You forgot the worst part about Vault 88: the AI pathfinding When the DLC first came out, I was super excited and finished the whole thing. I built a large enclosed vault in the main cave chamber, only to realize all my effort was wasted, because the settlers would constantly spawn outside the vault walls and get stuck in the cave. I built additional doors, scrapped entire walls, and they were too stupid to even find their beds. Eventually I just gave up and dismantled everything that was nonessential.
Same. Any effort is wasted because your settlers will just stand around in the cavern doing nothing. Luckily it is a great location for a tato and water farm as long as you don't mind defending it.
That's if your game doesn't bug and the settlers never even head down the stairs into the vault proper during the quest making quest unfinishable and the vault practically worthless.
The vault-tec DLC itself got released in a shady state. Some of the roof types on the atrium would kill the nav meshes on the tiles below. The game itself still has to rely on mods 100% to make game of the year every damn time. I have 0 to no hope for starfield. In a nutshell its going to be settlement building in space with astronaut preston.
@youcansave15ormoreoncarins75 I vary for mine. For outpost Zimoja, I went for a military checkpoint and even put the sentry bot prototype in a little shack to look as if the people were trying to reprogram it. And I also use murkwater construction site as a "raider" base. And now I'm finally working on King lighthouse as a minuteman outpost. Since technically it's the best spot to look for flares. But this is all for rp.
I've been playing with the "place anywhere" and "scrap everything" mods so long I genuinely forgot how much of a pain settlement building is without them
👍 This video just reminded me of how mediocre and annoying Bethesda games are in stock form. I've used the mods you mentioned forever, too. Then again, I'd never WANT to play one of their games without mods.
To me, every settlement with a massive building area with no unique characteristics to it is a difficult settlement. Take Starlight Drive-in for example. Coming up with an interesting layout, and building designs to fill up all of that space is so much harder than fixing the broken house in Coastal Cottage.
@frosty Starlight is nice for someone who likes to build a massive concrete fortress but it's not my style and I find it really hard to work on. I had to stop building when my game performance got a noticeable hit. I had to leave 1/4 of the settlement empty and it already reached 5600 pieces.
Starlight is good for big building builds. Like was mentioned, a lot of people build forts & fortresses there. I've also seen hotels & apartment complexes. I once built an entertainment center with a mall & an MMA arena I generically called The Fight Pit. Had AFT mod, so I took Tommy from the Combat Zone & made him run it.
@@BraddahSpliff Yep, I usually make Starlight into an apartment building fortress. Build a giant box around the water, one entrance, farming and stores all in the center, everyone's happy.
I think the head of Settlement-Command at Bethesda was someone called Zackery Prial and horribly made the border limits of this videos mentions and received a decent amount of hate, he did promise to join the team to overhaul the game's world but not the story, which is a false hope with Todd Howard being the mass of cancer he is. Steam does have a couple of good mods that puts in the unofficial patch and make settlements much better with smaller settlements like Jamica Plain border the entire town and a bit of the park where two raiders spawn in to harass your camp. We shouldn't defund Bethesda, just send the team to deep rehab!
(fuppping comment cut me off!!!)...of the park where two or three raiders go to harass that settlement. We shouldn't defund Bethesda but, send the entire team to deep-rehab!!!
There are spots in The Mechanists Lair that you can sink water pumps. There are small piles of dirt on the floor that will count. The problem is that when you scrap some of the junk on the floor, it also cleans up your dirt. I usually spin a water pump over some of those piles until I get a green place item prompt.
@@Leotheleprachaun I have from day one, but the smaller pump is easier to get to place. The smaller pump alone is a bit finicky, the larger powered one I was finding was a real pain the butt to rotate into the "Dirt" piles. I can place several small pumps around the room and get all the water I need for about 25-30 people.
I personally find the best use for the Mechanists Lair is to have it be a robot provisioner hub. It costs a fair amount of resources like you said, but it makes my settlements look better. Plus if all my Robots are based out of the Lair I'm not losing happiness in other settlements as a result.
I agree. Not useful as a true settlement, but I found it makes a great robot provisioner hub, plus a safe warehouse to hold my bulk supply of crafting components, water, food, weapons, etc. Lots of floor space, so perfect for storing complete sets of power armor, plus extra frames and pieces. In the main section I strung loads of lights so it's nice and bright. Built a living space in one corner, and along one wall built all the crafting stations. I use it frequently to drop off extras and do overnight rests. Built some machine gun turrets just in case something found it's way inside, but I don't think they've ever been triggered. FYI, there is one spot on an adjoining hallway where there is a bit of dirt, and you can squeeze in 2-3 water pumps. But of course no way to grow crops.
@@daneaster7 I have seen that video, but had come to the conclusion on my own well before that. Although at the time I was unaware of the happiness penalty of robot settlers and had made it in a very in efficient manner.
For me, it's Murkwater. All the swampy ground, the unscrapable trees and most of all the Mirelurk Queen that can spawn just outside means I never touch it. Of course, to be honest, in most of my playthroughs nowadays, the only settlement building I do is the stuff around Sanctuary that Sturges wants and fixing up the Castle if I'm going for a Minuteman ending.
Just a suggestion but personally I just like to build lil shanty villages everywhere. Simple and fun since pretty much all you do is take the premade workshop buildings and throw em around then spruce the place up a bit, sometimes I add more unique touches like houses on top of eachother or walls if the location is convenient or dangerous. I also like to keep the population of my villages between 10 and 15, gives me a good growth goal to reach while also keeping every random settlement in the commonwealth from basically nearly rivaling diamond city
for Murkwater I built a square cement habitated-wall. Sort of like a military fort- but instead a star fort, its just a square. use the middle area for crops and what not, build the "walls" as hallways with various built-in rooms. Make it two or three stories tall. Have outward facing concrete-windows with guard positions there. Works well.
You can actually get more settlers by going back to the Mechanist and she will send you out destroying rogue robots. Sometimes you will encounter Synths, Minutemen or BoS where the robots are located, but sometimes there will be 3 settlers (usually) wandering around, and you can engage with them and send them to any settlement you like! Be careful not to kill them during any melee though. ;) 👍
I actually find the vault one to be my favorite, it can give you a lot of resources and it's easy to defend since enemies can only come from 3 places as long as you stick to one area of the vault that is
@@thomas.parnell7365 i just stick with heavy lazer turrets at all entrances 2 each except for the primary entrance that gets 3 and i just give settlers armor and weapons i get on my journeys (the air port is a godsend for combat armor)
@@codyholley Exactly. I have every entrance so heavily fortified that NOBODY could get in. At the sewer entrance I built a long, complicated maze with machine gun turrets throughout and at every turn. At the pharmacy entrance, the whole shop is filled with machine gun turrets, and so is the cellar. And so far I have NEVER had even ONE attack get through.
For Vault 88 you can save yourself a lot of hassle if you don't open the other two entrances. As long as you never scrap the barricades blocking them, attackers can only spawn at the main entrance which is pretty easy to fortify.
hangmans alley is good as a hub in survival mode. You can "quick travel" to the institute by teleporting and so reach it very fast. It is big enough to build some food, water and glue production and all the workbenches you need to modify your equipment. For a big lively settlement it is not the right place.
Hangman's Alley is my favorite personal settlement in the game. It's easily defensible with just a few turrets and by not unlocking the front and side doors. It has space enough for food and water to make it self sufficient and while every settler might not get their own house, I found there to be enough space for the limit to hit. I've also never encountered the problem of AI not going to the back.
I love Hangmans Alley! As a recruitment area. I build a concrete block house to block the street/sidewalk entrance with about 10 beds and stop in occasionally to send everyone not involved in the 12 food production to actual settlements.
Red Rocket was the hardest for me, but it was mostly due to how I'd set things up. I used it as a hub for followers by completely abandoning the ground level and building a big industrial shelter on the roof, complete with indoor plots for food and stored water. I then put a reactor genny on top, next to the shelter, ran walls all the way around the perimeter, put two different entrances in different locations and made a giant maze for invaders. Instead of traps, I loaded the place with bottlecap mines and shotgun turrets. Plus, there were parts of the maze that had no ceiling, letting my allies rain hell down from above. It was a bitch to set up and replacing the mines was a hassle (until I peppered the adjacent woods with additional assorted ones), but it was the most easily defensible location I'd made in a while.
As someone who does no hit runs, hangman’s alley is my absolute favorite as it’s easy to stay low profile, easy to defend, near diamond city and vault 81 for safe trading, and near the river for stealthy travel. However I totally get that it sucks for big/resourceful settlement building.
There is actually a *very* tiny patch of dirt in the Mechanist’s layer for a water pump but it requires patience to build onto because the area that will allow construction is so ridiculously tiny. Hangman’s Alley is good for making an artillery array. The central location means you’ll be able to hit a lot of the downtown area if you need to.
The only reason I actually build in some of these places is when I have my nuclear winter and survival mode mods on. I disable fast travel as well. The settlements serve as a sort of camp site where I can warm up, eat, drink, and rest as well as stock up on ammo and other supplies for more traveling.
Murkwater construction site. With a mirelurk queen that constantly respawns _inside the settlement._ I didn't realise she would respawn, and I put my main building directly over her spawn point. Result: Whenever I arrive, there's a mirelurk queen clipping through the floor of my settlement.
Another vote for Hangman's alley being my favourite. Both before and after mods. Played a survival game where I wanted to be a trader and it was such a great resting point to drop off and resupply. Finding all the spots for efficient turrets as well was great!
As a Survival mode player, far-flung settlements are my least favorite. Somerville, Coastal Cottage, Murkwater, Ozinga, even Sanctuary! I grew to dislike putting in lots of time and resources into a place you rarely see. Even Starlight Drive In starts to feel out of the way. I’m more focused on building up settlements that I visit often. For me, County Crossing is #1. What puts it over the top is being located at the shore, near the waterway crossroads. Swimming everywhere is a cinch, and fast . (And a brief respite from encounters) (remember to get the 25% faster swimming magazine). After that, Hangman’s #2 (DC’s Home Plate can’t be linked with provisioners). And #3 Jamaica Plain.
funny my go to settlements are Sunshine Tidings because I found it the easiest to wall off in vanilla (Auto-Fencing is a such a time save I swear), Abernathy Farm for the same reason and Home Plate because I find it useful to have a central location as a push off point
Nice choice! Never considerred swimming much as I'm an over-user of Power Armor. Might be worth give it a try more often! (My drugs imperium payinf fore the cores needed lol)
@@hotdognl70 Hi. Yes! Swimming! It’s the #1 reason I don’t play using power armor anymore. My first playthrough, I dedicated myself to a power armor build. I was playing on survival, and ever since Concord, where you get the full T-45, it just seemed so cool. No regrets. But I knew swimming was fast. I forget when it finally dawned on me. I just knew that on my second playthrough, I would try Survival without power armor, so i could swim. It’s so powerful. Swimming gets me places, often in half the time or less. Especially since there’s no fighting. Which is great for a couple reasons. One, fights take time, and resources. It makes planning what to take easier, if I don’t have random encounters. Two, I can get more use from the bonuses given by Well Rested and Lover’s Embrace. And three, after completing a quest, or after getting a particularly strong legendary, there’s nothing I want to do more than save my game. And swimming is safe. Overall, the time saved swimming is too good to pass up. Some of the benefits i listed, you can do walking in Power Armor, on the floor of the sea. It just takes too long for me. Survival is already a lot of travel time. Cheers.
Ironically these are all my favorite settlements because of how challenging they are lol. I will say though although I'm not a very big fan of mods, they have made for all these specific settlements are some of my favorite in the game especially the mansion mod that replaces the coastal cottage is absolutely incredible!
Spectacle Island is too big for the game. It loses track of people at one end when they move to the other. Power has a similar problem. I usually build two small independent settlements at either end of there.
Like many others have said, I think Hangman's Alley is pretty solid. I used it for the first part of my Survival playthrough before relocating to Bunker Hill, and it was quite useful due to it's central location. The space restrictions made it difficult to make it look good, but it was serviceable. I took the built in hut as my house, kept some of the small shacks and built an awkward floating room above it all for the settlers to sleep in. The biggest issue I had with it was the noise. The settlers, companions and occasional brahmin would not stop talking. Bunker Hill was an upgrade though. To bad I never finished the playthrough due to the Brotherhood questline glitching out on me.
Sanctuary is the best imo, I only use a few mods for building like place anywhere, spring cleaning and homemaker (i think) which only lets me use more objects from the game. I restore the player's house to pre war state like every playthrough, spend hours decorating it and eventually I planted trees all over the settlement, it looks more like a park now. It's the only place that looks pre war and untouched, had to do all Codsworth's work for him smh
@@Chuked spectacle island is great if you love building freely I prefer restoring or expanding on what's there like croup manor, red rocket or kings port lighthouse
@@michael6880 Red rocket is my second favorite place, I just don't like water locations so I've never even been to spectacle island even with 700 hours
Hangman's Alley is my favorite settlement in my current playthrough. I just build a wall with vault door to cut off the raider-spawning portion, and build a dense and cozy structure in the remaining part. I gave it a very colorful aesthetic with lots of lights and lamps and neon signs, and it has such a nice vibe at night now. Oh, and I did find a use for the section outside the vault door: I put my institute teleporter there.
I always hated how some junk and overgrown shrubs can never be modified or removed. The ultimate settlement would have manicured lawns, crack free paths and no liter. Small complaint but it would be nice
Jamaica Plain and Hangman's Alley are actually 2 of my favourite building sites, the latter being, bar none, the best settlement for survival mode with its relatively central location and proximity to most major hubs.
I remember Vault 88. Instead of sealing it off like the other vaults, I kept the train in place and cleaned up the rest, transforming it into a futuristic train station with vault technology.
Vault 88 was honestly kinda fun to work with. Of course defence is one thing but cosmetics wise, it’s kinda fun trying to make a compact settlement with just the vault bits, challenging but quite satisfying when finished.
I can provide a couple that I personally love, Total Snapgasm is good cuz it adds snap points to a lot of the settlement pieces that really needed them and Auto-Fencing to save the headache on trying to wall settlements off when used with a mod that makes Settlement Attacks spawn outside the build zone, Homemaker for some of the items that aren't normally able to be crafted, as for actually fixing landscapes I got nothing as the settlement mods I use are just to make placement of stuff easier
Settlement expander and scrap everything mods are a must-have. Once those are installed, Hangman's Alley and Jamaica Plain actually become really fun settlements. The alley gets expanded to the surrounding streets with water access in the tunnel below and on the river. Jamaica Plain gets expanded to the entire town, giving you all that space to work with. I do wish you could delete more of the buildings and houses there, though.
Came here to say this. With Settlements Extended and Scrap Everything, all these settlements become much more worthwhile locations. Hangman's Alley goes all the way down to the Charles(?) River. You can even set up some elevated turrets to take out the Raiders that occupy the USS Riptide.
Hangmans alley could be such a great Raider themed settlement, where the people further down the foodchain have to live in the refuse at the bottom while a scrap shack shanty town is piling onto itself further up until it's on hight with the rooftops on which you can build a Platform for upper Stands, maybe even a Combat Arena to duke it out for control over the Gang and all that raider bs, and all they had to do is make a reasonable sealing and a wider build area.
Vault 88 was my favorite, half because of the difficulty. I made a giant vault and had it all connected up. Granted over half the vault were just corridors so I could do the connections, but it was super satisfying.
For Vault 88, I don't even bother removing the debris blocking the other sections. With careful planning you can get your 20 settlers, shops, crafting, stores, and food/water into that first area. And then I just leave it at that. The resources needed to build all the hallways and door to other sections isnt worth it and makes defending a huge pain. But if you keep it to just the first area, the raids always come from the main entrance and you can just fill the security area with 40 turrets and just pop in to see 5 super mutants get wiped out in 5sec. You do get stuck with the quest to explore and unlock the rest of the vault but it's a small price to pay.
Hangman’s alley is actually one of my favorite places to build, primarily because after a while I started playing mostly survival mode and in regards to that hangman’s is in a great location and while it doesn’t have the most open spaces it’s both easily defensible and encourages more vertical expansion rather than horizontal
Vault 88 can be amazing if you take the time. Settlement attacks are not likely to happen if you have massive defense (double the total amount of food and water). The attack spawn points are at the pharmacy entrance and main entrance. Fully decked out, can be a great base of your wasteland operations. Coastal cottage for has 6 settlers and acts as a supply cache/safe house for my enclave playthrough. Jamaica plain is a supply staging area. 4 settlers Mechanists lair is manufacturing and robots that act as provisioners from one central location. Hangman’s alley (6 settlers) I use as a rest area for city-proper engagements. One food settler. One artillery settler. Four assorted Vendors. RP perspective is a hideaway in DT Boston where one can resupply and rest. Conclusion, use your imagination and build height.
I have found a couple of random spots in the Mechanist's Lair where you can place a pump, or murfruit tree, but I've always used that for my robots. I like Hangman's Alley, but I've always used the scrap everything mod there. Two stories of jobs, stores and fun stuff, plus little apartments on the third floor that the settlers seem to like.. I tend to store things there due to it's central location.
A fun way to approach Hangman's Alley is from the back. Use the dirt pile and then the red awning to jump over the wall and into the settlement. You can leave all the doors locked this way. Raiders will still get in if it is attacked while you are away. However, most times if I fast travel right away, they spawn in a corner of the back alley. Outside the locked door, lol.
hopping on the Hangmans Alley love train. Even before i got the quality of life mods for base building it was my favourite (and it became even better with scrap everything and place anywhere)
With Scrap Everything, you can get rid of the broken down building and annoying trees at coastal cottage, and with that, it makes it my favorite settlement in the game, it's peaceful and quiet, and I don't mind the small size, it's cozy. Buildings can be built with the concrete foundation floors and you're good to go. And there's a random encounter hot spot near the bridge, and overall I personally love the coastal area of Boston. But yeah vanilla it's pretty lacking.
Don't diss my hangmans alley like that. I love that place. I turned it into a trading post on the ground floor, and a big housing skyscraper in the middle, it looks sick. I love the space restriction you have there, it gives me so many ideas
I tried a few times to build a decent Vault 88 & during one attempt I pulled it off kinda at the location near the Vault door (the starting area you end up at the beginning of the DLC). During other playthroughs, I just use the "store" entrance as a home away from home. Even made it a gameroom/mini casino/bar at one point. Costal Cottage....I tried to make something out of the red shed/garage thing but it never works out. So I just use it as a place for my trade line trader to go to Far Harbor. Jamaica Plain.....now I've had fun with this place. Not as much as other places but it is salvageable when I get ahold of it. The Mechanist Lair.....I only dedicated time building here once & turned it into an arcade. I kid you not, it was like FNAF but Fallout. Hangman's Alley..... choosing between this & Boston Airport, I'll take this. A few times I turn this place into a sort of bazaar and with a few tricks made it seem like you could go inside buildings that had no entrance. I think of this as a halfway point for traders. I always try to find some use for all settlements so I can make trade lines easier but some places I favor more over the others and build their to make something lore friendly. However, there are two places that I don't bother with or bother unlocking and that's Boston Airport and Bunker Hill.
I quite like coastal cottage. With the scrap everything mod you can get rid of all the waste. I turned mine into a luxury ultra-modern house, on top of the cave and turned the cave into a mini secret Batcave style den. accessible through a basement door
hangman's alley is my go-to. i love cramped living spaces, and i keep my settlers in the more open areas outside boston proper. thus, the alley has no need for resources and it never gets attacked.
Here is the rundown- Coastal Cottage Wasn't really able to do anything about this I installed the scrap everything mod and after that lever the area with foundations to fill the hole and stop settlers from falling in. Vault 88 You can build the vault to connect most areas for a giant loop, but the settlers just stay in the main atrium areas for the most part, massive vault no one goes into sigh Jamaica Plain Scrap everything mod to get rid of the boarded-up building, and after that, it shapes up into a very good settlement. The Mechanics lair I really have not done anything with this area, just tried building a robot and it takes so much time it just seemed like a waste, may go back to it later. Hangmans Ally With the settler tracking problems I am thinking of just clearing it out and maybe using it for storage
1st time building at Hangmans I made a full 2 story where all 20 settlers found their beds. No tracking issues. This time I just have about 6 settlers and the minimal requirments and their beds on the ground with roofs for now and at bedtime they just freeze in their spots standing around.
Personally I use the second settlement mentioned as a place to have all my couriers as they take up a settler spot so just putting some beds down is sufficient
I took Coastal Cottage as a challenge. Granted it's not the concrete bunker trading post that Murkwater is, the food and water production center of Vault 88, the power armor and unique weapon museum at the Boston Airport, or the fully automated scrapyard of The Mechanists Lair, but I made a cozy resort area.
I’ve been getting into settlement mods lately. A lot of cool new settlements to be had. The sluice, fort Sampson, fort strong, the naval port is the biggest settlement. Would like to see grey do some faction settlement builds. Like minuteman, brotherhood, institute. With mods Even old ones like legion ncr enclave etc. custom ones would be awesome to, like Star Wars, mafia, mercenaries etc. I look forward to some settlement mods videos by grey!!!
I had a lot of fun building vault 88, I loved the challenge of overcoming all of the various problems. I have a respectable 3 story vault that took quite awhile to build without mods😭
Hangman’s Alley and Coastal Cottage were always my favorite spots to build at for every reason listed as to why they suck. The limitations are just part of the challenge.
The sinkhole at Coastal Cottage you can put a set of stairs descending into it so your settlers are kettle won't get stuck in it but of course using the stairs from the floors section of Wood Construction
It's insane to think that FOUNDATIONS have both a lowest height limit and can't clip through existing materials. Foundations, the one thing that is historically known to be put underground.
I generally use the mechanists lair exclusively as origin for all my settlement suppliers. Having a robot living in a settlement places a hard cap on max happiness, so by keeping them all in one place helps with that.
I find that resources are far more abundant in fallout 4 that people realize with the scrapper perk alongside various other methods of generating resources it isn’t hard to produce large quantities of materials for use in settlements and other resource intensive activities like the creation of thousands of robots.
IMO Hangman's Alley is one of the best settlement locations for a few different reason. The first being this is the most defendable locations. If you don't lockpick the doors open enemies literally can't get in. You outlined the other reasons why. I liked the Video!
Hangman alley is the best - you can build a second level of prefab rooms on top.of the existing shacks and awnings big enough to bed 20 settlers there's enough dirt for self sufficient crops and water, and the open area is good for a full shopping bazaar. The fact your settlers gather near the door where the occasional attacks come from is a plus, not a minus. Gear them up, put six turrets above the wall and watch the fun.
IMO Hangman's Alley is actually the best location in the game, though that is largely dependent on playing in Survival mode. Location as you mentioned is key and in a playthrough with no fast travel, having a central location means you never have to trek clear to the other side of the map to go back home. Being close to Diamond City is nice, but also being close to the locations where enemy patrols frequently spawn is also great. Remember on survival mode enemy respawns take much longer, so sometimes it is harder to find enemies to kill for exp and loot than it is to avoid them. The main reason why people hate it is because of the confined space and building limitations, however those aren't even a major issue if you have the right mindset. Not every settlement has to have 10+ people living there, not every settlement has to be self sufficient and not every settlement has to be a grand masterpiece. I actually use Hangman's Alley as my own private base to operate out of and never bring a single settler or companion over there. When you look at it from that point of view there is more than enough room to customize the place to your exact liking.
I actually found a place in the mechanists lair where you can place a water pump or purifier. If you are facing the facility from the main computer room, look to the highest room in the top left corner, with metal screens. In that room there is some debris in the corner which you can place the water pump on.
hangmans alley is litteraly my favorite outpost. Obviously, with mods, you're able to build way up into the buildings. But even without mods. I always thought it was cool to just have, like, a secret little outpost in the city.
This was a really good video but honestly the challenging promise of constant attack from multiple defined entrances wants me to go back to the vault..... brb wile i subscribe and binge watch you your other vids. Fantastic content buddy well done 😊
great video, lol, ya there is dirt in the mechanist layer, its on the top floor of the room, I just had to do the rug glitch to bring the water purifier on the first floor, hope this helped 😀 👍
The mechanist lair became my supply depot, I replaced all my human provisioners between settlements (freeing them up for other work) with robots coming from the lair and all my junk gets dumped into the mechanist workbench so everything is in one place (in case I want some random crap for decorating)
Hangmans Alley in Survival is a piece of heaven. Basically the center of most of my activities since it is literally in the middle so travelling to any objective has "tecnically the same distance. I love the Castle but in Survival it is a pain in the ass. It is far and to get there you have to pass through narrow paths full of supermutants and ghouls then finding out your next mission is on the other side of the map just ruins the experience for me.
2:43 tip for you. I get to a 100 settlers by playong Automatron side missions to destroy robots. They spawn settlers nearby so you can recruit them to any settlement. Even if they have their max limit you can still put them to the settlement you send them. Its exactly the same as the inventory of ur companion asking him/her to pick up stuff after their inventory is full lol
Coastal Cottage is such a major disappointment that I either avoid it completely or never populate it. Last playthrough the only reason I had any settlers there was because It was the site of Mercer Safe house.
Man, I haven't played Fallout 4 in years, but I definitely remember enough to agree with everything here, honestly, settlement building is what shies me away from picking the game up again, such a hassle to build everything and for it to get attacked later when you're on the other side of the map and playing on Survival so there's no fast travel.
Gotta disagree with Jamaica Plain and somewhat with hangman's alley. First in Jamaica it's quite easy to wall up the settlement and setup amazing defense and block out any entries and you still have space to set up for some food, energy and water. You won't fit too many settlers in there but just enough, anyway the settlement defends itself easily once you're done building it. Hangman's alley is quite small but similarly to jamaica it's very easy to defend with bottlenecks at the door and there is plenty of room to setup turrets on top floor building's balcony and windows. Again you can't have too many settlers there but it's very doable.
Once i instaled a "Scrap it all"-Mod, i actually started enjoying Hangman´s Alley and Jamaica Plain, and i love to use the Mechanist´s Lair as my key supply Hub by creating a basic bot for every settlement to supply. But otherwise i totally agree, those settlements suck when not using mods ^^
Hangman's Alley's biggest issue is frames, that shit just eats resources. With mods though, it is absolutely my favourite spot and the first settlement I truly develop when starting a new game.
I personally really liked Hangman's Alley. I had to figure out different ways to make lots of stuff fit in a small area. I ended up building a vertical city. To be fair I was using Settlement mods for removing any prop item I want and higher building roof.
To be honest, I think some settlements weren’t meant to house the max # of settlers. Each of these areas has great roleplay potential if used properly Hangman’s alley is always a personal base, a few shops and where I send most supply lines to get supplies out to every settlement towards the south (I like the supply lines being to the nearest settlement, instead of Sanctuary-Alley, I do Sanctuary-Drivein-etc). I imagine it as a hub for traders to meet in that is safe, for when Diamond City is locked up, or Bunker Hill is blocked up. Coastal Cottage is less of a home, and more of a military base for the MinuteMen, to exterminate the local dangerous wildlife; the rocky walls make great natural defenses, the slanted hills mean you’re set to make elevated platforms for shooting, and the sinkhole can….be used to store alcohol? Holes often keep stuff cool, I guess. Point is, dangerous area, you want to clear it out. Jamaica Plains is rough to use, no matter what, but urban area makes another trading most pretty easy to make; set up the parking lot to be the stalls area, roofs for a really good bar/inn, and you’ve got a decent place imo.
When it comes down to build sites, I feel like Bethesda intended each to be one of two noteworthy archetypes: A settlement zone or a home base zone. Not every build site is intended to have a large quantity of settlers, some are just there so you can make a safe haven. The Coastal Cottage, Mechanist Lair, and Hangman's Alley are all examples of this, you're just supposed to fortify the ones that need it and use it for storage / crafting.
Vault 88: You forgot about the bugs that causes the quests to freeze and not progress so you get limited to start with. The enemies spawning inside your cleared tunnels make no sense at all, unless it's a creature that can actually dig holes or teleport in. Everything else should technically be going trough the main entrance and that's the location it doesn't even use as spawn point for enemies. Also let's not forget that right outside the main entrance raiders keep spawning, so it's a paint to even get in without getting noticed. Coastal Cottage: The cliffs are not really the biggest problem here, it could work excellently as protection and can add to your defenses. However the big problem here is that you are not able to work with the highest point added to this giving a huge weak point in the defenses. Also raiders mostly come from this side adding to the problems. With the build limit and other restrictions you can not really add much protection or anything else. Even the default build height is too low compared to other settlements. Jamaica Plain: This location could have been a very good one, but the ferrals spawning inside your settlement and near it, plus raiders spawning at least at 2 locations very close making this a disaster waiting to happen. This is not the only problem, there are so many buildings around and you can't go there because of the build area limit and many of these buildings being just a outer shell and there for useless. Can not tear the old city houses down to build your own thing either which adds to the problems. Mechanist Lair: This is more a old style player home at best, and thats even pushing your luck. Hangmans Alley: Another location that could have been amazing, but got wasted due to buildings you can't enter and having a limited space to really work with. If you go high enough you will encounter other issues such as wires, poles and overhanging objects, none can be removed by default. This leaves you with complaining NPC's that will always have issues with everything you do for them. The height limit is also a problem as problematic, you can't build high enough to get on the roof tops nor do you have the ability as you are severely limited to do so with the build limit. Homeplate in Diamond City: Although it's not on your list, this is another horrible location. You can't build much, you don't have a exterior to work with either. The objects you can use are very much limited on top of that. Your power armor even is forced to be placed outside which gives random NPC's that are part of Diamond City the chance to steal it (if you forgot to take out the fusion core) The Castle: I know I might get hate for this one, but hear me out. The mirelurk bodies don't always disappear, so do the eggs. This is a bug most likely, but if they don't get removed after x-amount of time, you will have problems with building space. The huge gaps in the walls force you to block that off in the hope you did a good job at it, but with the build limit you can't really build turrets and other defenses all over the place. This giving huge holes in your defenses which is obviously a huge problem for something that is called 'the castle' and used to be a old fort. This location could have been amazing, but it's really done with lack of knowledge and respect. I didn't even mention the narrow interior that adds to the problem and not being able to place more things in the water to get the much needed water for other settlements. This could have been the absolute number 1, but due to Bethesda messing this up severely it became a 'meh' location at best.
I'm about to reinstall FO4 and was aiming to make Hangman's Alley my home base! Thanks for letting me know, I'm gonna mod the heck out of it too make it better
It became a habit with me, what else can I say. My save is 146 days of game time (of course owing to settlement building). I've had iterative builds at every settlement site over the course, with all now in their final state but for Red Rocket Nuka World. Finally a platinum build was achieved out at Coastal Cottage: post-war, two-storey house built over the collapsed house, and a security guard station in the other building w/ a helipad for the roof. Never a mod; container's covered in other ways.
you know, i was expecting to argue with a lot here, but you kinda nailed the real problems areas. i love hangman's alley, but without mods, it's so broken and small that it's useless.
Despite the overall inconvenience of the Mechanist's lair, I usually turn it into my HQ (player home that is). All the workbenches I need have already been placed in this location meaning I don't have to waste resources and/or perk points on building them myself. And even being situated outside the building edges, the benches are connected with the settlement workshop inventory. Plus this place never gets attacked so even if you've got some settlers or companions here, you're free to store your ammo here without being afraid it'd be wasted by the place's inhabitants during the very first attack.
The one settlement location that should atleast be excluded from any list is the area by the airport, its been a few years since I played 4, but the area is strangely small, not much of anything until I realized its not meant for a settlement but more so meant for you to build brotherhood quest items and the teleporter.
I turned the Mechanist's Lair into a supply depot and manufacturing facility (for clothes and non perishable foods) eheh I used Hangman's Alley as a personal base when I was dealing with the Institute (Kind of an RP sort of thing, but eh, it worked) Jamaica Plains, ech, yeah, I don't much care for it either, but I did my best with it Coastal Cottage, Yeah, I guess that could be kinda troublesome, and yeah, I hate how things are unscrappable in that when they can be scrapped in other settlements just fine. Vault 88, it was so massive my rig couldn't actually run it very well...so I went back to an older save Pre Vault 88...maybe someday I'll try it again.
I love hangmans alley, got a little shed where I have my room with a electric garage door and then you can fit a bus over top so I put my workshop there
I happen to really like Hangman's Alley. It's location is key for a playthrough w/o fast travel, but I do use the Scrap Everything and Place Anywhere mods to enhance my building capabilities. I also avoid attracting other settlers to this location, preferring to keep it as a home for just Dogmeat and I. Yes, I could just use a modded Homeplate, but it has even less build space and I prefer not having to go through two load screens to reach home. If I could just find a way to avoid making an irradiated crater on my front doorstep from blowing up the institute, I'd be even happier.
I personally like to make Coastal cottage a mining camp. I put scavenging stations in the bottom of the pit. I also like to build Jamaica plain as an Enclave Outpost.
You forgot the worst part about Vault 88: the AI pathfinding
When the DLC first came out, I was super excited and finished the whole thing. I built a large enclosed vault in the main cave chamber, only to realize all my effort was wasted, because the settlers would constantly spawn outside the vault walls and get stuck in the cave. I built additional doors, scrapped entire walls, and they were too stupid to even find their beds. Eventually I just gave up and dismantled everything that was nonessential.
Same. Any effort is wasted because your settlers will just stand around in the cavern doing nothing.
Luckily it is a great location for a tato and water farm as long as you don't mind defending it.
what i don't like is the invaders spawning in vault 88 were too deep inside the cave and hard to find
That's if your game doesn't bug and the settlers never even head down the stairs into the vault proper during the quest making quest unfinishable and the vault practically worthless.
The vault-tec DLC itself got released in a shady state. Some of the roof types on the atrium would kill the nav meshes on the tiles below. The game itself still has to rely on mods 100% to make game of the year every damn time. I have 0 to no hope for starfield. In a nutshell its going to be settlement building in space with astronaut preston.
@@neemojenkins881 well I don’t I like invaders come fight but I use powerful mods 😎
I always felt like the very small settlements are meant to act as player bases rather than a town
Yeah Crystal Cottage really only serves as a "one bed only" resting spot.
facts just small outposts it looks like
I just turn them into minutemen military bases
@youcansave15ormoreoncarins75 I vary for mine. For outpost Zimoja, I went for a military checkpoint and even put the sentry bot prototype in a little shack to look as if the people were trying to reprogram it. And I also use murkwater construction site as a "raider" base. And now I'm finally working on King lighthouse as a minuteman outpost. Since technically it's the best spot to look for flares. But this is all for rp.
Jamaica plain is my South Boston outpost since I play on survival
I've been playing with the "place anywhere" and "scrap everything" mods so long I genuinely forgot how much of a pain settlement building is without them
You don't enjoy dicking around for hours trying to place a wall and essentially achieving nothing? What's wrong with you?
👍 This video just reminded me of how mediocre and annoying Bethesda games are in stock form. I've used the mods you mentioned forever, too. Then again, I'd never WANT to play one of their games without mods.
Mods are for fk wits and noobs 😂
Agreed. I recently contemplated starting a modless game, and was startled awake immediately by the thought.
For real. I can't ever play without them, otherwise I'd probably have a mental breakdown from frustration
To me, every settlement with a massive building area with no unique characteristics to it is a difficult settlement. Take Starlight Drive-in for example. Coming up with an interesting layout, and building designs to fill up all of that space is so much harder than fixing the broken house in Coastal Cottage.
@frosty Starlight is nice for someone who likes to build a massive concrete fortress but it's not my style and I find it really hard to work on. I had to stop building when my game performance got a noticeable hit. I had to leave 1/4 of the settlement empty and it already reached 5600 pieces.
Starlight is good for big building builds. Like was mentioned, a lot of people build forts & fortresses there. I've also seen hotels & apartment complexes. I once built an entertainment center with a mall & an MMA arena I generically called The Fight Pit. Had AFT mod, so I took Tommy from the Combat Zone & made him run it.
@@BraddahSpliff Yep, I usually make Starlight into an apartment building fortress. Build a giant box around the water, one entrance, farming and stores all in the center, everyone's happy.
I think the head of Settlement-Command at Bethesda was someone called Zackery Prial and horribly made the border limits of this videos mentions and received a decent amount of hate, he did promise to join the team to overhaul the game's world but not the story, which is a false hope with Todd Howard being the mass of cancer he is. Steam does have a couple of good mods that puts in the unofficial patch and make settlements much better with smaller settlements like Jamica Plain border the entire town and a bit of the park where two raiders spawn in to harass your camp. We shouldn't defund Bethesda, just send the team to deep rehab!
(fuppping comment cut me off!!!)...of the park where two or three raiders go to harass that settlement. We shouldn't defund Bethesda but, send the entire team to deep-rehab!!!
There are spots in The Mechanists Lair that you can sink water pumps. There are small piles of dirt on the floor that will count. The problem is that when you scrap some of the junk on the floor, it also cleans up your dirt. I usually spin a water pump over some of those piles until I get a green place item prompt.
*looks at small powered water pump with concrete foundation*
Does nobody have the Contraptions and Workshop dlc's installed?
@@Leotheleprachaun I have from day one, but the smaller pump is easier to get to place. The smaller pump alone is a bit finicky, the larger powered one I was finding was a real pain the butt to rotate into the "Dirt" piles. I can place several small pumps around the room and get all the water I need for about 25-30 people.
I personally find the best use for the Mechanists Lair is to have it be a robot provisioner hub. It costs a fair amount of resources like you said, but it makes my settlements look better. Plus if all my Robots are based out of the Lair I'm not losing happiness in other settlements as a result.
It also never gets attacked making for a great central storage.
I agree. Not useful as a true settlement, but I found it makes a great robot provisioner hub, plus a safe warehouse to hold my bulk supply of crafting components, water, food, weapons, etc. Lots of floor space, so perfect for storing complete sets of power armor, plus extra frames and pieces. In the main section I strung loads of lights so it's nice and bright. Built a living space in one corner, and along one wall built all the crafting stations. I use it frequently to drop off extras and do overnight rests. Built some machine gun turrets just in case something found it's way inside, but I don't think they've ever been triggered. FYI, there is one spot on an adjoining hallway where there is a bit of dirt, and you can squeeze in 2-3 water pumps. But of course no way to grow crops.
You watched the Oxhorn video didn't you? 😏
@@daneaster7 I have seen that video, but had come to the conclusion on my own well before that. Although at the time I was unaware of the happiness penalty of robot settlers and had made it in a very in efficient manner.
For me, it's Murkwater. All the swampy ground, the unscrapable trees and most of all the Mirelurk Queen that can spawn just outside means I never touch it. Of course, to be honest, in most of my playthroughs nowadays, the only settlement building I do is the stuff around Sanctuary that Sturges wants and fixing up the Castle if I'm going for a Minuteman ending.
Just a suggestion but personally I just like to build lil shanty villages everywhere. Simple and fun since pretty much all you do is take the premade workshop buildings and throw em around then spruce the place up a bit, sometimes I add more unique touches like houses on top of eachother or walls if the location is convenient or dangerous. I also like to keep the population of my villages between 10 and 15, gives me a good growth goal to reach while also keeping every random settlement in the commonwealth from basically nearly rivaling diamond city
I love it too
Just use murkwater as a water baron location and it's perfect
for Murkwater I built a square cement habitated-wall. Sort of like a military fort- but instead a star fort, its just a square. use the middle area for crops and what not, build the "walls" as hallways with various built-in rooms. Make it two or three stories tall. Have outward facing concrete-windows with guard positions there. Works well.
'Listen, lad - we live on a bloody swamp, so we need all the land we can get...'
You can actually get more settlers by going back to the Mechanist and she will send you out destroying rogue robots. Sometimes you will encounter Synths, Minutemen or BoS where the robots are located, but sometimes there will be 3 settlers (usually) wandering around, and you can engage with them and send them to any settlement you like! Be careful not to kill them during any melee though. ;) 👍
Hangman’s Alley, you think, “well, MAYBE I can finagle this to work”
…then the random Brahmin shows up and refuses to leave.
I actually find the vault one to be my favorite, it can give you a lot of resources and it's easy to defend since enemies can only come from 3 places as long as you stick to one area of the vault that is
yes do think 1000 defense and all settlers armed with automatic plasma rifles do the job
If you don’t open the chained doors, I’m pretty sure they only attack from the Vault door area.
@@thomas.parnell7365 i just stick with heavy lazer turrets at all entrances 2 each except for the primary entrance that gets 3 and i just give settlers armor and weapons i get on my journeys (the air port is a godsend for combat armor)
@@codyholley Exactly. I have every entrance so heavily fortified that NOBODY could get in. At the sewer entrance I built a long, complicated maze with machine gun turrets throughout and at every turn. At the pharmacy entrance, the whole shop is filled with machine gun turrets, and so is the cellar. And so far I have NEVER had even ONE attack get through.
@@richardreinertson1335 my second favorite is the starlight drive in (near sanctuary) that's my main base.
For Vault 88 you can save yourself a lot of hassle if you don't open the other two entrances. As long as you never scrap the barricades blocking them, attackers can only spawn at the main entrance which is pretty easy to fortify.
hangmans alley is good as a hub in survival mode. You can "quick travel" to the institute by teleporting and so reach it very fast. It is big enough to build some food, water and glue production and all the workbenches you need to modify your equipment. For a big lively settlement it is not the right place.
Hangman's Alley is my favorite personal settlement in the game. It's easily defensible with just a few turrets and by not unlocking the front and side doors. It has space enough for food and water to make it self sufficient and while every settler might not get their own house, I found there to be enough space for the limit to hit. I've also never encountered the problem of AI not going to the back.
I use the lair to build bots that I use as my provisioners, as you pointed out with the lack of food/water it is pretty much all you can use it for.
I love Hangmans Alley! As a recruitment area. I build a concrete block house to block the street/sidewalk entrance with about 10 beds and stop in occasionally to send everyone not involved in the 12 food production to actual settlements.
Red Rocket was the hardest for me, but it was mostly due to how I'd set things up. I used it as a hub for followers by completely abandoning the ground level and building a big industrial shelter on the roof, complete with indoor plots for food and stored water.
I then put a reactor genny on top, next to the shelter, ran walls all the way around the perimeter, put two different entrances in different locations and made a giant maze for invaders. Instead of traps, I loaded the place with bottlecap mines and shotgun turrets. Plus, there were parts of the maze that had no ceiling, letting my allies rain hell down from above. It was a bitch to set up and replacing the mines was a hassle (until I peppered the adjacent woods with additional assorted ones), but it was the most easily defensible location I'd made in a while.
As someone who does no hit runs, hangman’s alley is my absolute favorite as it’s easy to stay low profile, easy to defend, near diamond city and vault 81 for safe trading, and near the river for stealthy travel. However I totally get that it sucks for big/resourceful settlement building.
There is actually a *very* tiny patch of dirt in the Mechanist’s layer for a water pump but it requires patience to build onto because the area that will allow construction is so ridiculously tiny.
Hangman’s Alley is good for making an artillery array. The central location means you’ll be able to hit a lot of the downtown area if you need to.
The only reason I actually build in some of these places is when I have my nuclear winter and survival mode mods on. I disable fast travel as well. The settlements serve as a sort of camp site where I can warm up, eat, drink, and rest as well as stock up on ammo and other supplies for more traveling.
Murkwater construction site. With a mirelurk queen that constantly respawns _inside the settlement._ I didn't realise she would respawn, and I put my main building directly over her spawn point. Result: Whenever I arrive, there's a mirelurk queen clipping through the floor of my settlement.
Another vote for Hangman's alley being my favourite. Both before and after mods. Played a survival game where I wanted to be a trader and it was such a great resting point to drop off and resupply. Finding all the spots for efficient turrets as well was great!
As a Survival mode player, far-flung settlements are my least favorite. Somerville, Coastal Cottage, Murkwater, Ozinga, even Sanctuary! I grew to dislike putting in lots of time and resources into a place you rarely see. Even Starlight Drive In starts to feel out of the way.
I’m more focused on building up settlements that I visit often. For me, County Crossing is #1. What puts it over the top is being located at the shore, near the waterway crossroads. Swimming everywhere is a cinch, and fast . (And a brief respite from encounters) (remember to get the 25% faster swimming magazine). After that, Hangman’s #2 (DC’s Home Plate can’t be linked with provisioners). And #3 Jamaica Plain.
funny my go to settlements are Sunshine Tidings because I found it the easiest to wall off in vanilla (Auto-Fencing is a such a time save I swear), Abernathy Farm for the same reason and Home Plate because I find it useful to have a central location as a push off point
Nice choice!
Never considerred swimming much as I'm an over-user of Power Armor. Might be worth give it a try more often!
(My drugs imperium payinf fore the cores needed lol)
@@hotdognl70 Hi. Yes! Swimming! It’s the #1 reason I don’t play using power armor anymore.
My first playthrough, I dedicated myself to a power armor build. I was playing on survival, and ever since Concord, where you get the full T-45, it just seemed so cool. No regrets.
But I knew swimming was fast. I forget when it finally dawned on me. I just knew that on my second playthrough, I would try Survival without power armor, so i could swim. It’s so powerful.
Swimming gets me places, often in half the time or less. Especially since there’s no fighting. Which is great for a couple reasons. One, fights take time, and resources. It makes planning what to take easier, if I don’t have random encounters. Two, I can get more use from the bonuses given by Well Rested and Lover’s Embrace. And three, after completing a quest, or after getting a particularly strong legendary, there’s nothing I want to do more than save my game. And swimming is safe.
Overall, the time saved swimming is too good to pass up. Some of the benefits i listed, you can do walking in Power Armor, on the floor of the sea. It just takes too long for me. Survival is already a lot of travel time.
Cheers.
@@christophercollins3632 Thanks, definatly keep this in mind when I'm goin for a new game. Survival swimmig!
Ironically these are all my favorite settlements because of how challenging they are lol. I will say though although I'm not a very big fan of mods, they have made for all these specific settlements are some of my favorite in the game especially the mansion mod that replaces the coastal cottage is absolutely incredible!
i wonder what you're assessment of Spectacle Island would be, as it's my personal favourite settlement area considering how massive it is.
Spectacle Island is too big for the game. It loses track of people at one end when they move to the other. Power has a similar problem.
I usually build two small independent settlements at either end of there.
Like many others have said, I think Hangman's Alley is pretty solid. I used it for the first part of my Survival playthrough before relocating to Bunker Hill, and it was quite useful due to it's central location. The space restrictions made it difficult to make it look good, but it was serviceable. I took the built in hut as my house, kept some of the small shacks and built an awkward floating room above it all for the settlers to sleep in. The biggest issue I had with it was the noise. The settlers, companions and occasional brahmin would not stop talking.
Bunker Hill was an upgrade though. To bad I never finished the playthrough due to the Brotherhood questline glitching out on me.
Sanctuary is the best imo, I only use a few mods for building like place anywhere, spring cleaning and homemaker (i think) which only lets me use more objects from the game. I restore the player's house to pre war state like every playthrough, spend hours decorating it and eventually I planted trees all over the settlement, it looks more like a park now. It's the only place that looks pre war and untouched, had to do all Codsworth's work for him smh
spectacle
island
@@Chuked spectacle island is great if you love building freely
I prefer restoring or expanding on what's there like croup manor, red rocket or kings port lighthouse
@@michael6880 Red rocket is my second favorite place, I just don't like water locations so I've never even been to spectacle island even with 700 hours
Hangman's Alley is my favorite settlement in my current playthrough. I just build a wall with vault door to cut off the raider-spawning portion, and build a dense and cozy structure in the remaining part. I gave it a very colorful aesthetic with lots of lights and lamps and neon signs, and it has such a nice vibe at night now. Oh, and I did find a use for the section outside the vault door: I put my institute teleporter there.
I always hated how some junk and overgrown shrubs can never be modified or removed. The ultimate settlement would have manicured lawns, crack free paths and no liter. Small complaint but it would be nice
Jamaica Plain and Hangman's Alley are actually 2 of my favourite building sites, the latter being, bar none, the best settlement for survival mode with its relatively central location and proximity to most major hubs.
I remember Vault 88. Instead of sealing it off like the other vaults, I kept the train in place and cleaned up the rest, transforming it into a futuristic train station with vault technology.
Vault 88 was honestly kinda fun to work with. Of course defence is one thing but cosmetics wise, it’s kinda fun trying to make a compact settlement with just the vault bits, challenging but quite satisfying when finished.
Unless you already done it a video on which mods help fix settlements would be nice
A top whatever amount, or a necessities list
I can provide a couple that I personally love, Total Snapgasm is good cuz it adds snap points to a lot of the settlement pieces that really needed them and Auto-Fencing to save the headache on trying to wall settlements off when used with a mod that makes Settlement Attacks spawn outside the build zone, Homemaker for some of the items that aren't normally able to be crafted, as for actually fixing landscapes I got nothing as the settlement mods I use are just to make placement of stuff easier
Settlement expander and scrap everything mods are a must-have. Once those are installed, Hangman's Alley and Jamaica Plain actually become really fun settlements. The alley gets expanded to the surrounding streets with water access in the tunnel below and on the river. Jamaica Plain gets expanded to the entire town, giving you all that space to work with. I do wish you could delete more of the buildings and houses there, though.
Came here to say this. With Settlements Extended and Scrap Everything, all these settlements become much more worthwhile locations. Hangman's Alley goes all the way down to the Charles(?) River. You can even set up some elevated turrets to take out the Raiders that occupy the USS Riptide.
Grey Gaming: "Hangman's Alley is the worst place to build!"
Me: "May I introduce you to Covenant?" 😜
Hangmans alley could be such a great Raider themed settlement, where the people further down the foodchain have to live in the refuse at the bottom while a scrap shack shanty town is piling onto itself further up until it's on hight with the rooftops on which you can build a Platform for upper Stands, maybe even a Combat Arena to duke it out for control over the Gang and all that raider bs, and all they had to do is make a reasonable sealing and a wider build area.
Once went all out on Coastal Cottage, but needed a lot of high stelts to even get a proper flat area.
Vault 88 was my favorite, half because of the difficulty. I made a giant vault and had it all connected up. Granted over half the vault were just corridors so I could do the connections, but it was super satisfying.
Hangman's Alley is my favorite. It is limited, but it's a great spot to make a home in the middle of most things.
For Vault 88, I don't even bother removing the debris blocking the other sections. With careful planning you can get your 20 settlers, shops, crafting, stores, and food/water into that first area. And then I just leave it at that. The resources needed to build all the hallways and door to other sections isnt worth it and makes defending a huge pain. But if you keep it to just the first area, the raids always come from the main entrance and you can just fill the security area with 40 turrets and just pop in to see 5 super mutants get wiped out in 5sec. You do get stuck with the quest to explore and unlock the rest of the vault but it's a small price to pay.
Hangman’s alley is actually one of my favorite places to build, primarily because after a while I started playing mostly survival mode and in regards to that hangman’s is in a great location and while it doesn’t have the most open spaces it’s both easily defensible and encourages more vertical expansion rather than horizontal
Nice to see players and TH-cam still giving FO4 much love years after it's release. Ad victoriam!
Vault 88 can be amazing if you take the time. Settlement attacks are not likely to happen if you have massive defense (double the total amount of food and water). The attack spawn points are at the pharmacy entrance and main entrance. Fully decked out, can be a great base of your wasteland operations.
Coastal cottage for has 6 settlers and acts as a supply cache/safe house for my enclave playthrough.
Jamaica plain is a supply staging area. 4 settlers
Mechanists lair is manufacturing and robots that act as provisioners from one central location.
Hangman’s alley (6 settlers) I use as a rest area for city-proper engagements. One food settler. One artillery settler. Four assorted Vendors. RP perspective is a hideaway in DT Boston where one can resupply and rest.
Conclusion, use your imagination and build height.
I have found a couple of random spots in the Mechanist's Lair where you can place a pump, or murfruit tree, but I've always used that for my robots.
I like Hangman's Alley, but I've always used the scrap everything mod there. Two stories of jobs, stores and fun stuff, plus little apartments on the third floor that the settlers seem to like.. I tend to store things there due to it's central location.
A fun way to approach Hangman's Alley is from the back. Use the dirt pile and then the red awning to jump over the wall and into the settlement. You can leave all the doors locked this way.
Raiders will still get in if it is attacked while you are away. However, most times if I fast travel right away, they spawn in a corner of the back alley. Outside the locked door, lol.
The automatrons really should have had a template system.
"Make me 5 ag bots, 2 guards, and a scrapper!"
hopping on the Hangmans Alley love train. Even before i got the quality of life mods for base building it was my favourite (and it became even better with scrap everything and place anywhere)
With Scrap Everything, you can get rid of the broken down building and annoying trees at coastal cottage, and with that, it makes it my favorite settlement in the game, it's peaceful and quiet, and I don't mind the small size, it's cozy. Buildings can be built with the concrete foundation floors and you're good to go. And there's a random encounter hot spot near the bridge, and overall I personally love the coastal area of Boston. But yeah vanilla it's pretty lacking.
Don't diss my hangmans alley like that. I love that place. I turned it into a trading post on the ground floor, and a big housing skyscraper in the middle, it looks sick. I love the space restriction you have there, it gives me so many ideas
I tried a few times to build a decent Vault 88 & during one attempt I pulled it off kinda at the location near the Vault door (the starting area you end up at the beginning of the DLC). During other playthroughs, I just use the "store" entrance as a home away from home. Even made it a gameroom/mini casino/bar at one point.
Costal Cottage....I tried to make something out of the red shed/garage thing but it never works out. So I just use it as a place for my trade line trader to go to Far Harbor.
Jamaica Plain.....now I've had fun with this place. Not as much as other places but it is salvageable when I get ahold of it.
The Mechanist Lair.....I only dedicated time building here once & turned it into an arcade. I kid you not, it was like FNAF but Fallout.
Hangman's Alley..... choosing between this & Boston Airport, I'll take this. A few times I turn this place into a sort of bazaar and with a few tricks made it seem like you could go inside buildings that had no entrance. I think of this as a halfway point for traders.
I always try to find some use for all settlements so I can make trade lines easier but some places I favor more over the others and build their to make something lore friendly. However, there are two places that I don't bother with or bother unlocking and that's Boston Airport and Bunker Hill.
I quite like coastal cottage. With the scrap everything mod you can get rid of all the waste. I turned mine into a luxury ultra-modern house, on top of the cave and turned the cave into a mini secret Batcave style den. accessible through a basement door
hangman's alley is my go-to. i love cramped living spaces, and i keep my settlers in the more open areas outside boston proper. thus, the alley has no need for resources and it never gets attacked.
Here is the rundown-
Coastal Cottage
Wasn't really able to do anything about this I installed the scrap everything mod and after that lever the area with foundations to fill the hole and stop settlers from falling in.
Vault 88
You can build the vault to connect most areas for a giant loop, but the settlers just stay in the main atrium areas for the most part, massive vault no one goes into sigh
Jamaica Plain
Scrap everything mod to get rid of the boarded-up building, and after that, it shapes up into a very good settlement.
The Mechanics lair
I really have not done anything with this area, just tried building a robot and it takes so much time it just seemed like a waste, may go back to it later.
Hangmans Ally
With the settler tracking problems I am thinking of just clearing it out and maybe using it for storage
1st time building at Hangmans I made a full 2 story where all 20 settlers found their beds. No tracking issues. This time I just have about 6 settlers and the minimal requirments and their beds on the ground with roofs for now and at bedtime they just freeze in their spots standing around.
Personally I use the second settlement mentioned as a place to have all my couriers as they take up a settler spot so just putting some beds down is sufficient
I took Coastal Cottage as a challenge. Granted it's not the concrete bunker trading post that Murkwater is, the food and water production center of Vault 88, the power armor and unique weapon museum at the Boston Airport, or the fully automated scrapyard of The Mechanists Lair, but I made a cozy resort area.
I’ve been getting into settlement mods lately. A lot of cool new settlements to be had. The sluice, fort Sampson, fort strong, the naval port is the biggest settlement. Would like to see grey do some faction settlement builds. Like minuteman, brotherhood, institute. With mods Even old ones like legion ncr enclave etc.
custom ones would be awesome to, like Star Wars, mafia, mercenaries etc. I look forward to some settlement mods videos by grey!!!
i love hangmans alley! i use the boxcars and stack them to make a really tall town, i find it fun
I had a lot of fun building vault 88, I loved the challenge of overcoming all of the various problems. I have a respectable 3 story vault that took quite awhile to build without mods😭
Hangman’s Alley and Coastal Cottage were always my favorite spots to build at for every reason listed as to why they suck. The limitations are just part of the challenge.
Hangman's Alley is actually quiet awesome. Small but cosy. And you can built a 4 story appartment complex. My settlers love it.
The sinkhole at Coastal Cottage you can put a set of stairs descending into it so your settlers are kettle won't get stuck in it but of course using the stairs from the floors section of Wood Construction
It's insane to think that FOUNDATIONS have both a lowest height limit and can't clip through existing materials. Foundations, the one thing that is historically known to be put underground.
I generally use the mechanists lair exclusively as origin for all my settlement suppliers. Having a robot living in a settlement places a hard cap on max happiness, so by keeping them all in one place helps with that.
GG: Hangmans Alley!
Spectacle Island: I suppose your provisioner can swim?
I find that resources are far more abundant in fallout 4 that people realize with the scrapper perk alongside various other methods of generating resources it isn’t hard to produce large quantities of materials for use in settlements and other resource intensive activities like the creation of thousands of robots.
IMO Hangman's Alley is one of the best settlement locations for a few different reason. The first being this is the most defendable locations. If you don't lockpick the doors open enemies literally can't get in. You outlined the other reasons why. I liked the Video!
Hangman alley is the best - you can build a second level of prefab rooms on top.of the existing shacks and awnings big enough to bed 20 settlers there's enough dirt for self sufficient crops and water, and the open area is good for a full shopping bazaar. The fact your settlers gather near the door where the occasional attacks come from is a plus, not a minus. Gear them up, put six turrets above the wall and watch the fun.
IMO Hangman's Alley is actually the best location in the game, though that is largely dependent on playing in Survival mode. Location as you mentioned is key and in a playthrough with no fast travel, having a central location means you never have to trek clear to the other side of the map to go back home. Being close to Diamond City is nice, but also being close to the locations where enemy patrols frequently spawn is also great. Remember on survival mode enemy respawns take much longer, so sometimes it is harder to find enemies to kill for exp and loot than it is to avoid them.
The main reason why people hate it is because of the confined space and building limitations, however those aren't even a major issue if you have the right mindset. Not every settlement has to have 10+ people living there, not every settlement has to be self sufficient and not every settlement has to be a grand masterpiece.
I actually use Hangman's Alley as my own private base to operate out of and never bring a single settler or companion over there. When you look at it from that point of view there is more than enough room to customize the place to your exact liking.
I actually found a place in the mechanists lair where you can place a water pump or purifier. If you are facing the facility from the main computer room, look to the highest room in the top left corner, with metal screens. In that room there is some debris in the corner which you can place the water pump on.
I usually use hangman's ally as my storage settlement, and Sheffield seems to love the thinking space.
hangmans alley is litteraly my favorite outpost. Obviously, with mods, you're able to build way up into the buildings. But even without mods. I always thought it was cool to just have, like, a secret little outpost in the city.
Covenant, I hate that place. I never populate it. I scrap everything I can, take the material elsewhere and put a concrete wall in front of the door.
This was a really good video but honestly the challenging promise of constant attack from multiple defined entrances wants me to go back to the vault..... brb wile i subscribe and binge watch you your other vids. Fantastic content buddy well done 😊
great video, lol, ya there is dirt in the mechanist layer, its on the top floor of the room, I just had to do the rug glitch to bring the water purifier on the first floor, hope this helped 😀 👍
The mechanist lair became my supply depot, I replaced all my human provisioners between settlements (freeing them up for other work) with robots coming from the lair and all my junk gets dumped into the mechanist workbench so everything is in one place (in case I want some random crap for decorating)
Hangmans Alley in Survival is a piece of heaven. Basically the center of most of my activities since it is literally in the middle so travelling to any objective has "tecnically the same distance.
I love the Castle but in Survival it is a pain in the ass. It is far and to get there you have to pass through narrow paths full of supermutants and ghouls then finding out your next mission is on the other side of the map just ruins the experience for me.
2:43 tip for you. I get to a 100 settlers by playong Automatron side missions to destroy robots. They spawn settlers nearby so you can recruit them to any settlement. Even if they have their max limit you can still put them to the settlement you send them. Its exactly the same as the inventory of ur companion asking him/her to pick up stuff after their inventory is full lol
Coastal Cottage is such a major disappointment that I either avoid it completely or never populate it. Last playthrough the only reason I had any settlers there was because It was the site of Mercer Safe house.
Man, I haven't played Fallout 4 in years, but I definitely remember enough to agree with everything here, honestly, settlement building is what shies me away from picking the game up again, such a hassle to build everything and for it to get attacked later when you're on the other side of the map and playing on Survival so there's no fast travel.
Gotta disagree with Jamaica Plain and somewhat with hangman's alley.
First in Jamaica it's quite easy to wall up the settlement and setup amazing defense and block out any entries and you still have space to set up for some food, energy and water. You won't fit too many settlers in there but just enough, anyway the settlement defends itself easily once you're done building it.
Hangman's alley is quite small but similarly to jamaica it's very easy to defend with bottlenecks at the door and there is plenty of room to setup turrets on top floor building's balcony and windows. Again you can't have too many settlers there but it's very doable.
Once i instaled a "Scrap it all"-Mod, i actually started enjoying Hangman´s Alley and Jamaica Plain, and i love to use the Mechanist´s Lair as my key supply Hub by creating a basic bot for every settlement to supply. But otherwise i totally agree, those settlements suck when not using mods ^^
You can put water pumps in some places in the mechanist lair. There's dirt piles near some upper doors that take a water pump or two.
Hangman's Alley's biggest issue is frames, that shit just eats resources.
With mods though, it is absolutely my favourite spot and the first settlement I truly develop when starting a new game.
I personally really liked Hangman's Alley. I had to figure out different ways to make lots of stuff fit in a small area. I ended up building a vertical city. To be fair I was using Settlement mods for removing any prop item I want and higher building roof.
Working with the terrain makes it a lot of fun to me. That makes most of these settlements really fun and cool to me except for the mechanic's lair.
To be honest, I think some settlements weren’t meant to house the max # of settlers. Each of these areas has great roleplay potential if used properly
Hangman’s alley is always a personal base, a few shops and where I send most supply lines to get supplies out to every settlement towards the south (I like the supply lines being to the nearest settlement, instead of Sanctuary-Alley, I do Sanctuary-Drivein-etc). I imagine it as a hub for traders to meet in that is safe, for when Diamond City is locked up, or Bunker Hill is blocked up.
Coastal Cottage is less of a home, and more of a military base for the MinuteMen, to exterminate the local dangerous wildlife; the rocky walls make great natural defenses, the slanted hills mean you’re set to make elevated platforms for shooting, and the sinkhole can….be used to store alcohol? Holes often keep stuff cool, I guess. Point is, dangerous area, you want to clear it out.
Jamaica Plains is rough to use, no matter what, but urban area makes another trading most pretty easy to make; set up the parking lot to be the stalls area, roofs for a really good bar/inn, and you’ve got a decent place imo.
When it comes down to build sites, I feel like Bethesda intended each to be one of two noteworthy archetypes:
A settlement zone or a home base zone. Not every build site is intended to have a large quantity of settlers, some are just there so you can make a safe haven. The Coastal Cottage, Mechanist Lair, and Hangman's Alley are all examples of this, you're just supposed to fortify the ones that need it and use it for storage / crafting.
Vault 88: You forgot about the bugs that causes the quests to freeze and not progress so you get limited to start with. The enemies spawning inside your cleared tunnels make no sense at all, unless it's a creature that can actually dig holes or teleport in. Everything else should technically be going trough the main entrance and that's the location it doesn't even use as spawn point for enemies. Also let's not forget that right outside the main entrance raiders keep spawning, so it's a paint to even get in without getting noticed.
Coastal Cottage: The cliffs are not really the biggest problem here, it could work excellently as protection and can add to your defenses. However the big problem here is that you are not able to work with the highest point added to this giving a huge weak point in the defenses. Also raiders mostly come from this side adding to the problems. With the build limit and other restrictions you can not really add much protection or anything else. Even the default build height is too low compared to other settlements.
Jamaica Plain: This location could have been a very good one, but the ferrals spawning inside your settlement and near it, plus raiders spawning at least at 2 locations very close making this a disaster waiting to happen. This is not the only problem, there are so many buildings around and you can't go there because of the build area limit and many of these buildings being just a outer shell and there for useless. Can not tear the old city houses down to build your own thing either which adds to the problems.
Mechanist Lair: This is more a old style player home at best, and thats even pushing your luck.
Hangmans Alley: Another location that could have been amazing, but got wasted due to buildings you can't enter and having a limited space to really work with. If you go high enough you will encounter other issues such as wires, poles and overhanging objects, none can be removed by default. This leaves you with complaining NPC's that will always have issues with everything you do for them. The height limit is also a problem as problematic, you can't build high enough to get on the roof tops nor do you have the ability as you are severely limited to do so with the build limit.
Homeplate in Diamond City: Although it's not on your list, this is another horrible location. You can't build much, you don't have a exterior to work with either. The objects you can use are very much limited on top of that. Your power armor even is forced to be placed outside which gives random NPC's that are part of Diamond City the chance to steal it (if you forgot to take out the fusion core)
The Castle: I know I might get hate for this one, but hear me out. The mirelurk bodies don't always disappear, so do the eggs. This is a bug most likely, but if they don't get removed after x-amount of time, you will have problems with building space. The huge gaps in the walls force you to block that off in the hope you did a good job at it, but with the build limit you can't really build turrets and other defenses all over the place. This giving huge holes in your defenses which is obviously a huge problem for something that is called 'the castle' and used to be a old fort. This location could have been amazing, but it's really done with lack of knowledge and respect. I didn't even mention the narrow interior that adds to the problem and not being able to place more things in the water to get the much needed water for other settlements. This could have been the absolute number 1, but due to Bethesda messing this up severely it became a 'meh' location at best.
Coastal Cottage is my Sole Survivor's penal colony where I always send Marcy and Jun Long
I'm about to reinstall FO4 and was aiming to make Hangman's Alley my home base! Thanks for letting me know, I'm gonna mod the heck out of it too make it better
It became a habit with me, what else can I say. My save is 146 days of game time (of course owing to settlement building). I've had iterative builds at every settlement site over the course, with all now in their final state but for Red Rocket Nuka World. Finally a platinum build was achieved out at Coastal Cottage: post-war, two-storey house built over the collapsed house, and a security guard station in the other building w/ a helipad for the roof. Never a mod; container's covered in other ways.
you know, i was expecting to argue with a lot here, but you kinda nailed the real problems areas. i love hangman's alley, but without mods, it's so broken and small that it's useless.
Disagree with hangmans alley takes alot of concrete pillars and mats but you can turn that place into a bladerunner backalley looks sick.
Despite the overall inconvenience of the Mechanist's lair, I usually turn it into my HQ (player home that is). All the workbenches I need have already been placed in this location meaning I don't have to waste resources and/or perk points on building them myself. And even being situated outside the building edges, the benches are connected with the settlement workshop inventory. Plus this place never gets attacked so even if you've got some settlers or companions here, you're free to store your ammo here without being afraid it'd be wasted by the place's inhabitants during the very first attack.
The one settlement location that should atleast be excluded from any list is the area by the airport, its been a few years since I played 4, but the area is strangely small, not much of anything until I realized its not meant for a settlement but more so meant for you to build brotherhood quest items and the teleporter.
I turned the Mechanist's Lair into a supply depot and manufacturing facility (for clothes and non perishable foods) eheh
I used Hangman's Alley as a personal base when I was dealing with the Institute (Kind of an RP sort of thing, but eh, it worked)
Jamaica Plains, ech, yeah, I don't much care for it either, but I did my best with it
Coastal Cottage, Yeah, I guess that could be kinda troublesome, and yeah, I hate how things are unscrappable in that when they can be scrapped in other settlements just fine.
Vault 88, it was so massive my rig couldn't actually run it very well...so I went back to an older save Pre Vault 88...maybe someday I'll try it again.
I love hangmans alley, got a little shed where I have my room with a electric garage door and then you can fit a bus over top so I put my workshop there
I happen to really like Hangman's Alley. It's location is key for a playthrough w/o fast travel, but I do use the Scrap Everything and Place Anywhere mods to enhance my building capabilities. I also avoid attracting other settlers to this location, preferring to keep it as a home for just Dogmeat and I. Yes, I could just use a modded Homeplate, but it has even less build space and I prefer not having to go through two load screens to reach home. If I could just find a way to avoid making an irradiated crater on my front doorstep from blowing up the institute, I'd be even happier.
In my survival gameplay, I never had any problem with Hangman Alley. Then again that's where most of my companions and robots hang out.
Jamaica Plain was one of my favorite settlements. I liked Hangman's Alley, too.
I personally like to make Coastal cottage a mining camp. I put scavenging stations in the bottom of the pit.
I also like to build Jamaica plain as an Enclave Outpost.