Hi everyone,

So I've been trying to learn a bit about supply lines so I can stop manually hauling building materials between settlements. But I read an artical that says linked settlements also share food and water. How does that work? Will it show the total pool of all food and water production of each settlement somewhere? Or do they take it out of the work bench? I've noticed food and purified water keeps getting added to the work bench. I assumed that was surplus and I've been selling it. But do the settlers use it somehow?

Cheers.

If you link settlements the food and water are distributed across the entire network,

if there is not enough to meet all settlers needs then the individual settlements receive their production first, then excess is distributed across remaining settlements.

If you have more food/water than all linked settlers need then the excess is produced in workbenches relative to the production of each settlement

examples

If you have four settlements A,B,C,D, all linked together and with 10 settlers at each

A produces 40 food, 40 water, the rest produce none,

all settlers are provided with food and water, no excess

the settlers at b,c,d will complain if you visit, but they have their needs met so it does not actually matter, a bug

if

A produces 10 f/w, b produces 10 f/w, c produces none, d produces 50f/w

you meet all needs, have excess of 30

settlers at c will complain, despite having food/water, again bug

excess is produced 5 at a, 5 at b, and 20 at c, even though a and b should have no excess, they receive part of the food from d's overproduction, and provide excess.

(technically it would be a 5:1:1 ratio, but the math and rounding are a bit enigmatic)

The settler complaining bug is solved by having each settlement produce at least food/ water item for itself, if they produce 0 then the settlers complain, even though their needs are met and their happiness isn't effected.

Is there a cost to assigning a supply line? For example, if I tell a settler at Sanctuary Hills to establish a supply line with The Starlight Drive-in, then does the settler actually go there? Does this mean if he was farming/collecting food at Sanctuary Hills that the Food amount at Sanctuary Hills would go down?

yes, they actually travel there. I believer their description changes from settler to provisioned. You will need to re-assign whatever they were doing

Cost is that you have to use one settler for it. its also smart to gear him up as he might be attacked if in the same cell as you this might also get him killed.

However you can assign in any direction you want so its smart to use the large settlements as hubs.

Had two provisjoners attacked, one was out in the wild who I dealt with, second was one who was stalking one up to the castle, raider in power armor managed to activate the missile turrets for an very short time

The content of the work bench is global with local leader, right? So with shared food an water you don't need to know precisely which settlement has the surplus in order to collect it, right?


Or did I just dream that?

Food and water will be automatically distributed to settlers within the network and any crafting station in the network can access the surplus when crafting. However, when doing a withdraw from a workbench you have to go to the one where the surplus was accrued.