Bethesda’s patch 1.6 for Fallout 4 has caused issues with the game’s settlement feature. The bug went unnoticed in the vanilla build of the game, but Arthmoor’s Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch makes the bug more apparent.
The Unofficial Patch is a mod for Fallout 4 that was released back in April. The mod addresses a large number of bugs that exist in the vanilla version of the game, and has flourished since its release racking up over two thousand downloads. The creator of the mod, Arthmoor, has posted all the information that he and other modders have gathered about the issue on the Bethesda community forums.
According Arthmoor’s post, the bug causes settlers that are recruited through radio beacons or placed using the console commands to exhibit appearance, gear, gender, and race changes after a certain amount of time has passed. These changes are tied to the game’s respawn timer according to Arthmoor. Through adjusting this timer, you can trigger the bug to occur or delay it, but the latter causes performance issues to occur in-game.
After more testing, Arthmoor and other modders have come to the conclusion that this bug is an engine issue that cannot be solved through modding. “Only Bethesda can ultimately fix this, so IMO, people should start directing bug reports to them. Make them realize that as long as they’re screwing up fundamental systems for resource management reasons, we can’t do anything.” Bethesda has not announced that they are aware of this issue at this time.