Well, the time I heard form a dev on a Beth forum was with respect to a navmesh issue that broke the game. It turned out that creating a navmesh that looped around behind itself with respect to the initial teleport marker caused all actors to freeze. I do believe member(s) of the dev team pay attention to bugs found by the user community, but don't respond directly except in rare circumstances. Those circumstances might include issues they haven't been able to solve themselves over an extended period of time. Certainly, where actors spawn within the game is no unsolved mystery.

Its a pretty central element in the game, with the settlements, and they are litterd with bugs.

Maybe we'll see some patching, once all the crashes, stutters, and other higher priority problems have been dealt with.

Have you checked your settlements for any... unusual settlers? I don't want to spoil anything but... there's a chance your problem could be an intended effect of something else that can happen to your settlements.

Well trying to unravel your cryptic message, i get the feeling you imply infiltrators?

I didnt know there was anything like that, but this is not what i've experienced.

If a settlement is under attack, if you are not present, the turrets, defence generators, and water power generators will be knocked out, instantly, i watched a settlement from a distance to see what happen..

And none of the turrets responded to the threat, but the settlers were shooting their pea-shooters, and eventually won..

I was watching the turrets through my scope, and they had the "active" animation..

After the settlement attack was over, all my turrets just went instantly ZAPP, and out of order. (no longer active, damaged to disrepear).

And the attackers were never even close or ever shot the turrets... being busy shooting at settlers.

This might just be a limitation of the Gamrbryo engine. As I understand it, full AI isn't implemented in cells the player is not in or near. What constitutes *near* is up to conjecture, but is probably within one or at most two cells away. There is some basic action/reaction, but the fully detailed AI package(s) assigned to actors don't function the same. So, it does not surprise me that what you see from distance through a scope isn't the same as what you would see if the player was in the same cell as the attackers. The draw distance most people play at far exceeds the game engine's ability to perform detailed AI on all the actors it must render.

Now with that said, it also doesn't surprise me that there are issues with settlement defense scripts among a myriad of other aspects. It also wouldn't surprise me if, at some point, some of those issues are addressed in an official (not beta) patch. But it would surprise me if a Beth developer came here to comment on the subject.

Are there bugs? Sure there are. But that is the price you pay for pre-ordering (or buying day 1, etc...) a software title. It is the difference between the leading edge and the bleeding edge. Those of us playing now are on the bleeding edge and will have the advantage over those who wait a year or two to roll out this game post-patch(es).

Haha, OP has no idea how the GameBryo engine works.

The game doesn't even load actors that are further away from you than 5 cells or so, much less does it do spatial pathfinding for them. So you can forget about making tower defense style trap corridors, because the raiders don't even exist until you arrive, and then they will be teleported straight to the middle of the settlement.

The turrets will be offline when you get within a certain distance of the settlement during a raid, because they're scripted that way. It's to make the player have to actually do something instead of just twiddling their thumbs while the turrets kill the enemies. A remarkably stupid design choice.

The reason why you were able to see the raiders through your scope is that, when you zoom in through a scoped weapon the game actually increases the actor load distance (this is why you get the short blackout) to where you are zooming. The reason why the turrets didn't fire back is probably that the game doesn't update their detection logic if they are further away from you than their max fire range. The game really wasn't designed with anyone else than the player character in mind, and boy does it show.

Yeah thanks, u dont have to be a ahole.

I know that the game cannot keep every single NPC and AI running in all areas at all times..

And i know that the NPC's are generated.

But the point being, that 3 raiders is able to knock out 400 defence power, just because i'm not "present" is whats bugging me...

the raiders would be instantly disintigrated.

But instead, its just some simple script that just detects "player not defending the settlement", and it has a preset percentage which determines how severe the damage will be... theres no actual calculation or simulation of a AI battle.

Even if you put a turret behind 10 Steel walls, and no possible entry point, it would still be knocked out, because its not taken out by the attackers, but instead by a script.

And when this applies to many generators, and 400 defence power worth of turrets, and water production.. and crops... at times when several settlements are attacked.. i spend buttloads of repair costs, not to mention the hours spendt to get all the rare materials such as oil and aluminium for the repairs.... and it would be way way less expensive if i just had 20 defence power, and let the attackers stroll right in...

So its backwards of what it should be.

It is a punishment to build more defences..

It does not matter how you design a settlement.

So in other words.. right now you are better off just putting a few water pumps, 20 muttfruit plants, and 30 sleeping bags all just BLAM in one little cluster somewhere on the ground.. then put up a turret or two... does not matter where you put them.. just put them close enough so they are easy to repair.

This is to me makes the whole settlement aspect of the game POINTLESS.

Its such a big factor in the game, its tied to the minutemen(it IS the backbone of minutemen), its the source of so many quests, its tied into the perk system.. you're supposed to have bi-incomes from the stores... you are supposed to get supplies and food/water.

And you are supposed to enjoy building a settlement, but it just turns into a pain... it just takes too much time, and too much effort, and is not worth it because its just a constant cost, the more "secure" you make it.

And you could have made x3 times the caps if you just sold the crafting materials rather then spending it on the settlement.

and this is how you're supposed to be the saviour of the common wealth, providing outcasts, and other not so fortunate people a place to take shelter.

But the gamedesign right now... is just telling you to sodd it, and ignore it because its not worth anyones time.. and the more you do with it, the harder you get punished by its poor design.

Edit: On the other hand i love the building part, i love the fact u can build settlements nearly as you please.

Its just to shame it is litherally pointless putting anything but beds food and water in a big heap in the dirt.. thats the most effective settlement you can build.

I think people are on to something. If it happens outside of the bounds of AI and draw distance, it probably does just run a few scripts to get an ish outcome. Similar to how CIV decides stuff for AI. Numbers are looked at and algorithms determine the outcome.

You know what it is?

It's a settlement building system that's just complex and functional enough to wow game reviewers. After playing the game for a week or so, you realize how shallow and pointless it is behind the facade. But by then our favorite game developing company are already rolling in cash, and there is no reason for them to change any of it, because they know that mods will fix it.

Welcome to capitalism.

I think that Defense makes it less likely that a settlement will be attacked. In 2+ days of game time, I have only been attacked twice.. both times in settlements with "red" defense.

I just had my first two settlement attacks, one at Sanctuary and one at Abernathy Farms.... and I had a completely different experience.

First off, I got the "Sanctuary is under attack" message while exploring Hubris Comics. I ignored it and finished the hunt for the quest item and then fast-traveled to Goodneighbor to return it. Only then did I FT to Sanctuary where all my turrets were shooting at Raiders who were all OUTSIDE of my exterior fence. I had to jump the fence in twice - on opposite sides of the town - to gun down the attackers. That seemed to work just fine.

Next I went to Abernathy Farm to fill out the crops to 12 each of Corn, Tato and Mutfruit. I had sent the necessary new settlers there, but one hadn't arrived yet - the one I had intended to setup the supply line. So I FT back to Starlight Drive-In (my recruitment - only town), then FT to Sanctuary, and then back to Abernathy Farms. This time, not only was the missing settler there, but so were six raiders. I got no warning message this time, but since I had 24 food, 6 water and only 6 defense, I got attacked. The raiders all spawned outside the green zone of the settlement - I hadn't built any extra walls yet and only one turret perched on top of the farm house. After a quick battle, the raiders were dead and everything went back to normal. I assigned the supply line and built me defenses.

It all seemed to be in perfect working order, So I wonder why others are having issues so vastly different than my own experience? I did update to the beta patch, I wonder if that made any difference?

Actually it's Corporate Capitalism that's well on it's way to degenerate completelly into Opportunism. Which no longer makes it a form of Capitalism. Pretty much what's wrong these days...but that's just political science.

On those bloody Defences, seeing what people have been saying about them, I haven't put-up a beacon yet and thus far haven't had a settlement attacked. I don't know if they're related or not thought but I thought it might be a probable trigger. Of course I haven't even advanced to the big city yet and will probably prevent the Minutmen quests from moving forward but it has allowed me to explore the crap out of the NW map pretty much in-game breaking bug-free and thinking of doing NE next. I only have 3 settlements with settlers, 4 in Sanctuary + follower3 well defended, 3 in farm + follower1: 1turret, 2settler in Tbluff scrap everything I could but the farm no defenses. And RR which is well defended, my homebase and just has a dog I bought in it, the turrets did kill araider outside the wall while I was sotring inventory inside, so they worked at least while I was in it. So far made me able to play without having to worry about them and they being at least 50% -80% happy. Co-op was completly scrapped no one in there, even Groovy dissapeared while I was cleaning-up. I did leave water and elec in place in outpostZ to see if it would get raided, nope *shrugs*

Don't know how long, being settler headache free, will last but so far so good