Unlock Numbers Settlement For Free

You'll have to clear out the current residents or if it's one with human settlers you can do their quest to open it up. Note that killing the existing settlers is an option if you want to play it that way.

Unlockable items and objects can be found by scavenging the Commonwealth for issues of the Picket Fences magazine. Each one will unlock a different object for your workshop. Adds all the white Picket Fence pieces to the fence section of the settlement buildings.

While in a Settlement, check the Workshop menu to see if there are warning signs next to any of the Settlement stats. To increase happiness, everyone in your settlement needs food, water, a bed, a job, and defense to ward off raiders. Plant plenty of food.

Max population is 10+Charisma, also you need 1 food per settler, and 1 water per food produced+ number of settlers, currently you don't have enough water to permit any additional settlers, I would suggest removing a settler from food production. The higher your charisma, the more settlers you get.

The game has exactly 30 settlements that will allow you to unlock the Workshop so you can start building and customizing. However, all of them but two will require you to complete a specific task to unlock.

There's no hard cap. There's a very soft cap, which is "10 + charisma" for most settlements and "20 + charisma" for vault 88 under some conditions (if you are the overseer mostly). This "very soft cap" can be exceeded by using charisma boosting gear (armor, chems, etc).

You can lose a settlement if you don't help defend to many times. I've lost 12 so far, i'm playing on survival might be different on other difficulties.

Wiki says you need 8 settlements.