Incredibly strange bug?

[Evravon86]

This just happened to me for the first time. It has only happened at Starlight Drive In, and only once, and only in this particular save file (70ish hours in).

I have a mod installed that pauses the game and alerts me when my settlements are attacked, so I know this isn't due to my settlement being hit.

I just randomly traveled back to my largest settlement, Starlight Drive In. Every single crop was destroyed and in need of repair. Every single water purifier was broken. Every single turret was broken, even the turrets in unreachable locations. I'm not talking about a few here and there, I mean literally every crop, every turret, every generator, every water purifier. I had to walk through and manually repair everything in the settlement that could be broken.

NONE of my settlers were dead. None of my robots were broken. I had the same number of settlers and robots as I did beforehand.

What could cause this? Has it happened to anyone else? I don't know if it's related, but I went there immediately after going to that island way out past Warwick Homestead and The Castle. Got a settlement beacon set up and some beds. Went back to Starlight to assign a supply line and transfer a few settlers to get the place started. That's when I noticed absolutely everything was broken.

If this has happened to anyone else, or anybody knows the cause, please let me know. It wasted so much of my time and killed my hard work.

EDIT: Oh and I don't know if this is related either, but there was another weird bug happening to me yesterday. When I went to Starlight Drive In, one of my settlers (who had been wearing a suit of power armor before I left) was all stretched out. She was walking around like she was still in power armor, but there was no power armor on her body. Her body was stretched to fit the proportions of power armor, though. Her arms and legs were elongated, as well as her head and neck (slightly). I used the "disable" console command on her to fix the issue. I just noticed, after repairing absolutely everything at the Drive In, that the suit of power armor that woman was wearing when I disabled her was back. She's gone, but the suit's back. In the exact location I disabled her at. Maybe this caused some sort of conflict and that's why everything got broken?

EDIT2: Okay now something weird is happening. Went to sleep at Starlight Drive In after repairing everything. Woke up and like 30% of my turrets were all broken again, as well as the Surgery Center. I have no idea what's going on.

Edited December 18, 2015 by Evravon86

[Evravon86]

Bumping because I'd appreciate any input.

[Pthalo]

Not sure on the crops, sadly. Are you certain your attack-reporting mod is functioning correctly and these issues are not sneaking under the radar? It does seem odd that settlers are left intact despite the destruction. I think this issue is separate from the power armour for the reason below:

 

I've seen power armour derp the heck out of NPC's before, in vanilla. NPC's attempting to climb into power armour will sometimes assume armour-size joints to fit the pre-designed suit animation. I've also seen the power armour go invisible once the person is in it, yeah. The suit was there all along far as I can tell. I don't recall if there's an option to talk to the npc to get them to dismount from the armour, but that would be the way to go if you see this happening again. That disabled npc is G O N E and deleting game content kind of sucks unless you don't mind digging around for a particular character's formID to spawn a replacement.

 

If you can't talk the npc out of the suit for whatever reason, I'd be curious to know if typing disable, and then enable (with the disabled npc still selected so you can get them back the not-hard way) pops the person back into existence AND re-appears the armour.

 

If that does nothing, I'd likewise be curious if the following works any better: Go into console, and use the kill command. Exit console, let npc fall down all dead. Observer if armour re-appears. Enter console and type resurrect to bring npc back. If the npc in question is one you are currently doing quests for, or have traded goods to, resurrect 1 will return their current instance to an alive state, rather than remove it and replace it with a new alive instance. I've lost good items by resurrecting companions (WHO OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN ESSENTIAL UGH) the wrong way, as well as screwed up quest dialogue progress in past games.

 

As a preventative measure, NEVER leave a fusion core in an empty suit of power armour. It's the same logic as leaving keys in the ignition of your unattended car.

Edited December 19, 2015 by Pthalo

[Evravon86]

I appreciate the response. Sadly, I don't think this bug had anything to do with the power armor. And here's why: I have a RIDICULOUS defense rating. It's like 490 or something. I have like 30-40 heavy machine gun turrets strategically placed high up. I have a mod that allows you to build robots that add to your settlement defense rating. I had three sentry bots, two stealth assaultrons, two Lieutenant Gutsys and several other robots defending my settlement. None of them were destroyed or damaged. Every crop was destroyed, every turret was broken and needed repair, but none of my turrets were actually DESTROYED. No settlers were dead, either.

The other weird part about it is, after I fixed/repaired every single thing, I slept for one hour inside the settlement, and when I woke up, 35%-ish of my turrets were broken again. There had been no attack. Then, I saved my game and went to bed. When I got up the next day and re-loaded my save, one of the turrets was broken again. I haven't been back to the settlement to check it out again. This could be due to mods conflicting as I have a lot installed currently. And as another of my forum posts says, another part of my save is broken as well. I am completely unable to travel anywhere near Sanctuary Hills or my game crashes. If I use the TFC console command and fly my camera over there, half the settlement is blurry and unrendered, and looks like it has sunk down into the ground. I haven't been anywhere near Sanctuary for 80% of my playtime on this save file.

Edited December 19, 2015 by Evravon86

[SharraShimada]

Have you checked the happyness of your settlement? Maybe the start rampaging through it, when it drops below a certain level. That would explain, why everything gehts damaged/destroyed, but non of the settlers gets harmed.

[Evravon86]

Can that actually happen? I don't see why my settlers would be unhappy. They have plenty of food and water, as well as protection, and enough beds for all of them.

[SharraShimada]

Yeah they can get very unhappy. For example, when you place beds in a way, they can not access them.

[kraag]

Sounds like 'just another bug' to me. One of THOUSANDS I've now read about. But don't post this up on Bethesdas forum or all the fanboys will attack you and call you childish names for daring to go to their forum and post lies about bugs that don't exist. Then the "mods" will moderate the crap out of your post, likely sending it to Oblivion. The ignorance and corporate influence over their is mind numbing.

 

"w00t! fallut4 iz da besst gamez in da werld!1 Godd howard is da kingz!!!" <--- typical post at Beth forum.

[Evravon86]

Weird. I've posted bugs on their forum a few times already. I never got attacked, but I never got any responses whatsoever either.

[Pthalo]

Yeah, at this point I dunno man. I was very, very careful about which mods I installed, and what parts of the game they interacted with - I've not done nearly so much adding to settlement construction for this reason.

 

If your game is crashing anywhere near Sanctuary then yeah that's a really bad sign there.

 

Are you in a position to uninstall your mods and revert your game back to vanilla? With an entire settlement inaccessible and constant object breakage, a fresh do-over might be the best way in the longrun. I know not every mod out there can be cleanly uninstalled without wiping the entire game of one's computer, so I understand if you are hesitant to try that.

 

Basically, I wanna know if the game still does this to you in vanilla. I have a theory the robot security might be shooting at things besides expected hostiles but I can't test that myself.