Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

So if it's a matter of the Non-Player Character's perceptions affecting their reality (because the game is telling them a condition exists when it really doesn't) and they believe that the settlement has lost power the thought of a trap captured and assembled phalanx of defensive Beta Wave Transmitter mellowed Death Claws all running amok until I notice there's a catastrophe occurring...

...then you're living in a dangerous world.

[mandru]

True that. 


On my first play through FO4 I'd reported that I was receiving an emergency beacon that seemed to be centered on Mama Murphy's special chair.  The condition has arisen again except this time I've not given Mama Murphy any drugs so she has not requested her chair be created yet.  So I think I've identified the source of the strange emergency beacon signals.

From the mission The Lost Patrol I'd detected Knight Varham's emergency beacon leading to his body, some destroyed power armor, and his Battlefield holotape in a ruined house.  In all there are three beacons gathered in that mission which upon completion left them sitting in my inventory.

Being electronic items my thought was they were probably worth something worth scrapping for components so I fed them to the building materials for Sanctuary Hills.  I believe doing that resulted in the beacons being destroyed but for some reason the transmission of their emergency signals persists in the spot where they were scrapped.

Early in my first game I was using the carport of the house at Sanctuary Hills with the Workshop to scrap items where Mama Murphy's chair was eventually placed but I kept losing things through the cement surface there so I moved my scrapping efforts out into the middle of the road.

This time through the game I had cleared the ruined house off the concrete pad to the east of the workshops location and built a well lit scrapping shack out of warehouse materials and that is now the location from which the phantom emergency beacons are emanating. 

[Art Blade]

in a weird Bethesda way, it makes sense.

[fragger]

I actually posted about those distress beacons quite a while ago when I had the same problem. Checking around online confirmed that dropping and scrapping any of the three Lost Patrol beacons will in fact "activate" them and make them give off a signal from wherever they were scrapped, even though they don't exist anymore. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to turn them off except to reload the game from a point before the scrapping was done.

Even if you stash an intact beacon in a Workbench, it if gets "auto-scrapped" while you're building stuff, it will likewise activate and start emitting a signal from the Workbench itself. Same thing will happen if you have a beacon in your inventory and it gets auto-scrapped during the course of a building session.

Best options for handling those Lost Patrol beacons are to just leave them where they are, sell them to a Trader, or stash them in a trunk or something and leave them there

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

Finally met Preston in this playthrough (whilst already at Level 120...) With all possible settlement sites already populated, including those in Far Harbor and Nuka-World, Preston only offered one settlement-related mission before bringing up the Castle - within which I already had a settlement established. Once we took a leisurely walk into the castle grounds and I hooked up the transmitter (from the generator and cabling network I already had in place), Radio Freedom offered up a single settlement mission and that was it.

So it appears that settling every place there is before meeting the Minutemen will indeed greatly reduce the number of settlement-related missions that Preston (and Radio Freedom) will subsequently send you on.

I saved right before doing all this, with a view to later reloading and confronting Kellogg with Nick Valentine, thus bringing the Brotherhood of Steel into the Commonwealth in force before meeting Preston. I've already met the Railroad and done all the missions offered by them before falling in with the Minutemen. Whether unleashing the BoS before making Preston's acquaintance will make anything interesting happen I don't know - probably not - but it's fun to experiment.

[Art Blade]

cool

Looking forward to reading your stories

[mandru]

Indeed fragger that's an interesting approach to getting into the FO4's storyline. 


As an update on Hangman's Alley (HA) being turned into a pure synth settlement I've left the recruitment beacon on at that settlement ever since posting I was going to try this.  But out of the 18 settlers that have arrived (@HA) who after being equipped with a top level weapon, ammo, and armor all have been relocated as there has not been a single synth pulled into that location via that beacon. 

I preemptively had to stop the Mechanist's rogue robot missions as not a single synth has ever turned up in any of the 27 or so settlers I'd rescued and assigned to various other settlements.  I'd becoming aware of this trend and stopped that form of recruitment before deciding to make Hangman's Alley a pure synth population.  I didn't want to run out of settlement space and have to surgically remove individuals from the surplus population to create room so I could continue my experiment.

Though I may eventually have to resort to that if the need arises.    (maybe I am Institute material after all  )

As I ended my last game session it was late at night.  I should've been in bed an hour earlier.  But as I was parking my character in a safe spot to shut down I discovered that a synth had arrived at Sunshine Tidings.  That's one of the three settlements I've left with currently active recruitment beacons.  It's too hard for me to keep track of things at the settlements and still rove around thrashing things to kill both enemies and time while stalling off going any further in the story line.

So when I log in later today HA will get it's first synth settler.


An observation I've found with HA which comes pre-equipped with an assignable guard post is that about half of the time when I fast travel there because the map shows that there has been a new arrival a single settler will select to man the guard post instead of collecting food for themselves.  If there's two settlers before I check in one will be working food and the other is always guarding.

It makes me wonder if it is the nearby raider spawn point that you can hear reacting to your presence when you are working to get the settlement set up that causes those self assigned guardsmen to pick defense over food. 

[Art Blade]

maybe it's a combination of the nearby raiders and the guard post being there already. I suspect it's just because the guard post is already there. Are there any other settlements with guard posts already installed? If so, they should be manned just the same. Maybe worthwhile checking

[mandru]

Outpost Zimonja has a tall guard post preinstalled but I've never had a settler jump in to fill it over going to the gardens and digging in there towards food.  There is the also the ghoul raider who spawns in the trailer nearby just down the hill from the front of Zimonja.

There are auto turrets near that guard post (aiming down the road towards the raider) but I can't remember if the guard post has an automatic turret set up on it when first encountered in game.

[fragger]

Best laid plans and all that, mandru I'm curious about the Mechanist's Rogue Robot missions, though - do they always result in settlers being rescued? I've only ever had one. Usually I find a robot or two, take them out, and that's that - I don't even see any settlers. I think I've only ever come across one grateful settler who I could then send to a settlement. Maybe I've just been unlucky and the settlers are getting knocked down before I can get to them Admittedly I haven't done very many of those missions.

Regarding settlements with preexisting guard posts, the only other settlement site I've found where any settlers will gravitate to a guard post of their own volition is the Castle, but only if a settlement is established there before bringing in the Minutemen. As mentioned above, I cleared and settled it before meeting Preston, and one of the first incoming settlers took it upon herself to become a guard.

If a good-sized settlement already exists, then once the Minutemen are brought in (the three that come with Preston) and the radio is powered, the radio guy will man the radio while the remaining MM will just bum around. I don't know how common the following bit of knowledge is here, but once Radio Freedom is broadcasting, more Minutemen will show up during the next couple of days until there are 5 of them present (including radio guy), at which point no more will come. This happens regardless of however many settlers you may already have. I can't verify this next bit, but I think that Ronnie Shaw won't actually appear until all 5 Minutemen have arrived (the idea maybe being that you can then use some or all of the four non-radio Minutemen to man the artillery pieces you build for the test firing).

So let's say you're playing "by the book" and retake the Castle with Preston and his troops, and let's say you lose two of the three Minutemen during the fight with the 'lurks, once the radio is operating enough Minutemen will still show up during the next few days to bring the total to five. Naturally I leave radio guy where he is, and put the other four onto guard duty, after kitting them out with top-notch gear.


I need to make a slight correction to what I posted before. There was one settlement site which I didn't populate - the Mechanist's Lair. Since there is no dirt or water in the place to put in any water pumps, the only way to get water in is to establish a Supply Route with some other, water-rich settlement (or so I've read). Same with Food, the options for which don't even appear in the ML's Build menu (not even the Planter Boxes). I thought about maybe establishing a settlement of sorts consisting of nothing but robots manning Stores, but Stores don't appear in the ML Build menu either - and anyway, it appears that robots can't operate Stores. I tried to get a robot I'd built to man a sales counter at Sanctuary but it just kept wandering back and forth behind the counter without actually doing anything (much like some people I've tried to manage in reality...) I don't really know what the point is of having a Workbench in the ML at all, unless you want to make it a robot production centre or something. Curie is currently hanging around there until such time as I can get her a new synthetic meat suit, preparatory to maxing out her affinity.

[mandru]

I find that it's often up to five rouge bot missions before even encountering a group of settlers and then if one of the three settlers are killed by your efforts to take out the bots the remaining settlers of that event will turn against you.

The types of radiant missions given from the Mechanist are:
* free roaming bots not anchored to a regular location
* sometimes you will be sent to one of three routine locations where you will encounter A. Settlers B. Minutemen or C. Institute Synths.

Those routine locations for me are:
* A decrepit building (past the swimming pool and straight on) S.E. of Radio Tower 0BB-915 near the Fort Hagen Satellite Array
* A decrepit building N. or Andrew Station which is right across the street from the water front of a small inlet
* Three houses pretty much close to and due W. of Hangman's Alley

That location near Hangman's Alley can be tricky.  I scan my map to see the pips for where the robots are located to determine my approach.  If there's 3 or more 1 or 2 of them will attack from the S. end of the street where the settlers may be located while another two (which will often include an explode upon death SentryBot) will attempt to come on from a road to the N. of the site location and hit targets by pincering in an attack from the North.

You can't always trust that the bots will prioritize engaging you over settlers that you are hoping to save.

Using the two ways to approach (one way South and one way from the North) I determine if there's only two bots hitting from the N. I will take the first right turn out of Hangman's and then left to attack them (typically two larger bots) from behind long before they get near where the settlers might be.  If I see there's a pincer play in effect I will skip the right turn and follow the longer curving arc to the intersection where a diner sits, clobbering any bots (typically smaller bots) that end, and them charge on through N. to try to intercept and cut off all other bots approaching from the N.E..

It's usually midway through one of the Hangman's runs that I find that I'll pick up hostile fire from any Synths that may be hanging around in that location.  But that's OK synth jerks.  Don't worry I'll be back for you in a minute  


Sorry I tried to type this up quickly as it's now 2:00am and I should have been in bed long ago.  I hope it makes sense.

[Art Blade]

it made sense to me

Like fragger, I almost never found any settlers when attacking robots and I too only remember one time I actually sent whatever was left after the attack on the robots (one or two settlers) to settle in some place. I didn't play many of those radiant missions, either.

[fragger]

Thanks for the info, mandru And no worries, your post hung together just fine

[mandru]

Now that I've had some sleep I realized that there was one other location I was sent out to (maybe three times) but it was so long ago in this trip through the game I can't recall where on the map it was.  There were two cabins side by side and some cars out front that could explode if hit by stray shots that complicated keeping all of the settlers alive.

Also yesterday I was able to bring the synth count up to four for relocation to Hangman's Alley.  One of them is a Ghoul.  I'm not sure how rare that is.