Soon after I finished the Reunions quest, synths attacked Green Nursery settlement. A quest showed up under miscellaneous quests to defend it. So I went there and killed all the synths. The settlers thanked me. But the quest was not marked as completed. I left Green Nursery and went some place else, and immediately saw the "Failed to defend Green Nursery" message. I went right back to Green Nursery and saw most of crops, water, and defenses destroyed. Is there any way to fix this apparent bug? Also, after I killed all the synths, I noticed one of the settlers had died, and her inventory revealed a synth component! So I assumed that meant she had been a synth posing as human. Whether the synths killed her or the other settlers did, I don't know. Did all this have anything to do with why the defense quest couldn't be completed? I don't mind synths infiltrating my settlements once in a while, which makes things exciting. But I mind if I can't complete a defense quest for some possible bug and end up failing it and losing resources.

I've had this happen a couple times. I'll show up and help defend the settlement, clear everything out, but it won't register as completed. Sometimes you just have to wander around outside the perimeter of the settlement to spawn the last enemies. Other times it might just be buggy.

Really the whole settlement system with the Minutemen missions and settlement defense missions is a bit buggy. It'll repeat the same quests over and over again, which I can't really think it's supposed to do. I understand that the general premise of the settlement defense quests is going to typically be the same, but it could be switched up a bit.

That worked for me a couple of times. Running to the far corners of the settlement made it spawn stuff on the other side that, once killed, completed the task.

In the worst case you can just go on about your business and you'll eventually fail the mission. You may have to repair some stuff but it's not a huge deal.

There have also been times that I've gotten a notification saying "(settlement) is under attack!" and when I get there, I see no attackers and everyone is just kind of going about business like usual. So I leave and then a while later get a notification that I failed to help defend them. I've discovered that a lot of the time you have to walk around the perimeter to get the enemies to even spawn in the first place. My guess is that these defense quests weren't made with fast traveling in mind. With regular traveling there's probably something that amounts to a proximity trigger that causes them to spawn before you get to the settlement. With fast travel though, you bypass the proximity trigger and have to venture back outside of the perimeter to trigger it.

This worked for me in other attacks, but strangely not this one. I ran all over Green Nursery, killed a few insects, but still couldn't complete the defense. Was this synth attack somehow different? If this keeps happening, I have to keep wasting resources for repair, and it will be a big deal if the settlement is big and repairs are plenty.

I doubt that this attack was any different. It was probably just a bug. At this point there's not really any kind of fix for it.

If for some reason not all your kills during the defense do not "trigger" the game thinks there are still attackers alive and the quest does not complete. From the number of reports I have seen, this is likely a bug of some sort, but could also be one of the attackers getting wounded and running off outside your perception range so you can't see them on the radar. Note this would be more likely if your perception is on the low side.

If you leave the area before all the attackers are dealt with (whatever the reason), the quest will fail and the residual damage to your settlement will happen.

I'm curious to know if someone is able to see something I may have missed, so I'm including my save game here (https://www.dropbox.com/s/a4hcvgd4a0zzzhd/Save416_6A15C760_4B61746879_Commonwealth_050724_20151208185138_34_2.fos?dl=0). This is right after I killed all the synths but before I leave Green Nursery, with the defense quest still incomplete in my Pip-Boy. As I said, I already searched around for more enemies but to no avail. Hope someone takes a look at my save game, and thanks in advance.

This happened to me at Starlight Drive In when I had 16 settlers and a bunch of turrets set up. I killed a bunch of raiders, walked the perimter twice, quest still would not complete so I fast traveled away to do something else... quest failed. Returned to Starlight immediately and all my turrets were busted, my water purified destroyed. I reloaded the game and finally found that ONE raider that was stuck due to pathfinding. I hate how the game does not have an auto resolve system... somehow that ONE raider managed to sneak into my town, sabotage all my turrets, and destroy the purifier without anyone noticing? Come on..

Also note that sometimes instead of attacking the settlements, some retarders/dummers/poopermutants will decide to run off and chase the provisioner's brahmins instead of attacking the settlements.

All you ever needed to know re settlement attacks in easy bullets -

-attack messages often get lost while other events take place, e.g. Fast travel. The notification mod helps tremendously with this. If you cant mod, then accept some attacks will be missed unless you scan misc quest religiously

-some attacks that dont give success message are for legit reasons - e.g. Lone attacker hiding somewhere or just outside borders.

-most attacks that fail to give you success message are bugged - cant say why but the what is easier. Again using mod, you can see the exact type (raid from mutants, ghouls, raiders, synth attack, synth infiltrator,etc. this last one is the known bugged one - synth infiltration very often (for me 100%) does not complete even after infiltrator is dead. Console resurrect / kill 5-10x always solves this. The variable is how many times you need to resurrect and kill again.
This implies either the trigger is finicky and you just gotts kill / resurrect over and over till mission end trigger recognized, or the mission itself is coded where just meed to kill X number but bethesda stupidly only sends 1 infiltrator. Bad coding or bad design, same result.
If you cant console resurrect then you are sol and just need to accept the inevitable fail plus needing to fix broken items as result.

The mod i mentioned is useful not so much becuase of thr better alerts, which is awesome, but truly the really useful part is knowing it is an infiltration type. I then know to expect a bugged mission instead of guessing.

As my first post said, a synth infiltrator situation was exactly what I got. The fact that you had 100% fail in these situations is disheartening. I'm on a PC so I can use console commands. But I don't want to have to do this every time. Is there a mod that "automates" the resurrect & kill of the synth infiltrator?

Nope. Not as far as i know - and if there were it would surely be on the nexus within the top 100.

The only good news is that since getting the mod and knowing which message type is triggered, i can say 100% no other attack type auto fails for me - long as i am not stupid and miss some straggler sitting just outside my border, those missions can and will succeed. So i can live with that - if it fails it is because i failed to spot a remaining attacker.

Th synth one, for me, is 100% always fail unless i use the console resurrect /kill routine, which of course i do - but just saying i have never, not once, shown up - shot the infiltrator in the head and then get happy mission ends message. I kill, let my turrets kill, let infiltrator get some shots off first in case some delay is built in,etc. nada. I am convinced this scenario is just borked at the code/design level.

i just wish they would change the "auto fail if you not there" as it makes no sense

ive only been attacked 2x so far so have limited experience but the other night sanctuary got attacked, never saw the message just had "mission fail come up"

i have 178 defense and 19 settlers which are actually more heavily armed and armoured than i am

all of them have either full suits of polished sturdy metal armor or polymer sturdy combat armour or heavy studded leather armour and all are equipped with fully modded combat rifles/combat shotgun/assault rifle/laser rifles plus one has a fully modded tommy gun and one has a fully modded 50cal sniper rifle

i even have mama murphy in a fully modded suit of t-51power armour and a minigun (i dont know why that ammuses me so much but it does)

fast travelled back to see my base in tatters, thought [censored] musta been hit hard by a highly trained battalion of shock troopers!!! so i reloaded a save (i had just quick saved then fast traveled in which the "failure" came up) checked misc quests and sue enough defend sanc was there.

fast traveled to sanc to hear literally 2 seconds worth of gun fire/laser fire then silence

what powerful highly trained and heavily armed squad of shock troops took out my heavily fortified base before?

2x super mutants armed with boards, 2x super mutants armed with short pipe rifles and 2x mutant hounds

so weak were they that they died the instant sanc loaded after i fast traveled i did not even have time to turn around before it was over, so why on earth did they destroy everything when i wasnt there?

this could be a case of a Synth not taking full damage to die, but fell under surface of ground or other object effectively becoming invisible. this is a known issue. but sux when it causes a failure to defend!

It seems Conservation of Ninjitsu was at play:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu

But yeah, lack of auto-resolve svcks, though games usually screw that up royally (Shogun 2 naval battle auto-resolves... never again never again never again)

EDIT: What's the point of defense rating if it's not used in auto-resolve? Or is there auto-resolve but it's so bugged that it always reads the defense rating as zero?

Yeah, I think attacks should auto resolve too. Not just based purely on defense rating (then you could just put a bunch of turrets in a shed regardless of how effective it is.) but also based on:

• The total DPS and Fire Rate of the armament of all the settlers (Encouraging you to keep your settlers well armed)
• The inclusion of artillary
• the range of artillary of other towns
• Whether or not the Minutemen have retaken the castle (reinforcements)

Those would be thrown in a random percentage of winning an invasion. How well prepared based on the above factors would be gathered in a percent cap. Then the "Battle" takes place (in the form of generating a random percent), and if the result is less than the cap, the town will win against the invaders. If it's above it, the invaders win.

For example, when a raider gang attack and you don't respond in time, it spits out a random percent. If that percent is higher than the cap, you lose. If it's lower, you win. Example: If raiders attack red rocket, and the only thing there is 1 settler with a pipe pistol doing farm duty, no turrets, no minutemen castle, and no artillery will have less than a 1% cap. Add in some heavy machine gun turrets and this climbs to say 5%. Now if you had artillary there this climbs significantly (about 5% more), and if there's nearby artillary that's 5% for each settlement with each artillery piece nearby.) Give the settlers some plasma rifles and combat armor pieces it'll increase the cap further. Having Freedom Radio back online means the minutemen might be able to help out. Suddenly you're looking at 60-70% cap.

What would be REALLY boss is, when your percentage and population is high enough, some of the settlers may even begin to take the fight to the enemy, raiding a nearby raider/supermutant/etc outpost when it respawns. Again, with its own cap. Or you could lead this counter-attack yourself.

If the villiagers win, they will put everything the invaders had in the workbench and remove the bodies, avoiding the need for you to loot each body. Tying into this could be an "auto-share" ability, where at the beginning of each worker cycle (when they get up and do tasks) they will check the workbench for armor and weapons+ammo, and if they find a weapon inside that's greater than their own and the ammo to go with it, they will trade what they have for it, removing the need for trading with each individual person (unless you want to personally mod each weapon).

I would also change what exactly happens after the invaders win. Basically: one of two things:
- Plunder: All the turrets are destroyed, the people killed or kidnapped and looted, and all the stuff in the workbench is taken somewhere. You'll get a quest to take it back. If you don't respond to it in time, it's gone forever.
- Takeover: The town goes dark. The populice will be killed or enslaved, the turrets will be hostile to you, and you'll have to take it back by force. You can enlist the minutemen for help if you've taken the castle.

I resurrected the dead synth infiltrator and killed her (only needed to do it once), and the defense quest completed, like you said. Thanks. Another strange thing was that her dead body flickered, looking like some kind of graphic glitch.

I've had a similar occurance at Hangmans Alley. Two attackers managed to spawn behind the walls of neighbouring buildings.
Using the console command? to toggle off clipping (tcl) helped sort that out as it let me go inside the buildings.

?I've had issues with a 'Kidnapping at Oberland Station' getting bugged.

Quest was generated and failed all in the space of one quick travel. Preston bugged out refusing to allow me to say I'd failed. He would give and recieve other quests but would not open up regular dialogue or join as companion.

While I made some allowances for the buggyness of settlement defense I've had a few great examples of no alert and returning to find a settlement devestated ??

I've had that synth infiltrator thing happen on two occasions where the defend task failed.

It has left me a bit bemused.

Not sure if it's a puzzle that has to be solved or a glitch.

If it's a puzzle then I'll put it down to something beaming in but only when I'm not there.

Intriguing.

Anyway it's not a big deal.

Settlements can suffer damage even if you do successfully defend them.

I had this glitch bad where it was just one attacker. Resurrecting/recycling her corpse and then re-killing her (or whatever form she/he morphed into from the recycleactor) several times finally completed the quest. If you get this on a console, I'm not sure there is anything that can be done, it would be a settlement busting bug.