I just had the exact same issue and it did work perfect my last play through. I had to check all stages manually, not all of course as I read the quest in Fo4edit, but setting the proper stages manually was the only choice I had. I do suggest that the player initiates the dialogue and not the NPC. I did try to force Stodges to activate the player but that does not seems to work great in Fallout 4 with anything I tried so far but it works perfect in Oblivion and also Skyrim if I recall right. I did not think about using the holotape, but in any case, all the settlers are moving now after I set the stage to 160.
Stodges ask the player to hand over the weapons and my char are loaded wuth weapons but not dialogue popped up. I do have all setting right in my Settings/Gameplay menu. I do use a mod that may cause this issue and it is: Player Comments
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/22166 and I like that mod a lot but I sure have to move my char close to any NPC that initiate a dialogue, or I will miss it and I guess this is what did happen here, stodges initiated the dialogue when the player was not in reach, just a wild guess.
A bit odd and my modlist do differ but what differs is that I remade a lot of esp to esl with Wrye Bash. It is therefor I started all over to avoid issues. I did play this quest 3 times now and it worked perfect in my 2 first play through but not now, and my current game is very stable, as I have not done any bigger changes to my modlist at all now, which I did in the 2 other play through until the game got completely unstable and corrupt. I did test a lot of mods that I did not like really and got rid of them.
Do you want to see my current modlist in case you will remake this quest or edit it?
