As a writer myself, I think - contrary to popular opinion around here - that the Fallout 4 world is pretty well thought out, as worlds like this go. I can see that the writers really had their hands full coming up with thousands and
thousands of lines of dialog, which really are well crafted. But modders can certainly fill in plenty of empty spaces with examples like M Panda mention. Churches have obviously been spared the wrath of China by Providence, and would likely serve as focus points for religious or fanatic settlers. Farms like Abernathy's, Ten Pines, Greentop, Finch's and others could easily be larger with indentured settler workers. And gee, how many settlements do we establish besides? Even Boston Airport? Like 20 something? There are all kinds of places that, when settlements get too big, bands can separate to clear out and establish themselves. There is a lot of space to just throw down some lumber, some crops, and make a farm from scratch. And why just settlers? A Skinny Malone wannabe might get tired of being a second rate hood in Goodneighbor and pick a spot out in the Commonwealth, or even MacCready if he got tired enough of squatting in The Third Rail.
SS2 takes up a lot of the adventure steam left over from the FO4 vanilla plot, but there is still room for some intrepidness here and there.
As an aside, I'll have to say that I had a pleasant surprise yesterday. I managed to get through the Corvega mission for Ten Pines, only dying once, and on the way back to Sanctuary, crawling with about 1500 pounds of loot, I swung north to check out a familiar site just to see if something was there. And gosh dang, The Bone Zone was still open for "business"!!
I could hardly believe it! And I was so happy, because the modders responsible for the FN FAL rifle, among others, were well armed with them. And I only died twice, though I might have grenaded myself one of them. It's still not in the mod list, but who cares!
Such festivities were had, doing in some of my favorite mod authors and intranet celebs.