Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch

I haven't fiddled around with Automatron companions since the DLC was originally released, but I decided to do so in my most recent playthrough in order to have a "pack mule" that can hack terminals and doesn't make snarky comments about picking up "junk" every 5 seconds. I recently picked up 2 ranks of the Strong Back perk and decided to re-build this robot and sacrifice some of its carry weight in order to improve its offensive capabilities. After doing so and engaging in several protracted skirmishes, I realized that my Automatron's weapons were exploding for no reason in the middle of combat and that the only "safe" weapon was whatever weapon was mounted on either its right arm or whatever was installed on any Mr. Handy arms attached to the chassis.

I was able to confirm this discouraging behavior in the field by using a Kneecapper weapon to cripple individual enemies and let my Automatron unload on it with dual Gatling Lasers. Even though the targets in question did not possess any ranged attacks and did not do any damage to my Automatron (confirmed by using the console to monitor the robot's health values before and after a weapon exploded), the weapon on its left arm would randomly blow up despite taking zero damage from the enemy. I went back and equipped various ranged weapons on the left arm (minigun, lightning gun, etc.) and confirmed that the behavior was still occurring. I decided to go to Starlight Drive-In and do further testing by spawning various enemies for the Automatron to fight and discovered that 1) even the Assaultron Head Laser would break (sometimes in the process of trying to use it for the first time!) and 2) melee weapons would explode in the middle of combat (with the exception of Mr. Handy Saws, which seem to be invulnerable to this issue). Please keep in mind that I did NOT use any weapons or armor pieces that are marked as "unstable" in the Robot Workbench; their descriptions do not denote *any* possibility of these weapons exploding mid-combat.

I'm not sure if this behavior has been in the game since the release of the Automatron DLC and I simply didn't notice it before, if it was deliberately patched in at some point by Bethesda, or if this is an actual bug in the game, but I wanted to bring it to your team's attention in the event that it *is* an actual bug that needs to be fixed. Having robot minions is a lot less cool whenever their supposedly "stable" weapons blow up just a few seconds into a combat.