[BUG] Vanilla settlement raid frequency, numbers, and spawn points increased dramatically after Chapter 2 Gunner raids

[Emrys]

Hi, I have completed the Chapter 2 quest End of the Beginning and moved on to How to HQ, and I have been been having the following problems with settlement raids that have made the game near unplayable:

1. Increased frequency of attacks on settlements, sometimes two or three at a time. The settlements have ample defense, including an overkill amount of advanced turrets. I even tried adding a mod to suppress settlement raids, but it seems that is being overridden.
2. Increased number of attackers, similar to the larger number of attackers during the Gunner raids from Ch 2, but this is also for raiders, supermutants, Rust Devils, robots, everything. Attackers are spawning at all possible spawn points at once.
3. Attackers spawn at additional spawn points not in the vanilla game, including right in the middle of the settlement. I've been paying attention to each raid I show up to defend against, using Bullet Time to slow things and see where the spawns are, and comparing to this set of maps of vanilla spawn points for each settlement.. There are DEFINITELY added spawn points that are not in vanilla. These additional spawn points seem to be in keeping with previously mentioned additional spawn points for the special Gunner raid defense quests in Chapter 2. The added spawn points can be a real problem, particularly in the middle of settlements, when robots attack. Sentry bots explode with quite a bit of force, and can put a hurt on everything and everybody in the blast radius. I've been insta-killed when fast traveling in and a turret kills a sentry bot right near the fast travel arrival point.

This all started for me as soon as the special radiant quest Gunner raids started happening in Chapter 2, before the attack on Gunner Plaza. The settlement raid scripts seem to have been "hijacked", and were left altered and were not reverted to vanilla after finishing that part of Chapter 2.

Usually, I can set up a settlement and it can defend itself, but these attacks are overwhelming my normally overpowered defenses. Being as I haven't finished the main FO4 storyline, I feel like there is no way I can go on extended quest chains away from the settlements right now, like exploring the Glowing Sea to find Virgil, or going to the Institute. And I can't get any settlement building done, much less get back to HQ and complete How to HQ, so I would call this effectively game breaking. I have updated to the newest versions of SS2 & Ch2, but that hasn't helped the issue. Thank you for looking into this.

Platform: PC
Mod Manager: MO2
SS2 Ch1&2 v2.31a (latest)
Workshop Framework 2.34 (latest)
MCM
HUD Framework
XDI with SS2 patch
several of the most popular SS2 plot addons
F4SE up to date.
Latest LOOT installed and mods sorted. SS2 and related mods locked in load order per official guidance on SS2 wiki.
Full Modlist posted here on Modwatch (may not reflect actual load order).

 

[yaugie]

This very much feels like a "mod conflict issue" to me, but I don't see anything on that 'modlist' link you have there that'd obviously be causing that.

A couple of dot points first:

• The SS2 Gunner Attacks as they're "meant" to work should only be like, 15-20 dudes, capped at one raid occurring every ~24 ingame hours, with a maximum of 5 (soon to be lowered to 3 in next patch) active at any given time.
• The Gunner Attacks are COMPLETELY separate from the vanilla raids; there's actually separate code entirely running them (it's in Workshop Framework, technically). This is why mods that disable the vanilla attacks won't stop those.
• As per the previous point, since they're separate systems, it shouldn't even be able to spawn other enemy types during that quest phase.

Now that said, the code running those has been getting subsurface updates the past few patches to prepare for what'll come in Chapter 3, so it's entirely possible something broke in the back-end, but for nobody else to have reported it...

As soon as I hit Submit on this post, I'm going to fire the game up myself and holotape-cheat up to that phase in the questline and run for a while just to see what it does for me. Do note though that I'm actually currently running the 'public beta for 2.3.2' update of the mod myself.

 

[Cessori]

I happened to have a vanilla settlement attack in my test game to do, so I played through it.
Definitely interested in learning about how it plays out for you, @yaugie

I've logged an Issue #1135 - My testing for this appears to have replicated the reported spawn points, however, I did not see an increased number of attackers.
In my current game, I haven't noticed an increase of vanilla settlement attacks so far.

 

[yaugie]

I happened to have a vanilla settlement attack in my test game to do, so I played through it.
Definitely interested in learning about how it plays out for you, @yaugie

I've logged an Issue #1135 - My testing for this appears to have replicated the reported spawn points, however, I did not see an increased number of attackers.
In my current game, I haven't noticed an increase of vanilla settlement attacks so far.

After a dozen attacks, the number of Gunners I was seeing seemed about what I'd expected. I don't have the 'attacker spawn points' for every single settlement memorised, though, so I can't speak to that. No 'vanilla attacks' in that time and no enemies popping in other than the expected Gunners.

(side note: I can see now why the 'gossip' says the general public of The Commonwealth are afraid of the Gunners; practically none of the outfits in the Generic Settlers Leveled Lists for them to spawn with have ANY Energy Resist, and Gunners default equip those Laser Pistols. At least equip a Leather Chest Piece or something guys come on - msalaba's Clone Settler Outfit thing is totally going in my load order once I'm playing with more than the Testing Mode Setup again)

 

[kinggath]

We actually don't add any new spawn points - the closest we get would be is that some City Plans will use an object we have that can move the spawn points for enemies, but that simply moves the vanilla spawn points - in those cases I would expect them to be moved further outside of settlements, not in the middle.

As yaugie mentioned, the raid system we added is completely isolated from the vanilla raid system. We don't hijack the vanilla system, don't edit the code, and don't inject anything into it at all - not even for C3. The assumption is folks will have mods to make that system play how they want it so we don't need to mess with it.

If you can get this to happen on an SS2 only load order (you can use the cheat holotape to skip ahead) I can look at a save from that reproduction and see what's happening under the hood. If it is happening in that scenario, then I should be able to create a fix that will work for your modded save as well.

 

[yaugie]

For what it's worth, I test-ran another dozen Attacks and was still getting the same result. The only variable I changed that might have an effect (although I'm not sure?) was that I force-leveled my Player Character up to level 69 to see if that's what the issue was - I've noticed "is pretty high level" as a recurring sub-element of a lot of the complaints about the Attacks being too much, but as best I can tell it has no direct impact unless some other mod's interfering there too - I can see potential for MAYBE anything changing the Gunner NPC Leveled List making them individually too much to handle at high levels, but that shouldn't affect the number of them spawning?

 

[Emrys]

I've noticed "is pretty high level" as a recurring sub-element of a lot of the complaints about the Attacks being too much

My PC is something like level 101. Being as this is my first playthrough of SS2, I’ve been doing a lot of settlement building, and the XP has racked up, especially with having taken the “Idiot Savant” perk. But with the additional spawn points, and my level, that might account for the increased number of attackers I’m noticing. On the other hand, this all happened abruptly when the Special Gunner Raids started in Ch 2. Just based on that suspicious timing, my speculation on the cause frequency of attacks were as follows:

1. Something in the triggering of the Special Gunner Attacks (SGA from now on) somehow caused an increase in Vanilla Settlement Attacks (VSA). I should note that it felt like the SGA were happening much more frequently than every 24 hours, but hard to be certain because the VSA were mixed in and affect my recollection, and I could have 3 settlement attacks going at the same time. It was so bad, I couldn’t complete simple quests in one go. I did the Nightingale quests , to get their support for the attack, while this was going going on. I couldn’t complete any of the quests in that set, up through “Angel”, without leaving partway through to defend settlements. Now that it is only VSA active after I took HQ, I’m still seeing elevated VSA frequency, even after installing “Configurable Minutemen Radiant Quest Limits And Fixes”, which has a setting to block settlement attacks…is there still some “bleed over” affecting vanilla attack frequency?
2. Does SS2 raid probability work separately from vanilla probability of raids? Is it overriding this stat, even if it isn’t touching the vanilla mechanic? I really haven’t been building many martial plots, and have been relying on turrets, particularly those from Advanced Settlement Turret Set. I have observed that SS2 doesn’t always integrate well with vanilla resources, e.g. vanilla beds (actually, I use often bunk beds from Snap Beds) placed at outlying settlements early in the game caused problems until I replaced them with SS2 res plots, and vanilla food and water were often way undercounted when I revisited settlements. And non-SS2 buildable objects that boost settlement happiness, whether from vanilla or mods, have zero affect on happiness with SS2 installed. So if SS2 is determining raid frequency, and it isn’t fully accounting for vanilla defense assets, that could be a factor in increased attack frequency. If SS2 is overriding that probability, it could explain why CMRQLF’s attack suppression isn’t working…if it is dialing down the vanilla attack probability to zero, but the game is now looking to SS2’s attack probability? Curious how this mechanic actually works for SS2, with the Martial plots. On the other hand, I’m not sure it accounts for the sudden rise in frequency I saw when the SGA started, or the other changes to VSA observed (spawn points, number of attackers).
3. This seems unlikely to be a factor, but in the interest of full disclosure of conditions, I tripped the Atomatron DLC by stumbling across Ada and rescuing her somewhat around time…I think maybe about 12hrs of realworld play time before the SGA quests were initiated. I stopped How to HQ and completed the Automotron just to stop the robot raids, as the exploding sentry bots were a real problem. So through the worst of the combined SGA and VSA attacks, the VSA were all DLC robot raids. Still, I’m still seeing higher VSA frequency than I’d expect with 200+ defenses at all settlements.

As to increased numbers, the raids are easy enough for me to handle on my own if present, but the settlers can’t handle them on their own. On a typical FO4 playthrough for me, once I set up a settlement with walls and turrets, they can defend themselves from then on out.

 

[Emrys]

I happened to have a vanilla settlement attack in my test game to do, so I played through it.
Definitely interested in learning about how it plays out for you, @yaugie

I've logged an Issue #1135 - My testing for this appears to have replicated the reported spawn points, however, I did not see an increased number of attackers.
In my current game, I haven't noticed an increase of vanilla settlement attacks so far.

Ok, so not just me. And I’ve seen the additional spawn points reported elsewhere in these forums also. While my main issue with this is the spawn poin ts i n the middle of settlements beside the fast travel point, I should say that interestingly, the Special Gunner Attacks (SGA) all seemed to spawn from different spawn points from the Vanilla Settlent Attacks (VSA). For instance, for a SGA on Egret Tours Marina, the Gunners spawned down the north/south road to the north, in the trees just east of the intersection. This is well north of the closest vanilla spawn point. I saw several other instances. So despite the fact that new spawn points are not supposed to be added by SS2, per Kinggath, they are some getting added somehow.

I’m curious if there is any relation to the fast travel point, since the spawning in the center of settlements seems to also be right beside the fast travel point. Likely a coincidence, but easy to test. I might try setting up a FT plate at Hangman’s Alley around the corner, and see if that affects the new non-vanilla spawn point.

 

[yaugie]

There's actually TWO sets of spawn points associated with each settlement; the vanilla ones that all the base game attacks use, and an additional set used by you the player and your gangs when raiding settlements in that sequence of Nuka World. I believe I remember being told at some point that SS2's attacks use the Nuka World ones. There is also an unresolvable meta-issue of the fact that when you Fast Travel, so do any other NPCs set up to move; this is why attackers just kind of appear already inside your walls when you fast travel to a defense.

There shouldn't even be a probability check or any kind of "how much DEF does the settlement have" calculation in the SS2 Chapter 2 attacks; as I said above, it's meant to just be one every ~24 ingame hours, possibly biased towards settlements built with SS2 plots, plain and simple... (with the technical exception that they'll NEVER attack whichever settlement Stodge&Co plus Old Paul are at, for story reason)

 

[Antoine Soverie]

There is also an unresolvable meta-issue of the fact that when you Fast Travel, so do any other NPCs set up to move; this is why attackers just kind of appear already inside your walls when you fast travel to a defense.

Can't even fast travel there anymore (it goes undiscovered) but yeah. Maybe it's one of the reasons why we can't.

possibly biased towards settlements built with SS2 plots

it's 100% biased towards them, at least since.. some point in time.

(with the technical exception that they'll NEVER attack whichever settlement Stodge&Co plus Old Paul are at, for story reason)

That's not true though, I had a lot of SS2 attacks there. Unless it changed at some point too. But it may not be high priority.