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Gunner Attacks

Jonnan

Jonnan

Active Member
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I've had a lot of Gunner attacks in a short period - My main settlement is Starlight drive in, but I also had attacks at Ten Pines, Abernathy Farm, Red Rocket, and Sunshine. In the midst of these without having had time to get there I have had a Defend Hangman's Alley quest.
I don't actually have anyone at Hangmans alley (Or Red Rocket), when I got there I just see Gunners... hanging around? When I talk to them they briefly go into search mode, then relax and start acting like settlers? This didn't happen at Red Rocket (also empty), I honestly don't know if these are Algernon's people and I'm waiting on a different attack or what?
 
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Well, I saved and attacked. Killed them. Never turned aggressive but Defend hangman's alley cleared, five minutes later a Gunner squad was attacking Taffington Boathouse.
 
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I highly recommend SKK's Settlement Attack system at https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/37393
It lets you fix a lot of the frustrations of the vanilla attack system:
  • you decide how often the attacks will happen
  • you can disable the vanilla attack system
  • it picks the closest settlement to your current location to get attacked
  • it prevents the attack from starting until you arrive at the settlement
and many other things.

As for the friendly Gunners, I sometimes get that. SS2 definitely is not Gunner-friendly. In my current playthrough I've not yet completed SS2 Chapter 1, but I have cleared Gunner Plaza twice, including blowing up the building (via the Depravity mod). So when I get to SS2 Chapter 2 the interior might still be heavily irradiated and the gunners inside will die before I can shoot them. But I always thought Captain Wes' side of the story regarding Quincy was ridiculous, so I was never going to let him live anyway.
 
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The SS2 gunner attacks are scripted and not influenced by SKK's mod. I wouldn't mind that, but the gunners spawn right next to the workbench, bypassing all defenses.
 
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Runestyr said:
The SS2 gunner attacks are scripted and not influenced by SKK's mod. I wouldn't mind that, but the gunners spawn right next to the workbench, bypassing all defenses.
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Yeah the attackers "bypassing" any external defenses and somehow already being in the middle of the settlement is just how things work. It's something to do with how it calculates "offscreen events" during the loading screen when you Fast Travel - it basically 'fast forwards' any other NPCs that're set to be moving towards a location during that time, which for 'settlement attacks' means they almost invariably end up already standing at the Workbench when you load in.
"SKK Settlement Attacks" works differently by setting it up as a "multi stage quest", where the incoming attackers aren't even spawned until you are already at the workbench of the settlement in question, thus meaning they don't get that "offscreen travel" happening. It's more fun that way from a gameplay perspective, but "lorewise" it makes less sense - why would raiders wait for you to get there, after all?
 
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yaugie said:
Yeah the attackers "bypassing" any external defenses and somehow already being in the middle of the settlement is just how things work.
"SKK Settlement Attacks" works differently by setting it up as a "multi stage quest"
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Thanks for explaining that.

I'm not sure fast travel is the only catalyst, though. The first time I played SS2 Ch 2, I was in Sanctuary and got warning of a gunner attack on Red Rocket. So I ran there (no fast travel), heard the Cpt Wes announcement when I arrived, didn't find any gunners, then the gunners appeared a few seconds after I finished my search. I emphasize: the Red Rocket cell was loaded in memory when I got the warning. I don't blame the SS2 team for using the vanilla system, especially for a gigantic mod like this. But wow, Bethesda gave us settlement walls, but didn't account for them in off-screen attacks? I'll try to make a mod where each junk wall piece provides a defense benefit of 1 (half the defense of a settler guard), to help balance the off-screen attack calculations.

I've never been disappointed in an SKK mod, and I imagine the decision to be less-lore-friendly was to counter the design flaw in the vanilla system. And SKK added balance by making the attacking group challenging at any level, in the default setting. Attackers wouldn't wait for the player to get there but they wouldn't teleport in either, except maybe the Institute. But even that has a lore problem because the power cost to teleport a platoon would definitely outweigh the benefit of attacking a dirt-poor settlement. Meh.
 
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Runestyr said:
heard the Cpt Wes announcement when I arrived, didn't find any gunners, then the gunners appeared a few seconds after I finished my search
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Getting the Captain Wes Voiceover says that must've been the first one the Ch2 questline makes happen, which as far as I know (I haven't pulled the data open to check, i'm just going off what I've seen ingame), actually has two variants - one where you are warned ahead of time that they'll attack and follows the normal rules, and one where you weren't warned until Jake tells you "a settlement's gone dark" and the scripts will forcibly spawn them all in the middle of the settlement to represent them having already taken it before you got there.
(the variable that decides which 'variant' you get is - did you talk Wise into joining you in Vault 75?)

Anyway, yeah, it's a clunky system at best. Here's hoping Chapter 3 with all its talk of WAR will try to do something better with that whole sub-mechanic.
 
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Yeah I just found another pack of them. This "Defend Red Rocket" has been sitting here active but un-responded for I'd say probably a month of ingame time, I'd had no reason to go back there until now. I've long since taken over GNN myself.
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Note that they aggro'd onto Dogmeat (who was not "in the party" at the time), but not me, even after I started dumping rounds into them. I suspect I may have gotten close enough to technically "spawn" them before - there's a Martial Plot just inside Sanctuary near the bridge that I'd manually used the ASAM on more than once, that might be within range.
that specific configuration on the Bizon doesn't do jack to level 70 Gunners, apparently; I need to switch back to the Eviction Notice
 
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yaugie said:
It's more fun that way from a gameplay perspective, but "lorewise" it makes less sense - why would raiders wait for you to get there, after all?
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The best way I can think of to bridge an SKK-style attack for the gunners in SS2 and lore is that the gunners aren't just after settlements but they're after you as well. I imagine by now they'd have put two and two together and realised you're the Vault Dweller mentioned on DC Radio and Publick Occurences, and they've got scouts near the settlements waiting for you to show up. So, instead of the quest notifying of an attack in a distant settlement, whenever you're in a settlement there's a chance of a gunner attack on that settlement.

That way, there's no need to fast travel to a settlement, which causes gunners to crowd around the workbench, since you'd already be in the settlement. And I understand the SS2 gunner attack spawn points are outside the settlement boundaries, so you'd always be in the settlement actually defending the settlement from an external attack, instead of attacking gunners that are invading a settlement. It would make walls and turrets really meaningful.
 
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Yeah, the Gunner Attacks are way out of hand - in the time it took to get a Radar Beacon for Ada I had Gunner Attacks come up for five settlements, and two or three more came up before I got those cleared.

I get that out of game there doesn't seem to be any hurry, but in RP terms it's very immersion breaking to put it off and you have to because you can't get any traction on other quests if you're constantly running between settlements (I'm on Survival Mode). I can't imagine trying to play Nukaworld or Far Harbor with this going like this.

Suggestions:
A) Instead of announcing an attack, something like "Gunner recon spotted near 'Settlement'", Maybe even distinguish between the size (since I've seen anything between 5 and 20ish Gunners) so you have an idea between scouts, squad, platoon, et al.

:cool: Slow it down. The gunners are mercs, there should be a limit on how many people they can field at a time. Maybe they can field a lot of small ambushs or 1-2 major assault groups but not everything everywhere, all at once? If they have just lost a major assault group, that should slow them down for a bit?

C) There is definitely a bug regarding them being non hostile and you have to just murder them. It looks to me like it has something to do with them attacking a settlement with no one in it ... I've had it at other settlements but I think only immediately after killing a bunch at an empty settlement, so I think it starts there but 'infects' other active gunner attacks.

D) I really hope the gunners only attack in the Commonwealth and not DLC?

E) MCM settings for Gunner Attacks.
 
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I was trying to figure this out myself as I just started playing chapter two, and man did the gunner attacks escalate, I know it must be scripted because I get attack after attack by only gunners, and once in a while I think a normal attack spawns in with other mobs. But jeez I played for about 2 hours tonight and had like 8 attacks, I was barely able to get a single quest done before I had another attack.

If there is not a point in the storyline where you get the number of gunners down enough so the attack frequency slows, I would suggest nerfing this big time, at least by half.

I can see this being part of the story but if it is going to be like this from now on I may need to mod it so I can slow the raids down and do some other tasks during my playtime.
 
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Behemothrex said:
I was trying to figure this out myself as I just started playing chapter two, and man did the gunner attacks escalate, I know it must be scripted because I get attack after attack by only gunners, and once in a while I think a normal attack spawns in with other mobs. But jeez I played for about 2 hours tonight and had like 8 attacks, I was barely able to get a single quest done before I had another attack.

If there is not a point in the storyline where you get the number of gunners down enough so the attack frequency slows, I would suggest nerfing this big time, at least by half.

I can see this being part of the story but if it is going to be like this from now on I may need to mod it so I can slow the raids down and do some other tasks during my playtime.
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Its meant to only be one Gunner Attack per 24 ingame hours, and they should stop once you advance the questline further and do the Battle For GNN.
Enough people have reported otherwise that I am keeping an eye on it to try and figure out why.
 
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yaugie said:
Its meant to only be one Gunner Attack per 24 ingame hours, and they should stop once you advance the questline further and do the Battle For GNN.
Enough people have reported otherwise that I am keeping an eye on it to try and figure out why.
Click to expand...

It is frequent. I'm not sure, if it's every 24 game hours or more frequent, but it's hard to squeeze in another quest between them. Which always forced me to rush the battle for GNN.

But there's kind of a workaround, though not entirely satisfying. As long as you don't hand in Hostile Takeover to Jake, the attacks don't start.
 
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abaris said:
It is frequent. I'm not sure, if it's every 24 game hours or more frequent, but it's hard to squeeze in another quest between them. Which always forced me to rush the battle for GNN.

But there's kind of a workaround, though not entirely satisfying. As long as you don't hand in Hostile Takeover to Jake, the attacks don't start.
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Well, too late for me LOL I wish I knew that ahead of time, one of the favorite parts of the game for me is exploration and taking things at my own pace. Just today in about a 3 hour play session I had 8 to 10 attacks, right now I have two settlements qued up for attacks, its really getting annoying at this point.

I hate to rush through these quests as I know we will have to wait for chapter 3, so I want to stretch this out, and not speed run it like I did Chapter 1 because I was having so much fun.

Maybe they need to give a warning message that once you complete this step it will be settlement defence all day all night.
 
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On the good side my character has leveled up at a remarkable rate, over level fifty, and has both a gatling laser and a gauss rifle. I actually still tend towards my two-shot laser musket because I have scads of ammo as opposed to like, 138 ec carts, but I still like having something to use those fusion cores with.
 
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Behemothrex said:
Well, too late for me LOL I wish I knew that ahead of time, one of the favorite parts of the game for me is exploration and taking things at my own pace. Just today in about a 3 hour play session I had 8 to 10 attacks, right now I have two settlements qued up for attacks, its really getting annoying at this point.

I hate to rush through these quests as I know we will have to wait for chapter 3, so I want to stretch this out, and not speed run it like I did Chapter 1 because I was having so much fun.

Maybe they need to give a warning message that once you complete this step it will be settlement defence all day all night.
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Yeah, don't worry about that. That's kinda the point at this point of the story. You have to deal with the Gunners. Get thru it, then go back and clean them up. I don't know how much you know about what's to come, but you're gonna have lots of time to do other stuff while you work on the next batch of quests.
 
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