Settler Weapons

*** Possible Spoilers ***

Since I installed Automatron DLC, I've been considering what weapons my settlers should have. Almost immediately after Automatron was installed I had an attack on Abernathy Farm. The attackers were six Mechanist robots. The settlers did a pretty good job defending themselves but it makes me think that I should be diversifying to include some energy weapons.

Laser Rifle - Image from Fallout Wikia

Initially I gave settlers pipe rifles and automatic pipe rifles because they were plentiful, the same calibre yet more powerful than the .38 pipe pistols settlers normally come with. As I advanced, settlers were upgraded with my looted guns. Many now have .45 combat rifles and .45 submachine guns. The "Triggermen" in the Goodneighbor warehouses respawn after a certain amount of time (30 in-game games, I believe). So .45 submachine guns are easy to get. I now have a decent collection of of energy weapons so I'm starting to hand them out. Hopefully, with a combination of kinetic and energy weapons they'll be able to deal with robot attacks.

Lasty, is it better to give settlers single shot or automatic weapons? Just from my observation, settlers are not very good shots. It may be better if settlers have automatic weapons taking a "spray and pray" tactic. Since settlers don't use up ammo, running out of rounds isn't an issue.

Scavenger Stations

I've been assigning unassigned settlers to scavenger stations so that they're pulling their share of the load but I was wondering how much this really help. I found some good info on the Fallout Wikia.

Image from Fallout Wikia

Normally, unassigned settlers will scavenge by themselves at a rate of one random junk item per day (in game day I assume) when assigned to a scavenger station they can collect two random junk items per day.

This was basically what I thought it was but the following was of most interest:

Once the total number of junk items in the workshop reaches 100 + (population × 5), no more junk items will be added to the workshop in either case.

So there is a limit on how much can be scavenged at which point they will stop. So how to resolve this? Do we have to clean out all the junk from a workbench when it reaches or looks like it's reaching, capacity? Would it help to manually scrap the junk in a workbench? Players have mentioned that they move junk from a scrapping settlement to another settlement where they aren't doing scrapping. This really sounds like a pain in the butt.

I'm not sure what the best solution is but I'll keep looking.

Another interesting thing is that scavenger stations can be wrecked in an attack. There is no external indicator. You have to cursor over it in build mode and it will give you the option to repair it.

Unkillable Settlers?

When you assign a settler to be a provisioner, they become "essential", they cannot be killed by another NPC other than you. Just like a companion. They may get knocked down but not killed.

So what if you assigned all you settlers to be provisioners but then immediately reassigned them to other tasks like farming or defense? Either it's a bug or feature but once an NPC is assigned to be a provisioner their name becomes "Provisioner" and even if you reassigning them they stay a "Provisioner".  Yes, they still maintain their essential quality.

I tested this out. I shot, but didn't kill, a "Provisioner" that had been reassigned to defense. My companion, MacCready, "killed" the NPC but in a few seconds he got back up again. I then permanently killed the NPC.

The only possible problem is that this may screw up you supply lines. I have a couple "phantom" supply lines (they show up on map but there is no one assigned to them). I'm not sure if this is due to the few reassignments that I've made or not (I've killed reassigned provisioners but the routes don't go away). But, creating a settlement of invincible inhabitants would be an interesting experiment.

Covenant: A Promise Broken

**Warning: Potential Fo4 Spoilers**

In fo4 there is a town called Covenant. It's a town that can become a settlement. It's a great site to make a settlement, the town is completely walled and there are seven turrets along the wall. The build space is small but it has several intact buildings that can be used for bunk houses and such.

All the townspeople act very strangely. There's obviously a deep dark secret that they're keeping. Peyton Place like. There is a Mister Handy robot there named Deezer. He want's to give you lemonade - his special recipe. (Maybe a drinking the Kool-Aid reference or something more perverse?) While I was hesitant to take it, the drink has pretty good restorative properties. As you go along the quest to unlock the workshop (unlocking a workshop at a location allows you to make it a settlement), you find that the townspeople are involved in some pretty nasty stuff. At the end of the quest you are give a decision to side with the townspeople, accepting their evil doings, or not.

Covenant in Fallout 4

I didn't side with the town so I'm not exactly sure how that choice plays out. I'm sure you can Google it. Not siding with the town results in the townspeople getting all aggro with you. When you return to the town they start attacking. Strangely, the turrets don't attack you. All the NPCs are pretty low level so killing them off is not a big effort especially if you have a companion. I accidentally killed the town cat, Dora. I'm so sorry Dora, but you were right in the middle of the fight. At least you gave me a tasty chunk of cat meat. I didn't kill Deezer though.

Now you have the town and now things get strange and frustrating. First problem is that you have all these dead bodies. After the normal looting of the bodies, you would think that the game engine would clean them up in a few in-game days. But no (strangely, Dora gets cleaned up). These bodies remain. I, like many others, dumped the bodies in some bushes so that I don't have to relive my sins every time I travel to Covenant. An additional strangeness with the bodies is that they sometimes respawn loot (clearly a glitch). Weird but not unwelcome.

Each settlement you build requires defenses so that raiders, super mutants and other nasties don't kill your settlers and destroy town resources. With seven turrets you would think you're set. But no (again). The existing turrets don't count as defense. WTF? Some players destroy them but then you're left with un-removable, smoldering, turret stumps and you can't place new turrets in those tactical locations. Ok, you figure, I'll just put up my own turrets and let the existing turrets add some, unaccounted for, defense (they will shoot at hostiles). You pop a new turret up and then all hell breaks loose. Your turret thinks the existing turrets are hostiles resulting in a huge shootout which only stops when there are no more turrets to shoot or your turret gets destroyed. Nice.

You can move the turrets while in workshop mode. It's not obvious, but they do highlight and if you hold the action button you can grab them.  I figured there must be a way to take advantage of these turrets. They are heavy turrets so they have some value. I took them all and put them in one of the buildings. If you do so, make sure none of them are in view of the new turrets you put up or the whole shootout starts again.

There's another glitch with these turrets. If you try to pick them up and they are too close to another crafted object, both objects get picked up. I'm playing on PS4 so I don't know if this is unique to that platform or not. By moving crafted objects around and a little finesse you can shake them loose. If you're fed up with the turrets and just want them gone (the existing turrets can't be scraped or stored in the workbench) someone found a workaround for PS4 and Xbone (if you're playing on PC you can use console commands to remove objects). You can place them on a crafted shack floor and then store the shack floor in the workbench. The turrets vanish into the aether while the floor is duly returned to storage (another glitch?). By the way, this doesn't work with the bodies.

Having all the existing turrets collected, I took them to places where my new turrets couldn't "see" them. I hid them in corners and put up walls to give them cover. There was a bit of trial and error. You don't know for sure if they're actually hidden until you place them and all the turrets complete a scan of their view. There were number of quick saves made to work it all out. Ultimately, I did get several of the existing turrets in usable locations. Since then I don't know if it was really worth the effort. The only attacks I've seen so far are by a few raiders, nothing my new turrets couldn't take care of. The existing turrets ended up in vulnerable locations so I've had a couple of them destroyed by attackers. Meh, it was a fun puzzle.

There are other weird glitches with Covenant. Doors remaining locked, having to steal items from yourself, Deezer... I didn't kill Deezer. He now hides in a corner, is cheery and continues to offer his special lemonade (wink).