NCP Lost My Power Armour

[Semi-Erect]

Hello. I'm still very new to the game. I have only just started to settle down and build in Sanctuary when an NPC jumped into my power armour to defend our settlement. Only issue is that they didn't return it to where I had left it and they are no longer wearing it. There is no icon of it on my map and I've looked in the surrounding area with no luck. How can I find my power armour and how can I stop these jerks from using it then loosing it?

[Chip Patton]

Just look around sancuary (if they're not a provisioner).

Settlers will generally do activities such as sleep, eat, etc. They cannot do those activities in power armor so they will exit the power armor to perform those activities. Generally you can check near beds, tables, etc and it should be there. I've seen them take the power armor off in the river, on top of buildings, etc. Just look around everywhere, the power armor is there though.

If you want to prevent them from jumping into your power armor, jump out near a power armor work bench, then hit "E" to snap the power armor to the jack, and exit the station. You can do the same thing for Power Armor displays as well if you have the DLC.

Otherwise, when someone attacks your settlement, the NPC's will do everything possible to give them the best advantage, including jumping into power armor that's just sitting around.

With that being said, if you have spare power armor -- leave it sitting around and you'll find your settlements will successfully defend themselves without having to come and check up on them :)

After you have most of the settlements unlocked every few minutes one comes under attack. I have tried everything to make it so they can succeed on their own including laser turrets, watch towers and completely enclosing the settlement with fences. The only thing I've seen that will almost guarantee the settlement succeeds in your absence is leaving one or two power armor frames (just the frame will do, actually).

[Ilja]

Power Armor in the settlement does not actually make any difference. Settler personal defenses are not calculated. Only settlement defenses are.

You can reduce the attacks by reducing the number of food and water in your Workshops. Those affect on attack calculation.

Each settlement has a base chance of attack (+ cooldown) per day. Your def is calculated against the food and water in Workhop, when the chance is determined. Game only recognzies 100 def for settlement in this calculation.

What comes to power armors: settlers only use them, if they have Fusion Core available. They will take items directly from Workshop, so leaving FCs there will cause them to grab some and enter in to PAs. They do not use PAs, if FCs are not available.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Ilja:

What comes to power armors: settlers only use them, if they have Fusion Core available. They will take items directly from Workshop, so leaving FCs there will cause them to grab some and enter in to PAs. They do not use PAs, if FCs are not available.

They don't have to just draw fusion cores from the workshop, either. Any core they can reach is good enough, from what I've seen.

They may also ignore power armour frames with no armour pieces on them, since some reports indicate that they don't take into account the base benefit of using the frame itself (so they ignore an unarmoured frame as providing no worthwhile armour). I haven't tested that, though, since I tend not to leave armourless frames sitting around in settlements.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

They don't have to just draw fusion cores from the workshop, either. Any core they can reach is good enough, from what I've seen.

That's true, but AI doesn't seem to search them too far away from PA. They have direct access to content in their own inventory and Workshop, which makes them automatically grab FC from settlement workshop.

I have never seen them grabbing FCs from original player house, if PA isn't parked right outside of it. However, I know it is plausible, if they detect both FC and PA at the same time, or have weapon that requires FC as ammo.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Ilja:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

They don't have to just draw fusion cores from the workshop, either. Any core they can reach is good enough, from what I've seen.

That's true, but AI doesn't seem to search them too far away from PA. They have direct access to content in their own inventory and Workshop, which makes them automatically grab FC from settlement workshop.

I have never seen them grabbing FCs from original player house, if PA isn't parked right outside of it. However, I know it is plausible, if they detect both FC and PA at the same time, or have weapon that requires FC as ammo.

For the settlement workshop, they do still have to go to a settlement workbench of some kind to grab a core, but distance could be a factor in either case. I've had them use cores taken from a nearby (non-workbench) container.

[Ilja]

Yeah. What I meant is that they have constant access in to Workshop, so they always detect what is in the workshop. If FCs are there and they detect PA, then they will detect FC as well. What then takes the priority is of course another matter.

[Chip Patton]

Originally posted by Ilja:

Power Armor in the settlement does not actually make any difference. Settler personal defenses are not calculated. Only settlement defenses are.

You can reduce the attacks by reducing the number of food and water in your Workshops. Those affect on attack calculation.

Each settlement has a base chance of attack (+ cooldown) per day. Your def is calculated against the food and water in Workhop, when the chance is determined. Game only recognzies 100 def for settlement in this calculation.

What comes to power armors: settlers only use them, if they have Fusion Core available. They will take items directly from Workshop, so leaving FCs there will cause them to grab some and enter in to PAs. They do not use PAs, if FCs are not available.

That's not true. Setting the variable AttackChanceBase = 0.02 to 1 and having 500 defense at the Castle, the castle will fail nearly 60% of the attacks. Placing one suit of X01 power armor in the court yard will lower the failure chance to about 40%, and placing 2 suits will lower it even further to 30%. It seems to have a lower impact after the first suit and consecutive suits.

The only thing defense seems to do is lower the likelyhood your settlement is attacked to begin with, however the only thing that determines whether you get a (losely quoting) "XXXX Failed to repell the attack and stuff was destroyed" or "XXXX Successfully defended against the attack" is how much power armor you leave for the NPC's to use. The diffrence is also very noticable when the attack is supermutants. For instance, if you help a settlement when you see the attack message, save the game and find out it is supermutants -- if you reload the save, they will amost surely fail the attack unless there is power armor for them to use regardless of how high the defense is (I've tested this with sancuary with 1,000 defense, they will amost always fail a super mutant attack while the player is absent regardless of defense:pop ratio).

This variable can turn off attacks on your settlements if your defense is high enough:

AttackChanceSafetyMult = 0.01

Changing that to a 1 means if your settlement has 1 defense and 1 settler, there is a 0% chance it will be attacked. That's the only purpose of the defense value that I'm aware of.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by Chip Patton:

Placing one suit of X01 power armor in the court yard will lower the failure chance to about 40%, and placing 2 suits will lower it even further to 30%. It seems to have a lower impact after the first suit and consecutive suits.

We have gone through the attack code sevearl time. Now I really want you to show me this par from the script. If we missed something, then I would be happy to find out where.