I am about 50 hours in the game (Survival difficulty), founded 10 or 11 settlements so far but I got few questions on the subject........

1) Do I really need to gear up the settlers?

2) What if I don't?

3) Is it necessary for settlement defence? Wouldn't setting up a bunch of turrets solve the defence problem?

Now I had a couple of settlement defence quests and we did well to protect the settlements and I had none of the settlers geared, they used whatever they had on them by default......and now I am wondering if I should bother to go through the trouble to gearing up all my settlers, because many of my settlements have 7+ settlers and its going be a lot of armors, guns and ammo if I attempt to gear them all up.......and I am wondering if this is necessary.......

Can someone please shed some light on this?

Thanks

I tend to not worry too much about them, just a little armour and at least a ranged weapon to stop them charging an attacker and getting in the line of fire.

Otherwise, clusters of turrets with overlapping fields of fire tend to do the job.

I got one more question, please add this to my original post.

Can I lose settlers or can they die in an attack on the settlement?

Passive defenses can work well, but there's no harm in gearing them up. It does help, and some attacks can be massive. Here's a cool fact, if you give them a custom weapon they only need 1 ammo to keep firing it indefinitely. So gearing them up with miniguns, plasma weapons and even fatmans doesn't cost you anything outside of the weapon, and can be quite hilarious in a base defense mission.

And yes, settlers can die in an attack

Yes gear helps settlers live longer. But DO NOT GIVE THE AOE WEAPONS! The terrible AI will aim that missile launcher at any enemies in view regardless of friendlies in the impact area. Same goes for shotgun and missile turrets. Till Beth fixes the AI those options are out of the question.

I give all my settlers decent armour and better guns and it does make a difference in combat.

I accidentally shot one in the back (caught in the line of fire) & they went to settler heaven, but I was unhappy with this, so I reloaded. I believe they can die as I've found corpses before.

So that they may cheat death with each breath.

Oh yes, they do die. There's the occasional settler lying around after a fight. And, regardless of your defense rating, if you got the message of helping against an attack, do it, if your time allows. You're losing quite a lot if you're not there.

The abundance of spare weapons and armour make it easy to gear up your settlers. At least after a few hours when you've got enough caps and scrap supplies. Do a few radiants for the various factions and you'll be overflowing with extra stuff.

All my settlers have new weapons. The wimpy .38 Pipe Pistol everyone carries just isn't enough when a gang of 10-12 Raiders comes pouring in.

I've revised my dress-code system again so that they at least wear Road/Raider Leathers but with renamed chest pieces so I know who's doing what job and where. eg GUARD - Sanctuary, FARMER - Abernathy

Gearing settlers helps a bit, but its optional. If you set up a good system of defense turrets they will do most of the work. In my game, Sturges decided to grab a Gauss rifle from my stash, but he hardly ever hits anything in combat with it. I have never had a settler die in a raid, but they certainly could. If you want to start arming settlers, I would give the good weapons to provisioners first. A settler becomes essential and unkillable if you make them a provisioner. If they happen to be hanging around a settlement that gets attacked, they will help support it.

I went to one of my settlements earlier, to build more wells, and they got attacked by legendary Molerats and all died! like, Population 0.

Luckily, by the time I was finished building two new settlers had moved in. Life is cheap in the wasteland I guess.

I agree, give them some ranged weapons, nothing fancy, just some modded pipe rifles you find lying around. HANDY TIP: if you fight off a load of gunners, just pick up their guns and armour and put them on the settlers. Eventually every settler will be geared lol

I actually brought up on the mod forum's an idea that I had pertaining to arming settler's. I was thinking someone should make a mod that is similar to how resource shipments work, except it would be for weapons and armor for your settlers.

Weird as AOE friendly fire was rare in Oblivion and Skyrim, should not be hard to add an danger close diameter on aoe weapons.

Still you will flow over with weapons and giving out some will have an positive effect. Remember that armor can also be used to mark roles.

And thank for the tips about one bullet, makes it smart to give them automatic weapons.