Fallout 4

[fragger]

Man's best friend... The dog I mean, not Preston

I've got a weird thing going on at Oberland Station. I mentioned earlier how I fast-travelled there and got spawned right in front of a Swarmbot. Well, it seems to be happening every time I go there. Three times now, and a Swarmbot is right behind me every time. There are now three wrecked ones laying around the place, as they apparently won't disappear either.

The last time I went there was because I noticed that the Pip-Boy was saying there was only one settler there, when there should be two. Suspecting that a glitch was at w0#k, I FT'd in (and got clobbered by that damn Swarmbot again), but the Pip-Boy was actually correct - one of the settlers was lying dead in the field.

I know I didn't kill her, so WTF?

So I abandoned Oberland Station. Since I couldn't relocate that other settler, I killed her off, scrapped everything and emptied the Workbench, picked all the Tatos and stored the plants, and wrote the place off as a no-go.

[Art Blade]

wow. That is weird. Both the Swarmbot respawning and the one settler dead.. hey, they're not supposed to die when you're not around, so indeed, what the F is going on there. We may never know.. but I wouldn't eat their Tatoes..

[mandru]

Sorry to hear that fragger. 

When I encounter a problem with direction specific repetitious settlement encroachment I tweak my automatic defenses to saturate the trouble spot.

A bullet says "Addressed to recipient", a grenade says "To whom it may concern" and a missile says "Burn it all down!"  **Almost sounds like a new signature  **

Oberland Station specifically gets elevated automatic missile launchers on the side of the settlement facing the bank running down to the river.  There's a rock ledge down hill and to the left in that direction where attackers love to congregate before starting an attack.  I have to mask off the missile launcher's field of coverage to avoid anywhere one of the defending settlers may charge into during conflict.

I go stand where I want the launchers to be most effective and look up at them.  If I can see the launchers scanning they in return can pound a target at that location and if I can't look up and see them a settler would also be mostly safe at that spot.  I limit the launcher's line of sight by recessing them well back from the immediate front lip of the elevated full floor section they are mounted on and use walls attached to the floor panels and other workshop created obstructions to limit their side to side coverage.


Actually this play through I've learned from past experiences and seriously over-built my settlement defenses to the point that when I get an alert that there's a pending attack on a somewhere I often arrive right as the enemy has been mopped up and the "settlement defended successfully" announcement displays before I can even get a shot fired off.

It kind of robs me of the conversation I get to have with one of the settlers that starts out "Man! You arrived just in the nick of time..." and often the whole occurrence is over even before the settlers are aware that something is happening.

[Art Blade]

interesting, mandru. I think you got it right, knowing your old wall-o-death constructions

[fragger]

Good strategy, mandru

I've thrown up some considerable defenses at Sanctuary. "Defense" is up to 240 at the moment and I haven't even put in all the turrets I've planned to yet I have about 30 Heavy Gun turrets around the place, most on high towers, and they will be bolstered by lasers, but I'm still working towards getting access to those Fusion generators to power the lasers. I'm getting there, one last Science rank and ten more Perk Levels to go.

Regarding the Build Size limit in settlements, I've read online where some people like to keep a bunch of weapons stored in the Workbench, then periodically transfer them to their inventory, drop them on the ground and re-store them into the Workbench to bring the "Size" slider down. Turns out that you don't even need to do that.

Since I prefer a nice, easy-to-peruse list of the materials and components that are stored in the Workbench, in my last game I got into the habit of bringing all my scrounged junk to the Workbench, dropping seven or eight items at a time on the floor near it, then interacting with the Workbench to scrap them.  It's more laborious than simply transferring the junk items themselves straight into the Workbench, but it pays off because I end up with an easy to read, alphabetized list of what materials are in there, as opposed to going through every junk item and looking at it to see what it's composed of and having to keep a tally in my head.

But here's the thing - scrapping junk items into the Workbench also has the effect of bringing down the Size slider. Despite the fact that I've built a heap of stuff in Sanctuary, I've scrapped so much junk in this fashion that the Size slider is actually empty now.

I'm also going to limit how many Supply lines I have. Just a few this time, to my most populous settlements like the Slog and, when I get them, the Castle, Vault 88 and Warwick Homestead. All unpopulated settlements (Workbenches only) I'm leaving us such. I just need to make sure I have at least eight populated ones, in case I want to pursue another Minutemen ending later.

I still haven't met any of the main factions yet, nor done any story quests (it's not like there is any serious shortage of other quests to do - there's heaps). I'm concentrating on creating a strong build for myself before I get mixed up with factions.

[Art Blade]

makes me wonder what the limit meter is good for. Supposedly to limit your building activities so the game won't "overload" when you get near a settlement with thousands of polygons. But if you can trick the game into believing that you scrapped components found in the settlement so it believes the amount of polygons got scrapped down, it's a silly concept. However, nice exploit

The game is so full of things to do you can indeed spend several hundred hours without caring about main missions. I did that during my first playthrough. I remember I had been playing some 700 hours without seriously pursuing any main quests. Just a few here and there and mostly random stuff

[LowPolyOWG]

Bugthesda have never spent any effort into modernizing/fixing the various flaws with their engine over the years.

[Art Blade]

"learn to live with it."

[mandru]

On supply lines.  Consider what's between linked settlements.

If you run a link between The Slog and Finch Farm you get a path that cuts directly through The Forged guarding Saugus Iron Works. 

[Art Blade]

that's tough grounds there

[fragger]

True. That's why I don't intend to run a supply line there

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

I decided it was time to meet Preston, so I went into Concord to do so. I think the game devs intended that new players would go there early in the game (as I did, and probably most players who are new to the game would do), since when you emerge from the Vault after the initial bit of game, there is a kind of natural progression - you tend to gravitate towards your home town of Sanctuary because it's right there and you can see it from the Vault's elevator platform, where you find Codsworth who tells you about the Concord group, and so you head straight there (and find Dogmeat at the Red Rocket along the way).

Normally, if you "stick to the script", as it were, you'd be going in on just a Level or two and armed with only your 10mm Pistol from the Vault, maybe a Pipe weapon taken from one of the dead Raiders outside the Museum and that Laser Musket you also find outside the front door, with little or no armour to speak of. Well, not this time. I went in already on Level 32, armed to the teeth and with a full set of modded Combat Armor. I also had a fully geared-up Cait with me (likewise clad in Combat Armor and packing a Plasma Rifle) instead of just a dog armed with teeth. I (we) swatted the low-level raiders inside the museum like flies, then did the same to the ones outside once I got onto the roof - and when that Deathclaw popped up, I simply dropped a Mini-Nuke on him. Mission accomplished

I already had 11 settlers and a Brahmin in Sanctuary, with enough food, water and beds for 20, when Preston and the gang arrived, so the population went up to 16. Heh, when I talked to Sturges, all the stuff he asks you to do to set up the settlement, I'd done already, so I was able to finish off his mini-quests one after another without moving from the spot

[mandru]

I have a couple observation notes.

First off I've kept The Slog purely populated with ghouls via no recruitment beacon and transferring the ghouls that come into other settlements over to them.  As I'm typing this it occurs to me that I don't think I've yet to encounter a Synth disguised as a Ghoul.  The Slog now has 14 settlers and resources that would qualify it as wealthy and secure.  With a current happiness of 87 that's the highest I've yet to achieve for that location.

Diedre (for me anyway) is not only a broken merchant but has died 2 or 3 times and after repeated resurrections no longer speaks, sleeps or can be forced to trade so she stands at her shop with no clothing and no interaction with me or others of the community.  Her condition may or may not be having an effect on the settlement's baseline happiness level.  I've not yet had the heart to remove her from the settlement.


Secondly at Somerville Place (one of the furthest South settlements) in my previous time through the game I was constantly having to repair the mutfruit garden because it seemed that almost every enemy spawn would happen right in the center of the preexisting garden space.

This time (as previously mentioned) the first thing I did once that settlement was unlocked was to strip the garden out of the fenced area and plant 24 mutfruits to the East side of the house.  The now empty garden spot has been enclosed so anything spawning there can't get out.  My initial thought was that 24 laser turrets mounted atop full height concrete floor sections lining the South and East sides for full coverage would slice and dice any enemy foolish enough to attack from that spawn point as well as offer some shielding on at least two sides of my little killing field.

Since installing that arrangement (even after a couple hundred hours of game play) though the attacks keep coming there have been zero attacks spawning in the old garden spot and the attacks that do occur at Somerville now occasionally hit from the North but mostly come from the East of the settlement in the direction of the old abandoned battle tank.  Both of those directions also have full coverage with laser turrets and the enemy spawn points are well outside the settlement and as of yet I've not lost a single mutfruit, water pump or received damage to any of my shops.

[Art Blade]

sounds good, mandru still weird that Deirdre keeps dying.. last time I checked mine was alive but forgot to test the sales ability of hers

a dog armed with teeth