Might work like a charm; does seem pretty brilliant. I guess it would just involved loading the cell(s) where a random attack is occuring _as if_ the player were present, but when they in fact are not present.

If Bethesda doesn't do this in a DLC or patch, then by ATOM! I will do my damnedest to make it happen in a mod!

Well since i doubt Bethesda will actualy put it in themselves(might also be problem for consoles power) i do hope you can mod it in after GECK relase, wud def apriciate such a mod a lot.(do let me know plz if you can make it happen will gladly DL/endorse etc..)

Well, then my money is on you, since, obviously Bethesda intended for you to lose if you're not legging it there. You never win and the standard message is "failed to defend". They virtually rub it into your face, so my guess is for this to be a feature and not a bug or lazy background calculations.

Modding FO4 is going to be my "part-time job" this spring, so if you are either on here or on Nexus and I have managed to get it to work, you will know

Awesome! Good to already have some cheerleaders

What should I call it? "Dynamic Settlements?" or how about "Anthropoid's Autonomous Settlement Defense Mod?"

And no problem if anyone else reading this manages to get around to implementing Paric's idea before I manage to Its all good, and I'm holding off on modding the game till the GECK, just cause I don't want to learn bad habits.

I surround all my settlements with a variety of turrets...usually around 15 or so.

Well, yes, being a member of nexus since 2002, I will be there.

Which, as manny of us observed. is of zero use, if you're not constantly legging it to each and every attack.

Heh name doesnt rly matter much to me as long as it works, but i doubt it wud even be possibile to do before GECK cuz while a lot of modding is already possibile with fanmade tools i dont think this wud be doable just jet, but if someone can prove me wrong and does it before GECK release i will be more than happy about it.

This is what happens for me:

I get the notification that I need to help defend a settlement.

I go there and plant some food, install some water pumps, etc.

Attack starts

Turrets go off

I don't even stop what I'm doing...I continue planting food or building.

Within a minute or so my turrets have taken the enemy down.

The exception to this is when there are super mutants...then I usually have to help.

But if you have a few laser turrets in the mix, that will help.

I usually place those in the locations where enemies are most likely to appear.

You're physically present. That's the key. If you were not or if you missed the attack notification for some reason, you lose with a 100 percent certainty. Regardless of what you built to defend that village.

I have Sanctuary protected like Fort Knox. I have turrets everywhere, and I mean every where. I guess you could say I went turrent crazy!

For some reason, Sanctuary doesn't get attacked in my game. Or hardly attacked, since I had one or two incidents there. Which is curious, since it produces 590 water and 70 crop.

Egret tours Marina on the other hand, gets constantly attacked. Even though it doesn't produce anything worth mentioning.

Must be in a bad neighborhood.

Well the defending pops up like a quest but a quest with a time limit on it. What I think its intent is, is for you to attend your settlement when your defense isn't higher than your food/water/settles combined. The intentions behind it I think is met to be that if your settlement defense is lower than your food/water/settlers combined than you are required to attend the defenses and your settlement can't defend without you. I don't think you are suppose to get attacked if your defense is higher than all your resources but from what I hear there is a bug with that and the attacks seem kinda random of sorts.

That may or may not have an influence on the frequency of attacks. I can't really say. It has absolutely no influence on winning. There is no winning option unless you leg it there. The game doesn't calculate anything. It's only a ticking time bomb going off, right in your face, if you aren't there. Defence rating doesn't help and the only message I've ever seen is, you failed to defend. So that's obviously as intended. Don't react and the game punishes you. On that I can actually lay my finger, since villages got utterly destroyed that have a defence rating of well over 200. Complete with missile and laser turrets.

And you don't always get the message. If it crops up while you are fast travelling - which actually consumes game time - you miss it. So your only option is to constantly check your quest log. But who does that?

so I walled in Starlight Drive-In using minimal resources/mats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDkbFpjHmYk

And I guarantee, you will still lose if you're not there. The game doesn't even seem to calculate that. At hangmans I have one tiny entrance point. The one from the alley. The back is walled off with a massive structure, serving as living quarters. The entrance is heavily fortified with six turrets aiming for it.

When I got the attack message, I travelled there, just to see Raiders smack in the middle of Hangman's. How they got there is anyone's guess. Probably materialized out of thin air.

no doubt settlement attacks, especially the auto-resolve needs some major work

I'm just trying to be minimalist when building walls, settlements, and defenses; so showing people you have the option of not having to build skyscraqers and what not; and I'm not using any cheats or console commands or anything, just normal gameplay/scavenging with supply lines.

That is a nice looking setup Artful. Looks like you have made pretty extensive use of the "wall" piece that is first in row of that set (farthest to left). I used that a lot at first, then I realized, it is more costly than some of the ones almost on the other (right) end of that set. I generally only use those, else the pure steel ones.

Having played several hundred hours now, I lean more toward using steel for construction as it is the most abundant thing you find in terms of building materials and I've more than once run literally OUT of wood while I still had a couple thousand units of steel.

The other things that I do differently (just to put the idea out there, there is no "right" or "wrong")

1. I no longer make big palisades like that and I generally use buildings as part of the wall. Settlers do not seem to mind being fairly packed in and my goal initially is just to set them up with food, water, etc. not to produce a city. The city part can come later when I come back and have so much building material there are no constraints.

2. I scrap or store EVERYTHING in the build zone that can be scrapped or stored (storing being the preferred, depending on circumstance). I see you've left quite a few sections of the original chain link in place, and I scrap all of that stuff myself.

Actually opposite for me atm, got around 4k wood and 2k steel
The first walls you're referring to are 3 wood/4 steel whereas the second walls you're referring to are 8 wood/2 steel, so I suppose you can go either way on that, I feel like I can come across plenty of steel in the wasteland, but the real wood source is trees and stuff you pick up inside the settlements (dont respawn)
So i'd rather run low on steel than wood
I am also doing this on the more condensed settlements, I just did this to the Drive-In cuz I want to make it big and neato xD, and I believe all the enemy spawn points are outside the wall, also I did this particular wall for demonstration purposes; I jus did have an attack on that settlement that included a couple radscorpions, walls do not work well on those xD
I do the same, sometimes i'll leave a few original things like a desk or dresser that has an object on it like candles or a lamp/lantern
All the fence that you're seeing is actually outside the build zone, I scrapped everything inside

This.


SH already has enough picket fence to enclose 90% of it. The tall hedges are impenetratable so you can drag those pieces from there and drag stuff that is fencing in sides of back yards. It is a pita to drag all the stuff around but you can enclose it with very few materials spent.

Even there or at other places I will build habitation on the property line so it serves three purposes. Walls, quarters and a place to mount the meat grinders!