Attack Frequency Solved - How to Reduce Settlement Attacks - Fallout 4 

I hate the fact that you have to babysit every settlement. When a settlement is attacked where the hell are the rest of the minute-men and Preston?

"Truth is, it was rigged from the start." -developers of the attack system, probably

The tips about setting settlement defense to 150 and removing excess water and food is really helpful. Thank you.

Enjoyed the video. I think the thing that drives me crazy the most about settlement attacks is that you can bounce around the map, go a stretch of not a single attack, but suddenly as soon as you are working on a quest, it happens when you can't get away to stop it. And of course the settlement loses the attack. Like when you are deep in the Mechanist layer. Or when the game doesn't even tell you there is one, and you find out that they lost an attack when you visit on a whim.

I just love the high quality and generally "good intentions" feeling from your videos. And thanks for the explanations.

I would just love to know how I can have a settlement with 1000 defense, 18 people and a happiness of 85 armed with power armor and combat shotguns with plenty of ammo can loose a attack?

I have settlements with 999 (the maximum it will ever display) defense, that if I am not there, will lose attacks. If I am there, I don't have to do a thing and an army of legendary deathclaws gets destroyed in a cloud of violence within seconds. There must be something missing.

Stored my backup saves and stopped playing right before the DLC came out, coming back to play now, so I'm catching up on all the mechanics that have been tweaked. Good video. One thing I love about the Bethesda games is that the players provide so much content and feedback themselves and "fix" the games over time.

I appreciate this, you're one of the only youtubers that do this.

i have 800 deffence and sanctuary and they hit me with low level raiders and i still lose if i dont show up.

Looking at this in 2023... Unfortunately the person quoting the script didn't include the most important parts: the functions that actually calculate attack strength and defense strength. Those are both capped at 100. For purposes of auto-resolving attacks your defense strength will never be higher than 100. So, it is pointless for your defense rating to exceed 100. In fact, since defense strength is actually the defense rating + population, you can likely reduce it even further. A settlement with a population of 10 could not make use of any defense rating beyond 90 (max of 100 - population of 10).

6:17- yeah I never use the sirens for just that reason: they never go off until it's too late to matter.

Im sorry, but you said that the game auto wins if defense = over 150. In that code it said "makes it more likely to win"

That's actually not how I read that code. I read it as you can have a maximum of 200 defense and they have a maximum of 150 attack. But there is still a random chance of 0-100 for just one of those values (although it looks like two one will get cancelled out - read below). Let me explain - This is what I worked out: First assumption: CalculateDefenseStrength() apparently returns a max of 100. Second Assumption: We are assuming we are calculating for a settlement with a huge amount of resources (enough to put attackStrength over 150). This settlement also has enough defenses and settlers to max the defensive strength to 100. Constant: resolveMaxAtackRoll = 150 Calculations: defenseRoll = 1d100 + CalculateDefenseStrength(max is 100) Therefore defenseRange is from 101-200. attackRoll = minimum of (1d100 + atttackStrength) OR resolveMaxAtackRoll = 150 So assuming attackStrength is over 150 - this will enforce that attack roll will always be 150. There is no random range as it has been subsumed by the min calcuation when raider attack strength is high due to large amounts of resources. The 1d100 for the attackRoll in this context is useless. Therefore with a defensive roll range of 101-200 and a fixed attackRoll of 150 - your settlements will have a 50% chance to be defend against a raider attack. My suggested solution to this is the following: 1. Decrease resolveAttackMaxAttackRoll to 50. int property resolveAttackMaxAttackRoll = 150 auto const 2. Change attackRoll to take into account randomness no matter the size of the attack. So change: int attackRoll = utility.randomInt() + attackStrength wsTrace(" ResolveAttack on " + workshopRef + ": original attack roll=" + attackRoll) attackRoll = math.min(attackRoll, resolveAttackMaxAttackRoll) as int TO ; don't let attack strength exceed 50 - makes high defense more likely to win attackRoll = math.min(attackStrength, resolveAttackMaxAttackRoll) as int wsTrace(" ResolveAttack on " + workshopRef + ": original attack roll=" + attackRoll) ; add a randomness of 1-100 attackRoll += utility.randomInt() This would give an attack range of 51 to 150 and a defense range of 101-200. So a well defended settlement would have much higher chance of winning but there would still be random chance it could fail in defense if there are a large amount of resources in the workshop (in this case 75% to defend - attackRoll(51-100) vs defenseRoll(101-200)). However if you are diligent and clear the workshop of food and water then you could reduce your chance of attack to zero (with no attack strength; attack roll becomes attackRoll(1-100) vs (defenseRoll(101-200)). NOTE: The above code might not work - I don't know the language they use for scripting so was just basing it on a cursory look at the code - however it should serve well enough as pseudo code to suffice for someone to use as a base.

so that's why my settlement always looks like Swiss cheese when I fast travel into them

holy shit oxhorn did start making videos i used to watch his warcraft videos all the time

Thank you, oxhorn. I built Red Rocket to be a soylent canning operation, but couldn't figure out how to force an attack. This is what I needed.

You may be running into an overflow. If the defense score gets stored in a byte, then your defense would be + mod 255 (i.e. take the value, divide by 255 and the remainder is the effective value).

unless I missed something, it did not have a condition for always win as a defender, only an always win as an attacker. Unless it's specifically coded, one thing being an always win, does not mean the inverse is an always win.

Uhh... @ 10:15 -- int Property maxDefenseStrength = 100 const auto Hidden int Function CalculateDefenseStrength(int safety, int totalPopulation) int defenseStrength = Math.min((safety + totalPopulation) as float, maxDefenseStrength as float) as int return defenseStrength EndFunction So, for a population of 36, anything more than 64 safety doesn't do anything for you when doing the Attack/Defend rolls. If you have anything over a total of 100 for pop and safety, its a 50/50 shot at winning because of the artificial caps in the game on defense and attack. So, there will *NEVER* be a situation where you will win 100% of the time with the code as it stands.

Hey I love your videos man It helps me a newcomer in fallout franchise how to build settlements properly. I was always wondering how come i get attack a lot and now I know why. I been a hoarder on food, water, and scraper and placing them in my workshop. After I remove pretty much everything (sold a lot since the food and water overburdens me's and properly distribute the resources to other settlements) and setting up a good defense I can now don't have to go every settlement just to defend so far I only have 6 but they all get attack a lot, now with the videos you show me and a little bit of management on my workshop, the attack on my settlements are reduce and it can hold off on it's own with my help. So thanks man with your videos kinda help me in a tight spot when I was constant;y being attack by Gunners and Super Mutants and apparently The Atom children( weird). So anyways tks for this advice man!!

bourhood neighly friend oxhorn XD

One note about the line in the code "don't let attack go above 150..." That is a comment, not code. It shows what the coder originally intended to do, but it may not reflect the reality of the programming.

Well done on figuring it out. I'm so glad that a while back I started putting food, armour, weapons, etc all in their own separate containers (it was taking for ever to load my workshop inventory). Probably saved me a massive headache.

Would it make a difference if I put a bunch of resources into a container that I built at a settlement? And not the actual workshop?

Awesome clip I'm on ps4 and since installing Nukaworld ( which I've not visited yet cos im vault building jeez it can be painfull ) I've had 3 settlements attacked at once I could only defend one in person and the other two failed to defend thereselves but these were small in population so I wonder the attack on the castle was nothing like I've experienced before they were heavy in numbers super mutants and behemoths. I'm not sure whether it's nukaworld related or since this is me returning to the game since I finished the main story and the game has upped the anti however I'm really enjoying it and glad I came back to the wasteland that and the fact that there's robots around now since I downloaded the dlc for them the game feels totally different and fresh again I love it great channel your a clever chap that's for sure subscribed peace out

Hey Oxhorn I've noticed in my game often the ingame list showing the settlement stats bugs out sometimes and will say for instance I have no water when I know I have tons. perhalps that bugg is part of why you can still lose attacks. Just speculation but I see it allot. It will even effect happiness of a settlement that should have that problem. This game is buggy!

Holy shit, 19:40 startled me when he said *WELLP THERE YOU HAVE IT* I thought something scary was about to happen, like a mass feral ghoul and gen-2 attack.. The nuclear weather makes it eerie too.

thanks man, I need to be attack more so I'm gonna pile up food and water in my castle..

great find, kinda figured out something like this prior to your video. my formula was to make sure defenses were double my resources to compensate for times I can't go defend

You realy did your homework! Awsome vid ox!

My settlements have a .001% chance of defending itself. The reason you fail is because you didn't show up. You are the driving factor if your settlement fails or not. I have a total defense in Sanctuary of 257. The only time it fails is when I don't show up. 1 time out maybe 50, I got a message saying Sanctuary depended itself. What doesn't help with this whole settlement activity is size. A place like Jamaica Plain is so small you'd think 20 would be too much. What hurts that struggling place is the size. We aren't given much space and furthermore much building capacity. It is worthless to build there without a mod. Sadly, at least on ps4, trophies are turned off when a mod is used. I have been attempting to get that elusive 100% happiness for years. I still have yet to figure it out. Every settlement is different

The mod you're using, if it's the same one I have, comes with the ability to adjust how frequently you get attacked. That helps you compensate for the large number of resources in your settlements.

I found that having cages in my drive-in cinema settlement led to attacks so often I couldn't go anywhere.

THAT EXPLAINS IT!!! Why does my RR keep getting hit. No one lives there (it's my player home so just Dogmeat hangs out there). It has 0 Population, 20 DEF (I added turrets due to the attacks), 0 food production, 3 water. BUT, I store all my looted food in the workbench! So just about every time I visit there to store stuff I get attacked! Now I know WHY! THANX!

I just always assumed a failed to defend message was simply referring to you the character personally not turning up to defend it, not that its defence had been successful or not as a settlement?

if I understand correctly the attacks on settlements change as you level up, which to me indicates that the attack "strength" variable may being increased in some other part of the code.

And have you ever had Sanctuary attacked without cages? I use it as my main drop off of resources and scrap and have never been hit in 4 play throughs unless I have cages

yeah im years late but max attack strenght 150 does not mean you should always win with 150 defense you forgot about the random diceroll you explained of 1-100 so if you roll a 1 with 150 total defense and an attack of 150 strenght comes in and rolls a 100 you need 250 to get to 251 def, diceroll included to win

Considering that I don't math very well, I will take your word for it that the numbers on my screen are correct..."Strong doesn't understand human"... With that said I have noticed an increase in my settlements getting attacked like sanctuary hills that had never been attacked before after I installed Nuka World. And I was trying to figure out where I had heard about this and it was your video so thanks for the info. Time to increase my defense!!!

I only have the vanilla game installed and most of my settlement are capped with 26 population, so for me with my armor I am at 16 charisma. However, Sanctuary is currently at 33 (was 35 but Synth attacks have killed 2 settlers). By the way, Sanctuary is higher because of your trick with chems and alcohol and moving settlers there which I got from one of your videos. Thanks for that! However, I also learned a while back from your videos about the limits (resource caps) in the workshop so about a month ago I took all resources from my all my settlements and put them in the Sanctuary's workshop. I do not get attacked very often and when I do it's generally one of my water producing settlements, such as Sanctuary. When I first started the game I recall seeing that to keep your defenses higher than your water and food combined. That is the case at everyone of my settlements, however most are greater than 250 in defense regardless, with the exception of the water producers, as I mentioned are very high in defense. Sanctuary is well over 600 defense and produces almost 600 in water daily. One key factor for me is that I try to purge water and food from Sanctuary's work shop each day (real day not game day) but I can't do that from some of other water producing settlements each day and these are the ones that are attacked most frequently, in order of most attacked, these are The Slog, Finch Farm. Taffington Boathouse, Nordhagen Beach, Warwick Homestead are attacked most of all, and Sanctuary is still attacked more frequently than, Mirkwater Construction site, Egret Tours Marina and Kingsport Light house. Oddly of all my settlements, only Spectacle Island and The Castle have yet to be attacked and they are the second and third biggest water producers for me and also have the second and third most defense, respectively. Keep in mind, that other than building resources I try to keep most water and food in containers whenever possible to reduce the chance for attack. I believe this helps. However, Sanctuary with the highest defense is still attacked on a weekly basis, but it usually when I have been following a quest line and far from it, so several game days would have passed. So even though it would cap out on water and food after one game day it would be the highest of all my settlements. Some how I think there is a lot more here than we may be able to uncover. I think that you are on the right track but you never know with Bethesda...just saying. Whenever, I am attacked I drop what I am doing and run for that settlement. I don't see the nightmare of 5 or 6 or more settlements attacked at once like you do but I have had 2 or 3 attacked at almost the same time. However, I have only lost one attack that I didn't respond to thinking my defenses would take care of it. unfortunately it didn't since I had less than 25 at the time, which you have proven a guaranteed loss. To me I felt like my settlement had been raped. Most of resources were taken or destroyed, as I recall, but then I didn't have that much there yet. Anyway, to me it was so bad that I reloaded from a hard save and made it there in time the second time. After that I learned my lesson first and foremost build defenses before anything else, until that time my settlements always won their attacks, this settlement was a new settlement barely a week old and still being built. I should point out that the workshop was very full of building supplies, many "shipments" of resources that I would be using, plus the food for starting the farm. Now, the first thing I do is set up a supply line. Great game and made even better by all your videos. I am sorely tempted with all the mods you us but want to finish my game play first with any mods. Right now, I am in a quandary, since I can't decide what faction to knock off first, as I really don't want to destroy any of them, but that's just me. Thanks again and my apologies for the terminally long comment.

This explains why my unassuming Red Rocket gas station player home with only a small garden tended by a robot is attacked every time I visit it...

My cinema settlement was getting attacked by robots every few in-game hours because it contained traps for gunners, ghouls, raiders and radstags. After scrapping them, things returned to normal.

As an IT software tester I find this kind of video an interesting way of understanding how the game should actually function. I also think Oxhorn does a great job of explaining things and I really enjoy his videos. However the message displayed about the attack on Croup Manor does not say it lost the attack. It says you failed to help defend it. To me that's not same thing

Earned a sub from me. Great research and explanation. Hopefully you can figure out the defense issue.

Technically, that comment mentioning the 1d100 only says that it's a 100-sided die, but it doesn't specify what the sides of that die are. Theoretically, it doesn't have to be between 1 and 100, it could be between 0 and 99, or even between -50 and 50. We don't see the guts of utility.randomInt(), so we can't know for sure. But I'll concede that, most likely, it is 1-100. And none of these values add up to anything that would go over the value threshold for an int (you're not generating over 2 billion on your defense roll), so that's not the problem. I have heard about a bug where, when you are not in your settlement, certain settlement objects may not register as being present. Maybe that's happening to your settlement defenses when these attacks take place, so it's calculating the defense roll based on a temporarily glitchy safety value.

This is why I just play games and don't fuck with shit.

At 3:30, I laughed. Because I realized why you have a problem and why they would have capped the resources like they did and I know you know the logic as well.

I appreciate the breakdown of the equations from the code. Something does seem broken from the win/loss formula though...

You're taking the fun out of fallout with your mathematics

Oxhorn has completely forgotton how to speak in English but only when delivering that one line.

Hey Ox, I like your videos man. A lot :) Raids against settlements are esqued capture-the-flag attacks. if they reach the flag ( aka the workshop ) they win, else they lose. In your video you have a dead attacker right next to it. Obviously I'm just speculating but it kinda makes sense especially if it's a radius around the workshop they have to reach, or perhaps a radius center on them that needs to include the workshop to loot it. Than again Bethesda logic has produced "logic gates" that require a PhD to set up or figure, so who knows, lol. Edit 1: The code you analyze seems to deal with attacks chance and some behind the scenes or automatic (player not there) calculations. I think it's independent from what constitutes "winning condition" for the attackers, hence why I think attackers reaching the settlement workshop IS the winning condition. Even if they die quick , even if they die seconds after looting your workshop they still "Won". It's likely that win loose scenarios are dependant on actually looting the settlement rather than arbitrary chances or God forbid RNG. Since that code seems to handle the "au to" fights and has nothing remotely looking like a real winning condition, I believe the workshop looting determines the outcome not defence/attack/whatever. Maybe walls are useful now?

Question about the 150 attack roll max...is that including the random number or just the number that is rolled before adding "random number"? That may be why settlements a little over 150 is still losing. Just a thought

“Those damn green skins, we cant do anything when they show up!” You have three deathclaws stomping around here and you expect me to believe that?

thank you so much oxhorn for this video although this comment is way too long after the video is released I just wanna let you know that even after all these time your videos helped me a lot

Well thanx a bunch Oxhorn for the fabulous information, now i know what i need to do in order to have my settlements attacked more often, glad all my locations are able to farm lots of food and water. Also on PS4 but never experienced any of these particular issues.

Hi Oxhorn, PS4 player here, love your vids, particularly ones like these. I have found them very helpful, I don't build a new settlement without checking you spawn points vid. Anyway here's a link to SarDeliac's vid on defence. I think you might be interested in the link he has to a Reddit. I think it explains some of the random results you are experiencing. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pB7ki5ufgUg.html Keep up your great work.

What I've noticed is the less settler's I have the less chance my settlement's get attacked. Croup Manor has no settler's a supply line and 250 defence and not once has it been attacked.

The only thing that would explain all of this is an old reddit (or maybe steam forum?) post I remember reading, that claimed that defense is capped at 100 when it came to calculating "off-stage" settlement defense. @Oxhorn, you should use the CK yourself and try to see what lines are above these "sample ones". There might be one above that modifies something.

So... basically, the one time they fix something, it screws with us

So, by making a cooler to store all my aid in, I unknowingly made it so my settlements are less likely to be attacked. (I don't make settlements, I just use them as bases. So I don't need to plant food or purify water as much)

you have a flaw in your calculations the resource multiplier 0.001 = 1/1000 not 1/10

Did Ox's brain forget English for his intro

Oxhorn, two things. 1. The resolveAttackAllowedDamageMin you point out at 10:10 is only the Damage min. It is not reflected in the Roll. So the roll can be less than 25 but if the attackers win, there will be a minimum of 25 damage. 2. It really does not matter because the whole roll process is only called from within a Quest. The comment at line 2888 states ; called by attack quests if they need to be resolved "off stage" The actual attack process is found in WorkshopAttackScript.psc as stated in the next comment: ; return value: TRUE = attackers won, FALSE = defenders won (to match CheckResolveAttackk on WorkshopAttackScript) I did find the following on line 2851 and 2851 int Property maxAttackStrength = 100 const auto Hidden int Property maxDefenseStrength = 100 const auto Hidden So each part of the comparison can only be between 1 and 100. You are on the right track though. Good luck in figuring it all out.

I'm a software developer by trade and education and based on the snippet of code you showed, there is nothing ensuring the 150 limit. I saw no code there that enforces such a limit which might be why you loose some settlement attacks. If the resource bug was indeed fixed with the Nuka World release, then who is to say this bug was not fixed. It seems minor in the grand scheme of the game and only appears in special cases such as a player continually dumping items into a single workshop or using mods to remove caps. So it was probably very low on their to-do list. Besides, maybe Bethesda was relying on the resource caps to keep this very issue from arising instead of fixing the code. I've seen alot of code like that where the comments in the code say one thing but the code itself doesn't work perfectly that way. Anywho, thanks for looking into this.

If the rolls are out of range reroll attack function, if else defense is at 150 or greater return win function. If else defense is below 150 but attacker is greater then defense return loss functions, if else defense is below 150 but attacker is less than defense return win function. "I hope this makes sense to you"

i also would place strong companions in certain settlements they only work when you arrive on the scene though

Now I know why I rarely get attacked. I keep things at a minimum to keep the settlers happy.

If you look at the formula you will notice that it will take the min of the the two defense roles if you def is lower that 150 it will take that ( 150, 110 ) => 110; If your def role is higher it will that the 150 ( 150, 250 ) => 150. This is done so that you will always have a change to lose an attack.

Only 4+ years late, but ... At 10:45 - "Be sure you debug only code. Comments can be terribly misleading." The defenseStrength variable is set by calling the function calculateDefenseStrength, which caps your defenseStrength at 100. Meanwhile, attackStrength is capped at 150. To both of these, a random value from 1 to 100 is added. That means that, at the caps, the value of defenseRoll is 101 to 200, but the value of attackRoll is 151 to 250. So, at the caps, with attackRoll > defenseRoll determining if the attack succeeds, your settlement only has a 12.75% chance of winning. Also, before the NukaWorld DLC, I believe the chance of being attacked used the same formula, but it counted your production rate, rather than the resources actually at your settlements.

I'm so proud of you Oxhorn! This is how you do it, dig around the code yourself. I encourage everyone to do that. It may be a little intimidating at first but who cares. :)

I think it should be the other way around, the only resources that should be counted for that are the ones actively being produced, not the ones stored in the workshops. To me, that means they were working before, and they broke that with Nuka World. They changed it, I think, not because they were 'fixing a bug', but because the outposts do (should) not produce food, so only the only way for them to count it, would be food in the workshop, so for this reason, I am guessing they chose to add it in now. A possibility, I am not sure if this makes sense, but perhaps, that 150 limit uses a modified number, not just your total defense, but rather your total defense minus some other factor, the attack, a resource, or something else.

I thought resources are referred to the food and water are produced every day in settlement, not the ones you store in workshop, this calculation formula is quite bizarre.

Hi Oxhorn, I just want to thank you for the awesome videos. They've helped me a lot.

Well the other variable is the attack strength, and I believe that attackers come in levelled teams or monsters. You're assuming that the attack strength is the same as the defense population value, which is 1 per inhabitant. That isn't a safe assumption. Enemies level, and increase in armament even if not in number. I routinely see raider teams attacking settlements including two in power armour. I don't know how that would be calculated, but the attack strength of the attackers is surely larger than a count of the individuals present, to which the figure between 25 and 150 is added.

With my latest char, Hangman's Alley is my main settlement. First char with Nuka World. Tons of defense as well as food and water. The food and water might explain why it's constantly under fire from every kind of baddie.

They must have changed something recently, because just a few weeks ago I was attacked twice within about an hour, hour and a half while in Sanctuary. And my defence was about 150 - 200 or so.

If Defense is multiplied by a random number, it will always be possible, if increasingly unlikely with high Defense, that during any given attack Defense cannot beat the Attack. The way Attack is capped means there is a minimum Attack strength that requires a certain minimum Defense to at least get a chance to defend against, but with high rolls on Attack Defense will never be 100% certain.

People in the settlements might all need to be armed to be added into the equation. If they don't physically have a gun on them maybe it makes a difference in the system logic/roll.

I must be blessed, i havent been attacked in at least 7 irl days, so thats what.... A month or so in game time. Granted i have 200 defense in every settlement & empty the workshops every few days & dump them in Mechanist Lair workshop. Never been attacked there even though it has hundreds of thousands of resources & barely any defense. Further proof the Mechanist Lair is the best local for provisioners

Try 151+ def per spawn point. It doesn't necessarily say that it's 150 or greater for the entire settlement or at a particular spawn point

I would have guessed you're simply failing a quest by not doing it: which is to say that the settlement didn't lose the fight, just that you failed the quest to show up and defend it.

So happiness has no bearing on attack frequency? Does happiness have any effect on a settlement (is there any reason to care about happiness)?

Thanks for this, I haven't played since Nuka World was released do to all the attacks.

Good vid! Anyone made sure the issue isn't with how the Saftey rating is calculated? For instance could be defence rating - (food production rating + water production rating) and any excess is whats considered Saftey rating

My problem is The Slog specifically. When i go there there are either 5 death laws or on this occasion, which caused me to search this info out…30+ mutants 😬 I’m on ps4 with minimal mods so nothing like uncapped resources. Most notably the popular mod ‘Immersive Gameplay 5’. As this increases difficulty I’m not sure if it increases enemy count. I noted that having a bunch of resource in my workshop will increase the roll of being attacked(?), which is actually only something I’ve recently stored that way, I used to just plant them and thats it. That, and when I set up supply chains made a huge difference, so maybe another way to stop a specific place being attacked is severe the supply link - problem is there is no option to do that and I can’t find a ps4 mod to do so. Any new guys reading this, maybe keep an eye on each settlement you link for a period before linking more and see if you notice. Therefore I’ll try remove all of them from the workshop and see if it makes a difference that way first off. A way of mitigating NPCs killed I’ve just completely walled off some settlements and that has worked greatly. So maybe down the like if all else fails I’ll continue just boarding up and not even bother travelling to protect them.m 🤷

I wish I got attacked that often, I'm on hardcore and I haven't been attacked more the 12 times while playing and I've had fallout from day one! (Xbox one btw, I haven found any "more attack" mods)

For missile turrets: setav 333 150, then setav health 99999999 Learn where attackers spawn and have a couple of turrets waiting for them 999+ defense Just being there and doing nothing seems to always make the defense successful. I love building with Vault-Tec pre fabs. The blue "domestic" pieces work best on a shack block foundation. Two stories, with planter crops on the roof. The Gray Garden elevated highway section has "dirt" on it that you can sink water pumps into!!!

That code says that if the ATTACK ROLL exceeds 150 the code bugs out and high defense becomes more likely to win. So theoretically one could force their settlements to always win by changing the code to make the attack roll always greater than 150 and then putting lots of defense in their settlements.

My defense for Santuary is over 400+.

I remember getting a notification about getting attacked like... once... I'm level 90 now and own all settlements, but i have only been attacked once in the beginning of the game...

Oh, and fantastic investigative video Oxhorn ;) Much appreciated.

I haven't left sanctuary and im building a big settlement. haven't been attacked yet

The things you said about the chances of settlement attacks around the start of this video kind of explains why mee settlements don't get attacked much... it's because every settlement has 10 heavy robots defending the place.

I didn't read the code too deeply but from my understanding it's the random integer that is limited between 25-150 and then the attacking force is added to that. Now you said you removed the food and water so that would eliminate a possibility of the attack rate being a multiplier of the attackstrength but correct me if I'm wrong but didn't your resources increase the attackstrength by extension of increasing the enemy forces? That would explain how the attackstrength number can exceed the defencestrength. Other than that it was a great video and I learned allot about how the settlement attack system works.

Oxhorn, first I love your videos. But regarding settlement attacks I'm thinking that since you can defend the settlement that they are happening in in game Real Time and if that is the case what about the random chance for Crit. and the equipment carried by both the defending settlers and the attackers. I suggest adjusting the equipment of your settlers to include the very best (even legendary items) for you next test. But until someone who is good with computer code is able to check out the report on any give attack to see if individual attacker/defender critical are raising or lowering the Defense/Attack values during the attack we might never know, as to why its not in the Creation Kit it might be a simple matter of a typo where Bethesda thought it was there (I hope not) or a glitch in the game (I REALLY hope not) . Anyway keep up the good work and Thanks for you videos

Hmm... interesting video and information. Though I'm one of those people who hasn't had this issue at all. Actually in terms of frequency of attacks and DLC, I was hit far far more often during Far Harbor (well over a dozen times) than I was during all of Nuka World (only about 4). And in the interim I didn't make any significant changes to any of my settlements with that character. I basically finish Far Harbor then put her on the back burner until Vault-Tec Workshop came out, and then again between Vault-Tec and Nuka World. I'm not sure if I'll ever run across that problem at all. Though one thing I think may be possible when it comes to the success of a settlement defense roll off... it may well be possible that the attacker roll is bugged and is not honoring the 150 maximum for some reason, and thereby making it possible for attacks to overwhelm even highly defended areas.

I usually store my food in the yellow wooden crates and my water gets put in the big ice boxes

Well, they had a pre-Nuka World bug that didn't account the resources. Who's to say there isn't a bug with defence ratings as well. Or maybe all your defence becomes 0 during fast travelling, beds and food and water likes to do so occasionally (annoying as hell, drops happiness despite being a bug). Or maybe there is a hardcoded 5% (or other) chance to loose a dice roll no matter the size and amounts of defences. Also, settlement repairs do not account till you visit damaged settlement to re-spawn all the broken things. This can lead to severe drop in happiness if damage was high.

Thank you. Bethesda should also be grateful for your great videos!