I never had this problem what I did was put a floor safe in front of each workbench then stored the items in each safe that went with the workbench. i.e. power armor pieces in front of the power armor station. Then I built another floor safe in my house for my legendary weapons. Also I didn't have the stairs connect with my house so you had to jump to get in so I never saw a settler in my home.

hmmmm, interesting, yeah I could see why this would be upsetting. I guess this makes it easy to outfit settlers though! well with weapons at least. I'm all for less micromanagement.

However, it should be possible to have a storage container that settlers can't steal from, do safes keep the weapons, uh safe?

lol

No safe is safe, but they are safe if placed in the area where the settlers cannot get to.. haha

Or you could just give them better weapons.

I don't use settlements for storage because nothing in there actually belongs in you. Proof: General's Bedroom in the Castle? Soldiers and Common room is sleeping in your bed.

What I do is stash the stuff I don't want to lose in Diamond City's home. It's where I haul the junk to and upgrade weapon/armor before passing them out to settlers.

I don't even give my settlers one bullet and tell them to fight with just one bullet, I give them few clips of bullets. Because I'm not Stalin.

Only reason I haul excess weapon/armor to diamond city's home is to keep things organized and I'll know where to upgrade the weapons at before passing them out. Better
than chasing down that one damn settler you don't know where he/she is in the settlement. Basically the smaller the settlement is the more likely, they'll
be packing missile launchers. Because its funny to watch enemy think they'll win easy only to get screwed over.

I was thinking the other day that it would be nice if there was a public armory we could add to settlements so I didn't have to manually equip the settlers with better gear.

Now I hear they do it on their own? Hell, I've got a million guns and sets of armor. Go for it, guys. Save me the trouble.