Solved Info about Defend mechanics please

[MisterKen]

Can someone point me to info about how the Defend mechanics work? Specifically, how it determines how many are trying to attack and what level it decides they ought to be at?

I have Sunshine City Plan going, has enough martial plots built in the plan to cover the reasonable level and normal defense requirements, but three martial plots manned by Raider Guards isn't in any way working well for Defend missions. In every instance, in any city plan at the several Defend missions I have, large groups of a dozen+ most Legendary and Skulls attack, kill the three paltry martial plot guards, destroy all of the plot particulars (turrets, etc), my extra turrets (lots), and then they are still a massive army. My Defend missions always fail. I end up killing the lot of them, but that's a lot of overpower to be messing with.

Something ain't right in Denmark.

 

[Raider106]

Can someone point me to info about how the Defend mechanics work? Specifically, how it determines how many are trying to attack and what level it decides they ought to be at?

I have Sunshine City Plan going, has enough martial plots built in the plan to cover the reasonable level and normal defense requirements, but three martial plots manned by Raider Guards isn't in any way working well for Defend missions. In every instance, in any city plan at the several Defend missions I have, large groups of a dozen+ most Legendary and Skulls attack, kill the three paltry martial plot guards, destroy all of the plot particulars (turrets, etc), my extra turrets (lots), and then they are still a massive army. My Defend missions always fail. I end up killing the lot of them, but that's a lot of overpower to be messing with.

Something ain't right in Denmark.

This happens to me too in a vassal and in hangamans alley city plan when several assaults come i try to kill them but then the quest fail and i dont know if is a fix i tryed to stop the time with jet too to kill them in slow time but the quest always fail for this i lost hangmans alley and abernathy farm.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

You need guards that are ranked up, recruits will get wiped easily.
If you have high control over a settlement it is less likely to get attacked.
Git Gud, dose yourself up with chems and kill the attackers faster.

 

[MisterKen]

You need guards that are ranked up, recruits will get wiped easily. If you have high control over a settlement it is less likely to get attacked. Git Gud, dose yourself up with chems and kill the attackers faster.

1) Raider Veterans man those posts, or did. Eaten alive in seconds. Guards don't get ranked up standing there unless attacked and they survive, which isn't going to happen. Reassigning perfectly good veterans from Warrior to Guard is an awful thing to do to your trusted captains.
2) 100% control still = regular attacks it seems, even high enough vanilla defense still = regular attacks apparently. That settlement has been attacked every couple of days despite 100% control and more than enough vanilla defense to cover the normal things.
3) Fast traveling every time but two seconds later Failed. Not exactly a way to get good, mate. Thankfully the quest can fail but I end up killing them and saving the day, the settlement remains mine, etc etc.

Why are the attackers so high level? Back to the original question. Where can I find the specific details of how this new mechanic works? Something official would be grand, with numbers!

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

Sounds to me like you have a mod making changes to npc's because by default attackers are not that powerful. Your vassal/outpost will not get attacked if you have full control.
Are the defend quests in the main quest menu or miscellaneous when they come up?

 

[MisterKen]

Always Main Quests, I get the quest pop-up. The few times where it was a vanilla raid it was that lousy left upper side easily missed notice and those seemed to stop once I added a bunch o' turrets.

I am a nearly vanilla playthrough on Normal except of course the many SS add-ons. I have MJC's Dogmeat tweak. All of my attackers at that settlement are always Super Sized Skull mofos and some legendaries with a rare regular Conscript thrown in; they tend to always be Gunners now that I remember. I got seriously tired of it last night and dropped four missile turrets into the already over defense grid, and that helped a wee bit but the quest insta-Fails on load in. I suppose if I just walked away the Gunners would take over, is that the normal Conqueror mechanic at play for that? I figured the quest failing meant they won the settlement, but the settlement always remains mine. The enemies are dead so they can't complain about it. I had a prior Children of Atom character pack and Tenpines was lost to the enemy because I didn't make it in time. The faction members had to pack up and leave.

I started with just the regular Sunshine city plan, so I'm guessing maybe Conqueror sees a high level city plan with a high martial plot defense rating (even though there were only three plots there). I figured Conqueror threw in what it thought were appropriate level enemies, but it's a real shit show. lol at that particular settlement.

In contrast, I took over Oberland, barely any control at first. One attack, regular spread of enemies, 100% control and hasn't been attacked since. Sunshine with 100% control and way too many (costly in caps) turrets and power . . . ugh. Damn Gunners.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

Conqueror does not buff enemies, it uses the same AI leveling as vanilla does, meaning you will seldom encounter npc's at a much higher level than your character.
The city level has no bearing on attacks.
I have never seen a skulled npc in an defend quest, and no one has done more Conqueror quest than me.

 

[MisterKen]

All that says is that Conqueror is spawning enemies at a level it thinks is appropriate, basically vanilla, and appropriate at that settlement is Hellish. lol

The other thing I could do is change all those agri plots to martial and make it military and industrial. No one seems to attack non HQ Sanctuary in any of my Conqueror playthroughs so they can bear the burden of a few agri plots.

 

[MisterKen]

Now I have the odd thing where a full-on Defend quest started but it was at my HQ. I thought HQ was a no go zone for Conqueror style Defends. Either way, I got stuck waiting to enter PA bug problem, reloaded the save, the Defend quest appeared again and it was now at a different settlement altogether (Sunshine, again). I wondered what would happen if I reloaded several times as a test. Defend, different outpost/settlement each time. All of them are 100% control with plenty of vanilla defense. Makes it fun but they do happen a little too often.

The one I finally let run was Sanctuary, and they were all normal enemies except one. That's refreshing. Easy, but refreshing. lol

 

[Grim Experiments]

I normally get about 10-12 gunners, 2 being legendary on average. I have never experienced a Skull, yet there are often only 1-2 conscripts or "lower level" gunners in a crew. The rest are ranked appropriately as far as I can tell. In my game they are brutally strong, however I'm on survivor and I used GCM to ramp up damage. One-shots are a real fear. My primary tactic was to come in behind and snipe them, hoping to draw them away while the Raiders hit them in the rear. That doesn't help with failed timers though. Which is strange because on survivor it can be 4-5 days before I get to the settlement to defend it.

I ended up getting tired of over-defending due to issues with Guard assignments, so I switched off defense missions in holotape. For my defenders at the outpost I gave them all gear with Railroad Weave, lol. That leveled the playing field. I only had that option because of mods like Armorsmith Extended though.

I hope that helps.

 

[Qerewen]

yeah i have also noticed that the raiders are a bit too soft once you start to reach level 40.
They get a few pieces of garbage raider armor and sometimes if lucky a combat rifle but usually a automatic pipe weapon.

the gunners seem to level past 40 and get MUCH better gear, like full sets of combat armor plasma/laser weapons.

The armory does not help at all because raiders must get levels before it upgrades their gear,
i don't see the raiders getting levels when they are the equivalent of a toddler and a teddybear vs Deatclaw on a heavy psycho addiction.

I am however going to try recruiting some raider warriors as followers with AFT and see what happens, hopefully i can level them up killing molerats or something.

as it is now i'm making Zhukov proud with my conscript attacks that only works if i sabotage outposts before i attack them.