I'm 18 hours in to the game and haven't even looked in to this setlement building. Reading all above im quite happy i haven't invested anytime on it as it seems rather stupid for the attackers to spawn inside a settlement rather than outside of it. I'll wait untill it gets fixed before investing time building bases.

I've had I think 3 attacks, two at Starlight Drive in, one at Red Rocket. Neither one had complete fortifications yet, but... I did have wire fencing up encircling the Drive-in and two light machine gun turrets in place covering the entrances. The first attack was feral ghouls, and they came through the entrance near the big screen. They never made it more than ten feet inside the fence. the second attack was raiders who came in through the drive in entrance behind the snack bar. The machine gun turret took them out before I ever fired a shot.

In spite of all the theories that attacks come from the road, the attack at Red Rocket came from the back corner behind the cook station. The raiders were up on the high ground that sides the river and quite a ways from the station itself when they opened fire. My machine gun turret there is fronting the road entrance (because I had heard and believed raiders always attack from the road, silly me) but I ran up on the roof, manned my sniper nest and took them out before they even got close to the fence.

My conclusion is that most theories regarding the attacks are erroneous in assumptions made. From here on, I will have a tower platform with three or four machine gun turrets back to back covering the entire compound. That way, I don't have to give a damn WHERE they spawn.

I made a thread about this, but nobody seemed to care...for me its a huge let down:

So far the only enemies I've seen spawn in town are the synths disguised as settlers. the rest seem to spawn just outside.

I put turrets in various locations inside the compounds, once the enemy is through the perimeter they still arent safe. I do not think the walls are reliable at all. More of a distraction to them at best.

At sanctuary there is this annoying tree that you can't get rid of that lets you get on top of one of the houses from outside.

So there's always a way in for up-to-no-gooders.

Put a gun turret near there targeting that point of entry.

just wait until the Geck comes out, I'm sure someone will go through each settlement and move the spawning points to someone more realistic.

Have just had two settlements gotten attacked and both spawned well outside of settlement.

One use of fences is to protect turrets against melee.

At best, walls only restrict movement options. I used to build my walls then construct homes within. Now I just construct homes and build walls in gaps between said homes. Saves a load on materials.

Sounds like Dawnguard all over again with vampires spawning inside towns and killing all the NPC's (Which was also the reason why I uninstalled it straight away and never touched it again). Think we are just going to have to live with it how it is unfortunately which is a real shame as it kinda spoils what was a great addition to the game.

Ya its a dealbreaker for me too.

They obviously put alot of development time into the settlement sytem. They sacrificed stuff like factions, karma, good/bad options for dialogue for this settlement system. I think alot of players would have rather had the traditional faction and karma stuff than the building minigame that doesn't work. Heh, and the settlements have a unit cap too so that the consoles could cope.

It looks like the settlement system is a good 1/3rd of the gameplay too. Thats alot of content.

Oh well. I've only played about 20 hours on my brothers copy. Looks like I'll be waiting a good year before I bother buying it myself. Maybe 2 years then I can buy the full package for cheap.
And if they never fix it then I'll never buy it. ...or I'll just play my brothers copy and just do the story and ignore settlements and crafting and such.

I had 2 attacks vs settlements yesterday and in both enemies spawned outside of walls.

1st at Sanctuary. This was was a surprise as it has a defense rating of 68 with just 30 Food & Water. I heard settlers shouting and turrets blasting from the far end near the big tree. I have that whole culd se sac walled off. By the time I got over there a super mutant was dead thanks to the turrets and he was well outside of the walls. Went about my business and about 30 minutes later as I was leaving found two more trying to find a way into the settlement from the vault side. Easily lured them in front of the gates where those turrets and the 2 settlers on guard duty had fun.

2nd at Greentop Nursery. I had just gotten and was starting to wall off a section in front of the house when the guard settler started shouting. I exit build mode just a missile hits one of the wall sections I put up. More super mutants and the one just kept shooting missiles at the 30' of wall I was taking cover behind. But again, thankfully the enemy spawned outside of my walls.

Maybe some are starting off with too large of a walled off area?

the one time i found santuary under attack it had them spawning right in front of the MCs old house.

however other settlements like finch farm came under attack from ghouls and i was able to respond instantly (left the cave i was in and fast traveled) the ghouls spawned far up the road way outside the area and slowly walked, i had plenty of time to box in the NPCs and put a turret on top of the shack..

i then jumped up on top of the shack until the Ghoul AI realized they could not get to me and decided to run away. at that point i would jump down to anger them into following me close to the turret again and make them chase me all the way back to the staircase i would jump off of to get back on top of the shack where they would stare at me while getting gunned down for a bit before running away again (still getting turret murdered).

i repeated that quite a few times eventually killing them all.. then reloaded the game and set 3 turrets then reloaded and did the one again to save materials.

anyways if i had set up walls they would have 100% needed to get inside them in that situation. but most of the other attack encounters on other settlements dont seem to have that nice setup where they spawn at a distance and travel to the location... definitely something bethesda needs to address... i honestly think this is not something that should be "left to the modders". there should not be any creature spawn points for these events inside of the craftable area of any settlement.

sanctuary in particular, there is no point in guarding the bridge which is the only pathed route...

It's not the games fault if you missed a few spots where you put no fences.

Heres the Solution: Enemys spawn always around two places (Sanctuary) : around the Bridge (large spawn area) aswell as around the large tree/road cyrcle near your house. Just make sure to build your defenses/walls a bit away from these locations since the spawn has some randomness. This way you can perfectly defend your base. My suggestion is to build walls in the garden area around your House with the workbench, with enough space for your food needs and all other walls close by. Works me. The closer to the Mainhouse the better.

EDIT: You can force a path for enemys but it needs to be close to your main house (with the workbench)

I remember being a kid, and living on a remote ranch. The area around the house had a few outbuildings and was completely fenced with 6' high wire and wood that enclosed the whole area. The place had been a stagecoach stop in the 1800s, and the fence was actually built into the original defenses. When we moved there, I kinda wondered why, eh?

So one night the water froze up (as it did every winter) and I had to make a midnight trip to the little shack out back, if you get my meaning. Anyway, as I stepped out the back door, I looked up and there was a cougar on the lower part of the porch roof about 3' above my head. My dad told me that the fencing wasn't for the cougar, nothing was going to stop him anyway. It was meant to slow down the hungry black bear who would occasionally visit looking for the family trash can which was kept inside a shed.

The point is that even RL fences are not very effective in keeping determined critters out, so finding baddies inside your fenced area should not really be such a big surprise. Surprises are just part of life, and one should know going in that there is NO SUCH THING as a perfect defense. If there was such a thing, there would be no wars anywhere in the world.

I have had 3 attacks at Red Rocket, 2x Raiders and 1x Super Mutants. The Raiders spawned both times outside the walls so were no problem. The Super Mutants spawned inside the base whilst I was there. A Suicide Bomber then proceded to run straight at one of my turrets and blow up, another went straight for the workbench and took a minigun and started firing immediately, the third and final one went straight for a settler.

This makes me wonder a couple of things. Does the type of hostile have a specific spawn point from the central point of the settlement, ie the workshop? Also, whats the point of a safe? the minigun and ammo were seperate (ammo in a safe) just to stop the settlers from grabbing it. The Super Mutant did not go to the safe, just the workshop. So when i loot the corpse I'm thinling, thats a nice load of ammo! go to place it in the safe, ah, bugger.

I would have expected all hostile spawn points near building locations (Workshops) to have been placed outside of the green build zone so I'm thinking someone may have dropped the ball here. More and more small problems seem to be surfacing with regards to settlements, heres hoping a fix for some of them will come along soon.

Settlement building isnt really part of the fallout universe gameplay so maybe they didnt care it was broken and the enemies spawned in the middle of our bases because its not really part of the game?

it IS part of the game, and will probably be part of the next Elder Scrolls too (mark my words).

Yeah, enemies should always spawn outside the green settlement boundry, whether you have made fences or not. Spawning randomly inside it means there is no point even building walls, just make a circle of turrets or something. Stupid.

I kinda think it makes a difference if ALL critters and baddies spawn inside your fenced perimeter or not. Yesterday I had (at different times) a super mutant and a Yao Gui (spl?) spawn just outside my fence at Starlight. Actually, I've never had anything spawn inside the fence at all, but I only have the area by the snack bar out to where the water pool radiation begins fenced in.

For me, the fences work fine... Except for Sanctuary, which isn't fenced at all.

I too have spent hours carefully designing walls, entrance corridors and cross-firing turret systems only to have enemies spawn right in the middle of town. I even had a bunch of radscorpions spawn inside the houses in Sanctuary.

Whether it's a bug or by design it needs to be changed otherwise the whole idea of building a defended settlement is pointless, and all the time spent on designing the artwork and mechanics for the building assets was wasted. Bethesda's own developers should be rioting over how their efforts have been poured down the toilet by having enemies spawn inside a town's defences.

I've only witnessed one attack so far and I was inside when it started so I don't where the attack spawned. Not that it would have mattered. It was a frikkin deranged supermutant that just ran at the centre of the settlement and blew himself up with a mini nuke.

I have actually been in a few of my settlements as attackers have spawned and I have always seen the attackers come from way outside the middle of my settlement. One was tenpines bluff and the other was The red rocket settlement. Both had the attakers spawning very far outside the settlement and trying to work their way in. I actually had problems finding them as the bullets started flying. THen I realized they were taking cover behind trees outside my settlement zone.

Maybe its settlement dependent.

Spawns are not always in the middle. I've had Abernathy Farm attacked by a pack of Feral Ghouls and they came from outside (getting gunned down by a turret I had placed).

It seems random, but there is definitely still purpose to putting up defenses for outside attacks.