I came back to Sanctuary after noticing the numbers weren't right. When I got there everything from crops to turrets just started breaking one by one until defense and food both read 0. This makes not sense right?

Did it break while you were present or did you miss a raider or creature attack and come back to broken equipment? The latter is expected behaviour.

Everything just started breaking when I returned. Before this happened I stopped a group of synths attacking. Plus things I had just made were breaking. For example, I placed a missile turret and generator to prepare for future attacks. Even the crops were destroyed.

Did you hear or see any shots coming in? Yesterday while walking through the city I realized I was getting shot by a super mutant from far far far out of loading distance, on top of a building, barely got him in sight with a sniper -.- Wouldnt surprise me if a leftover Synth could mess up your stuff from beyond the bridge....

Nope, no shots. I have reload from a few different saves, but everything just started self-destructing when I get there. Which can't be intended.

Yeah stuff breaking is highly annoying. Had generators break down and crops die. In my case it might have been a missed attack. Still they need to change the current setup, its just flat out annoying to go from 120ish water, to 0 without a reason being given. (and half my crops dead to boot)

If you have a save from a point where you're away from Sanc, load that and walk back. If it happens again, it could be the game's weird way of presenting the results of a missed raider attack (if you don't go back, everything gets broken regardless of how much defence you had).

Same thing just happened to me at Finch Farm. A message popped up saying the corn crop was damaged and a few seconds later it said it was repaired.

I'm finding myself tinkering with settlements and junk all the time and haven't really advanced in the game. This game could literally take years to advance through. Not that that is a bad thing.

Is it because you have lack of people attending to them maybe?

It might be the same bug I ran into a while back.

I arrived in a settlement just after the start of an attack.

I drove the attackers off successfully with little damage to the settlement and no casualties.

I got the "thank you" messages and everything.

HOWEVER..........

The game itself seemed to think I had missed the attack completely and counted it as a full wipe as soon as I fast traveled elsewhere.

After spending hours tinkering with possibilities I finally gave up and let the wipe happen. I then went back to the settlement and fixed all the broken stuff and left again.

As soon as I fast traveled away the wipe reversed itself and the population and production immediately restored itself to pre-attack numbers.

It is this: an attack.

Until you get a message from the UI that the attack has stopped, it is not finished, even if you already gets thanks you from your settlers.

I know cause it happened to me once, and then I fund one hidden enemy after loading again.

Hidden enemies shouldn't be an issue, which would still make this a problem. Plus is it normal for everything just to start breaking when you load in? And even if it was a missed attack, why would things I had just built after the fact break?

Sometimes there is no hidden enemy. The mission is bugged sometimes and despite killing everything, it wont complete and quest still stays in defend phase.

Once you leave settlement, everything breaks, despite no message saying failed.

For some settlements i can believe it is possible to miss an enemy. But some where this has happened to me is pretty black and white - Abernathy for instance. There is no hiding place, fairly flat terrain or sloping where you can see all around. It is possible tht perhaps an enemy falls through the world and is there but just not visible.

But save / reloading didnt have any reappear. Basically, for whatever reasons why, the end consequence for me is always the same - automatic settlement broken. it's not super common but not rare either. It happens enough times that it feels like a routine chore.