The only logical reason Sanctuary's stats drop is because it is getting the same griefer cheat that other settlements gets; just minus the drastic damage.

If you look at how Gray Garden and Nordhagen Beach consistently get imaginary "attacks" that typically destroy water, defenses and pre-existing food you can see the same thing happens to Sanctuary. Just without the massive damage to things.

The "attacks" are some cheesy way to cause the player to have to spend resources and waste time (A.K.A. content stretching).

One clue was how when the game hits the previously mentioned settlements only the pre-existing food gets destroyed. Not things you've planted. Sure they destroy some defenses and water but that's it.

These attacks have no NPCs and your defenses are completely irrelevant! They just have a preset damage list and certain settlements that get griefed.

I got sick of these attacks; so I built only basic things and went defense crazy. Over 90 on most a few above 100 defense. It does not matter the cheat attack just damages a preset list.

So, Sanctuary apparently got removed from the damage list due to it being the players first settlement. They left the stat griefer code in as that still causes content stretching.

Pretty sad when a single player game has to cheat this bad.

I quit online gaming because the cheats have gotten so bad it's pointless. Now I find a single player game can't compete either.

I realize there has always been some things that single player games had to do but this is far beyond stat tweaks or encounter traps.

Bad form Bethesda, bad form...

Well, I'm currently holding off on building/Minutemen until this part of the game will get an overhaul (hopefully!). I've got RR as my personal base and Sanctuary as my Companion resort, but that's it.

I mean, it can't be that difficult to preset 2-3 spawnpoints outside each settlement and program an attack path from there towards the settlement. Right now it's just annoying.