Does their Small Guns skill increase, or they just get guns in their inventory?

Technically, it increases their skills, gives them guns and increases their confidence so that they will fight the SM attacks instead of running from them.

I think that's what I recall seeing when browsing the scripts.

yes, they will try to kill the mutants with their own guns. seriously: without your help in those attacks they still are hopeless =(

You are better off killing those mutants yourself.

So if you don't teach them small guns, but reverse-pickpocket guns and ammo on them, they'll all just run away from any fight?

No, some will fight but others will run.
Kimba, for example, will not fight unless you taught them small guns.
My advice?

Visit minefield first. Collect all the mines.
Then, set up the minefield on the road leading to bigtown, to right of its bridge entrance. That's where the SM attack comes from. Then do the quest and teach them to use small guns. They'll all get a weapon and learn to shoot. Then the mutant attack comes. The mines should kill most of the mutants. You can help them finish off any who get through your minefield.

Then you can pickpocket arms and armor on them as you see fit, if you hadn't done so already.
For fun, you can kill the baseball bat wielding raiders at the nearby baseball field, and drag their bodies in front of big town. Now whenever they respawn they'll attack big town and be quickly dispatched by the gun-toting big towners.

I see, thanks for clearing that up.

Do you know if the raiders always re-spawn where the bodies are and not in the same original place? Would this work at other places like outside rivet city? and would they get inside if they kill the single guard on the bridge?

The raiders will respawn wherever you dragged their bodies. They will stay at their new position for 3 - 5 days. Then slowly walk back to their original position. This is how I used to set up huge Raider vs Enclave battles in the Super Duper parking lot. With me in the middle. :foodndrink: Good fun. But it got to be a pain to maintain the numbers, as they kept drifting back. The biggest battle, iirc, was 7 vs 7 + me.

If you give the Big Towners powerful enough weapons, they can be a formidable force despite you not teaching them to shoot. Miniguns and Flamers are especially effective choices.

your better off teaching them to hide. if you have high sneak then teaching them to hide they wont even come CLOSE to dieing... unless you move. even at high levels, you cant die if your enemy doesnt know your there.

theres also the point that after about level 10 it doesnt matter if they can shoot a fly in a haelstrom, they WILL die, probably all of them.

Wow! That is so awesome! Does it also work with animals/giant insects? Feral or non-feral ghouls? Do they automatically respawn at the same time?

---and Souro, are you saying the S-Mutes come back every 3 or 5 days after you show the kids how to fight, and that they level up with you... so pretty soon the Bigtowners are fighting Tri-Beam totin' Overlords with their Chinese Pistols and Hunting rifles? That doesn't sound good at all...

im not saying that at all. im talking about the only battle. those 2 super mutants can (and at higher levels, will) kill at least one person.

Those two waves of Super Mutants have never gotten near the town for me. I run over and block them at the entrance and take them down myself.

Just make sure that you don't have any npc that is tracking you down if you mine the roads.

The last time I did this, I mined the road/approach. I then taught the kids small guns. While doing the target shooting I got the message "Victoria Watts is unconscious" several times.

I ended up having to go take down the mutants myself, since I didn't want any of the kids dead. Victoria managed to set off every one of the mines. That was rather annoying.

I've never tried it with non-humans... I assume it would work. With the Super Duper Mart, at the peak number of combatants, if you were to fast-travel to aforementioned parking lot, I haven't been able to last more than about two seconds, before dying. Taking the slow way is recommended.

To the OP: there is one glitch, with BS installed, that is a problem that I've found on the 360. Depending on which level you do this quest, there could be a problem with mining that one street corner just outside of Big Town: water caravans travel to this intersection, with their Rivet CIty Guards. I've mined that corner and accidentally killed an entire caravan, and had Rivet City Security go hostile on me. No big deal when I'm evil, big deal when I'm not. So I make my minefield extend just up until that corner to the right off the bridge. Then I kill Super Mutants, and not caravans.

Hello every one..new here

I usually give red and the other guy you rescue from germen town that Enclave power armor with 50 DR(75 in FWE) and a minigun.. that usually gets the job done...lol

Do they wear a power armor if we like reverse steal the armour into their pockets ? Would be cool to make entire Bigtown into an Tesla Armor + plasma rifle town

wow that would be awesome to see if it worked. Or maybe use Outcast armor, as a tribute

You don't need to place the mines before you do the quest. The Mutants don't appear until you talk to Red about your reward for rescuing them, at which time she'll ask you to help out, so you can place them then. You're much better off waiting until the last minute to do that as there's a bit of traffic going through that area, and over that bridge. One time I had just finished laying down the mines when I saw Lucky and his caravan about to travel right through them all. Plus some of the Big Town residents go on patrols in the nearby area. I once came across Flash near that cemetery church where those Super Mutant were holed up, and Bittercup goes wandering out at night somewhere. If you place the mines too early, they're likely to get themselves blown up before the attack.

They rarely make it to Big Town for me either, but it's my minefield that does the job. If by chance one does make it through, it's so badly damaged it goes down very quickly.

No, that Mutant battle only happens once. After you kill them, they never bother Big Town at all.

Whew, that's a relief.

...in a role-playing kind of way. :wink_smile:

There are however a couple of Super Mutants close by that do respawn. They're guarding this abandoned truck that's very close to Big Town. They don't normally get close enough to be a problem for them but some of the residents do go out on patrol in the area. So I suppose it's possible they might end up following someone back into the settlement. I've never seen it happen though, unless they were chasing after me at the time. I need to take them out in order to clear a path to Arefu and occasionally one of them will miss the Bottlecap Mine I lay for it. So I stick close to the settlement hoping that Rusty will come out and help if that happens. Which he does sometimes.

I put Red, Shorty and Sticky into Outcast power armor and gave them Chinese assault rifles...even took them around the Wasteland for a while hunting mutants. When you pick them up, you can access thier inventories and take anything they have, took them back to Megaton and had them model all my outfits. Sticky will also use a Gatling laser if you give him one.

lol... would like to see the faces of those muties when they see a power armoured gantling lazer totting defenders in big town.. Everytime i go to big town and see them walking with a minigun and a flamer, it makes me laugh :celebration:

its kinda useless either way.. after broken steel they always end up dead , once i saw all of em dead with dead raiders inside another time i saw an albino rad scorpion walking around happily inside. The only effective way to save bigtown is to ask Fawkes or dogmeat to stay there, IN my current game either Faekes or dogmeat is allways in there xD