Not sure if this is a bug or simply a limitation of the scripting engine. I've seen it mentioned here and there online, but no help to be had rectifying it.

I managed to rescue 2 settlers that had been captured by super mutants and were being transported across the wasteland. The settlers themselves ran off during the fight. I found them at Sanctuary Hills later on, but the're just standing in the middle of the road. I cannot talk to them to trade, assign them tasks (well, I can, but they just stand there continuing to do nothing), and I can order them to head to another location. The only problem is, Ten-Pines Bluff and Sanctuary are the only settlements I have...and I'm not convinced Ten-Pines is going to last much longer.

I have enough beds, defense, food, water, etc -- everything is in the green. The bums just stand there, being grateful, and starving in the street. Any suggestions?

EDIT:

I am not using any mods that alter NPCs. I'm running only ENBoost (no actual ENB) and a Darker Nights with the stealth detection fix esp. The NPCs being stuck occurred before I installed either of these, though -- so the problem was vanilla. The second issue I mention below (naked caravan guards) only started appearing after I installed the mods, but I'm not convinced either of these programs would affect the scripts for NPC clothing.

Okay, I've successfully relocated the woman to Tenpines Bluff. Now she's standing there doing nothing and the ghoul is at Sanctuary doing nothing.

I've heard of this happening. It seems to result in a glitch whenever you encounter them prior to them reaching their location. I've never actually encountered this situation, so I can't speak to it personally. I've seen it mentioned several times though.

Hm. Now I'm getting caravan guards spawning without base clothing. They're wearing leather armor pieces, but they should also be wearing either the Road Leathers or the Athletic Outfit, from what I've been seeing up to this point.

Seems like all the usual Bethesda bugs are still fully intact. Naked messengers in Oblivion. Naked messengers and revelers in Skyrim. Naked caravan guards in Fallout 4. Don't remember this particular bug in Fallout 3...(someone must have forgotten to update the Obligatory NPC Bug file for FO3.)

Both of these are quite the immersion breaker. And I'm wondering of similar scripts are to blame. Seems that there are certain scripts not executing for randomly generated NPCs.

On further reflection, it seems that certain NPCs are carrying at least 2 sets of clothing. Like a Radstag Outfit and Athletic Outfit. Perhaps NPCs appearing naked with armor pieces are spawning with clothes equipped that will not allow for armor on the arms/legs, forcing the clothing layer to become unequipped as they are better defended in underwear and extra armor.

Also started seeing LOD textures that are not unloading when you draw near, similar to the Thicket Quarry issue, except this has now happened 3 times in downtown Boston. I know this bug existed since Oblivion. Altering my Fallout.ini as follows seems to have fixed it for now:

These are double the initial values. I'm wondering if it might help with the NPC clothing issue as well. Forcing them to load in earlier...maybe get a bit more memory usage to load their clothes in properly.

I understand how incredibly complex creating a game like Fallout 4 is, but seeing the exact same issues occur over the course of 5 titles and 9 years, not considering how many patches were released between Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Skyrim, and now Fallout 4 -- and we're STILL seeing the SAME ENGINE BUGS.

Someone is not doing their job -- or no one cares to do the job at all. It's moments like these when I'm reminded of Skyrim being released with memory issues for 64 bit systems (which took a month to solve???), the lip-sync bug introduced in 1.9 (which was never addressed on ANY platform???), messy Papyrus scripts breaking quests (which the team has never figured out how to QA as they go???)...and now I'm looking at apparently the same issues again.

It is 2016. Bethesda is still not aware of how to initialize their games for PC systems with more than console-levels of RAM? They cannot ensure that the engine loads assets for NPCs before they're drawn on-screen? They cannot ensure that the engine properly unloads unneeded meshes/textures at DEFAULT settings?

It's not that the game has issues -- it's that the game has THE SAME ISSUES we have been seeing for 10 YEARS.