Heh. I got a giggle from that.

The game is going out of the way to punish you for not being there for an attack. Note that you always get the message "failed to defend", meaning, you lose. I didn't even see the message of an impending attack cropping up, being busy with something else. Now, Egret tours Marina got hit, sporting a 186 defense rating, mostly missile and laser towers and everyone in complete sets of combat armor and good weaponry. Everything's destroyed, thank you very much.

So, I can only repeat, if you're into building defenses, build away. But don't expect it to turn the tables. If you're not willing to go there or if you miss the message for some reason, you lose. And that's really not an enjoyable experience. Since Beth probably won't change that system, my hope is with the modders.

LOL! 5!

I recommend installing http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/217/? and http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/837/? before running the batch file below.

Some info:

The squad is based on 8 man squad.

1 Squad = 1 Sgt + 1 Cpl + 6 Pvt.

1 Platoon = 2 Lt + 1 Sgt + 4 Squads

1 Company = 1 Capt + 1 Lt + 1 Sgt + 4 Platoons

The batch spawns a total of 1 company at 2 different locations at Sanctuary, they're split up into 2 platoons each.

Let me show you a good time @ Sanctuary

#Pseudo raid batch by Ristar

#Gunner Privates
96c85.placeatme 000FD3A0 48
#Gunner Corporal
96c85.placeatme 000FD3A1 8
#Gunner Sergeant
96c85.placeatme 000FD3A2 10
#Gunner Lieutenant
96c85.placeatme 00070506 5

#Gunner Privates
96c6c.placeatme 000FD3A0 48
#Gunner Corporal
96c6c.placeatme 000FD3A1 8
#Gunner Sergeant
96c6c.placeatme 000FD3A2 10
#Gunner Lieutenant
96c6c.placeatme 00070506 4
#Gunner Captain
96c6c.placeatme 00070507 1

I'm not really into cheating or cheesing. And that looks a whole lot like that.

What I want is my defenses making sense. Not some army out of nowhere. Also, I already said why I don't use the non essential NPCs mod for a simple reason. It can possibly break some quests if a certain NPC is needed.

LOL. Cheating? The truth is, Bethesda is cheating by nerfing the player and buffing everyone else.

I'm not even sure why you're so into the quests thing. You haven't completed the game? Is having essentials NOT cheating?

As for "cheesing", seriously? No army/merc unit uses only a few guys to defend/attack a place. Game companies like to nerf the AI numbers for many reasons, one of it being making the game too difficult for the PC to run, another being making it too difficult for the player.

Long ago, when playing Morrowind, there was mod, providing the player with a million gold. I thought it to be a good idea and installed it. Truth is, I got so bored wiith being able to buy anything that I threw away the gold.

That's why I don't like mods like that. They make things boring.

Irrelevant. Nowhere in that little batch file is a command to increase your caps, number of settlers, etc.

You wanted a challenge, I gave you the option. Now you're just making excuses. LOL. Oh well.

No, either you misread what I said or you didn't read it at all. I don't want a challenge, I want my defenses to make sense and not to auto lose when not being present for the attack. I don't want to frigging micromanage each and every attack when I already provided for defense systems and good equipment. That's what I was saying.

I thought that was pretty clear in all my posts in this thread.

Yeah it was clear. That was what we were talking about.

I didnt read it.

Auto lose is baked into the cake, and you guys want to fix it. OK, got it.

Without experience in modding Beth's games, I can only say the following.

6. Conceptually, it is quite simple. If you are able, you can first split the settlement and surroundings into a few areas then figure out which turrets and settlers were assigned inside each area, as well as time of day to determine if the settler is sleeping/farming/guarding. Needless to say, if sleeping, the settler should be guarding the area at his bed instead of another area. Then use the maths that you come up with to factor in your points 1 - 5, 7 and 8. To offset the possibility of players figuring out where the spawns and your boundaries are exactly to spam defenses at a few spots and call it a day, you will have to decide on a lot of additional possible spawn points. To offset an "all or nothing" outcome, your maths will have to decide on how many deaths on the winning side as well. If defenders lose, everything destructible building/plant in that area is destroyed, and naturally, everyone and everything in that area is killed/destroyed. OK, maybe not everyone want their settlers to lose their "protected" status, so do make it an option.

If you want a more "detailed" mod, you can even figure out the XYZ distances as well as any obstructions in between the areas as well. I do not think that's required, though. Keep it simple and edit as you go.

7. Happiness

8. SPECIAL. More specifically, Perception, Intelligence and Charisma.

I agree entirely. If there is anything that will prompt me to walk away from this game, it's this heavy-handed player-steering.

I am just now to the point (after 325+ hours) where I am going to stop Minuteman settlement nurturing and move onto the Find My Son quest line. I expect/fear that I am going to get deluged with "failed to defend" messages. That may prove to be too much guilt-tripping for me. "You abandoned us, and now we're dying! And it's all your fault we're dying!"

The defences are not calculating properly(when you are not there)wud be my guess, because i always make sure settlers are equiped properly and the autodefences are adequate i mean why the hell does settlment defence fail if i am not there, when my defences obliterate everything in few second before i even mng to fire off a shoot most of the times when i do travel there.(my only explanation for that is that its bugged somehow)

lol

Yeah, agreed. I don't like the whole defense-message set up. I feel like it forces fast traveling, and that really throws a wrench into my game-play style. I like to wander, camp each night, wake up and keep going. Then I see "Settlement "X" is under attack". First, how would I even know this if I'm half way across the map in some ruins? This message needs to go.

Now if a messenger approached me alerting me to the news, I'd buy it. Then maybe I could request he send a message to the minutemen, or whatever your preferred faction is to defend it, I could walk there and it would probably be destroyed by the time I got there, or if it's a nearby settlement I could sprint there and help defend.

The current pop-up message system. I just don't like.

My guess is, it's not calculated at all. Either you turn up, and the game spawns whatever when you show up, or you lose and the game turns everything into a damaged state.

I don't see it so much as guilt tripping. I view it as a nuisance. Why do I even bother to collect combat armor, effective weapons and build defenses if they're useless when not babysitted?

As has been said, these lasers and missile turrets make short work of every attacker when I'm there to watch. Without firing even a single shot. The same setup gets destroyed when I'm not. Along with alll other valuable stuff I built for that settlement.

I made it my business to not give a damn about the small settlements like Tenpines and the likes. If they're attacked, tough and good riddance. I only react to these messages if one of my major hubs is concerned. The ones I really put some effort and resources in. But sometimes the messages just escape my notice, as it was with Egret Marinas. That's one of my model settlements and if I'd seen the message, I definetely would have gone there.

Yeah, it rubs the "got you" message into your face. That's just purely annoying and I wonder if any player is actually happy with that - for lack of a better word - feature.

I couldn't even buy the idea of a messenger. First, how do they even know they are about to be attacked? Second, even if it was a radio message, "We're under attack!", there is simply no way that the attack wouldn't be already over long before you made haste to get there. Even if you were right next door, arriving "in the nick of time" would be problematic. Relying on a messenger that must first ascertain where your character is currently at, then traverse the distance in between at the best foot speed possible, and then the character must traverse that distance to get to the settlement in question before the battle concludes? Not unless teleporters are commonplace in the shattered Wasteland. (Oh, wait. Maybe that is what makes fast travel possible!)

I suppose they could say a large group of supermutants was spotted heading towards x-settlement.

I did get a message once that Abernathy farm was under attack and ran all the way from Sanctuary. I arrived behind some attacking raiders and helped fight them off. I don't see why it couldn't work.

Nearby is a possibility. Like dashing from Sanctuary to Red Rocket or Abernathy Farms. But from Sanctuary to someplace like Nordhagen Beach? Unlikely.

You do notice that fast travelling consumes the same amount of ingame time? It's only that you don't have to do the actual legging part of the excecise.

Yeah, the automatic loss is really a disappointing feature, slowly turning me away from an otherwise enjoyable feature of the game for me: settlements. I started a second playthrough and decided to only have my Red Rocket personal base, the Castle as the Minutemen headquarter, the few original settlers in Sanctuary (can't get rid of them), and maybe a "personal beach house" if I feel like it, probably the lighthouse. Might take Greygarden because it's easy food and would allow me to only have soldiers at the Castle, not farmers, making it look like a real military base.

Building up large settlements and micromanaging attacks on small farm settlements is too annoying if you have to defend them all yourself.

Arverne Yep I started on my second play through and that is exactly what I am doing, I got so tired of having to micromanage 20+ settlements that in this play through I am only building up Sanctuary and the Drive in. The rest of them can rot.

I stumbled into Finch and picked up the quest to help the farmer get his son/sword back but when I was done I just cleared out without ever building the place up or stating a beacon. I have been by there several times since and they seem to be doing just fine without my help, yet if I built a beacon and let Preston know they had joined the MM I would have to defend them all the time. Go figure, a farming family gets by just fine without me, but the second I build up a ton of defenses for them they suddenly can not do anything with out me. Just really really poor writing.

That's precisely my point. From the moment that the settlement sends word that "We're about to be attacked and we need you here NOW!" until the main character traverses the distance to get there, too much time has elapsed. The battle would have been long over by the time the character arrives. It's not like the attackers are outside the gate and they get word that the Sole Survivor is on the way and they say, ""Oh? He/she is on the way? In that case we will hold off until they arrive."

Not true according to my observations. Fast Travel takes 2 to 3 times as long as jogging with a bit of sprinting mixed in.

I haven't tested it thoroughly, but I did compare Pipboy travel times for trips between a half-dozen of the locations in the northern half of the map and Sanctuary. Fast Travel seems to be slower and slower compared to normal travel the further the distance.

I agree the way it works is annoying but I think it goes beyond "poor writing," and actually I can sympathize with the problem Bethesda will face if they try to reconcile it and create a viable and less annoying system. Consider the following:

We acquire a settlement and resolve to build it up and make it "defensible" because the game will somehow assess how good our defenses are and use its estimate of our settlements defensive value in auto-calculations of the attacks on the settlement.

The question then becomes: how should the game "assess" settlements for purposes of assigning one or more values to be used in calculations of the outcome of auto-attacks (when the player is not there to help)?

Sure, it could just use the current "Defense rating" that comes form placing auto-weaponry and guard posts (with an NPC assigned to it . . . the NPC can be wearing underwear and be unarmed and it will nonetheless count the same as if they are fully armored and carrying a Fat Man) but obviously this is not satisfactory.

If I build:

A. an ingenious star-shaped fort, where there are interlocking fields of fire, zero cover for enemies within iron-sights range of the walls, my walls are lined with defensive firing positions, I have 20 turrets positioned to create kill zones in a 360 around the fort, and all my 21 settlers are equiped with full set of arored military fatigues + combat armor and good weapons, OBVIOUSLY the game should give my settlement a far greater chance to successfully auto-defend against any given attack than if

I build:

B. A ramshackle wall with gaps, very few elevated firing positions, 20 turrets haphazardly set up and allowing large gaps in fields of fire, and all my 21 settlers are left with their default gear (pipe pistols and civilian clothes).

versus:

C. I do nothing except set up 20 turrets and leave.

Assuming that none of these three alternative designs have no "guard towers" and that they all have 20 turrets, as far as the game knows they are all "equal" in defensive rating. How would you quantify the greater defensive value of A > B > C?

I almost never sprint, since it's a pain in the hindquarters pressing two keys simultaneously.

Actualy solution to that problem is kinda simple game should never auto calculate it but instead play it out same as it does when you are there(but basicly if you are not present its like if you were there but didnt intervine at all, which is something that works just fine when you just travel in and let the settlment defend itself)

By using that aproach it will take into account everything form how well its built, how well are the settlers armed, are your missile turrets shoting into your generators/crops destroying them in the process etc.)

There you go perfect solution that takes everything into account and should be possibile to impliment.