Those patch notes remind me....
People are always saying your heavily defended settlements never get attacked.
Well, game proved that wrong last night.
I've been fortifying Sanctuary Hills since the start of the game, more than 120 hours. It's got only 2 open entrances to the actual town, all guarded by 4+ HMG turrets. Snipers patrolling the walls. Snipers looking down from my Ten Penny Tower. Its Defense Score is something like 150.
So I get a notice that Sanctuary Hills is now being attacked and I think "Oh, sweet. Finally get to put these defenses to use." The only other attack at that settlement occurred like 60 hours ago when I had just the walls built. So I was pretty excited.
I fast travel to town and step out from under the awning where the fast travel point is. Instantly I hear close gun fire and, I shit you not, turn to watch a bullet contrail pass literally by my face. And so I think "Great, they're inside the walls." Not the first time I've seen that happen. So I pull out my Flare Gun and fire a round off into the sky and draw another weapon and prepare to defend.
And then I hear Preston go "What are you doing?"
I'm a little confused, because it's pretty obvious I'm trying to save Preston's worthless hide along with all the other NPCs. I hear more gunfire, my HMG turret on the roof of a house chattering away, right where the last attack came in. So I ignore Preston and head up there.
As soon as I make the roof, the turret stops firing. I use VATS to search for another target....but see none available. That's unusual, I think, on several levels. I go down to the ground and begin searching for bodies. And I search for a while. Eventually I find one, ONE, synth corpse and a couple orphaned laser pistols.
Now, I had faffed around for about 3 minutes after getting notified the Settlement was under attack so I could finish the quest I was on. And I did fast travel halfway across the map. But in all other Settlement Defenses, I've never showed up in the middle of a fight or right at the end, regardless of how long I took to get there.
Part of me wanted to be mad. I wanted to see all my turrets open up and my NPC settlers shooting and fighting to defend their home! But then it kinda hit me. I built this ridiculously over-fortified settlement so I wouldn't *have* to fight to defend it myself, and by god, it seems to work. It's probably just a spawning/programming error, but it still struck me as funny from the NPCs perspective: Here comes the General, sprinting into town, sweat pouring down his face, shouting "TO ARMS, TO ARMS" and firing his flare gun to call in more support.....and he's like half a day late to the party.
Meanwhile, about 7 Minutemen also show up moments after the Synth died to the HMG and say, ironically "Did we miss all the fun?" Yes, yes you did. And where the fuck where you guys at the Slog when I had to fight off 10+ Gunners with nothing but some not-equipped Ghoul Settlers?
I'm really looking forward to Settlement Attack mods. Right now they seem completely arbitrary. Nordhagen Beach with 3 people living there gets attacked by 4 Raiders. Ok, that seems legit. But then Finch Farm with 3 people living there gets attacked by 10+ Raiders. Covenant with 14 people living there gets attacked by 5 raiders, while Sanctuary Hills, the most defended and populated settlement, gets attacked by what appears to be 4 Synths. Abernathy Farm with 3 people living there gets attacked by 10 Super Mutants. Starlight Drive-In with 1 guy living there (and a provisioner at that) gets 10+ Super Mutants. It's like it's completely random what the game throws at Settlements or which ones it chooses to attack. When the attacking forces actually make sense for what they're attacking, and you get time to prepare for really big assaults, that shit is going to be great. (And probably meltdown weaker PCs.) Right now it seems like I'm either fighting too many guys at an undeveloped settlement where I'm being shot from all directions, or fighting no guys at a well-defended or grossly overdeveloped settlement.
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Topic: Fallout 4: It Just Works (Read 841105 times)