Fallout 4 settlements

Fallout 4 already has many opportunities to craft, but it goes one step further and allows the player to establish new settlements or take control and manage existing ones, effectively recolonizing and civilizing the Commonwealth, one settlement at a time.

Overview
Most available locations contain at least some form of scrap materials that do not serve a practical purpose; these can be taken, broken down and recycled at workshops to improve the site. Still, this is only the beginning: other scrapped materials from all over the Commonwealth can be used to create structures and settlement infrastructures, like farms, water pumps, power lines, and defenses. While all crafting stations can be built by the player with the second rank of Local Leader, some settlements come with crafting stations by default.

The only settlements that survive in the wasteland are ones that are secure, but it is a bonus to have a comfortable settlement as well. The state of settlements in determined by the states of several resources, including: people, food and water, beds, power, defense, and overall happiness.

All of these factors can be viewed at the workshop, and any resource that dips below the expectations of the settlement's inhabitants will be displayed in red, alerting that it should be attended to. Furthermore, there is a Workshop tab on the Pip-Boy 3000 Mk IV that lists all settlements and can also alert the player if there are sub-optimal resources for a particular settlement.

Available locations

 * The following list has all 31 locations available to the player for building their own settlement. Only two are available as-is, the others have to be unlocked through a variety of means. Six more settlements can be unlocked via add-ons.

Improvements and items
In order to build a settlement, there are dozens of components that can be used to provide various resources, workshops, and even merchants.

Expert merchants
Think that all there is to stores is finding the appropriate merchant? Think again. Fallout 4 includes several characters who can be recruited to work at the settlements you control, manning the appropriate stores and unlocking special, unique items!

Behind the scenes
Enter console and select the settlement workbench, then use the following commands:
 * Every location has a build limit imposed on it. It can be modified by console:

getav 348 - Gets the current number of triangles used by player. getav 34A - Gets the current number of draw calls used by player.

setav 349 - Set the maximum triangle budget for the settlement. setav 34B - Set the maximum draw budget for the settlement.
 * Or by exploiting game mechanics. To do so, the player first needs to place weapons into the workbench inventory, then take them, drop them to the ground, and collect them in workshop mode. Repeating using the same weapons allows to make the game think the number of triangle and draw calls was reduced, increasing the build limit.