I was wandering around Sanctuary, and settlers were saying 'I hope you're here to help', etc. However, there was nobody standing off by themselves waiting to tell me that their friend was kidnapped. I walked all around the settlement. So, I went off and did some quests, came back. People were still saying it. So I checked again, and sure enough there was someone over on the road by the vault 111 path, as he should be.

However; It was not a settler from sanctuary. it was one from Starlight Drive in. He originally was a Sanctuary settler (not a named original, just 'settler'), but was moved. This was confirmed when the turn in for the quest after I rescued her read 'Report back to settlers at sanctuary hills', but the marker was at Starlight. Sure enough, it was the same dude. My artillery gunner.

So, I suspect that the first time I was hearing complaining in sanctuary, I was unable to find him because he was pathing from Starlight to Sanctuary to tell me about it.

The whole kidnapping bit feels really clunky. Ignoring that raiders somehow wandered into Sanctuary and abducted a guard without anybody raising the alarm (I know it's just a scripted thing, but it feels so ham-fisted), the actual mechanics of receiving the quest is very awkward.

Occasionally I hear the sad bong of a quest failure, but get no message. I'm now assuming these are settlement quests failing from other places that I just never knew were even a problem. It would also explain random Happiness drops I'm getting in otherwise stable settlements.

I had something similar happen, in that the quest giver was a provisioner running supplies between Sanctuary and Tenpines Bluff. (He's based at Tenpines) It so happened that I ran into him near the entrance to Sanctuary and took the quest there, so I got a "Raider Troubles at Sanctuary" quest title and was told to turn it in at Tenpines when I'd completed the quest. I went to Tenpines to turn it in and the map target was showing somewhere between Tenpines and Sanctuary. I ended up fast traveling to Sanctuary, placing a chair at the foot of the bridge and doing a sit/wait/check the map loop hour by hour till he showed up.

I've also had a different issue with a kidnapping quest, in that I ran across someone who'd been kidnapped that was based in a camp I hadn't visited beforehand so I didn't have a quest for him. Having run across kidnapped people before in Fallout 3 I went ahead and released him, but once outside the building he just wandered aimlessly till he got killed. Figuring something was amiss, I restored to a previous save, left him alone for the time being, and eventually found a settlement that gave me a quest to go and retrieve him. That time he made a beeline for home as soon as he was outside the building and the quest finished correctly.

Alright, this is really frustrating. My artillery gunner from sanctuary is now just plain missing, no hint that she was kidnapped. I haven't missed any settlement attacks. Item shows unassigned, and she is nowhere to be found. RIP all the nice gear she had on her.

Time to install a mod to disable this... feature.

It's time to just rush the ending and put the game down. I wanted to really go through all the side quests and so on, but the annoyances are getting to be way too large. I don't feel like the general of the minutemen, I feel like the minder for a bunch of special needs children.