Soooo, I've put about 4.5 hours into Fallout 4 over the past couple of days, and I still haven't even left Sanctuary (well I left for a minute to go talk to some bros in a different settlement, saw a rock quarry, and decided to turn around and build up Sanctuary a bit before doing any more of the story). I've been exploring the abandoned houses and scrapping shit now that I've figured out how to use the workshop mode. However, I am having trouble assigning my people to work. I set up a scavenging station for food purposes, but when I try to issue a command to someone to operate the station, it doesn't tell me whether or not it's worked, and they don't follow me once I press "command" and "go to."
Also, I think I got way ahead of myself with some of my buildings. I built a water purifier that I had to put in the river, but I don't have enough wire to connect it to my current generator setup. Also, I built an operational radio tower (crystal decanter FTW!), but I only have one set of potatoes growing right now, and more people arriving every few minutes. Too many people, not enough food/clean water, and not enough material to build the things I need. I think I'm gonna have to move my radio tower and my first generator closer to the river, but I'm worried they will be attacked. Would raiders attack my purifier, generator, and radio tower?
I've found that Copper seems to be the most valuable resource in Settlement building. You need it for Generators, power lines, power connectors, lights, pretty much anything that requires or generates electricity. I usually suggest that you pickup any items containing copper when you're scavenging. Telephones, cooking pots, light bulbs, fuses, table lamps, and high powered magnets all have copper in them, so I make sure not to miss any of these. Oil can sometimes be a highly sought after commodity too, and circuit boards, but it just depends on how much gun modding I've been doing with oil, and how many turrets I've been building. Make sure you always make a save before you're going to do any major building in a Settlement, you never know when you may run out of parts during a build and find you have a bunch of useless stuff built until it's all finished. I ran out of Copper myself while trying to string power lines around Spectacle Island...that place is huuuuge!
As far as the Scavenging station, I don't think that has anything to do with food. I think Scav Stations are used by Settlers to manufacture junk parts for you. They basically make junk parts appear from thin air, and they deposit them in your Workshop inventory. If you need food in a settlement you'll need to plant food from the Resource menu of the Workshop, and then assign a Settler to those crops. You don't need to assign them to all the crops, just take one Settler and assign them to one unused/unassigned crop (They'll appear with a red character icon on them if no one is tending to them) and they'll assign themselves to as many open crops as they can handle. Same for guard towers, one guard can handle up to 3 towers when assigned. You can tell if a Resource or Guard Tower is currently assigned to a Settler by hovering over it in Workshop mode, it'll have a green character on it to show it's being worked. As far as finding Settlers that DON'T already have a job, that can be a little tougher. Settlers usually go to work around 8am, loafers will be meandering around town doing crap like cooking at the fire, or sitting down. You can put a Bell down in town from the Resource menu, which will call all Settlers to the Bell. You can then hover over each Settler, and if they're assigned to a Crop/Guard Tower it should highlight in green to show where they're working. If nothing is highlighted, then they probably don't have a job.
As far as Raiders, I have yet to see an attack target a Radio Tower or Generators. They typically go for food, turrets, guard towers, and water pumps...and probably water purifiers, but I only have a few of those built and they're at my strongest forts right now. If they destroy any of these items you just have to go into the Workshop and repair them, usually for a small bit of resources. Turrets usually just cost 1 of each item that it took to create them. Crops basically have to be replanted from scratch, but if you just repair the destroyed crops it's less messy. Water pumps repair fairly cheaply too, as do guard towers. If you find that you're getting overburdened with Settlers at a location, just turn off the Recruitment Radio temporarily, or send some of the Settlers to another Settlement. If you've run out of jobs for Settlers, you can either put some Stores down (If you have the ability), or put down more Scavenging Stations and put them to work. Settlements are happier when everyone is working, loafers aren't tolerated!
Try not to get too bogged down with Settlements, unless you really enjoy them. I found myself spending the first two weeks just liberating/building up Settlements and not really enjoying any of the quests. Preston Garvey will never stop giving you Settlement quests....ever. It's part of the Radiant quest system, so it will generate new quests infinitely to give you things to do if you've already finished the game. At some point I finally decided "Sorry, Preston, I really need to go search for my kid now. Jamaica Plains will just have to go without me clearing the Corvega Factory out for the 3rd time." If you do fail a quest, like failing to assist a Settlement being attacked, the results aren't usually terrible. The worst I've seen is a few Settlers may be gone, the Water Pumps were broken, half the crops were ruined, and some turrets needed repaired. Typically if I fail to get to an attack in time I just have to repair a few turrets and some crops. I've even had the map show that the Settlement was reduced to 0 people, but when I get there the people are all still alive. Weird glitch? I dunno.
To be perfectly honest, the whole Settlement thing in Fallout was a big turn off for me. I really hate it. I find it tedious. I also hate the feeling of having to pick up every single item because it's useful in some way. I hate it to the point of me probably returning the game tonight to try and get a big chunk of the price back.
It sucks because I really love the visuals and the gameplay outside of settlements but I feel like I'm not playing the game correctly if I avoid it altogether.
I've been playing The Witcher 3 instead and I like it a lot more,
I agree with Greyhammer. I would just avoid settlements pretty much all together if I were you. It's completely optional, and the game is great just on it's own. Settlements are just a little bonus that weren't there in previous games. I think Bethesda saw what a lot of modders have done in previous games with Settlement-type building and decided to add a bit of that in Fallout 4. Great idea, but I'm almost curious to see what the modding community will really do with it once the toolkit is released. To be honest, I get to a point sometimes where I find myself messing around with Settlements waaaay too much, but not nearly as bad as my buddy. His Sanctuary is ridiculous, with walls going completely around the border, several dozen turrets of all kinds, it's a real fortress that puts the Castle to shame.