DeimosMasque said:
I really like the concept, especially if you side with the Minutemen, controlling although settlements means that you are nation building.
Your are taking the disparate parts of the Commonwealth and forming them into a true nation. Well maybe more of a confederacy. But either way it's new to the series and I like the concept.
If that was the thematic goal and expressed more strongly through the Minute Man agenda or there were coordinates at the Castle - or we could somehow involve and make into a hub of some sort Diamond City then that would have added a much better motivation for the whole thing that might have made me feel like it was a lot more of an epic struggle to reclaim civilization in the waste vs. what it does feel like... which is mostly feeling like the most ridiculously charitable person in the waste getting taken huge advantage of by a ever growing number of people who didn't care enough to do any of this for themselves.
Maybe they could build on something like that in future DLC to make this all turn into something more relevant and important.
Frankster said:
Oh god 23 settlements with 150 people...
You are going to get so many defence quests (and if you don't do them in time, then people in your settlements die and you are a very bad person for leaving them to their fate!) constantly interrupting your game when you're trying to do something else :/
Not to mention all that time wasted staring at loading screens as you run around from settlement to settlement...
Yes, that's exactly my predicament. I have so many too that it seems the game is a little hard pressed to keep up and sometimes I don't even hear about the trouble until I get a "failed" notice, then I have to try to figure how where and how I might be able to reload to prevent that happening, because I never got the "in trouble" notice to alert me.
Frankster said:
I stopped at 8 or so settlements myself and focused mainly on developing Sanctuary, the Castle and that one settlement in the middle of mosquito infested marshes (im terrified of those things so having a safe heaven in the area seemed like a good idea).
By just focusing on those 3, settlement building became a lot more fun... I satisfied the minimum criteria to keep everyone happy then focused on building these massive towers and buildings because I like to over compensate by having the tallest and biggest junk buildings around.
But yeah the settlement aspect is going to need a ton of mods to make it really work, especially if you have so many settlements... I really do not envy your game because unless you are willing to discard all that hard work, you're practically stuck being the minutemen response team, rushing off every time raiders kidnapped one of your farmers daughters (always the same friggin one too...how many kidnappings can the same family go through in a week?).
You got it right, the raiders are the only ones actually trying and putting in some "honest" hard work.
Yeah, next time definitely going a different route with the whole thing, probably much more downscaled.
It's true though - the Raiders are really making a go of it for themselves it seems from all I have read on their terminals after I've killed them off. They have plans and they're doing serious revitalization work in factories and they are pulling materials out of quarries and what have you. I can't help but notice it used to be the other way around in the games - the average people had some settlements and farms and livestock and were doing the trade-route thing and the Raiders were just leeches living in the ruins sucking the lifeblood off of whatever came by - now there's still some element of that here of course, Raiders are still "bad guys" and such, but they seem to be the ones with their stuff more together by comparison to the people I'm stuck babysitting.
FavouriteDream said:
The minutemen faction and the settlement mechanic are trash and I can't believe more people aren't talking about it.
I wouldn't go to saying they are "trash" exactly, but it does seem somewhat half-baked at the present state. I mean, they aren't seemingly
doing anything. Thus far, and I'm a good part in, but I'm still just before choosing a faction to start really getting cozy with vis a vis the Main Quest progression, all they do is mill about the Castle yard (which I took for them, of course) and that one guy on the Radio calls out reports for me to go address.
If there were groups of Minutemen going about doing things - like there are groups of Brotherhood going about doing things who I see all the time actually in my wanderings - then I would maybe feel like there's more going on there and that things are happening. As it is it just seems to be a dressing for the "you can build settlements" mechanic and little more than that. Maybe that changes as the story progresses, I'm not sure.
BloatedGuppy said:
Settlements would have been better served with just a few simple tweaks.
1. Far fewer settlements. Somewhere between 1-5. Even 1-3. Make them large and visually distinct, and give them all their own special element to be worked in/around.
2. Get rid of the settler recruitment mechanic entirely. Instead, every time you rescue/help out of those bumfuck middle-of-nowhere farms or shacks by a muddy pool, those people will resettle in one of your major settlements.
3. Have the settlers you rescue broken up into different "classes". Farmers will immediately set about making food, merchants will immediately set about taking up in any unoccupied shops, and the rest will stand watch.
This would allow the consolidation of building resources in a couple of spots, rather than laying down the same foundation stuff in 15-20 spots. It would allow for the building of vigorous defenses in those spots, rather than piecemeal defenses everywhere and a constant barrage of settlements under attack. It would make rescuing/helping some new settlement exciting...new settlers for the big towns, possibly someone to fill an important role like doctor or guard captain!...rather than introducing another crummy ramshackle roadside accident you need to prop up.
And it's such a simple change too. Could probably be modded in relatively easy. Wouldn't require any huge code changes.
All of that would be a great improvement upon the system, you're absolutely right. Of course - I could see, with replay, some downsides to the limited number + distinct theme, but maybe you could pick them from a higher number of sites? Like, maybe you could have 1-3, but you're picking from 9 areas available so that you have some variety on replay by picking sites you hadn't before and seeing what they turn into?
Possibly even allow for some of the "named" NPCs out in the middle of nowhere to be recruited personally to towns by doing additional quests for them to leave their own locations, giving some bonus or special service or shop to the town they join? That would have been compelling for me.
EternallyBored said:
I would like some bigger settlements too, but some of the smaller ones are nice as well so I want to keep those too, like the inner city ones, hangman's alley is a fun little location. The best way to make those smaller settlements less annoying would be to rework the settlers so they don't have to be micromanaged so much, and make it so attacks are either less frequent or easier to see how well your defenses hold without you there. Having them wander around is more realistic, but I'd rather have them just stick to their assigned posts, even if it means they never use the beds I create for them. It's especially annoying when all my guard posts are abandoned because everyone has to go to sleep at night, it just adds an extra step of having to sleep until morning to get anything useful done with my settlers.
I do like Hangman's Alley as a location in the city, and of course it's small because the city is pretty close with other locations crowding it. Maybe in addition to the "Big 3 or 5" or whatever there could be another manageable (let's say again 3-6) number of "outposts" for those towns to be part of a network - locations between them like trade posts or check in points for Provisioners and what not to congregate on the road?
EternallyBored said:
Supply lines also need to be default rather than a perk deep in the charisma tree, actually visiting all your settlements would be way more attractive if it was easier to use them as linked resource storage and crafting centers, even with the supply lines you need settlers to set them up, so it always feels like a chore trying to set smaller settlements up as functional locations just so I can shuffle a settler back to one of my linked settlements. There should also be a quicker way to give upgraded weapons and armor to settlers rather than the current method of having to talk to them and sift through their inventories individually. I'm hoping for a mod that adds a settler upgrade system so I can just upgrade them with better weapons all at once.
It's a good start, but I really think it will need some mods and streamlining before I bother trying to get in depth with the system in any playthrough past my first.
Yes, the need for the Supply Lines "Perk" that seems pretty much needed if you're doing any Settling at all... it was not a happy moment for me. Maybe if it had been "Protected Supply Lines" where you already had the lines by default because of course you need them, but sometimes the people might die and you'd have to assign another Settler to it if that happened, and lose one population - then having a "Perk" that they got Caravan guards or something and that didn't happen anymore - that would have been OK as a PERK, but just being able to do that... I don't think we should have needed to spend a precious point on something so obviously a utility of the process.
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