I enjoy playing with SS ROTC and the idea that settlements should be able to take care of themselves. But I've found that when you turn on maintenance costs, many of the settlements are impossibly out of balance. Having a settlement produce a lot of food or water is a cool idea, but not if it costs way more caps than they generate. So here's a couple of ideas:
First, city plans should be better balanced for maintenance costs. While it's cool that settlements such as Warwick have a production theme, they require an unsustainable level of defense. Basically they need to build more martial plots rather than slap down 18 gun turrets. They also should rely less on vanilla items such as water purifiers and more on industrial plots.
Second, maybe there's a way to take excess food and water from the workbench and generate caps to pay the maintenance costs that doesn't require the player to handle all of the transactions? Maybe a "taxman" plot? Or make it something the city planner does as part of their job?
Or a more realistic way would be to make it so that settlements exchange caps for food and water? So a commercial settlement pays another settlement for food and water? They're already doing supply chains, why aren't they paying for those supplies. 1 cap for 1 food or water? Heck with the Logistics Station, they can already donate food and water to other settlements' food, water, and scrap reserves but they should be paying tax income too.
First, city plans should be better balanced for maintenance costs. While it's cool that settlements such as Warwick have a production theme, they require an unsustainable level of defense. Basically they need to build more martial plots rather than slap down 18 gun turrets. They also should rely less on vanilla items such as water purifiers and more on industrial plots.
Second, maybe there's a way to take excess food and water from the workbench and generate caps to pay the maintenance costs that doesn't require the player to handle all of the transactions? Maybe a "taxman" plot? Or make it something the city planner does as part of their job?
Or a more realistic way would be to make it so that settlements exchange caps for food and water? So a commercial settlement pays another settlement for food and water? They're already doing supply chains, why aren't they paying for those supplies. 1 cap for 1 food or water? Heck with the Logistics Station, they can already donate food and water to other settlements' food, water, and scrap reserves but they should be paying tax income too.
