So I really only read this last page, because it goes back to one week after release and, so much has changed then. I'm new to the Apple world, but I pride myself on my lexicon of Fallout knowledge.
First question: Making things look better. There are mods for that, but generally, scrap is what you got, because the world was nuked. In the vanilla game, you can use the nicest of the wooden shack floors for a roof and it's mostly waterproof, I think. Certainly no big obvious holes. And there's a clean wooden wall as well that matches. But, honestly it looks out of place. If you bought Wasteland Workshop ($5, or included with the Season Pass), you can use the concrete building set, which is real nice. Well, no it's not, it's concrete, but it's solid, and it's a joy to work with. There are mods that add decorations, too. If you haven't discovered Covenant yet, it's by far the nicest settlement. Though you have to do a quest to get it. And I recommend the violent path, because the current residents can't be assigned to anything, and they take up population. It's located southeast of the Starlight Drive-In, across that lake.
Next: Radiation and RadAway. Yeah, like the other person said, RadAway is everywhere. When you're out adventuring, check bathrooms. In the Institute, and a couple other places, mirrors double as containers. All these first aid kits randomly have RadAway, and most of us just have heaps of it. If you have Wasteland Workshop, you can build a radiation cleansing arch. So you should have one (or more) in each settlement you own. Since the 30 settlements sort of circle the Commonwealth, you should always be near one. They can be turned on and off, but turning them off is only good for aesthetics, you're not actually wasting anything. So just run through like sprinklers and it takes all the radiation away.
Settlements vs questing. I love that this discussion is happening on MacRumors as opposed to an Android site. As a recent convert to iOS (from Android, where I was for six years), I think there's an interesting parallel. In Fallout 4, the Sole Survivor is compelled to find his or her lost son. On a smartphone, you're compelled to use it for calls and texts and apps. However, Fallout 4 tempts you with all these settlements, where people spend countless hours building them up, for what? Nothing but ego. Likewise, Android users spend all this time with kernels and ROMs and widget makers and live wallpaper makers, and for what? It's not the point of a smartphone. It's just a distraction. Not trying to start a platform war or anything. Just that realizing this is one reason (among many) that I switched. But I think it's interesting. I don't know why others use iPhone and not Android. I know there are a lot of good reasons. Android has so much more customization, but is that why we use smartphones? Like all this settlement building. If you told me a year ago, that on this date in 2016, I'd have Fallout 4 and two DLCs with another on the way, but rather than questing or just killing super mutants, I'm playing this Minecraft/Sims mashup aspect of the game, I would have laughed at the very least. And yet here we are. And even though I'm now on the iPhone side of that philosophy, I absolutely love settlement building. (But I haven't been doing it for six years.)
Well, that's it for now.
