Article describing the basics of settlement creastion for Fallout 4

Fallout 4 has more than 30 possible settlements that one can establish, this is to help you get a basic settlement running the does not require maintenance and still is provides valuable resources.

When you find a settlement the first thing you need is to build a Radio beacon with a generator attached to allow your settlement to grow. Once you have a radio beacon you want to establish a supply route, to do this you need to upgrade the local leader perk to level 1(Level 6 Charisma required). Once you have the perk go into building mode, look at a settler and choose the option of assign supply line, assign it to sanctuary. (As long as a settlement has a path to it, they receive resources from all other settlements connected to that path. Therefore you can assign all youre settlements to one place and they will receive resources from all your other settlements).

Now that your settlement can gain more settlers and has resources to craft with you can start building a base. What you want is to have at least on bed per settler plus one for when another settler joins the settlement. You then need to plant crops: Corn, Carrots, Mutfruit and Tato are your most valuable crops. Not only are they used for soup, these ingredients together make vegetable starch(cooking station) which will be your main source of gaining adhesives for weapon mods. I would suggest using Abernathy farms to be your main source for crops as they already have a Brahmin which raises the speed at which crops grow. Crops generate 0.5 food per unit, you want to have as much food as you have settlers but best would be to get as much as possible for adhesives.

After crops you need a water supply, if there is any natural water in the environment I would strongly suggest investing in a large water purifier as it provides you with a lot of purified water which heals 40 points of health without any radiation, can be used as a crafting ingredient in multiple food and chemical combinations. It also sells for a lot of caps at vendors. If your town generates around 40 water, with 15 residents you will receive 25 purifeid water every day which provides you with a very valuable resource to use for trading and health.

Now that your base supplies you with food, adhesive, water(income & health) it needs to cater for junk. All you need for this is to build a scavenging station (located under resources>Misc) and assign a settler to it. They will then scavenge for junk and supply you with much needed crafting resources.

You have now created a profitable settlement, all you need now is to protect it. An important thing to note is that turrets give a good amount of damage but does not have a lot of health. To help protect the turrets all you have to do is buld a foundation(Structures>Wood>Floors>Foundation) that is sticking about a characthers height above ground and place the turret on top of it. This protects the turrets from melee attackers and gives it a better field of view. Doing this helps the turrets survive much longer and has a larger impact on attackers.

Extra notes:

A settlement cannot gain settlers if there are unnassigned settlers. Build a bell, open crafting mode and ensure that all your settlers are assigned to something(Food/ Scavenging station/ Supply line / Shop)
Brahmin generates ferteliser (crafting ingredient) and also speeds up crop growth in a settlement.
Settlers do not use up ammo, so give them those ammo intensive weapons and 1 bullet. The require at least one unit of amunition for a weapon which they will then never use up and fire endlessly.
Companions do not use fusion cores. If you have a human companion command them to get into a suit of power armour and watch them go. The fusion core will not deplete while a companion is inside it.