Fallout 4

[fragger]

The airship is currently hanging overhead in my game, but I haven't yet answered Paladin Danse's call to arms. I'm holding off on that until I've gotten some other stuff done

[Art Blade]

Ah, I see. Well, it's within reach, then

[Art Blade]

just had some fun with those Hallucigen grenades with my main character while waiting for that settlement to drop below zero in happiness.   It seems to be at a stable 12% now.. weird. Well, I came across a raider camp and and chucked some grenades over the walls and then I could lean back and listen to the ensuing chaos and battle on the other side of that wall, particularly funny were those one-liners now that they were addressing themselves. 

[Art Blade]

Darn, this takes too long, stuck at 9% so I sent most of the settlers back to where they came from (there are no beds and so on, either, and happiness has dropped there from 80+ to 60+ already) and the remaining ones..

..I'm gonna teach you unhappiness.
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[mandru]

Well, I came across a raider camp and and chucked some grenades over the walls and then I could lean back and listen to the ensuing chaos and battle on the other side of that wall, particularly funny were those one-liners now that they were addressing themselves. 

Toggling detect (tdetect for on/off) will allow you to walk up on a group of enemies and plant a gas grenade right where it will cause the most damage then slink quickly away to a safe spot (tcl to toggle clipping and get to an out of view rooftop) to watch the fun before toggling detect back on so they can see each other and go at it. 

[Art Blade]

 

[Art Blade]

I did that now, mandru, it was great fun

Also I put some ghouls into the other settlement a couple of times so that those settlers had to defend themselves without any turrets, no defences but their own weapons. Happiness isn't plummeting, unfortunately, but slowly going down. Now 44% at that settlement, from about 80+% alright, we're getting there now. On the other hand, I got 4% at the airport and that makes me believe it was a bad choice. The airport settlement was unlocked with the BoS and the build menu is limited (for instance, you can't choose any food, only water) so I think that's probably the only bloody settlement I picked that follows its own rules Which means, I'm going through all that again with the other settlement. Well. I want to know what happens, so I keep going 

[Art Blade]

I decided to stop that test because even if it had been successful, it would have taken far too long.

It already took way too long (I spent what, 12 real hours on that project?) and I want to have some fun now. It really isn't funny watching your settlements drift into an abyss of endless sadness, having to force them to it, and because it was a test, I couldn't achieve and keep anything -- I didn't want to continue with that in the first place so.. no progress whatsoever. Well, I was down to 3% at the airport and 26% for the other settlement. Side effect for whatever reasons, when I went to Sanctuary again after all this time, it was down to 43% Usually 90%. The other settlements stayed normal, as far as I checked.

Sunshine Tidings, the other settlement, was reason for me to go there and boost their happiness a bit, which was at 80% -- having returned to a former savegame They only had the pommel horse and the weight bench.

In the screenie, see all the wires in the background to the right, from that tall pylon? They lead to seven new cat traps I also added that gambling machine and the phoropterorwhatsitcalled, and a barber chair.. but man, look at that crowd around the new soda fountain

creating happiness
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[Art Blade]

I just had an epiphany why nothing happened when my settlements were as low as they were: it simply doesn't matter anymore after finishing the main story

Which means, during the main story you get warnings when your settlements are dangerously low on happiness -- I never got any afterwards. So if you want to get rid of them due to unhappiness, you must not have finished the main story line. At least I think that's how it's working, the only logical explanation I can come up with. Which also means, we don't have to take care of them any longer afterwards, unless we have fun doing so.

[mandru]

Something that may have affected your test would be your presence at the locations under scrutiny.

Depending on your how you've set up your leadership perks you may not have considered that by being there it's another factor that makes settlers happy. 

[fragger]

Yay, finally! 100% happiness in Sanctuary

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I've noticed that no matter how much you build up happiness in a settlement, sooner or later it will begin to drop again until it reaches a point somewhere between 80-90%, then it stabilizes. People, I guess... They're all happy whenever they get something new, but then the novelty wears off and they start getting bored again. Well, bugger 'em. If they can't make their own entertainment, they'll just have to put up with it

I only wanted to get one settlement up to 100% for accomplishment's sake. From now on, I don't care what level of happiness they're at, within reason. I don't have any settlements below 65% happiness and most are around 75-80%, so that's okay with me. I might put in a bar or two and gym equipment, but I can't be bothered going out on any more Mirelurk hunts just to get the meat to build the cages to catch the cats.

If I do though, the best place I've found for bagging Mirelurks is the quarry near Concord (once you've drained it). The Raiders always have five 'lurks in enclosures at the bottom of the quarry, and two more in an enclosure at the top. Since the 'lurks are safely locked up, you can blast them with impunity. It's still a lottery though - only about 1 in 6 Mirelurks ever seem to yield "Softshell" meat, even when they're called Softshell Mirelurks You never know which 'lurks will yield the softshell stuff. Last time I went to the quarry, I fought through all the Raiders just to get to the 'lurks and none of them yielded any softshell meat

I also like to put a General Store in each settlement, population permitting. I always go for the middle-level one with the nice counter, which costs 600 caps to build (along with the other required materials), as it's not too expensive. After a while I can do the rounds of the settlements and gather up a few hundred caps in total from the Workshops of those with General Stores. It also provides more outlets for buying junk items like Biometric Scanners and Microscopes, which yield the rare and much sought-after Fiber Optics commodity, which in turn is necessary for energy weapon upgrades and laser turrets.

The General Store (Trader) is also another happiness generator.

If you're not using cheats and you want Fiber Optics, you need to do a fair bit of wheeling and dealing to get hold of them. FO is hard to come by, possibly the hardest commodity to obtain in significant quantities in the game, yet is vital if you want decent energy weaponry.

I recently discovered Vault 81, and the general trader in there appears to be the only one in the whole Commonwealth who sells Fiber Optics shipments. I'll be visiting her a fair bit in future

I created a couple of  "standard issue" weapon configurations for my settlers. The working slobs get one of these, which I dubbed the "Citizen LP" (Laser Pistol):

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Those on guard duty get a "Citizen LR" (Laser Rifle)

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Those on guard duty in my most important settlements are issued a "Guardian PR" (Plasma Rifle).
They also get a full suit of Heavy Combat Armor, which I can manufacture in my armour plant.

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And of course, they each get 1 of whatever ammo they need, so that they'll actually have an infinite amount. Funny how that works.

They may not be the hardest-hitting weapons in the game, but they are certainly not pop-guns either. They represent the most cost-effective solution I could achieve between affordable mass-production and usefulness. I have two settlements thusly equipped so far. It'll take a while to get everyone kitted out. And a lot more Fiber Optics...

I'd like to have everyone armed the same, so that I know they have a good chance at repelling invaders should the need arise. I can't be sure of that if they're all armed with a mish-mash of different weapons, and usually all they have are those crummy pipe pistols.

I also built one of these, an Overseer's Desk, just for aesthetic purposes. A Population Management Terminal fits quite neatly inside it:

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[Art Blade]

mandru,
you surprised me there -- I'm not aware of a specific character build that makes settlers more or less happy when I'm around. What exactly does influence that happiness?

During my previous "happiness test" I managed to get two more settlements up to 100% and I wasn't even there much, just occasionally. Apart from that, the current goal was to create an unhappy settlement. I wanted to see a settlement that jumped off the gravy train and left the minutemen and me respectively, which should have happened with 3% or perhaps even 26% but they didn't and I didn't get any warning that they might.

So even if my presence increased their happiness, I wasn't always around and those two settlements kept dropping. The only weird thing was Sanctuary. I've never seen it dropping so low (to 43%, from 90%) even if I hadn't been around. If it had been due to my absence, all other settlements would have had to drop equally but they did not. I suspect it was due to me "jumping" from Nuka World to Sanctuary using my batch file but then again, I have made use of that bat command a lot in the past, particularly when in a DLC world like NW or FH, and it never affected happiness.


fragger,
congrats on your 100% in Sanctuary, nicely done

I don't know why any of your settlements settle at 80-90% if they were 100% before. I have got 100% settlements and they either stay at 100% or drop to 99/98 and recover from there on their own back to 100% so maybe those you have in mind never were 100%. Of those I've got plenty and they range from 50% (default, if no one is there and you never did anything there) to anything up to around 90%. From my experience, they usually stay at the same percentage no matter what percentage that was, with sometimes a little movement up and down.

Regarding outfitting settlers, it's more or less a cosmetic thing. You have to w0#k hard to get the resources so I want to make sure that you're aware of the cosmetic thing. I call it that because those random attacks on settlements are random, including the damage to defences and other stuff like generators. Apart from that, settlers cannot die, no matter what hordes of enemies they're facing. They can only die if the player kills them personally, i.e. you need to shoot them dead. I experimented with all that so I can guarantee you that they won't die -- they'll do just fine with whatever armour and weapons they have because on the other hand, any AI attacker can and therefore will die by the hand of your settlers. If a settler is "lethally" wounded, they sit down, heal up, get up and return to the battle until the enemy is annihilated. What is also worth mentioning: If a settlement is under attack, settlers will grab any power armour (if a fusion core is in it) and any weapon in their reach that's better than their own, usually they go to the w0#k bench to grab weapons but they may loot your weapon collection if that's close enough. What happens a lot is that they pick up weapons dropped by the enemy if they are better than the ones they're currently using. I "traded" (open their inventory) with settlers after those battles and oftentimes I saw multiple weapons in their inventory and they were no arms dealers or some such. I know for certain that they do because I had stripped them of everything before and they returned armed to their teeth

However, it's interesting to watch the dynamics of this game 

[fragger]

Happiness definitely drops in my settlements. I had Zimonja Outpost up to 99%, then it gradually declined until it's now at 91%, where it seems to have stabilized. The Castle was up to 94% at one point, then it slowly went back down to 85%. I don't know why happiness levels in my settlements decline over time, but they do. However, they never drop by more than about 10% before they level off, as far as I can tell. Could god mode play some role in preventing happiness decline? I don't see why it would, but who knows.

I have actually seen settlers die, but that was when they ventured outside their settlement. There was a fight going on a block or so away from the Hangman's Alley settlement once. The settlers heard it and all of them went out to fight, where two of them got killed by Super Mutants. Maybe they only get killed if they're in a fight that isn't actually a settlement attack. I know that companions will pick up weapons, didn't know that settlers did. Mind you, I think I've only ever had three settlement attacks in the whole game, not really enough to take notice of what the settlers did. In any event, I still like to issue them all a standard weapon. I put it down to the very mild case of OCD that I suspect I may have (although you wouldn't know it from the bed I haven't bothered to make for three days)

[Art Blade]

 

Alright, if they wander around.. in a dangerous neighbourhood it may make sense to give them good armour and weapons. Anyway, if they die, well, it bloody is their own fault. Can't expect us to play guardian angel all the bloody time, now can they

I don't mind dressing settlers and arming them, I do that occasionally. It just looks and feels good.

And no, can't be god mode, else I wouldn't have had to struggle as much and my settlements haven't got a fixed happiness. Sometimes they drop for reasons unknown, I have to check those just like you do. I think it's random game dynamics.

[fragger]

Yeah, must be. It is a bit of a quirky game at times.

Something else occurred to me. According to the Wiki, a lot of fast-travelling can bring happiness down as the "zero" bug can kick in whenever you fast-travel (I've seen it happen once). Revisiting a settlement which the Pip-Boy reports as having a zero stat in something (not necessarily happiness), and/or interacting with that settlement's Workshop, will correct the fault, but if you don't visit that settlement, the zero stat can still have an effect until you rectify it. The Wiki also recommends not leaving a settlement if you're trying to raise its happiness level, as mandru hinted at. It recommends spending a whole day or two there without leaving (you can sleep or sit in a chair and "wait" your way through the time if you want).

But what occurred to me in relation to the above is this: I'm playing in real-time. By default, the game time/real time ratio is, I think, about 6:1. So if you spend an hour of actual time in a settlement, 6 hours will pass in-game. With a time-scale setting of 1 (default is 16), an hour spent in a settlement is an hour of game time. So if you spend an hour in a settlement and I spend an hour in a settlement, you're there for six game hours but I'm only there for one. If player presence is a factor in determining happiness growth (or preventing decline), then that could be why I see a greater drop in my settlements' happiness - I'm never in one long enough (in game time) to make a difference.

I found this useful, from the Wiki:

Each store provides some certain happiness bonus. The system sums all bonuses and divides the sum by the number of settlers in your settlement. The result is added to the base 80% happiness. To know how many stores you need for your settlement, you can use this simple formula: X*20=Y, where X is number of settlers in your settlement and Y is total bonus you need for getting additional 20% happiness. The result can be used to choose stores. In order to get 100% happiness, sum of all store bonuses in the settlement should be equal Y or higher.

For example, for making 100% happy 2 settlers you need total 40 bonus for your settlement (2*20=40). So for 2 settlers you can use: 1 tier 3 bar (bonus 40), or 1 tier 3 clinic + 1 junkyard dog (30+10), or 1 tier 2 bar + 1 tier 2 clinic (20+20), or 4 junkyard dogs(10*4), or 1 tier 3 clinic + 1 tier 1 general store(30+10), etc.

it is recommended that, if you're having troubles getting to 100% happiness, that you dismiss any companions to another settlement, as an issue with companions counting as a settler can arise.

Regarding that last line, I still got Sanctuary up to 100% happiness even though I have Cait, MacCready, Codsworth and Dogmeat all staying there (although I don't think the dog counts as a "proper" companion in this sense. Not sure about Codsworth either).