I took time to actually use some finesse and snipe all of the Raiders outside of the Assembly Plant early on. I didn't take forever , just being careful, but by the time I was finished ALL of the corpses had despawned already and I got no loot at all. Not a very cool scenario. I have found others that have had exactly this issue and many have noticed it in similar situations. WTH!? Is a cautious play style just going to rob me of my plunder?

You'd think with new hardware we'd have less of a problem with this, unless they just took things to such a high level they have to quickly despawn now. I'm still waiting for my copy (some kinda screwup) but all these threads are really pushing my pessimism to be even worse than usual . It sounds like the game really doesn't support or encourage much in the way of different playstyles.

Dang. That seems like a pretty big flaw. Maybe because you're so far away the corpses despawn? This sort of breaks sniping for this game.

I did the same thing and lost all that loot as well, so annoying

also lost all loot this way, there isnt any ammo really except on bodies.

How odd ive seen a fair few players and including my self suffering from bodies hanging around for ever.

You guys are killing me! Just keep reading things that will svck for me when playing.

I snipe around in fallout 4 aswell. And i never had any corpse dissappear before i could loot it. Maybe OP shot someone in a bush and couldnt find the corpse

Yeah, me too. Have to snipe and loot quick and not from too far.

I have a molerat that is to heavy to move, and it litters my home. 20 gamplay hours later and it's still there =(
Haven't seen a single body dissapear at all, ever. Maybe it's different between the platforms? I'm on PC.

yeah, It wasn't until about my 20 hour mark the the dead raiders at concord despawned. only time bodies seem to despawn for me is when a new random encounter loads for that area the next time i visit.

You can fix this with a console command.

Open the console (~)

Click on the dead molerat - Now you should see its ID.

Type "disable" - Enter

Is there any ini tweak or mod to fix this? It's really ticking me off how often it does it.

Damn, I'd have hoped at a minimum it'd replace the corpses with a container or something.

strange though, I did Concord, but left my power armour there. Took the Minutemen to sanctuary, next day I went back to Concord to pick up my armour and the bodies were still there.

There is bound to be a setting you can change for persistence, guess we'll have to wait for the Geck

I would guess it depends on Actor Fade settings. I am actually using bodies as bag, I cut off head of corpse, transfer there my loot and carry the head with loot to my base. They should implement some kind of brahmin partner, that can actually carry lot of weight, when there is so much to loot and i have only 2 strenght. Back to topic, when actor fade was set to low, head dissappeared after about 100 m. Now I have Actor Fade set to highest possible, and i can pretty much go anywhere with the head (bag).

headbags, wonderful! Have to try that

Your companions can serve as brahmin. Talk to them, choose "Trade". The little doggy can carry 250 kg of junk by himself.

Best to use markfordelete. Next cell reset it will vanish.

The reason for using markfordelete is to reduce savebloat since it actually deletes the ref. from your current save (and all further saves you make on that char) while disable only "hides" it from plain sight.

Yeah, I've noticed some oddities in corpses disappearing. Some hang around forever, while others disappear in minutes (I had several sniped enemies go away at the Corvega Factory, too. The three guys at the front door, for instance - one to the left, and two walking around on the stairs. Sniped them, ended up circling around another side and killing some other dudes first, when I got to the front door, all were gone.)

...heck, I'd swear that happened to me at short range, near the lonely chapel(?). Got jumped by two raiders, never could find the second one. And yeah, it's on a hill and there's some underbrush, but I wandered all over that place multiple times. It was a pistol-range fight, he couldn't have gotten too far away. )

The corpse despawning is horrible, with everything at max, I snipe one guy from like 100m away and by the time I get there the body and loot are gone. Or I see 2 supermutants attacking a trader, I engage from range and the melee one charges me. I kill him point blank, then go get the one still on the trader. When I'm done, the first mutant is gone. It's not like there are so many bodies that the game has to delete some for performance reasons.

But of course the bodies that it HAS to remove, they stay there for weeks. The ghouls I killed in Sunshine Tidings a few weeks ago? Yep, still there. Empty bodies not despawning, and no idle settler would even think of removing the stinking bodies.

This despawning issue is actually affecting gameplay and fun. I climbed on top of a highway ramp, I crept to the border overlooking a raider camp. It would have been nice to use the sneaky sniping skills I have been developing in this character to rain death on them from above. But I already lost a body to an untimely despawn while I was getting on top of that ramp, I am sure that the kills I will make from above will despawn by the time I get there too. It's a shame we can't use those skills.