The AI for settlers is not really Hannibal-levels of refined.

I think it would be great if we were able to place down "Defense Points". You could simply go around in build-mode and drop little icons in certain places.

These would be points that settlers would run to when they're attacked. I think we all spend time developing defensible areas, but when a base is actually attacked, the settlers just run around willy-nilly looking for prime locations to have their faces blown off. It would be better if they all ran to designated points in relationship to the direction of an enemy. That way, they would hunker down behind walls, rush up to the top of a tower to snipe, run inside and fire out of windows, etc. If a settler takes damage, they rush to another point.

Hell, you could even place twenty points in a row to create a firing line. Might work well with heavily armored settlers using powerful auto-weapons.

Yeah I agree, good idea. Problem is though, at least in my experience. Enemy NPC's don't always seem to spawn in logical places, sometimes they spawn smack bang in the middle off my settlement, 'the castle' being particularly guilty of this. I'm like, "how did a bunch of ferals get past all my fences and turrets undetected? What, did they dig a bloody tunnel or something? Have we got a ghoul version of steve mcqueen tearing around the wasteland on an old motorbike? That would be cool though.


If Bethesda could patch it so enemies don't spawn inside the green build zone, that'd be great. Ooh, and sandbags, why can't we build sandbags?

My personal preference would be any attackers spawn outside of the building zone. My settlement at Sanctuary is surrounded by a defensive wall, so for this to work, building assets would have to have some form of destructible element to them so it could allow attackers to enter the settlement.

For example a mini nuke completely destroys a section of wall, leaving only debris, whereas a couple of missile strikes creates a gap.

By this token, that could mean settlements could also be damaged in attacks, which some may not be keen on.

I don't think that would really work too well. It's a cool idea in principle, but not really in execution. The problem is that enemies don't always come from the same location. If Sanctuary gets attacked, they're not always walking across the bridge. They usually come from somewhere else or just randomly spawn within the settlement. If you have a defense pad in a given location with cover around it, and then an enemy spawns right next to it, your defense pad has basically lost all purpose. The only exception to this is at the Castle. I've never seen attackers come from anywhere other than the road that leads to the main gate (excluding the actual Defend the Castle quest).

Honestly though, settlement attacks are easy enough to repel. With a sufficient number of turrets placed in good locations, practically all you have to do is show up and let them do their job.

It might be a bit tricky to script, but I was thinking the points would have a facing that could be rotated. (I'm envisioning a little shield with an arrow on the ground showing its facing.) You place them in Build-Mode, and aim the arrow in the direction you want them to face. So if an enemy is detected to an individual settler's west, that settler would fall back to the east and grab the nearest west-facing point. The game could automatically attach a defense point to every window, guard post, etc. You could just fill in the gaps.

This would definitely be cool, but it would be tempting bloat in your savegames. Plus, I think it would beg the question: "Why can my base can be blown to kindling, but in the world, a mini-nuke won't even knock down a flagpole?"