I both love and hate the settlement system right now. I wish it felt a bit more lively, because all the effort feels moot at times. I'm on console so I don't believe there's a way to get more than 20, unless I've been lied to my whole life about the population cap.
That said, I've gone all out in some places. Sanctuary is starting to evolve for me; it was just a basic settlement surrounded by full concrete walls with a well-guarded turret on the bridge entrance, but I've expanded my shitty little barracks into a 3+ (still working) community hub with a bar on the second floor being overlooked by a balcony third floor. No clue for the unfinished fourth floor yet. What sucks is the concrete wall isn't technically lined up correctly at the bridge and you can't lock objects to a set height/skew, so the entrance clearly has some overlap issues that would just take too long to fix. (I used concrete foundation as my walls because it looked intimidating compared to anything else.) My proudest area is Spectacle Island which has a somewhat finished 7-Story tower as the main hub. Sadly it's a pain to get population there and it's impossible to currently send a caravan between it and the land-based settlements because your caravan dies of rad poisoning during the swim (lol). So the first 3/5 of it was built 100% out of the wood and steel found on the island itself. I'd share pics but I'm on mobile at the moment.
I can't wait for them to patch and optimize the height and population caps. It'll feel a little bit more enjoyable to make the settlements then for reasons other than because I want it to look nice. Anybody have any idea how to make some things look less shitty though? Like I have one settlement (forget the name) that's just half of a house and the surrounding twenty feet near Cambridge, and to make space I built an area above it. Due to the aforementioned height lock issue, this is now just a huge floating platform above the house connected only by stairs to the ground, and it looks ugly. The only bet I've found right now is using wired to make pseudo-tension cables, but I've seen areas that clearly use the in-game creator that have things connected by wooden pillars, and that'd be nice to have. I'm thinking maybe I just didn't grab that magazine yet?
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