Whenever I establish a new Settlement, the first thing I do is establish a supply chain in the hopes that the Settlements with water and food supplies will distribute it to those with a shortage of those items or none at all.

But I always hear the Settlers complaining about not having enough of either whenever I pass through, so I highly doubt that the supply chains I am establishing achieve the desired goals.

Aside from filling every Settlement with crops (not practical, I need the landspace for other things), how can this situation be remedied?

Water however, I assume they're just going to have to live without it.

The number of Settlements where Water Purifiers can be placed is too low to satisfy the needs of the others.

And I'm getting annoyed with having to place 5-10 water pumps at each Settlement.

I think the supply chains just allow the sharing of materials to build with, not resources

That's all I expect it to do. There is no way around the water , but you can replace most existing crops with nutfruit which will save a lot of room.

They do share excess water and food as well unless there is some bug happening, so no idea what wud they be complaining about, also about water purification you do have more than enough locations for them to produce water for all settlements maxed out with population(unless ofocurse you changed/moded/cheated away max population limits)

That's incorrect.

Edited to reflect correct information.

that is INCORRECT actually.

I have several settlements with zero water and zero food, and they are still green because food and water DO get shared between linked settlements

My supply chain is huge. Literally a huge pentagram on the northern part of the map when you pull it up on pip boy. As far as I've seen only junk(resources to build with) are shared through out your supply chain. I'm pretty sure food and water aren't shared. My settlement's that I haven't built anything at yet, except for a generator and a radio beacon, are always over 50% happy mainly because I laid out a bunch of sleeping bags for them to chill out in. My coupe manor is at 65% happiness right now and they have 0 food and 0 water. Yet they are connected to my main supply chain. Plus, there isn't any food for them in the "aid" tab on that specific work bench.

I wish settlements were just a little tiny bit more in depth with stats and example's of what exactly is going on behind the scenes. I know some people on this forum complained because it's border line sims, but I dont really mind. Settlements are a great way to boost the in game economy. Since I've beaten the main story arch, I've basically been a water sale's man. I go around to each of my 6 huge settlements and collect caps and water. Then I head to Diamond city and Good Neighbor and sell everything to those guys. I'm up around 50,000 caps just by doing this.

It's 100% confirmed settlements share food and water.

Its even mentioned in the game guide.

Indeed, food/water are shared. The number doesn't appear when you're at the settlement (it will still say zero for each if you have none being produced there,) and the Settlers may say things like "I'm so hungry..." as if they're out of food, but if you look at the Settlements section of your Pip Boy, you'll see that there is no warning symbol next to food or water at that settlement. Additionally, happiness still goes up (assuming other happiness factors are taken care of,) which would not happen if they were truly without food and water.

I think the dialogue from the Settlers only checks what is being produced at that settlement, which would be a bug.

But yes, they are shared. And as a reminder, they are only shared between the settlements which are directly connected via supply line. For example, if you run a supply line between Sanctuary and the Drive in, and another between the Castle and the Drive In, your Sanctuary and Castle resources will be shared with the Drive In, but not eachother. Took me a while to figure that one out. That's why I turned one settlement into a "hub," where I store all of my crafting resources, while the rest all farm and have their own water supplies. The Junk at my hub settlement is shared with all of the others, and their food excesses are shared with the hub.

This is 100% false.

All connected settlements share all resources regardless of it they are directly connected in the chain, or are separated by any number of links.

I keep all my crafting resources in Sanctuary, and can use them to build stuff at Spectacle Isle, which is like 6 links away.

Unless it was fixed in a patch or something, this was not working for me earlier in the game. I had several connections between Sanctuary and the Castle, but for whatever reason, none of the massive wood or steel stockpiles I had at Sanctuary were available to build with at the Castle.

Since I moved to the hub settlement strategy, this hasn't been an issue. Everything I have there is available at every other settlement.

Can I make all of my settlements share with Sanctuary or do I have to link them one at a time?

Probably a bug, because its supposed to work that way

It doesn't matter, you can hook them all up to one place, or slowly connect them together in a chain, the end result is the same.

Ah good. I founded spectacle island with the entire intention of it being a giant food and water farm.

Thank you for the correction. I updated my prior post to reflect that.