When I copied this design for a modular box-and-porch combination, I realized IвЂ™d also found a way to brahmin-proof the settlersвЂ™ living spaces - although I still caught our mutant cattle trying to climb up, stopping halfway, and falling straight through the stairs. FalloutвЂ™s construction tools arenвЂ™t quite sophisticated enough to build the lofts that many small homes use to maximize living space, but the settlementвЂ™s sole built-in house had essentially extended that principle to an entire building, using stilts to create the illusion of more outdoor space. Instead, I decided to combine a handful of indoor dormitories with public outdoor areas, following JennyвЂ™s suggestion of boxy buildings with attached porches, a popular prefab trend. A post-apocalyptic high-rise? Slow down, J.G. Besides, their pathfinding abilities were sketchy enough that multiple flights of stairs probably constituted some kind of safety hazard. These poor people were already living in a nuclear wasteland they didnвЂ™t need to live in a J.G.

IвЂ™d initially planned to stick with stackable towers, but I quickly realized that a single high-rise in an alley felt a little too dystopian. So after asking Jenny for some basic lessons in real-world design, I looked up the finer points of Fallout 4 construction and kicked off the HangmanвЂ™s Alley Urban Renewal Plan. I quickly placated them by throwing down a dozen sleeping bags and planting some corn, but the result was a chaotic refugee camp, complete with a brahmin ambling around its low huts and congested throughways. But while passing through on another errand, I discovered that the settlementвЂ™s population had boomed and everyone inside was miserable - lacking beds, food, water, and adequate defenses. At that point, IвЂ™d nearly forgotten about HangmanвЂ™s Alley, and she suggested a cluster of micro-homes on a large plot of land, or a stacked tower in an open but smaller one. Tiny, efficient, and even stackable, prefabs seemed like the perfect thing to try in the Commonwealth wasteland. The wasteland meets the tiny house movement Despite their unrealistic elements, she quickly pointed out that the gameвЂ™s snap-together buildings are a lot like real prefab homes - the cheap, modular, customizable, and compact dwellings that are popping up everywhere from the middle of nowhere to downtown Manhattan.

Shortly after Fallout 4вЂ™s release, I described its settlement tools to Jenny Xie, associate editor at our sister site Curbed. In a construction system where gravity is optional and entire structures can be uprooted instantly, it calls for something that feels almost like real (if small-scale) urban planning.

Its size pushes settlers to cluster together in an unusually human way, and it incentivizes thoughtfully working around its existing architecture. But these same features make it oddly compelling. Its vertical space is limited by awnings and fire escapes, and the ground can support roughly three one-room houses before becoming difficult to walk through. If youвЂ™re interested in giant, ambitious construction projects, HangmanвЂ™s Alley is a bad place to start. In Fallout's sparsely populated, largely suburban Boston, itвЂ™s more Jacob Riis than Mad Max. As its name suggests, itвЂ™s a short stretch of road sandwiched between two blocks of pre-war buildings, a shantytown that still feels almost urban. ItвЂ™s one of the first places youвЂ™re asked to build a settlement using the gameвЂ™s new crafting tools, but it breaks Fallout's standard mold of wide-open farms and ruined commercial spaces. Just south of what was once called the Charles River, a few minutes away from the bustling (by post-apocalyptic standards) metropolis of Diamond City, thereвЂ™s a unique piece of Fallout 4 real estate known as HangmanвЂ™s Alley.

Fallout 4 npc wars