Fallout 4: Part 3 - Settlements

Ever since Fallout 3 was launched people had wanted a settlement mod, the entire setting of Fallout really begs for that kind of bartering system. It was later modded in in mid 2009. New Vegas received the same treatment in late 2010. Both systems, were both well implemented within the confines of the GECK and whatever witchcraft the Gamebyro engine runs on - but they were obviously jank as fuck. Roll on Fallout 4.

With Fallout 4's "settlement" feature being baked in the core gameplay, you'd think it would be a lot better. For the most part, the system works. It does what it promises to do, and you can't really fault it for that. You will sometimes find yourself fighting with the controls to try and get a particular item placed exactly where you want it - but it mostly works. People have managed to make some pretty interesting settlements with the limited tools you're given, you only need to Google Fallout 4 settlements to see the crazy nonsense you can get up to. Sadly however, the settlements feature isn't exactly what I of hoped for. You can't build every single item that's in game (although with some mods to do get access to a lot more) and the "running" of a settlement amounts to very little in the long run. It boils down into maintaining happiness, setting up supply lines & quests.

Settlement happiness is influenced by how much many beds you have, how much food and water you have, your security level and how many lights you have. If you happiness is too low, you'll lose control of it. Occasionally, your settlement will be attacked by raiders or one of your settlers will reveal themselves to be a hostile synth. Making sure your defence is higher than your food + water will lessen the chance of these encounters, normally though your settlers will just mow them down anyway.

Most the quests you'll get will be running to settlement X to kill enemy Y and this "helps" whatever settlement you got the quest from. I don't mind these quests, as it's XP and it normally means exploring a location you haven't been to before. I'd rather have this than not, but it's shallow and uninteresting.

My biggest gripe with the system however, has to be the supply lines & issuing settlers to do particular tasks. Supply lines basically involve you tell a member of your settlement to physically walk to another settlement you own to share resources between them.That part is fine, it's clunky as all hell and it becomes a nightmare when you try to supply line more than 7 or 8 settlements together. I'd much prefer a pop up menu where I can just assign all that stuff in one fell swoop and not have to visit each one and try to remember who's assigned where and the like. The bigger sin out of the two however has to assigning settlers jobs. Once the GECK is out this is the ONLY mod I NEED. To assign a settler a job, you need to click on the settler in question then click on what you want them to do. After doing so, there is literally no way to tell who has a job and who doesn't. Unless they're doing it. I've taken to console commanding in a certain type of hat and just making everyone with a job already assigned wear that hat. It isn't an elegant solution, and I pray someone can mod a fix in but Jesus it's awful. When your settlement has 15 different people running around there's just no way to manage it in any meaningful way.

In brief, there's just not enough depth to the system. It's like they had the ideas, but just didn't implement them in the right way. The good news is, they're close enough that mods should be able to bridge the gap.

Edit: since writing this, a new beta patch has been made available. It now shows if what a settler is assigned to! The collective community belly ache has solved that particular qualm.