The point of no return is definitely a significant amount further than what kalina stated. The point where you're forced to start making factions hostile towards you is a quest called "Mass Fusion", where your actions during that quest will affect you. There are obviously points in the storyline where you can prematurely make a faction an enemy, but "Mass Fusion" is the point in the storyline where you're forced to make a faction an enemy in order to progress in the storyline. It is a very definitive point in the storyline where you can see the endgame approaching.
The power armor radiation gauge simply gives you an idea of what radiation is present in the surrounding environment.
It's important to be aware that, while certain things like power armor and hazmat suits greatly reduce radiation damage, nothing will completely negate all rads. If your Geiger counter is clicking, you're probably taking some amount of radiation damage.
So, this provides you two things:
- General awareness of when radiation damage is being taken.
- An idea of where not to step out of your power armor. (Unless you're wearing a hazmat suit underneath.)
Another thing to be aware of is that damage and max HP reduction from rads is not based on static values in the same way most other damage is. Each rad absorbed takes out 0.1% of your maximum health, regardless of how high or low your natural maximum HP value is.
Rad absorption that's displayed in a numeric form is generally in terms of "rads per second". The greatest available radiation resistance (such as what you can get with power armor) reduces most sources of radiation to "<1" rads per second.
This means you'll usually have somewhere north of 16 minutes and 40 seconds worth of survival time, before you'll have to use Aids or die, while the Geiger counter inside your power armor is clicking away. Certainly, this should be more than enough for most scenarios. But it's still important to be aware that it is a finite period.
One particularly annoying bit about the power suit's radiation gauge however is that it doesn't actually show you how much damage you're taking. Usually, it's extremely low ("<1 rads") but it would be nice to actually see that value so you can be certain.
The suit's HUD also doesn't give you a clear indicator of how much of your maximum health is currently unavailable due to radiation damage already taken. (Well, apparently there is an indicator but it's really easy to miss.) This can be particularly annoying when you are trying to judge how to effectively use your Aids to restore available HP or remove absorbed radiation.
To work around these limitations, you can go into VATS at any time by holding the normal VATS button for a half-second or so. (This works in and out of combat, regardless of whether there's anything around that can be targeted.) There, you'll see the normal health bar and radiation indicators as appropriate.
Best Answer
Assigning Settlers to Shops
The process for assigning settlers to shops is the same as assigning them to crops or a bed. If you have assigned people to shops and they don't stand at the shop, check the following:
To see if the shop has someone assigned, highlight it in build mode:
If the "REQUIRES" tooltip has a picture of a red person, it doesn't have someone assigned. Once you assign someone, the red silhouette will turn green.
Shop Benefits
Purchasing Stuff
Each type of that shop will stock items you can buy of that type. So, if you build them all, you'll have a vendor in your settlement where you can buy:
Healing
At the clinic, you can heal HP, remove RADs, or cure a chem addiction.
Collecting Taxes
Every day, you see a small amount of caps transferred to your workshop. These caps represent your cut of the sales for that shop. Think of it as a tax for that shop to be able to operate in your settlement. The amount increases as your number of shops and settlers increases.
Selling Stuff
You can sell items you find on your travels to the vendors in your settlement for caps. In addition, if you take 3 points in the Cap Collector perk, you will be able to invest 500 caps in each shop. This has the effect of increasing the amount of caps they start with after their inventory resets by 500 caps, which means you can sell more stuff to them per reset.
A somewhat popular money-making scheme in the game is to have a settlement overproduce water. Then, you can collect the purified water that gets deposited in your settlement each day and sell it to the vendors of your shops for 11 caps apiece. Jet is also a popular item to make and sell to shops, although it's a little more difficult as you have to collect plastic and fertilizer to make it.