I have rebalanced several aspects of Settlement gameplay in order to make it feel more like part of the game. The ability to build larger and stronger settlements will develop as your character's skills develop. The type of settlements you can build will also depend somewhat on your character build. Changes were also made to make settlement building more convenient.

Care was taken to make sure all quests can be completed without any specific perks required. You can build basic settlements, provide power to and craft all quest items with no perks.

All craftable settlement objects that provide a service or tangible player benefit have been rebalanced. Many are now locked behind perk requirements to craft. DLC settlement objects have been rebalanced to fit in with the rest of the system. Some offer more utility than in vanilla.

Compatibility:
Great effort was made to keep this compatible with other settlement mods (Including Sim Settlements).  I did not edit any core scripts or quests like WorkshpParent. Mods that add cosmetic items like building parts and decoration should be fine, but mods that add functional items like new defenses might be imbalanced.

I have used Sim Settlements and Sim Settlements 2 with this mod and have encountered no serious issues. The biggest issues I've had are with food production (settlers eating food out of your workbench) and defense structures having lots of turrets (which is fine for vanilla but OP here). If you play Conquest with this mod and assault settlements expect a serious fight! (and for your raiders to get melted by turret spam)

Food:
Crop types produce the same amount of food per plant.
Planted crops only have a 25% chance to give you an item when the player activates them. This is to encourage hiring settlers to farm for you.
Brahmin Milk has been added to the game and will be produced in settlements with brahmin.
You can now plant Tarberries.
Added additional planters you can craft.

Water:
The hand water pump requires no perks to build, but gives the player dirty water when activated.
Other water pumps produce progressively more water but require increasingly higher perks to craft.
Higher level generators produce much more water per object to reduce the need to spam them.

Power:
I've added an "Inefficient Generator" that only generates 1 unit of power but does not require perks to craft.
All other generators have perk requirements.
Higher level generators produce much more power per object to reduce the need to spam them.
Power lines can stretch further.
Power conduits and pylons radiate power twice as far, making it easier to power items in buildings

Defense:
Barricades don't require perks and offer increased settlement defense (but obviously require you to assign settlers to them).
Turrets require Science to craft and offer significantly more defense per structure (to avoid the need to spam them).
Turrets (settlement and otherwise) do a lot more damage so also offer more tangible defense.
Turret crafting (and repair) now requires a biometric scanner (which is now an unscrappable misc item). This balances turret use and increases maintenance costs.
Settlement traps are more durable and take more hits before they need to be repaired.
Settlement creatures (like tamed deathclaws) offer more settlement defense.

Miscellaneous:
-Crafting Workbenches no longer require Local Leader to craft.
-The scavenging workstation now gives components instead of junk items for player convenience.
-Some items like cars can be scrapped for more resources.
-Settlement attacks give a pop up warning message instead of a 2 second text warning.



Settlers:
See my NPCs Creatures and Companions article. Settlers are mortal and more interesting.

Robot Workbench:
Completely rebalanced so that you need robotics expert to craft anything but a very basic robot. NPC robots are more likely to drop a variety of base parts.