Thanks for the tips I'm gonna just have to wait I think.

There was a bug with rings in the original game, may have been patched. I use a star but one thing i noticed is that a lot of enemies seem to follow the provisioners in so there are always attacks there, or could be because my hub is starlight abd theres a spawn point nearby. I used to think star was only way to go becsuse u can have 1 recruitment station but than i figured out from another forum member that u can assign a settler somewhere snd then immediately after supply line them to a new place so u can easily setup supply lines from settlers recruited in a single place to anywhere u want. Only caveat is u need to make sure u have beds at the new origination point so i suppose a hub system is good if u want to completely eliminate any other traveling micromanagement

New settlements I set up a Recruitment Beacon until I get how many I want then store it (I can bump them up later when and if I decide to), first settler arrives is sent provisioning to Sanctuary.

In my world ALL roads lead to Sanctuary.

I seem to have lost two provisioners. I removed all the provisioners I could find from their route, but supply lines linking Sanctuary, Red Rocket and Abernathy have remained intact with no one patrolling those routes.

Phil, this has nothing to do with the topic, but I had to give a shout for your shiny avatar.

Long live the man they call Jayne!!

EDIT: OK, I'll make it have something to do with the topic. I actually ran into some of my provisioners today under attack from Raiders, and had to get the bad guys off their backs. Which kind of made me wonder- does this happen in game areas if the player is not around to see it? Are there randomized attacks/deaths of our provisioners in the game world?

I prefer the second type, I have had provisioners temporarily disapear or be killed so I like to build in secondary suppy lines. I also pay attention to their home base as if you have an intermediary settlement you haven't developed yet only send provisioners to it, not from it, as it will constantly have a low happiness.

If you want to reorganise the easiest way is to take the provisioner out back and put a shotgun to their head, then assign a new one to the route you want.

Supply lines just got a whole lot easier with Automatron! I'm going to set up regional hubs in each quarter of the map, and connect them to each other via Hangman's Alley. In each of these hubs I'll have a robot factory, so when I ally a new settlement I'll build a supply droid, send it to the new settlement and assign it to a supply line from there. Sounds like good system to me, but I'll have to see how it works out in practice.

I usually setup supply lines between settlements that are close to each other. For instance, I moved a settler to Jamaica Plains to be my provisioner for Murkwater Construction site. Jamaica Plains is connected to Finch Farm etc. I don't want all provisioners come from one hub, since I need working settlers in my larger settlement. They can't all just be provisioners.

Most of my settlements have one provisioner, some may have two, depending on the current size. I also feel the shorter the distance they have to travel, the better. It's less risky and the poor guy doesn't need to walk for miles on end. LOL

Hmm, supply droids... I may have to replace my human provisioners.

I feel for players who are just picking up the game- easily one of the trickier issues to get your head around.

FWIW, in my first playthru (on PS4) I had massive centralized hubs, and I abused the "drop-and-scrap" thing quite a bit to circumvent building size limits. I would have utter chaos at times with a half-dozen provisioners showing up in Sanctuary at the same time, resulting in what sounded like a Brahmin-noise rock concert and massive frame-rate drops.

Lessons learned:

* Just one line snaking around connecting them all works fine. The workshops will only show the junk in that particular workshop, but if you go to build something it will pull from the resources in all connected settlements.

* Provisioners count as settlers. They count against your population cap, so only use one per settlement to connect to the next in a linear fashion. Hubs work fine too, but assign from the outside-in so you don't have one places population eaten up by just provisioners. They need a bed- assign them to the bed before you assign them to supply lines- it might have been fixed, but doing it the other way 'round deactivated the supply line for me.

* Dress them all the same- whatever outfit you choose (I use hooded rags like Crickets') use that for all of them and don't dress any other settlers the same way so you always know immediately who the provisioners are.

* I rename a pipe pistol or something cheap and plentiful to show the two settlements the provisioner is working so I can ID them out in the world in case I have issues.

* If you have to reorganize your lines, ditch any companions who might disapprove of killing, hunt down the provisioner away from the settlement where your peeps will see you do it and kill them. No lasting consequences at all, but it does show up as a murder in your stats if you care about such things and are keeping score. It might have been fixed in an update, but reassigning a provisioner as a settler left that person with the 'provisioner' tag afterwards.

* Provisioner's cant die unless YOU kill them out on the roads. Enemy fire just knocks them down and they get back up again eventually. In settlements, they're fair game to be killed by enemy action and splash damage from your weapons, explosives and turrets just like settlers. That said, they can just disappear. That route from Murkwater to Jamaica Plain just goes down every so often for me, and requires a new provisioner. I have one route where the provisioner is never seen- just the Brahmin, but the line is still up. Lord knows the game is buggy like that- witness the Bird-Brahmin that like to stand on roofs and block doorways.

* Since they can't really be killed, what weapon you arm them with can serve another purpose- I give them full-auto lasers so that in case I need to assist one who's under fire out on the roads, I can see where they are and what they're shooting at just by watching the laser-fire from a distance. Saves time mucking about in VATS looking for the attackers.

* Don't overthink Hangman's Alley- they don't have to actually physically get through that little door in the alley with their Brahmin- they'll just stop at the door, turn around and be on their way.

* The can swim. Don't worry about water unless it's Spectacle Island (too long a swim- the rads will make them sit on the ocean floor to recover too much. They're still there- just sitting on the bottom) so use a ghoul or a robot there.

Yeah, this works best for me. I have them all connected to Red Rocket, because it was the first place I used. I also recruit there, and use those settlers as provisioners. As long as you don't grow food and water you don't have to defend it, and it makes them easier to find.

Provisioners don't die, unless you kill them yourself. The "ghost" ones are stuck somewhere, like in a ditch or building.

I use 2 hubs, Oberland and Taffington; all provisioners(dressed and equipped for easy ID, with a weapon named for their route) are based at one of the two. Have all settlements except BH and the Airport.

Have a human wearing rad resistant armor doing the Spectacle Island run, no issues, plus it's cool watching him and his Brahmin rise from the depths.

No problems keeping track of provisioners/supply lines, easy peasie.

I wish on console there was a way to turn off all provisioners and start over. I originally had all of mine originating from Sanctuary and from reading above this is why I have no one to gather food. Turning them all off one by one is going to take some work.

100 points for devonapple. In a world of full of message board trolls, you ate your crow AND made me laugh at the same time. You rule.

I recommend the now classic "ring" or "circle" route.

There are a few benefits from this design.

• Only 1 provisioner per settlement. If you go with a hub design there may be moments where you have to have 2 provisioners opperating out of the same settlement. I always considered this a waste of a settler.


• No chance of provisioner congestion. With the hub design, you're going to get a lot of provisioners hanging around your hub.


• Shortest paths for provisioners. A hub design may result in some very very long routes for your provisioners. Not a huge problem, but if you ever need to track them down to make a change to them or their route, a long route might make that harder.

I've been messing with regional circles or triangles.. meaning only 3-4 settlements connected.. granted ive only gotten as far as maying having five well connected hubs it seems to work for me. Thanks to Neon Amish for all those tips and hints. those come in handy when dealing with settlements..

The snake also seems like it would work well

I got to play with "Automatron" for a short while last night.

I didn't try, but I suppose new robots are assignable in Build Mode like settlers are? Or is that a quality that has to be unlocked by progressing through the "Automatron" quest and building up your collection of robot mods?

I thought about red rocket, but decided that would be almost as annoying. When the construction kit comes out I want to play around with the possibility of joining sanctuary with redrocket, creating a massive city.

Instead I use starlight drive in. Its a somewhat out of the way spot, easy to defend and hard to plant enough crops to make worthwhile. Yet still centrally located on the map, so when survival releases, I won't be cursing every time I need to travel there.

I think you can assign them straight away. They'll do most tasks, but they won't man shops. I'm not sure about scavenging stations.

I tend to make a few hubs and branch them off. But I like to make settlements that are focused on specific tasks like this on is a scrapping settlement, this is one is my merchant settlement (they all grow there own food though). I try to give them their own character and one thing I wish Bethesda would add to the game is settlement traits something like Merchant trait - gain 10% more caps from Merchants but scrapping provides 20% less materials. You could assign traits to the settlement once they had 10 settlers.

Wow, great input, and only 24 hours needed ! Thanks for all the responses. I think I am going to set up one big ring on the north half of the map and another in the southern half, which I have not gotten into extensively yet. I had based myself out of Red Rocket at the beginning, but I have moved to the Castle now. I am going to "decommission" all my provisioners and reassign them. I will give each provisioner a weapon named to reflect their route as I reassign them. That way I will be able to tell the difference between the decommissioned ones and the reassigned ones while I reset everything.

Mine is more daisy chain than hub, but I sort of mix and match. I think about things like the frequency of comings and goings in a given location. For example, my Red Rocket is connected to the network via the drive in, and Sanctuary is connected to Abernathy Farms. While the Sanctuary to Red Rocket link might be intuitive, it's so short there is always a provisioner under foot and I didn't want or need that.

i

Is there any way to un-assign provisioners, or anyone else for that matter?

Only in build mode, face-to-face, at a settlement.

One could keep a bunch of Scrap benches or Guard posts around at a settlement to temporarily remove a settler or provisioner from their current assignment.

Mine are set up in a very untidy and energy wasting ring! I have provisioners set up walking the length of the map when they could supply a far closer settlement. Luckily the way the game is set up I don't think this causes issue.


Out of interest, when you have 15-20 settlers in the settlement, how do you guys keep them busy? What tasks do you give them?

4+ Vending booths

Farming

Scavenging

Guard duty


All the basics really.