The game is destroying one of my biggest settlements, and there is not even an attack to defend!

My settlements are all moderate size, stable and well-defended. I've resorted to checking my Pip-boy summary every few seconds because of the chronic unreliability of the attack warnings.

Suddenly, I see that my Nordhagen Beach settlement is showing a defence warning symbol, and that the stats markings on the map are wrong (of course they are frequently wrong anyway). I fast travel there immediately. The settlement appears normal, but then - all the crops start collapsing, and all of the equipment starts destructing or switching off - turrets, generators, water purifiers, etc. Within about 30 seconds, the whole place is completely destroyed.

- there is no enemy attack visible, no shooting, nothing

- the settlers continue as if nothing is happening, the defences do not alert

- there is no attack warning

- in workshop mode, everything requires repair

I back up a couple of days in saves, and go to Nordhagen and wait. Same thing - at some point, the place just self-destructs by itself.

The repair bill is so enormous (three industrial water purifiers, large farm, multiple generators, many turrets, etc) that I've stopped playing any further - wtf should I bother endlessly looting and trading, if the game is simply going to wipe out my efforts? WTF is the gameplay supposed to be here?

Sadly, I've now just decided to abandon the game altogether until i hear this sort of thing has been patched.

(My game is a PC install, vanilla with no mods, never used console or any cheats. My character is level 42)

The settlement attack system is broken. If you're on PC there is a mod on nexus to disable this broken, bugged and badly designed system until the creation tools are released and the modders are required to fix another one of bethesda's games.

I've started to find the auto-destruction of settlements a little frustrating, although I think that's largely down to having unlocked all 29 settlements.
It's a shame that the game couldn't have some sort of background sim that figures out a more realistic result and maybe adds the loot from defeated raiders straight into settlement workbench.

But, on the flip side a lone gunman can destroy a Gunner base with all their turrets and assaultotrons without breaking a sweat so I figure it's a bit of payback

If you've set up settlements half decently you should be rolling in junk to repair stuff.

It gets even worse when raiders with pipeguns and sharp sticks are regularly kidnapping settlers in Comabt Armour who have combat rifles and grenades!?
It's fun the first few times, funny when you start to run through empty locations with a lone kidnappee because the mobs haven't had time to respawn since the last rescue

I think to maintain my sanity I won't be paying so much attention to settlements on my next playthrough.?

Use the mod to disable the random attacks - http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4180/? - in this context it isn't so much a cheat as a stopgap measure to fix the bugged system.

The regular radiant Minuteman quests still work when you use this mod, but they aren't the problem, it's just the random attacks that are bugged.

Fast travelling directly to the troubled spot will make you get this problem.

Make sure you fast travel to the closest spot and walk on foot. I do this and haven't been encountering the problem again until now.

And save some resources. Turrets are [censored]. If you never come to your attacked settlement, it will be destroyed anyway.

So just grab good free guns, arm your people, give them one bullet. That's it.

Feel your pain. That's genuine a game breaker Hope you find a fix soon

i have had random settlements just self destruct when i visit them..

happened quite a few times to warwick and a few times to the slog.. once to santuary.

usually to places i didnt have enough defense to be in the green(you know what i mean)

each time its happened, the number of settlers is unchanged... there is never any notification about an attack... and being near the crops and such as you watch them "break" one by one damages me slightly by like 1 point or so.

Yeah, it's strange. I was playing last night and the same thing happened at the Slog. It's the first time I've seen it though, and I've put in hundreds of hours.

I had that happen with Sanctuary. No alert and I was just returning when noticing that water production (over 400 units) was a big fat zero and power was lower than expected. Turned out, al the water purifiers were damaged and the power stations too. Along with some of my defense systems.

I had a strange opposite problem once. A settlement was under attack and I went there to defend, got the quest completed message, and then noticed a water pump and a turret were broken. At the time, I was unable to add the settlement to my trade network because none of the existing settlers were allowed to be provisioners, and I didn't have all the materials to repair the broken items with me. I went all around the settlement scrapping things to try to find the materials and just wasn't having any luck.

Then after some amount of time passed, both the water pump and the turret had somehow *repaired themselves*. I have no explanation as to why.

interesting. It happened to me for first time last night as well! Sanctuary was sacked without warning to me. I arrived to harvest and found it in ruins.

"repair" option on all my defense and infrastructure seemed to work fine, cost a lot of parts!.

any update occur recently? or has this been bugged on PC all along?

Broken items will repair themselves with time. I assume the settlers fix them.

I've never had more than a hand full of settlements with any character and haven't had this problem. Does it usually occur when you have some 10+ settlements? I usually only try to actually manage about 8 or 9.

Huh, may main PC that I am working towards having all 30 settlements (at 25 currently) has never encountered this thru a few hundred hours of gameplay. The only glitch or bug I have encountered is with Abernathy Farm. I have about 20 settlers there and noticed the food production was only at 6 even though I have plenty of crops to harvest there. I assigned 6 settlers on top of the Abernathy's to harvest and the food production never went up. I just ignored it after that.

Thank you very much for that tip. May I ask, though, if there's a mod to stop the radiant Minuteman quests as well?

Preston has reached some sort of critical mass on one of my characters, and is showering me with so many pointless fetch/rescue missions that it's probably impossible to keep up with them.

I say 'probably' since I don't care anymore. The time I got seven (7) of them inside 48 hours of in-game time I decided that those good-for-nothings will have to manage by themselves.

Given that I've had to tell Preston any number of times that we "won't be getting the support of the Sanctuary settlers" while those same settlers are roaming through my home (and probably stealing my whisky) I'm assuming that they're more or less ok.

Unless, of course, they get caught in the next Brahmin stampede. Don't, really don't get me started on the supply lines.....

Are you hinting at the occasional traffic jam on the bridge to Red Rocket. I would be curious how this comes to be, since I've only got one line from Sanctuary. The one to Red Rocket. Each one of my settlements is supposed to send exactly one provisioner to the next location on the map. And so on, and so on. Looks good on the map. Ingame I encounter provisioners in the weirdest places, where they certainly have no business lurking.

I've read but haven't confirmed that there is a limit on the number of radiant Preston missions you can have active at one time. Supposedly, if you reach his "cap," he won't give you more to do as he casually walks past you. The trick seems to be to do whatever outstanding missions you have for him, get to the point where you have to report back to him - then never turn them in.

My own personal trick is to never go back to Sanctuary (or the Castle, or wherever he calls home). One of my characters skipped Sanctuary and Concord altogether and is just bopping about the Commonwealth getting into trouble...

Best way to deal with the regular Minuteman radiant quests (not defend quests) is to just complete the quests he tells you to do, to the point where you hand it into the guy who gave it to you at the settlements and quest log says to go see Preston, then don't go see Preston after that. Eventually they will auto complete and give you xp. Also don't talk to Preston, run away from people in settlements if they start moaning at you or say they're in "real trouble" or ask if you're with the Minutemen, don't tune into the Minuteman radio, and stay away from the Castle.

If that was all I'd be laughing. They tend to fly over Red Rocket en masse and land in an untidy heap. I've seen plenty of traffic jams all over the Commonwealth, though, the most impressive one featuring 22 Brahmin according to my screenshot.

Thanks again. I'll have to reassign a number of the complainants since I've made them vendors, but I suppose that's no big deal.

Avoiding Preston won't be a problem, if I hear one more trite comment from him he's running a high risk of a lethal console command anyway. I was hoping to finish one of these quests by turning it in to a settler as you suggested, but that settler has dropped from the world according to the UI. In the alternative, he/she is stuck in a wall in the Saugus Ironworks.

Suits me fine, but I'll have open another quest to test the method.

I encountered a similar but different problem. My settlement was under attack. I went there and as soon as I showed up, the turrets killed everything (we all know what would happen without me). I fast-traveled elsewhere to get things done, then remembered that an attack is not over until you get acknowledgement from a settler. I went back, and no one talks to me about the attack. When I leave, it tells me that I failed the defense.

You can also stop him by just collecting the quests from him to "go to so-n-so settlement", which is one you don't have yet, and then just don't go to it. The quest just hangs here just like the 'Return and report' missions after you complete them.

Fast travelling directly to a city would cause all sorts of problems in Skyrim. You had to fast travel to the stables so that it wouldn't be 2:00 am and people were walking around like it was midday and other bugginess.

It looks like it's causing some trouble here as well.

I don't even care about the repair bills, what I hate is trying to highlight every single thing to fix it.

Please, please, please give us a "repair all" option in the workshop.