I've noticed the spawning inside the gates, myself. I've even had Raiders steal my Power Armour and start wearing it, I swear! For that reason I also have turrets facing inwards, to pick off the stray enemies that spawn/make it inside. I was using laser and missile turrets for that purpose, but there was some collateral damage, so I stick to the machine gun turrets now.

The Missile turrets are absolutely the best for those settlements that are always under attack from a neighbouring building, like Finch Farm and The Slog -- though those pesky Forged are also now getting a taste of their own medicine since I equipped all my settlers with Cage armour and flamers.

Strangely enough, Sanctuary Hills has never had a devastating attack, even though it is the least fortified of all of my settlements. No fences, sparse turrets. And the settlers are always patting themselves on the back for defeating the Raiders. That was true in my last game, too. It's as though the enemies get as far as Red Rocket and then decide they can't stagger one step farther. They always seem happy, so I built them a disco as a reward.

Sanctuary Hills works out about the same for me, but it seems like every time I show up there one of the settlers tells me about raiders that are stealing food and demanding items, then I end up with usual sweep and clear quest, come back and all is well. Also, I've had two occasions where quests have closed themselves without talking to Preston. I get tired of the "Help the Settlers, Build a Settlement" quests so tend to hold back from talking to Preston while I do other quests and stuff. When I got caught up in the railroad quests, I had two open Minutemen quests that only required me to close them out by talking to Preston. Sometime into the 2nd or 3rd Railroad quest, messages popped up that the quests were completed and my game registered XP and caps, weird eh?

Yep, I have a lasers and machine gun turrets pointing into the settlements and also 1-3 turrets on the inside facing the gate, depending on the size of the settlement because I've had legendary raiders storm the entrance to settlements twice now, so...


As an FYI, here's a great graphic's tweaking guide from Nvidia on Fallout 4 Nvidia Fallout 4 Graphics Tweaking Guide They go through the meaning of each of the standard and advanced settings. Take their recommendations with a grain of salt though, they like to push for higher settings in order to show off their graphics cards' features. Now if Bethesda could develop a game that's released without a memory leak and the usual occasional crash or stuttering at high settings I'd be happy. I'm shutting down the "wetness" setting, because I'm tired of seeing every single surface and settler looking wet even if it's inside. Cracks me up, they finally figured out the Rain Occlusion setting so it doesn't rain when you're under a canopy or porch, but they forgot to stop everything from looking wet inside and out. Nvidia states that turning it off results in a "Flat" look, what ever that means. I guess I'll see on my next gameplay.

Finally got ahold of a Gauss gun, they are quite impressive especially once you mod them out to their max settings. On the big guns topic, the missle launcher with the guidance computer and bumped up to 4 tubes with a compensator and night scope makes for a pretty decent frontal attack item. I do still like my .50 sniper rifles though. I noticed that the Gauss charge is stopped when you try to shoot between narrow gaps, so out comes the .50 for those. Finally got the ability to mod combat rifles with a .308 receiver, shortly afterwards came across a combat rifle that does an additional 50 points radiation damage. By the time I upgraded/modded it, damage was around 140 + 50 radiation. It makes for an awesome hip-shot, close quarters rifle due to it's higher rate of fire.

And next week the new DLC will be available. More to play with.

I decided I'd better do some quests for a while. I'll work on the Brotherhood for a bit, just to get the settlement. Then I'll turn coat on them.

I'm busy trying to figure out how to get a laser turret to work in a closed room. Apparently, the power conduit thingies don't provide enough power for turrets or anything that has a conduit connection, only lights - What a pain. Either I'm missing something or this is another one of those really obvious omissions because switch plates for traps also have a conduit connection. I guess the assumption is that you stop them outside the room, BUT that doesn't count for those magical settlers and such that spawn INSIDE! GRRRRRR!

Oh, this is just a guess, but I'm thinking if you don't want folks stealing your unattended power armor take out the fusion core and stash/lock it away somewhere or just carry it with you.

Update: Was rearranging my workshop and moving power armor frames around without a fusion core. You can get in and move around in both frames and full armor, but most of the features don't work and it keeps telling you to stop and exit.

Also, verified that unlike turrets, which can sense who are allies, traps do not distinguish. I forgot about the laser trip switch attached to dual Tesla traps I have in front of my workshop door. I spawned into my shop, did some work, walked outside without armor and died, in what sounded like a rather painful death from the noise my character was making. It wasn't pretty. On the good side, I also verified that using Tesla traps in tandem can take down a fairly tough intruder, armor/electrical protection not withstanding.

I'm pretty sure I've used conduits to power turrets. They have to have a direct connection, though, unlike lights, which work anywhere near a conduit. Or maybe they just don't work inside, period -- though that makes no sense, since most interior dungeons in this game have a few turrets.

I've never used traps, since I don't know how. Time I learned, I think.

I don't mind settlers using my armour. I did just make myself a really powerful power armour chest, though. so it might be time I made myself a really good set and tried it out for a while.

So, I tried the traps again on a test run and they only took down about 25% of my health... I don't get how inconsistent some things in this game can be.

On the power armor note, it's worth it. I've been going on missions to specifically locate armor frames and pieces. So far I've got 6 empty frames, 3 complete T-45 sets and one complete T-60 set (assembled from parts), which I use for frontal assaults. I've got a few of the T-51 pieces, but they must be hard to find because I've only come across sparse partial sets in 40+ levels.

I outfitted the T-60 with a mod that creates area effect explosive damage when you jump down from an unspecified distance. I also outfitted the Torso with Tesla coils that zap melee attackers. It's like Raid insect spray to Rad Roaches and Mirelurk Hatchlings, they die on contact. It does drain the core a little faster though.

Two of my T-45 are outfitted with a stealth boy function in the torsos. The limbs are geared towards better AP and taking higher damage figuring I could use those suits with a companion specifically for stealth missions when it takes a bit to switch between weapons or need to sprint out of the way of incoming fire after being discovered.

About the turret connection, that's the issue - They need a direct connection, you can't have a conduit on an outside wall connected to a generator and one on an inside wall connected to a turret or anything that has a conduit attachment, it won't work. I have no clue why.

Sorry, double posting, double ranting, double your pleasure, double your fun, doublemint, doublemint gum... Yeah, OK, been playing way too much Fallout 4 and for all my ranting I just picked up the season pass! I'm hopeless, totally hopeless

So Bethesda strikes again. I was running a sweep and clear for a certain quest in a certain ghoul infested location using my four-tube, computer aimed missile launcher (which does have it's draw backs, I'll get into that later) to basically just eviscerate the ghouls before they even have a chance to drag themselves out of their slumber. Well, after clearing one particularly dense area, feeling mighty proud of myself for eliminating the ghouly presence, a whole gaggle of ghouls (I believe that is the scientific expression for a group of ghouls, but I may be wrong) popped into existence right in front of my eyes. It was most definitely an "anger spawn" by the game because I took the original group out too fast. As a matter of fact, the said ghouls even looked a tad surprised to be there themselves, but of course they fulfilled their contractual agreement and attacked me with great ferocity and oh look, several legendaries all in a row, isn't that special... Gah!

OK, Gah! number 2. I get a message that my little hole-in-the-wall settlement of Outpost Zimonja is being attacked. It is an extremely small settlement, only four settlers and a few machine gun turrets. I fast travel to the settlement, only to arrive in time to see not one, but two mushroom clouds rise up from the center of it, I kid you not. Outside the walls a Gunner was using a Fat Man to lob Mini-Nukes into the settlement. So, tell me, how exactly are you supposed to defend against something like that? I don't recall seeing an "Atomic Bomb Catching Net" in the workshop; how about you? (I seem to be using the smirk emoticon a lot in this game) and yet, I bought the full DLC license for the year. I...am...a...gluten...for...punishment.

Mods, I am so going to load this game up with corrective mods as soon as they start getting released. There's already quite a few out there, but I'm waiting for the unofficial bug patch first. Then, then I will have my revenge. Just back away from the gamer, twitch, twitch, random noise, drool. He's had a little too much coffee on his day off.... OK, back to the wasteland I go.

Edit: forgot to mention the drawback to computer assisted aiming on the missile launcher. It will not pick up foes if they are a certain distance away so you are back to aiming by eye. When it does lock onto a foe who happens to be behind something, it aims the missiles at the center of their body. So if only their head is sticking out, it will miss every time and there's no way to disengage it once locked other than killing the foe with another method. So, moral of the story, good for big open areas or underground areas with open passage ways and little obstructions. Not good for urban battles or where there are complex obstructions.

Edit number 2: Forgot to mention that I have a Brahmin stuck on top of the drive-in screen, which holds a couple of nicely fortified gun posts. Yes, a Brahmin. It's so stuck, that the settler assigned to the posts can't get back down. I don't know, do I wait to see if it pops back down using that magic spawn transport or do we have a special cook out at the drive-in this evening? Time...will...tell.

Thanks Trail, I needed that laugh

Yeah, I get a little silly after a couple pots of coffee and 6 hours of gaming

Honestly though, Bethesda did a great job with the characters and story lines in this game. Just when I get frustrated with the game mechanics something really cool happens. I've got a couple hundred hours into the game and am only now really engaging the main quest, so I can't really speak about continuity of the story. Being a sandbox environment it's difficult to get a sense what order quests should be completed to get the most from the story. Typically, Bethesda tends to give the player a great deal of latitude, but that can at times create what feel like paradoxes in the quest lines.

All in all, it has been fun and I'm actually considering another restart now that I have a much better sense for the game. This is similar to why I ended up putting a few thousand hours into Skyrim. I wanted to explore all the potential permutations of the character types, that doesn't exist in FO4, but the combination of the settlement aspect and ability to select specific factions does lend itself to long hours and repeat gameplay. The crafting element is also quite engaging. Now with the addition of more DLC,looks like I'll be making more time to play.

A few thousand hours into Skyrim? Yep, I barely scratched it in 400 hours. My replay will be all of next winter, I guess. Another game I was obsessed with (like Morrowind before it).

I love Fallout 4. The story on its own isn't all that wonderful, but add in all of the other elements -- the wonderful post-apocalyptic sandbox to explore, the crafting, the many companions, the ability to choose a path -- and you have a game that will probably have a loyal following for many years.

Yeah, if I'm not in the Northland I'm gaming, so tend to rack up a ton of hours. I can't even begin to figure what I put into Morrowind and some of the Star Wars games. Neverwinter Nights was another one that had my attention for huge time periods. Well, I could be doing worse things with my time. Helps that my girl friend thinks of my gaming as a spectator sport because I get so animated while playing. She's trying to convince me into putting out some "Let's Play" style YouTube vids.

Bring them on! A whole new career might await you.

I tend to spend multiple hours gaming, too. Last year we were dealing with a health problem, so I was basically at home minding the fort and gaming filled many hours and took my mind off things.

I like the "Let's Play" videos. I've used them to get past a snag many a time.

So I've decided to build all my settlements to the max so I don't have to keep babysitting them, and then get on with the game. I have a list of where to find the magazines that give you more crafting items, so I will find them forthwith and get on with it.

The Red Rocket G-Mode Fortress in Progress Yes, yes, it is almost fully entombed...er...enclosed. I figured I make one crazy god mode fortress and then be a good boy for the rest of this new play-through. If anything gets in here, they can stay as a reward for the effort. Theoretically, raiders and gunners could lob Mini-Nukes through the opening I left above the "sustenance field" on the Concord side of the station, had to allow for some realism. Only one way in, well two if you count the eventual fast travel location that will be in my workshop yet to be built on the very top. The usual way is the set of stairs in the front and then through two doors that I'm going to trap. So, we'll see what tries to make it's way in once this character starts advancing levels.

Edit: you might have to double click the image to get it go full size.

Oh. My. God. The new DLC. What can I say. All new crafting stuff.

Concrete. More lights. Lots and lots of new electric stuff. Street lights. Copper lion statutes. A fountain. And did I mention concrete. Concrete walls. Concrete foundations. Concrete walls with -- wait for it -- mesh windows. Concrete walls that can be used to wall in your settlement properly; no more junk fences. Concrete that can be used to make properly seated interior walls with doors. Concrete stairs with proper railings. Concrete walls that stack so you can make a double-height ceiling.

Now this is definitely worth using God Mode for crafting.

I`ll be deconstructing several places and sending my settlers to the New Abernathy Fortress. And even Abernathy Fortress is going to have its main dormitory trashed and rebuilt.


EDIT: Hey, your Red Rocket is pretty cool! Mine is a bit of a mess, but it's well-lit.

Oh man, now I'm going to have to download those DLC's. I picked up the Season Pass and have all the DLC in my library, but was waiting to download until I got through this play-through. Now though, I will make the Red Rocket Fortress even more impenetrable! *Queue evil laugh*

You might even want to completely rebuild it. Windows!

My Abernathy Fortress looks like a real building complex, not some scummy little rathole pieced together with scraps. Makes all my other settlements, no matter how interesting, look lame.

Best yet - nuclear power. One generator to rule them all.

Spent about 4 hours last night rebuilding it with the new features. Pretty much the same design as the first since I'm enclosing that big rocket that sticks out. It's turning out really cool, I'll post up pics sometime this weekend, figure it will take me another evening to finish it off

I really like all the new things that they introduced, but wish they put as much time into the build/game mechanics. These new items are even a bit more tweaky than the old stuff, *sigh* can't do anything about it except keep gaming lol

View at night from the Sanctuary Hills side

Interior is still a work in progress.

Oh. I found the new stuff to be much easier to place. Interesting.

I'm in the process of replacing exterior wood walls with concrete and expanding some of my sites with an eye to increasing their populations. No point in building a huge place with for 20 people.

Your new Red Rocket is even more impressive. Now, if you could enclose the top and enemies STILL get in, it would mean that the Raiders and Supermutants were in league with the Institute.

It's pretty much fully enclosed, even over the top. I basically went bat-s*** crazy in god mode and spent four days building the thing inside and out. I probably used the "gun drop exploit" 10 times to drop the meter back down near zero so I could keep building. There are a couple things to finish on the interior, then I'll try to post up some picks that give a good perspective. All the critical doors are powered and controlled by terminals and all major work areas are protected by terminal controlled laser turrets, so even if anyone from an opposing faction does get in, they're toast. The "windows" they included are good for upper levels and allow you to run power cable to the inside, making it possible to have a secure terminal and powered turret protection. Might be easier if I just got some video software and have a guided tour.

One thing Bethesda missed was having the same number of flexible floor pieces as wall pieces. Need to have some of those 1/4 width, full-length sized floor pieces to make placement easier. The snap points are OK, but I did notice that, concrete pieces snap better with other concrete pieces and some of the flooring and roofing doesn't have the same properties as the wood versions. I noticed when I have trouble, especially when replacing pieces, it works best to just save, shutdown and then make the attempt. It's like the code falls into a rut and needs to be reset now and again.

Update:

By the way Hagatha, how is Ada working out for you? I've heard mixed input, especially about combat.

So, tell me how to use the terminals. I could never work it out. I tried attaching one to a trap, but the trap didn't show up in the terminal readout. And the trap just went off a soon as I wired, it, natch, so that was useless.

I`ve been running around beefing up all my settlements with new concrete buildings. I fully enclosed Sunshine Co-Op and built them better housing. Unfortunately, while I was busy doing that, Sanctuary allegedly got raided by invisible raiders (no bodies, no crushed plants, no evidence of an attack whatsoever) and happiness dropped to 60. So now I`m enclosing it with concrete foundations, which I like for fencing. Not sure what I`ll do for the Island, though.

I really would like to get to the point where I can go off adventuring for a while with beefed-up Ada, who can carry tons of stuff. Ada is just fine for combat with her laser upgrades. I like her better than most of my other companions. Plus she never gets snarky if I steal things.

And. OMG, I must have scrapped about 50 high-level and unique guns by mistake somehow instead of putting them in the workshop. I`ve been looking everywhere for them in vain. Ah, easy come, easy go.

I make it a habit now to save game just before doing the exploit and quick saving each time I'm going to drop the guns.

OK, traps need to be wired to a trigger like a laser trip line or pressure plate. It's best to have a switch between the trigger and the power even if you use a terminal. I'm at work texting this so, I'll update with more details later. Even better, I found this nice video tutorial on traps and trip lines

Terminals just need to be connected somewhere in the power grid they will pick up and give limited control to all turrets, spotlights and switches. I haven't wired in trap triggers directly yet so not sure if they display. The terminals see everything as groups. You can get individual turret status from a list, but control applies to the whole group of items. The only way to differentiate is to use separate power sources and terminals. If more than one terminal is wired into a power loop only the last one will display info, the others will glitch.


Still Texting Update :-) I figured out the terminal thing through trial and error. My plan is to build out Red Rocket as the ultimate fortress of solitude. Once I got it built out pretty good I saved and archived backups of that game. That way I can go back in and improve the fortress as I have time and when inspiration strikes. Since my character doesn't have any faction affiliation at this point I can use that save game as my starting point for other play thoughts and already have a base of operations set to go.

Update 2: OK, so part of what I said about the terminals, not altogether true and quite frankly given the bugs in the game I'm not surprised. I was just redoing a portion of the interior including making an independent power grid to control with another terminal. After setting everything up, the terminal is now showing ALL the turrets even though it's not on the same grid. Back to the build...

Updated Update : So now, the terminal on the separate grid is showing all turrets, including the ones not attached directly to it, while the other terminal I have in the 2nd to the top floor (workshop) is only showing the turrets that are attached to it's grid. *sigh* Also, each one only controls the switches that are directly attached to it. Logic? We don't need no stinkin' logic!

Okay. Next time I get a chance to play I'll start adding some traps to my entrances/chokepoints. I'm building up all settlements to a certain degree, and then I'll decide which one will be my main spot. So far it's been the Island, but I haven't got that one properly defended yet.

All of a sudden Spring is here and the garden needs attention. Also, I walk my three-year old cat on a leash for an hour every day. It's very cute (except when we have arguments about which way to go), but I find myself not having nearly as much time for gaming.

OK, so totally off the gaming topic, but you're going to have to put up a link to a photo of the kitty.

I've finally started into my gameplay, decided not to take up the minuteman offer. I'm just going to build up Sanctuary and let them be, while I quest. Last time they had way too many raider attacks and the "go get the raiders for us" quests got really annoying. It must be a random thing in the game, they pick a settlement that keeps getting hit by the teleporting raider gang about every game-week. I'm going to jump into the main quest this time and work the Brotherhood quest line on the side since they seem to meld into each other nicely. I abandoned my last play through right after Danse's buddies make there appearance. I thought that was very, very cool so have to follow through on that this time.

Took a bunch of fortress pics. Here are the highlights - no mods here, just the vanilla game and decadent use of materials:

Upper Level with Primary Power Station
Close-up of the Primary Power Station
Stairwell to workshop, storage levels and roof (top floors) Quite proud of that stairwell, took awhile to get it just right.
Workshop interior with main terminal, second highest floor.
Storage area, top floor. Nothing really going on there yet, basically an open canvas.
Roof top with guard stations. I hit the height limit with those.
Here's the interior sustenance garden at night on the ground level
Fortified Red Rocket station with turrets. This has actually been changed some since I completely enclosed/separated the stairs that lead to the wall turret accesses on the Sanctuary side.
This is the new, enclosed staircase area in the main structure that I referred to in the last link.

Craz y eh?

Oh, boy, that's an incredible job you did on Red Rocket. Makes all my little places seem positively provincial. Mind you, I have yet to select my one and only Home Base -- though at level 51 it's a bit late to worry about that, since pretty much nothing gets in my way any more. But I'll do it just for the coolness factor.

Great idea, BTW, to set up a Home Base early in the game and use that as a starting point for multiple games. I always wanted to do that but was limited too much by the whole gathering component thing. I might try that next so I can focus on joining each faction in turn.

I get pretty sick of the Minutemen, too. 'Course you could always . That would probably shut them up.


EDIT: I've completely built up two Settlements now, Oberland Station and Grey garden (almost done). Greygarden came out really well, with individual sleeping cubicles with doors and bathrooms.

EDIT AGAIN. So, what are you using for main gate/entranceway? They gave us power doors, but not power gates, so the Provisioners and their beasts get stuck in the doors and can't get into my settlements.

THIRD EDIT: My latest construction is Les Residences a Murkwood -- Fine living in the heart of the Swamp.

If you plonk down concrete foundations in two layers at Murkwood, you can cover up all of the nasty stuff lying around, and have a massive blank slate to work with. Pretty much tabula rasa.