Fallout 4’s settlement building is so bloody jank, it makes Halo 3 Forge look fucking smooth and seamless by contrast… >.<
There’s so many aspects to it that are the bane of my existence:
- Objects like to be placed perfectly flat, so if there’s even a tiny hump then it will be noticeably floating in the air.
- Objects have to be placed as close to the ground as possible, can’t just attach a concrete platform to a wall can we? No, you have to stack them on carefully placed concrete blocks first, damn you
- Not enough settlements have large, flat open spaces to build on.
- GRASS AND BUSHES. There’s too much of it, they keep phasing through the walls and floors of my buildings. Can I assign some settler to be a hedge-trimmer up here?
I reckon the three best settlements in the game are Sanctuary, Abernathy Farm and Starlight Drive-in. Sanctuary’s good, gives you a lot of pre-war houses to work with and the ones that you can’t you’re able to scrap for materials. Abernathy Farm also gives you a lot of room to build…albeit in a narrow area along a slope.
Starlight Drive-In is (imo) the gold standard for settlements, because that one not only gives you a couple pre-war structures you can build inside of, but the vast majority of the settlement is an open, flat plane.
Tenpines Bluff, Greentop Nursery, The Slog, Country Crossing, Finch Farm, Nordhagen, Warwick Homestead, Greygarden, Oberland Station, Egert Tours Marina and Sommerville Place all share the same problem. They’re decent enough spots, with some prewar structures you can build inside of…but they just don’t give you enough room.
It’s especially frustrating for places like Greygarden, which have an overpass covering the town that is just crying out for a bridgetown on it…but you can’t build up there because it’s outside the limit. >:P
And the rest…no. Just no. >.<
Jamaica Plain has to be one of the most frustrating examples. There is an entire town here, at least as big as Sanctuary in terms of potential build space, you could make it a “Sanctuary 2.0” if you will. There’s even a good water source right next to it, to slap a few purifiers down.
But no, you can’t do any of that. Because the actual build space for that place is one quarter of the town, with no access to the water source and the only open flat spot of land being a single parking space big enough to fit maybe two small houses and a walkway between.
Let me show you the one that really boils my fucking britches whenever I think about it. This here, is Mahkra Fishpacking:
As you can see, it’s a big, well defendable building with lots of space and good structural integrity, it has plenty of places you can easily adapt into homes and make it a town.
See those box things? I don’t know what the term for them is, but they’re crying out to be made into repurposed homes and shelters. I can hear them begging me to do it.
On top of that, it can get food from the nearby mirelurk nests, and you can basically build a shitton of water purifiers around it, making it’s main trade exports fishing and fresh water. Sounds like a wonderful place for a settlement.
So……can you settle there?
Why no.
No, it’s an Institute themed dungeon…and consequently a pointless exercise entirely if you’re allied with the Institute, because if you are the enemies won’t attack you. You know what your character thought was an amazing idea instead?
Going across the bridge and just down the road to this piece of shit
That the game calls Costal Cottage, and decides “yes, I will settle HERE!” :D
To this day, I have no fucking clue why anyone at Bethesda thought this was a good idea. They where drunk or it was an afterthought, look at this mess.
Does the game let you scrap this thing? Replace it with something else?
NO! FUCK YOU, LIVE WITH IT BITCH!!
And look, in the background to the left. See that bridge? The parking lot beyond it with the red shipping crates?
That’s the Fishpacking plant! That’s how fucking close it is!! D:<
Fallout 4’s settlements are damn near impossible to get good, aesthetically pleasing builds out of. The fact that my builds look as good as they do is a damn miracle, and is only possible because I spent 500 hours longer then is strictly necessary fiddling with every little block to try and get as near perfect a fit as possible…