I've finally got a good Sim Settlements game going. Using a mix of that and a few Transfer Settlement blueprints and I've got some really cool places.
Sim Settlements: Rise of the Commonwealth is a real game changer - just unlock a settlement, put a city planner desk down and assign a leader, then go off doing quests and when you come back you've got a new settlement in development.
I considered Sim Settlements, particularly with the expansions. The industrial revolution one had me pondering. But by then I'd half built a dozen settlements. I never seem to finish one, as I either change my mind and rebuild or wander into another settlement and start work on that or just run out of interest or ideas after placing a few thousand items.
I'm currently building Somerville Place into a walled medieval style manor house. Clerestory roof style, weathered oak boards on the outside with a stained timber frame and stained wood panelling inside. I'm using the Snappy Housekit mod, combined with G2M Workshop and Clean Shacks Compatibility for the interior stairwell. I started with "Clean and Simple - Somerville Place Startup" and was going to stick with that. I was still working on a huge trading settlement at Starlight, with an elaborate trading hall with large and fully decorated shops for the tier 4 merchants. I picked up Somerville Place as a settlement by accident, so I was just going to plop someone else's premade settlement there. Then I decided I wanted to add an extra room and a slanted roof instead of the flat roof section...and nothing snapped to it. So I built a barn as a temporary home, scrapped the old house and built the manor house in its place on the section that the Clean and Simple mod altered to make flat. Now I have a large hall and I'm wondering how to furnish and decorate it. One thing will be a painting of my character with weapon drawn and in full armour, dramatically lit in the fortified gateway to the settlement (I added a fortification wall - walled towns are appropriate in the gameworld). I have a mod that allows you to turn screenshots into ingame paintings and posters. It's not
mandatory for settlers to display "We Thank The Founder" paintings...
But then what should I do to make the pool area as nice as possible? Should I extend the hall further and add a toilet room and a gym, or should I have those as seperate buildings? Should I put grass down to replace the bare dirt areas? There are only 3 settlers there, so cutting large areas of grass would be an onerous task for them on top of farming. Not really, of course, but roleplaying is part of the fun for me.
I tend to use predominantly concrete in other settlements, so I wanted a more rustic, more medieval look for this one. Still remaining plausible within the gameworld, since that's my thing - as nice as possible within the gameworld. Concrete is plausible - you can make concrete from all sorts of things. Limestone, wood ash, shells. You just need to know how to make the cement from those things and how to make concrete from cement. That could be something the character had read before the war or something in a book scavved in the game. It's not very complex - it can be done with stone age technology.
There are about a bazillion things to do in FO4 if you're into settlement building, especially if framerate isn't a problem. You will get a drop in framerate if you use thousands of items, expanded settlements and infinite settlement budget.