Are certain Special Settlers not recruitable to HQ?

[Donofgames]

I've encountered a few Special Settlers that don't seem to respond to me wielding the clipboard and simply repeat their lines over and over or offer to trade gear. Are there simply some settlers that we can't have work at HQ?
I'll start a list of any that I've noticed and update it here, but so far there's been three (which I guess I'll put in a spoilers tag just in case)

Spoiler: List Contents

• Fish Food
• Gremlin
• Frenchy Jr.

Is there a console command I can execute to force someone to HQ in case this is a bug?

 

[yaugie]

Both you and the person in question have to be 'inside the build zone of a settlement' for the dialog to trigger. Some settlements have "dead zones" that for some reason the game doesn't count it for that. I can definitely say the latter two of the three you listed are valid HQ choices (I have them in my own most built-up HQ); theoretically, any settler that you can also 'move' between settlements with the vanilla functionality should be able to be assigned to HQ too.
kg actually encountered this issue himself during today's Livestream (in Sunshine Tidings, where I've had similar issues myself in the past); if you're ok with using console commands, you could try selecting the person and doing a moveto player to make certain they're somewhere that counts as valid, and see if that's what it was.

 

[Donofgames]

That did work out for me for Fish Food. He actually got stuck on his way to Sanctuary, so once I had his ID I was able to yoink him over to town and then recruit him without issue.

Gremlin is in the town that she's assigned, but still doesn't respond to the recruitment prompt as she seems to be glitched after completing her quest. I tried to assign her to trade route thinking that perhaps if she were mobile that it would help, however she doesn't actually leave to follow her new job and still doesn't respond.

Frenchy Jr. seems to know I'm hunting him down to put him to work because I cannot find him to try and recruit him again. :P

If I encounter more character issues I'll post them here.

 

[abaris]

The only settler I definetely know to be not recruitable, is Mama Murphy. Which is a shame, since she has insane stats, that could come in handy. The ones ones, excpept that fish food guy, I never encountered so far, are recruitable or were in previous games.

 

[yaugie]

Mechanically, what it looks for to determine if someone is eligible to send to HQ, is they need to have the flag set in their data that means they can also be "Moved" between settlements in the vanilla way.
This means that some other noteworthy exceptions that people might want to send to HQ are the "Minutemen Settlers" you get at The Castle and/or if Preston is Mayor of a settlement, and the "Nukaworld Raider" pseudo-settlers you get once you're up to raiding settlements in the Nukaworld questline.

 

[ThunderboltDragon]

I've encountered a few Special Settlers that don't seem to respond to me wielding the clipboard and simply repeat their lines over and over or offer to trade gear. Are there simply some settlers that we can't have work at HQ?
I'll start a list of any that I've noticed and update it here, but so far there's been three (which I guess I'll put in a spoilers tag just in case)

Spoiler: List Contents

• Fish Food
• Gremlin
• Frenchy Jr.

Is there a console command I can execute to force someone to HQ in case this is a bug?

I have Frenchy at my HQ so he is recruitable.

 

[SarahAda]

i've noticed the "inside the settlement build area" is sometimes finiky, especially if you are using a mod that expands the build area of vanilla settlements. often i will need to command or console move a settler closer to the workshop in order to have the recruiting conversation.