Settlements just keep getting worse and worse. First I find out, building fences and gates is BS cause raiders can spawn anywhere, then I find out turrets wont fire unless your there...NOW I'm setting up shop at the castle and not only are my settlers attacking me from time to time but the godd*#@ turrets won't fire!!! WTF!!!

The turret thing I'm not sure, but I always find it funny when you guys build these huge tall walls for your settlements, like turning it into a maximum security prison, and lining up 100 turrets on the perimeter. I leave all my settlements open. I love it when I get attacked at Starlight, and my 16+ settlers drop what they're doing and take up arms to defend their land like the wild wild west.

How do you know the turrets are not firing if you're not there to witness them not firing?

I kind of like to just stand as watch as my massed battery of turrets slaughter the poor fellows attacking my settlements.

Walls wise I've sort of progressed to a usual build of a courtyard with crops, surrounding cement foundations acting as walls and housing built on the foundations (with turrets on the roof) for a secure contained settlement whenever possible.

im going to have a settlement with minimal defense but each settler with maxed defense and offense (weaved clothing under heavy combat armor and weilding Laser Gatlings)

ive got a few sets already but its slow going in vanilla gameplay.

exactly, therefore this criticism is false, maybe this thread should b locked.

I believed it was mentioned somewhere before that when your settlement is under attack and you are NOT there its basically in RNG mode. Meaning everything is happening behind the curtain.

There is no randomness, all crops, generators, turrets, and pumps/purifiers are destroyed when you fail a defence mission. And, at least on PC, your turrets can be within render distance (i.e. visible) but still outside their activation distance (i.e. they won't move or shoot).

IV had a bug (Xbox one) where I'm at a random location and I look at my map via pipboy and it will say sanctuary hills has 0 food and water and 33 settlers and my happiness is dropping but when I fast travel to it it goes back to normal????

Yea, I just sit back and watch anymore. Once you get over a certain number of people they take care of themselves just fine. Hell, sometimes it's 5 or 6 raiders taking on 24 armed settlers. I almost feel sorry for the raiders

you misunderstood - I said I was setting up shop and got attcked by my settlers and my turrets didn't fire. Can anyone tell my why my turrets wont fire while Im AT the castle and why my settlers are attacking me?

Sounds like you did something to make them hostile. Have you left the place for a few days to let things cool down?

I've had that happen during a attact when I accidentally shot one of them. Makes sense that the turrets wouldn't turn on them.

Schrodinger's turrets lolz

I also have a weird thing happening at my settlements, it seems like the more stuff I build and the more upgrades I make the more dissatisfied my settlers are. When Sanctuary had nothing but a couple of beds my happiness was at 80%, now I have a fully built town and its dropped to 74% and continues to drop daily. WTF?

I've the same one, for multiple settlements.....for me at least it caused by fast travelling with in range of a recruitment beacon, don't fast travel from those areas and the bug disappears after I've been to a few of the affected settlements, do fast travel from those areas and the bug reappears. So I usually fly between settlements and to areas outside of the beacons to avoid the bug.

Same for me. I stopped fast travelling from my settlements and it stopped. Just need to go outside of the "workshop build zone". At least for me that fixed it.

I am not sure "maximum security prison" is a fair comparison when the gates can be opened by literally anything, including my dog!...

For me at least its the Recruitment Beacon, I've just built a personal base away from all those damn settlers and I can fast travel in and out without problems since there is no beacon there yet.....I'm going to turn off the Red Rocket one to test the theory further but for me just being with any recruitment beacons range (I was underwater between a couple on the last occasion) causes the bug.

I wud suggest using non heavy wepons on them since those will require [censored]ton of ammo to work.(weapons that dont fall into heavy weapon category dont consume ammo on settlers so having 1 bullet in their invenotry is enough-si i wud reconsider giving em modded top end rifles/automatic weapons instead)

False, as far as the actual statement goes. True when it comes to losing if you're not physically there. If you're not present at any given attack, regardless of you defenses, you will lose stuff and be left with damaged turrets, purifiers or crops. If you're there, everything functions as designed.

This, note that the calculations will be simplified. not calculating stuff like turret placement and probably not settler firepower.

its also probably that they are bugged.

Fun story from Skyrim, I and Lydia entered an tower with two powerful mages at low level. Lydia was hit two times and went down. I was next to the door, was hit once and exited the load door. I healed up and waited some seconds not knowing that Skyrim enemies rarely followed trough load doors.

Lydia exits after less than 10 seconds, we enter and I found she had killed the mages, fight was auto calculated and as she could not die she would obviously win, however as the mages could knock her down in seconds it would have been an very long fight. Lydia also took an detour once to avoid jumping down an 1 meter edge and killed an boss while doing so

It's basically the same problem as with Obsidians Pillars of Eternity. Your stronghold gets attacked and if you're not present to fend them off, things get destroyed and guards get killed. If you're actually there, you deal with the trash mobs within seconds. It's not what I set up defenses for. I'm not into micromanaging each and every battle there is and so I leave the smaller settlements in FO4 to their fait and only react when one of the bigger ones get attacked. The ones i actually developed and provided with structures I don't wanna lose because of the game not calculating my actual firepower and defense rating. Shacks like Tenpines Bluff is on it's own.

It's pretty clear that defence is better achieved by good turret lines of sight and ready access to fire power

than a walled/fenced compound.

Anything that prevents my turrets and settlers from cutting down raiders is counter-productive.

And I will issue my defending settlers with decent weapons and 'one round'...

Also, so long as your defence score is high,

a 'failure' is not a guarantee that your settlement will be wiped out.

That's not the point. Same settlement, if you're present and don't even fire a single shot, things go smoothly. You're not present and things go downhill. Your settlement isn't wiped out, but your turrets, water supply and crops can be in ruins. In fact, most of the times they are. I've yet to see a single victory, if I don't move my player there in time.

All those advices about how to proper defend are good, but dont change the fact that the game does a very poor job simulating an attack. All the random spawns and damage made me just forget about designing my settlement (how I desired to build fortresses all around..). Now I just make sure to have enough beds, then place 3 turrets and move on. No fun at all.