The Problem With Settlements

[Perraine]

Settlements DO make a difference when playing in Survival Mode/Difficulty. Having beds available at many locations is almost essential, having access to Purified Water is almost essential, having access to crafting and cooking facilities is almost essential, having settlements generate caps is almost essential ...

 

Bugthesda did make the Settlement System "kind of" optional, you'll still need to make "some" use of the system in order to progress many quests, but I think they planned it so that in Survival Mode, it's "almost essential;". Plus things like Charisma will allow you ti increase settlement size -> increased carrying capacity means you can tote more crap around to your settlements,-> you can build more crap -> you can make more stuffz and caps -> your settlements will get bigger -> you can make new settlements ...

 

One thing about Bugthesda games, you have to have iron clad self restraint and "RP" to get anything out of them, they are made primarily for the lazy, instant gratification masses.

[crawe1x]

I think for me, the biggest problem with the settlement system is that there is no real meaning behind it. There is no strategic goal.

 

Put it this way... You can spend hundreds of hours building settlements. Let's say you have up to thirty settlements strung right across the Commonwealth. Thanks to mods, some of those settlements are close to Diamond City in terms of size. Regarding manpower, they have 50+ settlers, armies of killer robots, guard dogs, etc. They have high walls, they have hundreds of gun turrets. They are connected by supply lines that run across the wasteland, which are manned by massively overpowered robot provisioners (or human provisioners equipped with the best armor and weapons), who obliterate pretty much anything that gets in the way... And yet despite all that, the Commonwealth doesn't really change. You still get two-bit raider gangs spawning left right and centre. It's nonsensical that they would even try to attack your settlements, but they do. I've reached levels of advancement where my gun turrets have obliterated squads of elite super mutants in literally three seconds flat. They're dead before I even have a chance to draw my weapon and join in the fun!

 

What I would have liked to see is a system where each settlement is connected to a small geographic zone within the map. That zone represents your settlement's area of influence. In other words, once your settlement reaches a certain level of advancement, its influence is so great that spawned attacks just don't happen any more. That zone is now 'safe'. Over time, the entire Commonwealth would be made safe - at which point, you would have achieved a strategic goal (i.e. bringing law and order to the Commonwealth). You could then end the play-through - or carry on with radiant quests.

 

Basically, the current settlement system takes inspiration from The Sims (so people keep telling me - I've never played those games). But I think it should also take inspiration from strategy games such as the Total War series.

Edited July 27, 2016 by crawe1x

[mkborgelt13]

What I would have liked to see is a system where each settlement is connected to a small geographic zone within the map. That zone represents your settlement's area of influence. In other words, once your settlement reaches a certain level of advancement, its influence is so great that spawned attacks just don't happen any more. That zone is now 'safe'. Over time, the entire Commonwealth would be made safe - at which point, you would have achieved a strategic goal (i.e. bringing law and order to the Commonwealth). You could then end the play-through - or carry on with radiant quests.

 

 

 

This is a really cool idea.

[dragonslayer2k12]

That IS a cool idea and don't forget that there would be gaps in the zones so some areas are just not clearable and always available to do radiant quests or shoot stuff. Some overrun settlements like breakheart banks could be retaken if say greentop nursery and the slog were both built and fully staffed.

Edited July 27, 2016 by dragonslayer2k12

[bobofudd]

What I would have liked to see is a system where each settlement is connected to a small geographic zone within the map. That zone represents your settlement's area of influence. In other words, once your settlement reaches a certain level of advancement, its influence is so great that spawned attacks just don't happen any more. That zone is now 'safe'. Over time, the entire Commonwealth would be made safe - at which point, you would have achieved a strategic goal (i.e. bringing law and order to the Commonwealth). You could then end the play-through - or carry on with radiant quests.

 

There's a few problems with this idea that I can see that you might not have realized.

 

First, this kind of already happens. I have several settlements where I walled the settlement in and beefed up the defenses and I haven't had an attack since. Good job me but game play suffers because of it. Not much to do.

 

Second, this game is designed to be a sandbox which should encourage the player to keep playing when all main quests have been finished. Radiant quests and settlement building help with this but meaningless repetition can kill that in a short amount of time. To counter this, a balanced system needs to be put in place that can constantly keep itself in balance while disrupting the achievements of the player and keep the game feeling fresh.

 

So if we take your suggestion and add the balancing system such as a large triggered event which takes place once peace is achieved in all of your "zones", it would give the player something to work towards like a final boss which would be the climax of building all your settlements. An example would be an alien invasion. You really don't encounter any aliens throughout the game other than the one in the cave but what if you could battle them and the only way to trigger it would be to successfully rebuild the commonwealth? What if a mothership as large or larger than the Prydwen slowly drifted across the Commonwealth and invaded each of your settlements? Then after a large scale battle occurs, the player would have to go back and rebuild and repopulate the settlements again thus continuing game play. The small attacks throughout the game just aren't strong enough to really challenge the player. They actually seem more annoying as they force you to teleport to a settlement to help defend when you know you're not even needed. And even with that I think the outcome if you don't show up is random. But knowing what to expect from an advanced alien attack would be something worth preparing for if I knew it could happen.

 

If the large scale events were random, it would be fun for the player not knowing what to expect and I think as a developer it would provide great opportunities to really be creative with attacks and surprise the player. But more importantly it would complete the cycle which would only support the sandbox design of the game.

[CiderMuffin]

I think for me, the biggest problem with the settlement system is that there is no real meaning behind it. There is no strategic goal.

 

Put it this way... You can spend hundreds of hours building settlements. Let's say you have up to thirty settlements strung right across the Commonwealth. Thanks to mods, some of those settlements are close to Diamond City in terms of size. Regarding manpower, they have 50+ settlers, armies of killer robots, guard dogs, etc. They have high walls, they have hundreds of gun turrets. They are connected by supply lines that run across the wasteland, which are manned by massively overpowered robot provisioners (or human provisioners equipped with the best armor and weapons), who obliterate pretty much anything that gets in the way... And yet despite all that, the Commonwealth doesn't really change. You still get two-bit raider gangs spawning left right and centre. It's nonsensical that they would even try to attack your settlements, but they do. I've reached levels of advancement where my gun turrets have obliterated squads of elite super mutants in literally three seconds flat. They're dead before I even have a chance to draw my weapon and join in the fun!

 

What I would have liked to see is a system where each settlement is connected to a small geographic zone within the map. That zone represents your settlement's area of influence. In other words, once your settlement reaches a certain level of advancement, its influence is so great that spawned attacks just don't happen any more. That zone is now 'safe'. Over time, the entire Commonwealth would be made safe - at which point, you would have achieved a strategic goal (i.e. bringing law and order to the Commonwealth). You could then end the play-through - or carry on with radiant quests.

 

Basically, the current settlement system takes inspiration from The Sims (so people keep telling me - I've never played those games). But I think it should also take inspiration from strategy games such as the Total War series.

I can see a lot of problems with that idea, especially with modded content and added dungeons getting empty. Not to mention the coding it would take.

 

Also no, it doesn't take inspiration from The Sims, that's just a stupid and inaccurate comparison people make to talk about "How Bethesda ruined Fallout by adding in something I don't like"

[dragonslayer2k12]

The thing is most people playthroughs are disrupted by patches and updates plus new mods. I don't think anyone really completely plays through this game more like get most of the way there and start over after a break of a week or two. Forever sandboxing sucks and the best way to combat it is have a ton of content to go through. Thanks to far harbor and some mods we have content like that but nuka world is up in the air for now. Once we see if that content sucks or not it will determine most people playthroughs in the future I think.

[crawe1x]

The thing is most people playthroughs are disrupted by patches and updates plus new mods. I don't think anyone really completely plays through this game more like get most of the way there and start over after a break of a week or two. Forever sandboxing sucks and the best way to combat it is have a ton of content to go through. Thanks to far harbor and some mods we have content like that but nuka world is up in the air for now. Once we see if that content sucks or not it will determine most people playthroughs in the future I think

 

Tell me about it ;-) I spend a few weeks on a playthrough, then some new DLC/mod comes along and I end up starting over. I've forgotten how many times I've restarted this damn game.

 

I agree with you that sandboxing for the sake of sandboxing gets kind of dull. That's why I'd like some sort of tangible, achievable goal when it comes to settlement building... And like you said in your first post, there would still be pockets of bad guys in between the zones.

[dragonslayer2k12]

The worst thing about starting over is getting the face right again, I hope someone can make a mod to save your face as a preset so you don't have to redo it every time. Even worse is the face cannot be adjusted in great detail I cannot get rid of the todd howard face from face01 and the other faces don't interest me at all.

[crawe1x]

 

 

So if we take your suggestion and add the balancing system such as a large triggered event which takes place once peace is achieved in all of your "zones", it would give the player something to work towards like a final boss which would be the climax of building all your settlements.

 

 

I was thinking along these lines. I'm no expert on Fallout lore, but at one we learn that the Minutemen made their name after beating off a huge super mutant attack on Diamond City. Now that is the sort of battle I would like to fight late game. A kind of last hurrah for the wasteland bad guys - maybe several of them even, each aimed at a key settlement.

 

Your alien idea could also work. Honestly, I don't know much about how the aliens figure in Fallout lore. It seems strange that there's this one alien and his ship, but nothing more comes of it.