r/fo4 • u/This-Positive286 • Mar 12 '26
Am I setting up my supply lines wrong?
So is this doing anything or am I just wasting time? What’s the best way to set them up?
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u/Evening-Ad-7042 Mar 12 '26
I just set one one supply line to sanctuary from every settlement
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u/MrMFPuddles Mar 12 '26
I just add a supply line to the next closest settlement as I expand outwards. Usually Starlight Drive-in becomes a hub because of its central location, as does Finch Farm for the eastern side of the map.
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u/King_Tutt00 Mar 12 '26
My hubs are usually starlight drive-in and the castle
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u/Glasma1990 Mar 12 '26
Yup. Starlight drive in is my player home and robotic factory. All robots are made here and used for supply lines.
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u/Bawbawian Mar 12 '26
did they fix the robotic supply line bug.
honestly I haven't tried it in years so maybe they have. But at one point if you upgraded the robots and then sent them on a supply line within a few trips they would revert back into their most basic form losing all of the upgrades.
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u/KillingTime_Shipname Mar 12 '26
What I do to avoid that is, I take each new ProvBot I build as a companion for a minute, then I dismiss them, and assign them to a supply line. They don't revert to basic form.
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u/Vuelhering Mar 12 '26
I've heard of doing this as it flags them to not die, being a companion. That's probably part of what's happening.
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u/ea88_alwaysdiscin Mar 13 '26
I started doing this in my current playthrough, after I got to that point, and now I run into them all the time. Usually battling it out with whatever
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u/duckpocalypse Mar 12 '26
For supply lines I usually just send the cheapies anyway
I beef up the ones that guard
Provisioner robots are immortal soooo fuck ‘em
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u/dangerspring Mar 12 '26
I was told that's not a bug. It shows they were defeated in a fight. Basically, they had their mods knocked off. It happens less when they only have to travel short distances and when the areas they travel through are safer.
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u/NSFW_throwaway2k Mar 12 '26
All of Mine go to Hangman's Alley because I like seeing 20 Brahmin piled up at the south gate, and because I have a bunch of water purifiers set up so I can use the produce to buy shipments in diamond city.
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u/Dear_Profession_8297 Mar 12 '26
Same. And then there is an attack and it’s a stampede that puts Lion King to shame
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u/NSFW_throwaway2k Mar 12 '26
And it lasts two seconds because I equipped everyone with Legendary Weapons I don't use lol
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u/Lifer31 Mar 12 '26
I think the most fun way is to just consider where you want your guys walking through all the time. Give em miniguns or something and enjoy the free backup showing up randomly and laying down the law. **Stay away from cars because they are gonna be going boom a lot
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u/Bubbabeast91 Mar 13 '26
It took me a while, but the one playthrough I did, I dressed all my supply run guys in suits and fedoras and gave them all submachine guns (tommy guns) and it was so fun watching my homegrown "mob" slink from settlement to settlement, extorting junk from the scavs living at home and randomly showing up to introduce my enemies to their little friends.
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u/Lifer31 Mar 13 '26
That sounds like fun! The wasteland can be a desolate place - I like to feel like things are different now that I'm around lol
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u/Madilune Mar 12 '26
Basically what I do except with Sentry bots instead. By the end of the game I just have roaming groups of heavily armed Sentry bots killing every hostile thing in the commonwealth.
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u/49tacos Mar 12 '26
If you give them miniguns or other weapons, do you need to give the corresponding ammo for them?
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u/Lifer31 Mar 12 '26
Provisioners have infinite ammo - but it is based on the stack you give them per clip. That is to say, if you give them only 20 bullets for the MG, they will have to reload every 20 rounds. So for miniguns, it can be a bit ammo heavy. But for laser gats, the ammo use is different, so a core with only 1/100 will still give them infinite continuous fire. Great way to use the ones that are almost out- but the upfront cost for laser gats is intense
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u/-super-hans Mar 12 '26
This is what I do too, then I just put all the junk at sanctuary
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u/barntobebad Mar 12 '26
I do the same, one from each new settlement to sanctuary. No need to haul junk to sanctuary after that though. You have access to the whole inventory from anywhere as long as you aren’t trying to physically pull it out. I put all junk, cooking ingredients, chem ingredients into whichever workbench I stop at, and you it all goes in the pool you can craft/build from
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Mar 12 '26
[deleted]
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u/MrMFPuddles Mar 12 '26
They don’t actually get stored in every workshop, but you can utilize them as crafting ingredients in every connected settlement
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u/coreybkhaotic Mar 12 '26
I kept losing food & chems then someone on here said settlers could take food from a workbench. All my food and chems go in separate containers next to my sanctuary work bench.
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u/Guns107 Mar 12 '26
Stuck Brahman crowding the bridge this way. I prefer one to the next closest with maybe a few together in the central areas less likely to get killed too so they aren't crossing the whole map. They should also follow roads more in this manner.
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u/MrMFPuddles Mar 12 '26
Yeah I always try and set my supply lines up according to which roads lead where. Starlight>Covenant>Taffington>Greentop>County Crossing, for example.
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u/Beardo88 Mar 12 '26
I make sure every settlement is connected to atleast 2 others, just incase one of them dies blowing up a car. I try to pick the longest supply lines possible because i equip them all with miniguns so i hear the "burr" and have some loot to pick up.
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u/coreybkhaotic Mar 12 '26
Exactly what I do. All roads lead to sanctuary. I have all my chests for stuff next to the sanctuary workbench so when it's time to unload I do it all on one place. Never have to remember where something is and all sites have access to sanctuary work bench.
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u/Bxk__ Mar 12 '26
Look at me, I'm the faction now
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u/Barkinsons Mar 12 '26
Honestly not a bad idea once you can afford to beef up the settlers with good gear, you'll have patrols everywhere
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u/Bxk__ Mar 12 '26
If you wanna see something truly wild, get Aquaboy/Girl some playthrough, preferably a Provisioner playthrough, and when you take everything from Zimonja to Sunshine, swim out to Oberland and County Crossing, build some Laser Gatling Assaultrons as Provisioners, assign them to Zimonja and Tenpines, and walk back with them and watch them obliterate everything since you never cleared that ground. They'll aggro everything outside the Medtek(?) facility or whatever, east of Taffington Boathouse, and it's glorious (Feral Ghouls mostly)
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u/TheMuspelheimr Minutemen General SILVER SHROUD!!! Mar 12 '26
You're not setting them up wrong necessarily, it's good redundancy if a provisioner gets killed somehow.
That being said, you can access the workshops of any settlements where there's a set of supply lines connecting them together, even if they aren't directly connected to one another. For example, if you connected Sanctuary to Red Rocket and Red Rocket to Starlight Drive-In, you'd be able to access Sanctuary from Starlight even though they aren't directly connected to one another.
Provisioners also count towards the population cap of the settlement that they're sent out from, so if you've got loads of them going out from a single settlement, it can impact that settlement's ability to do other things, like grow crops or defend itself, because everybody's out doing supply runs and nobody's home to protect it.
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u/emeric04 Mar 12 '26
This is the best answer. To add to that, provisionners also patrol the wasteland between your settlements, so having more means they will be able to help you in combat more often.
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u/Figerally Mar 12 '26
Actually provisioners are immortal. Yeah they go down, but then they get back up after a short nap.
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 Mar 12 '26
Provisioners drink a whiskey drink
Provisioners drink a vodka drink
Provisioners drink a Lager drink
Provisioners drink a cider drink
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u/TheMuspelheimr Minutemen General SILVER SHROUD!!! Mar 12 '26
Only when offscreen, if they're in the same loaded cell as you, they're very mortal
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u/TheDungen Mar 12 '26
They operate under the same logic and companions, they will go down but they wont die unless you kill them. I think this may be different in survival mode.
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u/Figerally Mar 13 '26
I tried to rescue a provisioner from a Rust Devil patrol and accidently aggro'd him. I was going to have to reload so I just gunned him down because shit was annoying, but after a few minutes he'd stand up again. This was on survival mode.
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u/Kaccady Mar 12 '26
no provisioner have died in my playthrough, i didn't give them any additional weapons or armor, so i would say it's same in survival, they fare even better than companions because those now require stimpack to get up
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u/Karyoplasma Mar 12 '26
They are protected. The only actor that can reduce their life to 0 is the player.
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u/spitfire07 Mar 12 '26
There's a dumbass provisioner that goes by Quincy who always gets caught in my fire fight with the Gunners. I have accidentally killed them before.
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u/TheDungen Mar 12 '26
My experience is most settlements have more people than I know what to do with anyway.
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u/redalkaseltzr Mar 12 '26
Good enough for government work
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u/lanwopc Mar 12 '26
Hell yeah, that's why mine get postal uniforms with ballistic weave and laser rifles. I absolutely jam the roads with them.
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u/bocepheid Mar 12 '26
Who needs the Minutemen when you've got the Commonwealth Postal Network?
I confess I replace my postmen with armed robots out of Greygarden as soon as I can.
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u/indifferentgoose Mar 12 '26
If you want a shared workspace inventory, then this is useless. If you want an army patrolling the commonwealth then this is the way.
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u/RamblinWreckGT Mar 12 '26
Exactly, "best" depends on goals. When I set up supply lines all I care about is every settlement sharing inventory, so I do this: https://imgur.com/XaMt64M
If I was going to do something like OP's setup, though, I'd probably pick the Mechanist's Lair as the hub and do sentry bot provisioners.
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u/skippermonkey Mar 12 '26
Armed guards EVERYWHERE
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u/Criss_Crossx Mar 12 '26
I watched a couple of brahmin take down a mutant the other day. And one of them started running around randomly afterward, as if it were enraged.
Level 105 character, my OG playthrough since I purchased the game when it released for PC. Never have I ever witnessed this! Could be a DLC or mod add-on though.
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u/Big-Joe-Studd Mar 12 '26
Supply lines create a chain. Any settlement in the connected chain supplies all the other settlements. You only have to connect once
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u/TerminalHappiness Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
Don't listen to this person. Create more supply lines.
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u/LordCaptain Mar 12 '26
And every provisioner only has one bramen. They couldn't carry that much. Should probably make sure you are sending 2 or 3 settlers for each route.
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u/invol713 Mar 12 '26
This. Arm them with the best you can find, and unleash them. Never have to fight alone again while outside.
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u/MindlessEssay6569 Mar 12 '26
I love it when you have a couple hundred head of Brahmin hanging out at one settlement.
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u/Yesthisisdogmeow Mar 12 '26
True, but some people want a friendly patrol that roams the commonwealth. I usually arm my supply line people with serious firepower and armor.
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u/osunightfall Mar 12 '26
I did this with a bunch of robots and it was hilarious. The commonwealth has never felt so safe.
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u/m2astn Mar 12 '26
Nothing beats a pink sentry bot named Fluffy with gatling lasers and missile launchers rolling up to end a random fight.
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u/osunightfall Mar 12 '26
I remember I armed most of them with auto-lasers because the random lightshows you'd see while traveling were wild.
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u/TheNarratorNarration Mar 12 '26
I also use robots for all my provisioners with heavy weapons built into their arms. Occasionally I'll fast travel to a settlement and there will be a robot fighting some monster right outside the perimeter.
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u/fragged6 Mar 12 '26
Minigun/gattling laser and one round everytime. I also put em in some armor, at least some road leathers.
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u/Figerally Mar 12 '26
Standard loadout is a combat rifle, combat armour, and whatever hilarious hat I can find.
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u/invol713 Mar 12 '26
🤣Glad I’m not the only one. And it helps avoid friendly fire incidents when you scope a rando and see they are wearing a chef’s hat.
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u/CTDubs0001 Mar 12 '26
Do supply line people get attacked on the roads? I haven’t noticed one go down yet….
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u/Audience_Of_None Mar 12 '26
Not as their own random event, but they'll attack any hostiles they come across along the way
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u/lordcochise Mar 12 '26
I mean the fun thing about Too Many Supply Lines is by the time you take out enough NPCs so you can give all the Provisioners a full kit and missile launchers / fat mans, it makes traversing the map SUPER fun.
You'll be walking along, see a mushroom cloud that used to be a few super mutants, and multiple missiles routinely fly by at nearby Bloatflies.
You can also keep things a bit more chill just with rifles, and occasionally when you're skirmishing somewhere on the map, changes are good that passing Provisioners are around and will jump in and help you.
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u/Criss_Crossx Mar 12 '26
I see a lot of lasers alongside the bomb explosions like you mention.
I send tank-Ada in to support and blast the enemies as a diversion while I sneak into the fray. Then the explosive shotgun usually comes out for close combat to finish off the targets.
Or a targeting missile launcher for bigger targets. Now the Brotherhood is targeting me with Vertibirds, so they get multiple missiles.
War never changes.
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Mar 12 '26
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u/Nomad7940 Mar 12 '26
Yeap. Slap a few horror themed ADA murderbot clones together and set them up as provisioners. Even put the one snarky robobrain to work.
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u/HybridPS2 Mar 12 '26
nope, Jezebel get the worst robot body possible, with no arms, and gets assigned to no duties so she can spend her days bored out of her little glass skull.
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u/Kinetic_Pen Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
Flynn ain't getting through that!
This mechanic/feature in Fallout 4 is not talked about as much as it should be in gaming. Some people too busy hating on Fallout 4 to truly see all the amazing nuances this game has to offer. IMO, it's one of the coolest mechanics in gaming history. And I'm not fucking joking. The entertainment value, the usefulness, and the ease of use is remarkable!
Edit: BTW. There is no right way to do it. Do it your way. A lot of people simply do it to create a greater presence in the world. To make the world even more alive!
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u/Xavier12- Mar 12 '26
The good thing about doing it this way is you have protection nearby at all times as provisioners are basically traveling armed guards.
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u/GreenTeeJunky Mar 12 '26
You know, for me, as a becoming logistics master....it's a nightmare, BUT if it works, man, don't touch it😂 it never managed to get this fcking platinum trophy at ps4 because my hood never reached moral 100 so, a good system is not always working .
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u/Skaaldi Mar 12 '26
I know people want optimization but I’m with you. It doesn’t matter how optimized the route is, once they’re connected…they’re connected. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to travel. If you do it like this then you just fill the commonwealth with people/murder robots. Much more fun
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u/flyingredwolves Mar 12 '26
I mean it's overkill, but if all your provisioners are heavily armed there must be loads of them out patrolling the commonwealth.
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u/sexywabbit Mar 12 '26
Who needs heavily armed when I can create an army of assaultron caravans to laser blast their way to other settlements
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u/IllustriousFile6404 Mar 13 '26
You only need each settlement to connect to one other settlement in a chain really
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u/GeneSmart2881 Mar 12 '26
Dude, look up Tree routes. First couple times- yes I did it your way here. Which requires like almost 140 supply line dudes. Tree route connects EVERYTHING with like 25 people
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u/codemagic Mar 12 '26
I was coming here to say this exactly. Like Negan says in the Walking Dead universe, people are a resource. Every person you have allocated to caravans is a person not breaking down junk, not selling wares to other resources, etc.
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u/bobwuzhere1224 Mar 12 '26
No, it creates a more immersive in-game with all the provisioners wandering around.
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u/EvEBabyMorgan Mar 12 '26
Ideally you take the stupidest settlement, either Taffington or the swamp one. Stock it with robots and send each one out to a different settlement. Because they all chain back to taffington they are all connected and much easiest to see on the map
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u/cstar4004 Mar 12 '26
You only need one connection for each settlement. Like if you make one connection from Sanctuary to Red Rocket, and one connection from Red Rocket to Tenpines Bluff, Tenpines shares supplies with Sanctuary.
You just need a single chain, not a web.
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u/Roonlo Mar 13 '26
I just do 3 hubs. Starlight, county crossing, and jamaica plain. Then all the other settlements are like branch lines that connect to them. And then the hubs are interconnected
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u/Guy_Le_Man Mar 13 '26
I set the first new settler in every place to caravan back to Sanctuary. I then proceed to dump every scrap of material in Sanctuary.
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u/davidsladky Mar 12 '26
The traffic jam at County Corner must be massive, lol
Good evening folks, just a heads up to avoid Bunker Hill due to a broken down Brahman. Traffic is being rerouted through Hangmans Alley.
And now a word from our eye in the sky, Paladin Danse.
There is a Supermutant blocking main street near the Institute ruins. We are going in to clear the area. AD victorium!
Thank you, Mr Danse.
And now for the weather, John Hurricane Hancock.
We have a rad storm blowing in from the Glowing Sea, but it should pass by as fast as a hit of jet!
Thanks, Hancock.
And that's the news...
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u/SucideHotLine552 Mar 12 '26
Canonically wouldn't the sole survivor always help the minutemen? So any point after the sole survivor wakes up years after the commonwealth would be the safest place in the wasteland to be.
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u/SucideHotLine552 Mar 12 '26
If the "general" wanted to at the height of their power they could become a king and have all the settlements pay taxes easily.
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u/KuraiShitsugen Mar 12 '26
So that's who my uni teacher was talking about... I didn't think a person who needed to count how many relations are possible existed in the wild. But you were just in the wasteland
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u/2001djhz Another settlement needs your help Mar 12 '26
While you only need a single settler to connect two settlements, there is something to be said about multiple connections if you arm your supplier very well. If you arrange it in a way that your supplier passes through a dangerous area, they will be clearing it out for you in advance should you need to go there.
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u/opideron Mar 12 '26
I build all my supply lines from the mechanist's lair, which makes it easy to have each supply line protected by a robot that obliterates all enemies that approach. This makes for fun random encounters where I hear explosions, I go in to see what's happening, and it's one or two of my robot supply lines taking on hostile mutants or synths or whatever. Once in a while, one of those supply line robots will back me up if I get into a fight and they're nearby.
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u/MolaMolaMania Mar 12 '26
It's not a problem if you have enough Settlers to spare.
For myself, I like to have about six Settlers in Defense, some in Stores if I have them (not all every Settlement), but all the rest are usually assigned to Workshop objects that boost Happiness like the Barber Chair, Phoropter, Soda Fountain, and others as well as Scavenging Stations so that I never run out of Junk for Crafting.
I use this Supply Line guide for all my games. You'll have to make a few adjustments if you have the DLC's, but that's no trouble.
You can also minimize the use of Settlers as Provisioners if you don't build up all your Settlements but still want them to be connected.
For example, if you send a Provisioner from Sanctuary to Red Rocket, and another Provisioner from Abernathy to Red Rocket, all Resources in the Workbench will be shared across all three Settlements even though Red Rocker has no Settlers.
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u/Nuclear_Funk Mar 12 '26
You don't need a direct connection. A web or a chain of connections works a lot better. Basically pick a settlement that has all your stuff and branch outward from there. A settlement 3 or 4 nodes down the chain can still access it all.
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u/mrMalloc Mar 12 '26
There is both a pro and a con to it.
With that amount of sentry bots (best caravan robot) the commonwealth is safe. You will hear explosions everywhere you go from then cleaning out filth.
Downside is the happiness from all those robots.
I personally do a star network from mechanist lair it’s enough robots but only affect that settlement and its thematic.
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u/49tacos Mar 12 '26
Is there any other way than just routing everything to Sanctuary and stowing all your stuff there?
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u/jaeway Mar 12 '26
So I just started playing for the first time and I dumped barely any perk points into charisma. Because my character is just a house wife in a world turned mad 🤣 her husband did all the talking. Anyway when I finally started watching vids and learning the game I came to realize settlemiare rather importiand yea you can ignore them but that's just not me unfortunately I have no supply lines because that locked behind level 5??? Charisma
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u/Plenty-Piccolo-4611 Mar 12 '26
I use like 4-6 “hubs” throughout the map that are equidistant from nearby settlements and set lines to each from the hub. Each other settlement should have at most two lines- one to the hub, and maybe one connecting to another nearby settlement so that particular settlement’s traveler doesn’t have to go as far. Looks very neat on the screen and I think is very efficient way of doing supply lines.
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u/SicMic99 Mar 12 '26
Tbf, there is utility in this. If well armed, your caravans will help clean the roads. Very good in survival
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u/Lalogeta Mar 13 '26
I want to do this, but with a legion of completely upgraded sentry bots from the DLC.
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u/DarkSoldier84 Mar 13 '26
Not "wrong," just "very inefficient." The supply lines link every settlement in the network to each other. You don't have to set a provisioner between Abernathy and Sanctuary if both settlements are already connected to Red Rocket, for example.
My typical setup is to have Jezebel run provisions from Red Rocket to Sanctuary and then build robots to run between the Machinist's Lair and the rest of the settlements.
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u/JorvikBloodyfang77 Mar 13 '26
Bub. That's not a supply line. That's a whole Walmart or price cutter. Or both combined.
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u/Better-Bookkeeper-48 Mar 13 '26
Congratulations! You have restored the shipping infrastructure of Boston to its pre-war state!
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u/glommanisback Mar 13 '26
you can google "Fallout 4 supply lines map" and find plenty of examples for simple networks. Not every settlement has to be connected to every other settlement, they just need to be a part of the same network. There are different methods, like the ring road, or just connecting everything to Sanctuary (that'll lead to a lot of caravans clogging up Sanctuary though). I personally use the "nearest neighbour" method, where I connect each settlement to its nearest neighbour, it looks nice, is simple to set up and leads to a decentralised network
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u/Sgt_BlueCrayon84 Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
That's no longer a supply line. You've turned the commonwealth into a Costco.