... 2 manned guard posts, 4 settlers, all 6 equipped with Mini-guns and unlimited ammo, Dogmeat perked out with spiked armor, muzzle, and collar, 2 caravan guards, a psycho drug addict that gets off on planting little trees to blow up in my honor, and the lot of you call me back to Red Rocket to defend you against 2 Level 10 Raiders while I'm 20 miles away in a damp, dark, musty, irradiated subway tunnel getting attacked by 20 Feral's, two of which are Legendary?

Really?!

One had an unmodified .38 cal Pipe Pistol on him and the other had a stick on her!!

Why did I even bother getting my defenses up to 102? Why did I bother equipping all 6 of you with upgraded Mini-guns and unlimited ammo and dress you all up in upgraded armored clothing?

Those two Raiders weren't even capable of giving you an Atomic Wedgy for the love of God!

Ey' yi yi.

You could have 999 defense, and have an army of Power-Armored settlers still cry for your help against a stupid stuff like that. Let them die I say.

I added a mod that just stops those quests altogether.

Would be awefully surprised to see a decent mod or DLC handle settlements in this regard in a more satisfactory manner than that.

"Thank goodness, we didn't know what to do."


"I see. Have you tried closing the gate and letting the missile turrets take care of it?"

They don't call on you when they can handle and attack. I mean, what's the point of getting the following message while you're in a flooded subway tunnel fighting off 20 feral ghouls, two of which are legendary:

"Your settlement is under attack, but they can handle it."

Now maybe if you got the "your settlement is under attack" message and there was only a chance they'd lose, even with some property damage and loss of life, that might make things a little more interesting. But seriously, the game doesn't calculate the number of defenses, that's just to gauge on how often the settlement is attacked with such force that you're presence is necessary to repel the invaders. I actually have a play through where I've been slacking on placing defenses. NOTHING has been attacked yet after 24 hours.

My settlers only die when I show up to help defend them.


You think they'd have learned by now.

Yup... that's why all I care about now are purified water and crops in my AID section of work shop. Settlements are broken. My castle is the only settlement that never gets owned. Enemies don't spawn inside like most of my settlements especially Somerville Place with 116 defense.

Want to know the fun part about it? You would have lost, had you not legged it there.

People keep saying this, but it's not always true.


Last night, right after reaching a kidnapped seller, I received a "help defend" for a boathouse-based settlement with zero defenses, and got the "success" message before I could even pull up the map.

I've heard that you get the message as soon as something in a settlement starts taking damage and the more something or someone takes damage while you are away, the more likely you are to get a fail. Defense rating comes into play for the likeliness of an attack happening, after that, it doesn't matter if you have a machine gun turret or a missile turret. If it and other things take enough damage, you fail.

That is only from what I have heard though.

That's unusual I've never had a success message unless I go to the settlement, failure to go to the settlement has always got me a a failed to defend notice,,,,,,defences have nothing to do with it, my settlements are literally the most heavily defended places in the game but success only happens if I return to watch the attackers die in seconds.

Zero defences should either lead to your settlers moving on or them being killed off, that at least has been my experience when I've left settlements with no defences, pretty soon no settlers.

It doesn't make any difference. I've heard saying, defences are a deterrent. That's as maybe, but if the attack actually happens, your defence rating seems rather useless. I have a couple of settlements with ratings well over 200 and still get the failed message. If I am there, the weapons make short work of whatever comes their way.

From what I heard, defense rating only comes into play for how likely a settlement is going to come under attack. It doesn't seem to factor into the calculations of getting a failed or success message like you say.

I doubt we will know how it really all works until GECK is released and we can have a look under the hood at the mechanics of it.

It is quite fair to say that it could all be down to a bug on the way it is all calculated like many other bugs in game. Then again it could be just a stupid mechanic that we will have to live with like friggen vampire attacks in Skyrims Dawnguard.. Which I am willing to bet was designed by the same person.

Once in awhile I don't even get a quest start or even a fail and my settlements will be all ransacked.

You know what I hate?

I get the report, if I take my time, everyone dies.

If I teleport, everyone is beating one mob to death senselessly and eventually survive without me firing a shot.

WTF is wrong with them.

I got that too. I supsect it's connected with fast travelling over long distances. You never get the message that way and if you're not constantly check your log, miss it entirely.

Its more to do with how the game calculates the success or failure or an attack the longer you are away from there. Its most likely something like +1% failure rate for every in game hour you spend away from a settlement or something along those lines considering defense doesn't seem to be taken into account.

A good way I think of how it should of been done is say your defense represents your success rate and enemies represent a failure rate for every hour you are away from a settlement. So say a group of raiders represents a +2 failure rate and you had 100 defense, you then had 50 hours to get back in time. If your settlement is getting attacked by a group of deathclaws which say represented 20, you would have 5 hours to make it back in time.

Five. Goooold. RIIIIIINGS!

Sorry, had to...

I have 16 Heavy Machine Guns, 4 Heavy Lasers and a Shotgun guarding my fort in the Red Rock near Sanctuary. It gets attacked all the time, to little avail, all my stuff is upstairs and nothing's ever made it up them. My Fortress of Solitude.

Sanctuary, next door, with 8 people and minimal defenses has never been attacked.

Actually it seems like the settlements with high defences get attacked more often than the low defences.....and by low I mean defences in the 100s.

Actually, I've got kind of mystery story. There's that family of three at a certain settlement. (don't name names, since this is still in the non spoiler section) I got no attack message, no fail message, nothing at all. Truth is, I wasn't very invested or interested in that spot. By chance, however, I happened to look at the map and saw a big fat zero settlers there. Thinking, this was just another bug, since the map is known to hand out false information, I went there. And really, they were gone. No bodies, no destruction, nothing.

I love to watch my settlers run outside the walls during an attack.... right into the impact zone for all my missile turrets.

I wish I could give them mini-nukes and let them be Settler Suiciders since they're hell-bent on dying anyways.

Fortunately, I have not had many settlement attacks. Probably the most serious attack was two deathclaws at Sanctuary.... I was to busy modding weapons to even bother defending.

However, one strange thing I noticed yesterday was the dead cat at Abernathy Farm. I do not recall seeing any message about it being attacked and the settlers made no complaints about attack. Oh well... I resurrected the cat using console commands.

Seemed unusual to me too. I'll try to capture it if it ever happens again.

I had it happen at another settlement without named NPCs, the settlers where either killed off or left do the lack of any defences.