Now that I’ve discovered cutting fluid, which lets me craft oil, I am following through with my plan to start oil farms by putting water purifiers in every settlement I can. Sadly, I have to find bones, steel, and something else — I forget what it is. Oddly, steel is the thing I use up fastest. I never thought I would run out of it. For ages, I ignored anything made out of steel when looting because it was so common. Now I collect every wrench and bucket.
Of course, I can also make my own adhesive, thanks to my industrious planting of mutfruit and tatoes all over the place. For some reason, in spite of my obsessive tato farming, I can never have enough of these things. Maybe settlers don’t like to tend them.
Another odd thing I sometimes get short on is cloth. These settlers spawn like flies and I’m always running short of beds. So now I hoard all the prewar money I can find for this purpose.
Anyway, I’m now going around to previously ignored settlements and installing every modern convenience. Weird places like Nordhagen Beach and Country Crossing are getting big doses of civilization. Places that seem susceptible to attacks are getting major infusions of defense. These include the two infamous farms — Abernathy and Finch — as well as the boggy insane places like Murkwater Construction.
I mostly ignore walls because attackers can always somehow find their way inside. Instead, I try to position turrets strategically and load up the settlers with assault and combat rifles.
Speaking of strategic placement, I was quite disappointed in my setup at the Castle last night. I spent quite a long time building a wonderful tower of death in the center of the yard. It was bristling with missile and heavy machine gun turrets. They were all elevated on really high platforms and covered every angle of the yard. If anything got in, it would perish in seconds. I was about to quit for the night when I got a notice that the Castle was being attacked. Anxious to see my death tower in action, I hurried over there and watched with amazement as all my settlers rushed out the main door to confront a group of raiders. About half of my guys got shot to pieces because, you know, they didn’t stay in the Castle yard where all the turrets were. I don’t think my death tower got off a single shot. If I hadn’t been there, things would have gone badly. So now I have to disassemble my tower and move all the ordinance to the battlements, which is going to be a giant pain in the ass. I must go around and see if defenses in other settlements need to be rearranged.
Well, we live and learn. Never underestimate the stupidity of settlers when setting up your defenses.
Also, I go through circuitry and fiber optics like mad, so I loot every telephone and hot plate I can find for circuitry. Fiber optics are more rare. Happily, I can take advantage of the treasure room in Jamaica Plain to supply these. I just reset all the laser trip wires and carefully disarm them. Boom. Lots of fiber optics.
I turned on recruitment beacons in a bunch of my settlements and now I’m deliberately ignoring them, hoping that after they get hungry and dirty and tired enough (since sleeping on the ground is impossible I guess), they’ll revolt and kill me and end my settlement management misery.
You are a terrible landlord.
I solved my Castle problem by tediously moving most of the defense units to the land-facing ramparts. After a couple of days, the Castle got attacked by super mutants. They couldn’t progress even halfway down the road toward the entrance. I felt a little sorry for them. I may take some carrots over to their hideout.
Oh, I think I figured out how to deal with the multitude of Brahmins that get underfoot in my settlements. In the workshop interface, I noticed that I could build a Brahmin feeding trough. So I did and put it in a fenced area. The cow went right to it and tended to stay in that area. At first, I tried to enclose the fence completely, but the animal was in such distress that I decided to open one side. This was at Country Crossing or someplace — don’t remember. The real test will be at Hangman’s Alley, where settlers can’t swing a cat.