I'm curious if there is anything the player can do to initiate a settlement attack? I personally am getting plenty (I had two last night alone), but my husband - with his fort knox Santurary - has yet to see any, and I'm wondering if it's possible to make an attack happen (without stripping all defenses and waiting).

Sure.
You use

Player.placeatme RefID #

where Ref ID is the Reference ID of the actor you want to spawn and # is the number of spawns. Without the creation kit, I'm having trouble finding valid RefIDs for raiders, but I'll post back if I find them.

Note: This will spawn enemies right where the player is standing.

As far as I know it's all automatic however you can create stuff that will influence ant any attacks.

I'm sat at 200 Sanctuary defence and had 1 attack from a few Radscorpion but all of my settlers are equipped with Laser Rifle's and Combat Armor along with all my defence setups they didn't stand a chance.

However I wouldn't recommend influencing an attack as Settlers can die.

the placeatme is interesting - and one that hadn't occurred to me - but I'm thinking that the attack event must have some form of reference in the Bethesda code; something that I assume randomly selects participants and placement. I'm wondering if that event can be triggered via the console ...

I think that's for PC players only, she didn't state what device she uses.

Just play the minute men radio 24/7 you will get tons of them.

No not really. The game will place a set amount of actors based on the player level. The game includes *markers* that also have RefIds. Finding these out is next to impossible without the Creation Kit. But the game has predefined spots where enemies will spawn. They are spawned with the same code I offered earlier. Each actor has a set of AI packages that control his/her actions. So spawning some random raiders and and raider attack on a settlement are exactly the same. The only difference would be which raiders spawn out of the dozens or even hundreds of varieties that are available in the game.

I found a few IDs for you, you can actually look them up in the console (a new feature not available in previous Beth games). To lookup a raider ref ID, type this in the console:

help raider 0

Then use the page up and page down keys to view the list. There are lots. Don't use any that begin with a code of FF, as these are instances (copies) of base IDs and reference something already in the game. You want base Ref IDs that begin with zeros. Here are some I found for you:

Raider 4AF21 - 4AF28

Veteran 7533E

Scum 758AF

Scavver 758B0

Waster 758B1

Survivalist 758B2

Legend 184752

I know I said these IDs must start with a zero, and they do, All IDs are eight hex digits long, but the leading 0s are relevant when it comes to enter the codes.

Fast travel to your settlement.

It works for me! Last night, 3 Super Mutant and 4 Raider attacks. Each one happened as soon as I arrived via fast travel.

My guess is that it's similar to the Dragon/Vampire spawning dynamic of Skyrim every time you fast traveled.

Awesome, thank you

That was supposed to read irrelevant, not relevant. Bloody spell checker picked the wrong word for me and I missed it.

Actually the setlement attacks are a quest, so probably there is a command to trigger that quest.

But I get attacks without a quest all the time! Those dern Super Mutants are a pain in my tuckus. Of course my machine gun turrets make short work of them so it isn't usually an issue.

Skip this.

Even if it is a quest, quests use scripts and the scripting command to generate enemies is: LocationRefID.placeatme ActorRefID #

Either enemies are placed in the game from the very beginning, or they are spawned via the above command.

But I get what your are saying, if you know the RefID of the quest, you could set its stage or even reset the quest.

Do you know that quest name by chance?

I did find some variables, but not sure if they can be set (const)

AttackChanceBase = 0.02

AttackChancePopulationMult = 0.005

AttackChanceResourceMult = 0.001

AttackChanceSafetyMult = 0.01

unrelated to this post but thought I'd toss it out there anyways

attractNPCDailyChance = 0.1

attractNPCHappinessMult = 0.5

How do you set these variables from the console? Were those in ini's?

As I said in my post, I'm not sure how to set them. No, they arn't in the ini. I found them through the console, they're some of the variables associated to the workbench. They're listed as const (constants) so unsure if they can be changed.

For a good time in your favorite Settler camp to punish ......maybe as a Day of the Turkey Event.... while drunk....

use player.placeatme and enter ID for deathclaws

and then enter a number for how many at once. 10 might be good but if your pc can

handle more go for borked

for 100 deathclaw summons.

Have sprint key handy or you might want to be a coward and use god mode while enjoying the show.

These values can be changed in the console using setgs and getgs. Getgs tells you the current vale and setgs changes it like this:

setgs AttackChanceBase 0.5

Just be real careful when doing this as you can permanently bork your game if you can't remember the defaults if you need to set them back.

These don't work. In my game anyway these variables don't seem to exist.

Hmm, I tested two myself: AttackChanceBase and AttractNPCDailyChace. Both worked. What error message did you get in the console, verbatim?