I ask, because I made two small merchant stalls in the Starlight Cinema base of mine, assigned a guy to each, and they've been doing their thing for ingame DAYS (and I've even done a little buying/selling with both) ... and as far as I can tell, I've earned not one cap.

Do the small merchant stalls earn any money? Where does the money go? How can I tell if I'm actually getting any?

The merchants themselves aren't carrying any caps (as far as I can tell, caps are not an inventory item), there are no caps in the workbench, I've had no notifications of caps received ...

Workshop storage

Caps are based off of jobless people shopping there. So in other words, its basically useless unless you have a large settlement (with lots of unassigned settlers), or just want to shop there yourself.

Its just another wasted broken "feature" they stuck in to claim more content they do absolutely NOTHING to make settlers happy or generate revenue for the settlement.

its a waste of time and scrap to build

They do actually make the settlers happy, and they do generate caps. Idk what you're on about.

WOW, seriously? They don't just earn cash in and of themselves? I had no idea.

I currently have 2 and make a few hundred caps every time i check them.

But making money is not really the point, the point is that you can have 6+ merchants at your home base to sell all your crap to.

They will keep you fully stocked with every supply you could possibly need.

Ya and I dont know about this jobless thing all of my settlers have jobs and i collect about 200 caps a day on 4 shops

Since this thread seems to be getting more attention, i'll ask my questions here.:

How do you generate more caps from settlement vendors? Spending 2000 caps so I can get back 25 caps a day is a pretty abysmal return!

Is it based solely on the population of the settlement they are located in?

Is it based off of the total population of all the other settlements linked to it?

I read that they might generate more revenue based on the "unemployed" population of the individual settlement. Is this true?

Dropping all those points in Local Leader and two points in the price discount perk amongst thousands of caps just to get the cap equivalent of a single rifle daily doesnt seem right.

okay, so the guys who are saying that you are earning 200/few hundred caps ... where are the caps going?

directly toy our cap pool?

into storage?

somewhere else?

Well, I build a bar in my "Tavern/Community building" and the settler assigned to it actually acts like a bartender, asking if you need a drink and then I can barter with him for Beer and some other stuff.

When I build a Trader stall, I couldn't barter with the settler I had assigned to it. Not sure why, will have to check again tonight.

Storage, go to tool you use to build your settlement, act like your about to add items to its storage, check its misc item selection. The caps will be under that.

get the heck out! awesome, I shall check that tonight!

Sorry I wasn't more clear lol

LOL and I have all my people assigned because I didn't want any inefficiencies. Guess its time to "trim the fat" "reduce labor costs" "adjust the workforce ratio"

Lay off some people! Hmm, so what is interesting here, is that people without jobs actually have caps to spend at merchant stalls? Wish our economy would work that way LOL

Not only do they sell stuff (If I need some quick oil for a settlement I'd rather walk 20 feet than hunt down Carla and I use the clothing merchant to dress/identify my settlers) they do provide happiness and provide a decent amount of caps (sometimes I'll find 30 caps in my workbench sometimes I'll find 300). If you have at least one shop in every settlement those caps add up.

See? You can play the evil guy in fallout 4.

in the workshops, under MISC

This is how myths and bad info get started. Let's kill this off right here - jobless settlers do not increase store income. Period.

Stores provide income, known fact. They provide more income based on quality of store (e.g. Emporium) and settlement population - exact numbers unknown, but that is clear trend in my game. Someone will no doubt publish exact wiki numbers for per day, per tier of store per population point formula - with probable adjustment for productivity prorated based on happiness.

But you can see general trend in game easily that they provide same income regardless of assigned or unassigned settlers. Sanctuary is my main base, with max pop for my charisma, 17 settlers - and with all 6 max emporiums, surgical center, restaurant (max 3rd tier shops) - every single settler is assigned a job and I earn the largest profits from this base.

The only thimg we know for sure jobless settlers do is:
-go out and scavenge for random junk that gets put in local inventory (source: game help text)
-auto assign themselves to any farm job that needs tending (source: obvious observation)
-auto assign themselves to defense guard posts if there is literally nothing else they can do AND settlement has no other defense (source: take over hangman's alley, build nothing, first settlers to arrive, one will auto assign to existing 1 guard post)
-hang around doing nothing

What do the these do? example: Trade Route - Fertilizer (for 500 caps) that merchants sell.

Not sure what to do with them or how to use them. Any help would be appreciated,

People are kinda missing the point of them.


Yes, they have an abysmal return. However, people often forget that these stalls also give you a vendor to pawn your own stuff off to. That way you don't have to hunt for Carla or whatnot.

The best use of vendors I've found is to place them all at the Castle

The set up a ton of water purifiers

The base comes with 3 of its own turrets and a pretty workable power grid too.

I'm making 400 bottles a day and I sell this to the merchants for all their caps making 2K caps each day, 200 .45 rounds, 200 10mm rounds, and an assortment of scrap, adhesive, ceramic ETC from the general trader.

The caps generated are nothing, but the resources in the vendors is gold once you have the water purifiers to trade to them.