This repeatable quest becomes available at the end of Restoring Order. The Sole Survivor must destroy one or more of the Mechanist's malfunctioning robots, before it causes any more damage to the people of the Commonwealth.
Unlike all other radiant quests in the base game, this quest completes and its reward is dispensed immediately upon destruction of the target, as opposed to requiring the player character to return to the quest-giver for reward and completion.
Not unlike other radiant quests, the Mechanist will sometimes say that she can not find any new signals and the player character should wait. To get around this, just talk with her again.
Sometimes the robots will be attacking settlers, who may be recruited if they survive. This most often occurs at Fort Hagen satellite array, Andrew station, and Hangman's Alley. Since the settlers can be sent to any settlement (barring Home Plate or Nuka-World raider settlements), regardless of the maximum population, this quest can be used to increase the population of a settlement indefinitely. If the quest Taking Independence is finished, the settlers may be replaced by some Minutemen.
Ada only gives this quest if one has killed Isabel at the end of Automatron.
Bugs[]
PCPlaystation 4Xbox One Sometimes after killing the rogue robot, the quest will not complete and it will stay in the Pip-Boy. However, it is possible to talk to Ada or the Mechanist again, and after exhausting all other dialogue options, they will give you another quest which can be completed.[verified]
PC Using the following console commands will resolve the issue:
PCPlaystation 4Xbox One You may have to talk to Ada or the Mechanist several times before their dialogue will suggest another rogue robot.[verified]
PCPlaystation 4Xbox One Sometimes there will be no robots, or corpses of said robots, at the location, so the quest completes upon reaching the quest marker.[verified]