The Basics

First we need to make sure all the basic necessities are in order:- In order to start a settlement you will need to setup a recruitment beacon. Find this under power -> Misc. After which you will need to power it by pushing space in workshop mode to connect a wire between a generator and the signal tower. Once that is done settlers will continue to populate your settlement as long as you can maintain the basic resources up to a limit of 10 + your Charisma.Tips: Wearing charisma equipment will also allow you to increase your population. I had for the most part wore my suit to look cool even in survival mode (I run a OHKO sneak build) and my capital grew to an astounding 19 when I had only 6 charisma normally without gear. The Normal upper limit for Charisma is 11, with this method you can even have a population up to 38! if you stack various chems, drink alcohol and wear various Charisma clothing such as the Black Suit, fashionable glasses and formal hat then send settlers from another village to the village you want to overpopulate.- After you put down that recruiting beacon and the settlers start coming in, you will need to send them to work. Hold V to get into the workshop menu and select the Settler with E and then send them to various jobs.Tips: 1. To find out what jobs your settlers are doing, mouse over them and both the settler and whatever they are working on will have a green outline. Alternatively, I dress up my Settlers for their different roles, like lab coat for my doctors, dirty clothing for my farmers, postman outfit for my provisioners. To do this, do a trade with them, send them a piece of clothing then use T to equip him/her.2. Unemployed / idle settlers tend to just sit around in chairs, hanging around the bar or busy hammering at a wall for no reason at all. Though some exceptions apply, like Jun Long, he seems to enjoy looking like he is not doing any work at all.- Food in settlements seems to all be grown vegetables and fruits, you can find them in various farms and markets of the world, simply bring them back to your workshop and start planting them. New settlers appears to automatically become farmers if there are crops available for them to work on. In terms of simple food efficiency, Mutfruits are the best food in the game, providing the most food for each Settler, allowing you to use less manpower to provide for the settlement - Harvest these and multiply them early. The Graygarden ran by the Robots also has a field full of them.Tips: Farmers will stash some harvested food into the Workshop passively based on whatever they are harvesting. This has two purpose: For one, if you have established a supply line to new settlements they will be able to farm whatever crops you have right away. And two, different fruits are used in different cooking recipes and Starch (Mutfruit, Tato, Corn, Purified Water) at the cooking station, becoming a renewable source of adhesive. Having farmers working on a good mix of various crops is never a bad idea.- You can easily get these by building water pumps, but water purifiers are where the real deal is at: You will get a constant supply of purified water sent to your Workshop based on how much water you pump - a renewable source of healing item. I think purified water even stacks with stimpacks for a faster healing rate (Though it could just be my imagination) and if you have too much, sell them for caps. A very useful early source of income.- In general, settlements can get by without any power. But if you are looking to make your settlement more advanced you will need to start looking at this. For one thing your recruitment tower uses power, and advanced structures like water purifiers or high grade defenses will also use power.Besides a direct connection to an object using wires (Push space on a generator to wire), you can connect your wires to pylons and conductors to help extend your power grid, these structures also have the added benefit of powering all the things that you can't connect with a wire (Such as lights and TVs) within a radius of about a few feet. There are also specific power switches that powers a mechanism after a certain condition is met (Like time delay, trip wire, floor plate, etc.) that are more used for traps or cool lightbox animations. There's also a terminal you can use to manage these things, but that's mainly just for show.- Raiders and creatures will attack a settlement based on the ratio of food/water and defense. Getting a raider attack during a dungeon is rather annoying, and if you don't help your settlement could get cleared out, so make sure you have that covered. Though it doesn't matter where you put your towers and traps in terms of defense value, I suggest everyone to be creative as to where you put down your defenses in the event of an actual attack.- The type of bed doesn't seem to matter much, just slap them somewhere with a roof over and having enough for your population cap and you are good.- Happiness seems to affect population growth and work speed. I noticed that my happier colonies seems to generate more income and resources and are generally more populated. Lower happiness may cause settlers to leave. You can raise happiness by having basic demands met (my experience surplus helps) and by building various shops in the settlement.