What the hell? I come back to Searchlight at lvl 20, cause the area was too difficult for me earlier, half the enemies are gone, half the turrets are gone and radiation seems to be decreased either! First, I thought I messed up myself, cause I am constantly messing with the toolset, but it seems one of the recent patches is responsible for this. Half the ghouls are gone, half the turrets are gone, all radscorps are gone and all the cute little yellow gheckos are gone too. What have the cute little gheckos done to you? Evil Obsidian! I re-enabled everything. You know, if you want to disable something in Searchlight, why don't you disable all the useless triggers you put in the area? Also, the FollowEdwards package is running on like 15 feral ghoul references without additional conditions. This means nearly all Searchlight ferals start running after Edwards if he goes to attack Astor, are you aware of that? Only three special Edwards ghouls are supposed to follow him.

Another thing: Damn turrets are too weak in FNV. You need a science skill of 100 to hack one of the turrets in Searchlight, but then they are instantly destroyed by enemies, what good is the science skill then? I gave all turrets in FNV Hoover Dam turret DT of 30 and the most powerful laser available in the toolset, complete with robot AP ammo, now we are talking business, haha! They are now actually hitting enemies and killing them too. I also set them to player teammates so that the player gets xp, cause obviously, it's the player who's the actual killer here, even though the game engine doesn't realize this

Also, at some point in the game, Astor and his men WILL bump into the enemy ghouls, cause he runs all over Searchlight. Yep, you took some precautions, but believe me, at some point he will bump into them, you just wait around Searchlight and see for yourself. And then all Astor quests are failed when he's killed. Real nice, Obsidian. Changed factions and aggression values around Searchlight so that Astor and his men are ignored by everybody. Well, except Edwards, maybe, hehe, in case you persuade him to attack Astor.

Also, if you reverse-pickpocket trail carbines on Logan and his men, they eradicate all opposition in Searchlight in like 5 milliseconds, cause damage penalties on hardcoe game dificulty only apply to player character, so if Logan uses a trail carbine, all enemies just drop dead around him. Is this intentional? I don't think he's supposed to be that powerful. If you don't reverse-pickpocket anything on them, it's Logan and his men who die in milliseconds.

They seemed to be all there for me, including the gecko's in the schoolhouse. Not sure about the radiation, I hardly pay attention to that since I just hit my radaway hotkey every time I get a radiation sickness message.
Occasionally the game does like to have enemies not show up or disappear...usually reloading a save makes them show up eventually.

Are you sure about that? Pre-patch I've seen Astor killed to the near north west of Searchlight but I've never seen him or his crew enter the town nor scout anywhere apart from along the road west and towards the north.

I agree there seem to be fewer ghouls since the patch, on the other hand it's much easier to find the tags. Don't know about the turrets or the rest of the post.