However when I decided to go with the "wait for it to pass" some @#$%head gunners decided to attack and killed 5 raiders with their grenade spam.
I always thought the first Gunner attack didn't happen until you talk to Jammer after taking your first vassal, After the first vassal assault, I try to avoid Jammer until I'm ready for the Gunner attack.
Simply because with such a low happiness none of my farms and water would upgrade.
Doesn't any food production in an outpost lower raider happiness by a lot? I thought it worked just like NukaGang Outposts.
From
@Jacozilla 's SS/Nuka Gang Guide on the Educational Forums:
https://www.simsettlements.com/site...settlements-integration-with-nuka-world.7060/
"3. Raider Happiness - nothing changes far as farms being taboo. This is default part of Nuka World behavior with raiders. They hate food production - doesn't matter who farms the food - them, robot workers, anyone - long as any food is somehow produced or farmed at that raider outpost, happiness goes down a lot by even small food production.
- Default Nuka World behavior is 1 raider farmer working normal, non-Sim Settlements patch of (6) food being produced generates -18 happiness. That is negative 18 points of unhappiness or -3 per food point.
- A single Level 4 SS farm would therefore create 20 food or -80 points of happiness. So basically, no food production at raider Outposts unless you want to micromanage rec plot spamming to keep up with happiness drops."
- [I think -80 happiness for a level 4 farm should read -60 happiness (-3 happiness per food point x 20 = -60 happiness)]
I tried getting some guard dogs or happiness and that went over like a fart in church. The triple dog spawns ended up eating a few raiders, another time my settlement turned into a frakking battle royal between the different raider ranks and the turrets because eof friendly fire killing the dogs.
Cats! No one f's with cats.
Though I did just recently download a mod that unlocked Gorilla cages. Higher defense and higher happiness than dogs. No risk of caging a hostile. I did experience a situation with some Raiders fighting the Gorilla. It only happened when I scheduled the vassal raid from the war desk, but not when I scheduled the raid by talking to Jammz. Best I could tell when you do it through Jammz the assault force appeared to teleport to the rendezvous point, but through the desk the raiding team (or at least some of them) appeared to walk to the rendezvous. There's a brief moment at some point between scheduling the assault and meeting up at the rendezvous that your raider's will show hostile if you VATS them. This window of them appearing hostile may account for settlement defenses, including dogs/gorillas, aggro-ing your Raiders. But when the raiding force teleported away, there was no chance for things to go wrong because this momentary hostility happens away from the settlement.
Another thing you might consider is taxes.
"Cumulative Effects
The tax adjustments done for each plot type also have an overall affect on your settlements. The tax system will "add" up your tax rates for each plot type and apply the following:
For Each "No Tax": -1 Defense per Martial Plot AND + 3 Happiness
For Each "Half Tax": -0.5 Defense per Martial Plot AND + 2 Happiness
For Each "Standard": Normal Martial Plot Defense, and No Happiness Modifier
For Each "Double": +1 Defense per Martial Plot AND -4 Happiness
For example, so if you reduce all 5 tax zones (Residential, Agricultural, Commercial AND Recreational, Industrial) to "No Tax", you'll have -5 Defense/Martial and +15 happiness."--
https://simsettlements.com/web/wiki/index.php?title=Holotape_Tax_Laws#Cumulative_Effects
The happiness provided from lowering taxes isn't divided by population: it's just tacked on to the settlements total happiness. And if you lower taxes in all five zones you will get +15 happiness added to every settlement you control regardless of whether any plots from those zones are actually built in the settlement. I don't use residential plots at all. If i wanted to I could lower their taxes and still get +3 to every total settlement happiness even without any residentials built. The cost of course is martial plot efficiency and no caps incoming. But raiders shouldn't be paying taxes anyway.
I could easily solve the issue with some CC stuff that increases happiness, but I am trying to keep my settlements GOTY/Nexus friendly to release plans later.
Philosophically, what's a raider settlement look like to you? To me it looks like a town with mostly all Recreational plots, enough martial plots, maybe a power/water industrial (but only maybe) and no farms whatsoever. Anything productive seems counter to the raider lifestyle.
I don't use city plans, but if i did I think the first thing I'd do is switch all the plots to Recs and just enough Martials, but mostly just Recs. I'd not only want to take over your town, but I'd want to ruin it with a bunch of drug dens: there goes the neighborhood.
Anyways. That's all just me. If the shoe doesn't fit, maybe you can use the laces.
The settlement have not been easy to take, some high casualties and I even failed to take my Red Rocket, twice. People who think walls dont mean anything aint ever assaulted a settlement with walls before, lol. Combine them walls with the grenade spawn as your people try getting inside and you lose people fast.
I completely agree with this. Walls finally do have a purpose and it's to keep the player out of settlements.
Grenade spawn: I lost at least two raiders taking vanilla Abernathy in one of my test runs. The dumb bastards were throwing molotovs inside the big house and burnt themselves up.