The team was highly skeptical about how much players would care about the system, and felt that it was ancillary to the game they were trying to create. The Studio Director and the Lead Producer both say that the settlement system was up for removal from the game from the moment it was introduced until just before release. According to the Noclip documentary entitled “The History of Bethesda Game Studios - Elder Scrolls / Fallout Documentary”, the settlement system was not initially included in the design for Fallout 4, and was added later in development as the result of a game jam session. This is partly explained by the tenuous nature of the settlement system’s place in Fallout 4. They cannot be changed with an esm/esl/esp file alone they must be overwritten by a replacement script. It is important to note that many of the values in the formulas below are hard-coded into the relevant vanilla workshop scripts. Unlike previous Educational Vault articles, I’ve adopted a list format for this article so that hopefully it is easier to read. For our more mathematically inclined readers, I’ve translated the script functions into mathematical formulas so that people who aren’t code savvy can at least see how the calculations are made. To help enhance the experience for both users and modders, I specifically reference which scripts and script functions control which mechanics. If it wasn’t possible for me to figure the mechanics out from the source, I used the Creation Kit wiki and in-game testing. The information provided below was derived directly from the Creation Kit and base game scripts, where possible.

In this article, we’ll be exploring the vanilla Fallout 4 settlement mechanics.

Fallout 4 med x