worst attack has been three relatively low-level radscorpions.

[Warmaker01]

2. In the overall grand scheme of things, what the settlers are equipped with doesn't matter. They're unkillable unless you harm them. I've had a dozen settlement rockets land near them, I've had them get beat down by Supermutants. They'll just get the animation of being knocked down and out of breath of sorts. They'll get into the fight again later but it will take a while. However, if you do outfit them better, they'll perform better. You want the best possibly armed settler that will cut attackers down? Outfit them with fully modded suit of combat armor and full auto plasma weapons with at least 1 round of plasma cartridge, and you're set. They are still going to be invincible like before but the protection you give them will let them last longer. The armament, especially since something like fully modded, full auto plasma has stupidly high accuracy means their shooting is efficient. Edit: This all applies to even your Provisioners.

 

4. IIRC, and I think someone will answer this better than I will, the likeliness of attacks depends on how much production you have going and how much defense there is of a settlement. High production, low defense is a magnet for attacks, while high defense makes it less attractive for attack. I think that's more realistic. Why risk your raider/merc group with something bristling with tough defenses? In addition, the severity of attacks I think also depends on your level, because gunners attacking your settlements with a high level player character game will for instance be quite well armed.

 

Sanctuary Hills however is kind of weird. I've had good production and mediocre defense and it doesn't get nowhere near the attacks that other settlements I've had with similar setups get. Red Rocket nearby gets more attention, because I can hear the rocket turrets going off there all the time while I'm doing crafting in Sanctuary Hills :laugh:

Edited February 19, 2016 by Warmaker01

[Chemist18]

for #2, I'd like to use a mod to make settlers "mortal" but right now they don't seem to perform well enough and they have a tendency to use a Banzai charge as soon as an enemy is spotted.

 

I'm currently outfitting Troops at The Castle with Polymer Combat Armor and fully Modded, Flamers, Miniguns, Combat Rifles, Assault Rifles, Combat Shotguns, and M14s. We'll see :)

[Deleted3507349User]

I'm using a mod that makes the generic settlers killable by anyone (Better Settlers, IIRC). It also makes generic settlers spawn with random armor and weapons, so I don't bother armoring them, I just give whatever automatic weapons I find and improve to the best of my abilities (and their one bullet, of course).

 

I lose a settler from time to time in an attack, but that's fair.

[Chemist18]

I'm using a mod that makes the generic settlers killable by anyone (Better Settlers, IIRC). It also makes generic settlers spawn with random armor and weapons, so I don't bother armoring them, I just give whatever automatic weapons I find and improve to the best of my abilities (and their one bullet, of course).

 

I lose a settler from time to time in an attack, but that's fair.

I agree that's fair :). I'm not too torn up about them not being killable right now because they go down so easily.

 

What I'd like to see is the guards engaging the enemy under cover of the turrets and for the farmers to take cover. But we don't always get what we want :)

[Deleted3507349User]

Pretty much yeah, for every settler I have there's plenty more just waiting to get in. The beds won't even have time to get cold.

 

*looks at Marcy* "You ARE replaceable, you know..."

[Chemist18]

Pretty much yeah, for every settler I have there's plenty more just waiting to get in. The beds won't even have time to get cold.

 

*looks at Marcy* "You ARE replaceable, you know..."

Marcy needs a ball gag.

[JuJooGuppy]

On the reason your sanctuary hasn't been hit hard, its actually because of another element no one has mentioned yet. Settlements actually come under different level attacks based on location, with south-eastern settlements typically suffering the worst, where as north-western settlements (Near your starting area basically) typically have the weaker attacks. This isn't 100% the case, though. Some times its more about whether you would encounter the settlement early on in your story or later on, too.

For instance, The Slog.. I have had it attacked a few times by super mutants and gunners, and man, they bring serious firepower when they do.

But, there is a slight counter for this, too. When you select a regular or heavy turret in the menu (Non-laser / rocket / etc, regular old machine guns). they actually get randomly assigned a "Mk" value, something like 1 through, 5? I forget the highest. You can read it on the side of the turret before you even place it. And if you get a low value, you can simply move to another item, and come back to the turret, and itll re-roll. Basically, the higher Mk versions have extra features (Which are also listed on the side.) such as explosive rounds, fire rounds, etc.

Note that settlements such as Sanctuary and Red Rocket, since they are low-tier attack settlements, can only get Mk-1 turrets. But The Slog can get something like Mk-4's because it comes under heavy attacks. If you cross a settlement where you are able to get high tier turrets, odds are it will also have some harder hitting attacks.

Hope that makes sense :P

[Chemist18]

Thanks JuJooGuppy, what you said make complete sense. I've noticed the labeling on turrets before. I didn't know if it made a difference in a fight but I did go back and forth until I got a higher Mk value turret :).

 

It's funny you mention the Slog. I was in the area one time doing something completely unrelated to the settlement and noticed a bunch of feral ghouls shambling ( a dozen or so) by. Turned out they were attacking the Slog. The four heavy machinegun turrets I had along the roofline on that side cut them to pieces, literally :).

 

I've been using The Settlement Raiding mod

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2995/?

to test defenses.

 

There's one side effect that makes me feel guilty (yes odd I know). That's all the goodies you can collect from the attackers afterward :).