Settlements?

It's kind of in-between those two extremes, though more towards building cities. You're given a series of construction options that range from entire houses to decorative rugs in front of those houses, and you can set them down on sizeable plots of land in several places across the Commonwealth. You use a radio tower to bring in new settlers, give them jobs (growing food, working as merchants, manning the defences, that sort of thing), and then let them do their own thing.

It's a neat system. Especially since you use all of those items that would normally be useless in a Bethesda game (cans, oil drums, spare tires, stuff like that) to craft your settlements.

 

I've heard that said settlements are also mentioned in the main story, so maybe it's worth investing the time with them. Also yeah it's useful because you can give out all the stuff that you don't use to your settlers, like guns and equipment.

 

The idea of being able to build your own little colony is really interesting and I really love it, I thought it would just be this bland thing that I would do for the sake of doing but I've been spending a lot of time just grinding stuff to make my colony just a little better.

 

Same here. It's a lot of fun. Gives exploration a whole new dimension. I just wish there weren't so many properties you need to improve. I really enjoy setting up Sanctuary, for example, and the Castle's awesome, but I'm less inclined to develop a piddly farm that barely has any land to build on. Still, more options are better than fewer.

 

Settlements are really more of a small town than a city in my experience. I haven't had settlers fight for me, but they'll fight to defend their settlement from the occasional radroach or sometimes a group of raiders.

 

I think the closest you can get to having them actively fight for you is via Minutemen artillery barrages, and that's not quite the same thing. I recall the Flare Gun having a similar effect, bringing people to help you, but I haven't tried it out yet. Regardless, yeah, they're more interested in keeping an eye on their homes.

 

The flare gun is like your "alarm button", when you're in desperate need for help you shoot it in the air and a bunch of minutemen comes to help you kill the enemies. It's cool but I mean you've got your companion so I have used it only once basically.

 

That's what I thought. I had one strange moment where that effect seemed to trigger without my use of the Flare Gun - there was a loud 'boom' in the distance, and when I ran over to see what it was there were three Minutemen lounging around, saying they'd 'secured' the area. As far as I could tell nothing there needed securing, so... thanks, guys, I guess...?

 

I'm not positive, but it seems as though there's a limit on the number of settlers you can jam into your settlements. Between that and terrain restrictions (construction mode is kinda finicky for wall placement, and you only have so much space to build on) I think a large city would be out of the question. Not unless you built up, anyway. I'm sure you could make some pretty neat, self-sustaining forts, though.

 

The settlement system is a total blast to play and feels like a game in itself. If you are looking forward to this feature, you will definitely love it and. What I love most about it, is the fact that you can scrap everything in your settlements, even ruined houses, and replace them with your own buildings.

 

I've only been watching play throughs currently, and haven't seen anyone do anything with settlements yet, but it sounds rad! I can't wait to make my own settlement when I get the game.

 

Well, I am about 40 hours in the game but I'm talking things a little slower than usual. I'm upgrading my settlements, and giving them sources of food and water, beds, and stuff like that. The main problem I'm having with this is that you can't effectively manage and see who's working on what resource. I hate having to find my settlers and order them around, and it feels really broken, to be honest. Also, the traders are really weird as well. My traders never have any interesting goods and they are missing from their store all the time.