Fallout 4 Questions - Townships

[happyninja42]

So it's been a while since I played FO 4, and I've been bouncing around playing it again, but putting a bit more focus on the various communities that I make part of my network, namely their defenses.

So, not accounting for any mods or anything, just with the vanilla game, I have 2 things that I can't recall about how the mechanics work.

1. Do NPC guards/caravan people that you equip with weapons, need ammo to use the weapon? So for example, I give a set of guards that I have in a town a pair of plasma rifles, do they have to have plasma ammo to actually utilize them, and will they use up that ammo while I am offscreen, far away from them?

2. If you have some really strong defenses at the communities, and the "Insert Place is under attack and needs assistance!" quest prompt comes up, if they are sufficiently tricked out with good armor/guns/turrets, are they able to win that fight without my help? Or is it automatically decided that a community that has that event flag, will fail if you don't show up to help them?

Thanks.

 

[Avnger]

So it's been a while since I played FO 4, and I've been bouncing around playing it again, but putting a bit more focus on the various communities that I make part of my network, namely their defenses.

So, not accounting for any mods or anything, just with the vanilla game, I have 2 things that I can't recall about how the mechanics work.

1. Do NPC guards/caravan people that you equip with weapons, need ammo to use the weapon? So for example, I give a set of guards that I have in a town a pair of plasma rifles, do they have to have plasma ammo to actually utilize them, and will they use up that ammo while I am offscreen, far away from them?

2. If you have some really strong defenses at the communities, and the "Insert Place is under attack and needs assistance!" quest prompt comes up, if they are sufficiently tricked out with good armor/guns/turrets, are they able to win that fight without my help? Or is it automatically decided that a community that has that event flag, will fail if you don't show up to help them?

Thanks.

It's been awhile since I played my unmodded run, but from what I remember:

1. They do need ammo, but only 1 item of it. They'll never actually use the single bullet, but it does need to be in their inventory.

The wiki seems to confirm this.

Unlike companions, settlers do not consume ammo. As long as they have a small amount of ammo in their inventory they will be able to use any weapon given to them. This means one can give them very advanced and/or ammo-hungry weapons such as miniguns, flamers, or plasma as long as given to them at least 1 "shot" for it. For weapons that use a minimum amount of ammo per activation, like the minigun, one will need at least that minimum. The same holds true with grenades. This does not work for the missile launcher or Fat Man as these are tagged with "NPCs Consume Ammo". The exception to this exception is robots, who have unlimited ammo for all built-in weapons including missile and fat man launchers (can build on sentry bot chassis shoulder slots in Automatron DLC).

2. The guns/armor settlers wear only matters if you are present for the attack. Otherwise, the calculation only cares about the "defense score" of the settlement.

When a settlement attack is triggered (and the quest objective appears) and the player character is away from the targeted settlement, there is a chance it will be able to defend itself without the player character's interference, completing the quest objective.This chance is determined by comparing the defense strength (defense rating + population) + a random number between 1 and 100 and the attack strength ((food + water in the settlement) +/-50%) + a random number between 1 and 100. The defense strength is capped at 100, so it's not useful to have more than (100 - population) defense when not responding to settlement attacks. The amount of food + water and the attack strength are also capped at 100, so the maximum attack strength is 50-100 (100 +/-50% = 50-150, capped at 100). When the random numbers are added to the attack strength and defense strength, the total attack value is capped at 150 but not the defense which can go up to 200. This means that high defense is more likely to win, but even when it's maxed out there is still a fair (30.6%, roughly 1/3) chance to lose to an attack on a "rich" settlement.

 

[Dansen]

I believe they need ammo in their inventory but just one bullet of whatever they are using is needed. They all have pipe pistols equipped by default anyways(not visible in inventory). Explosives consume ammo so don't give them rockets and such. Don't give them multiple weapons cause the a.i. has a habit of switching out their assigned weapon to other stuff in their inventory.

The turrets break fairly often so you will have to repair them even if the settlement repels them. Not defending them can cause people to be "killed" but they wont die in actual combat just get deleted by the game. If the town is generating enough happiness it will repopulate eventually.

It's honestly not worth putting too much time into the logistics for your settlers cause you won't lose named npcs easily and the randos repopulate in a couple of hours if you have free beds.