This is as accurate as it is frustrating.

Surprisingly no, they do the opposite. If you have 10 settlers you just need to make sure you have at least 10 food, water, and beds. Instead of consuming anything, other than using beds, they will produce food and water and store it in your workshop for you.

That's not good enough in my opinion. Why should we constantly have to clutter every settlement with crops? It's ridiculous. I know a good number of farms is a good thing but we should have the option to build sub-urban types and still make the settlers happy. What's the point of having big farms like Greygarden and Oberland station while only being able to have 20 settlers (I still haven't figured out where I'm going to build a structure where settlers can live in at Oberland Station) if they won't transfer to other settlements to be added to their inventory ready to be used? It's wasteful and a pain.

LOL... Says someone who doesn't understand how the inventory system for the workshop can be accessed from cooking stations, power armour mounts, weapons and armour crafting stations... Just go up to any of them in your settlement and hit the X button (on Xbox) and look at the top right... it says WORKSHOP.... even if you are at the Cooking station.

Now as to the locatio of the items... The excess water is being created at Sanctuary (It is currently producing 216 water there) but when I try to withdraw it at Sanctuary.... it isn't there. It really isn't logical. Thre should be some way to find out where the water actually IS. Same as the missing crops. Why can I use them but not take them out of the workshop.

Neo, the water purifier is producing water for the settlers. You can only transfer extra water to your inv.

Neo, the water purifier is producing water for the settlers. You can only transfer extra water to your inv. The food and water is only there to meet the needs of your settlers. If there is any extra, you can remove it. You're 216 water just means you can accommodate 216 settlers. Hope that makes sense

Sooooo.... if that was the case then you can't use the water to cook with.... but you can. That 149 listed in the screenshot is actually USABLE in the cooking station. Using your statement that the water is for the settlers use only then it shouldn't be usable in the cooking station. That's my whole point. It's neither one thing or the other. It's either got to be locked off for your settlers to use or you should be able to withdraw it from the workstation.

It's a bit like having a bank account with a bunch of money in it but you cannot withdraw it but can buy stuff online with it.

That's another thing. Water. Not every settlement has a pond for purifiers. So you're telling me in order to attract all 20 maximum settlers and make them happy I'd have to have 7 water pumps because The Castle, which is producing 40 water, is too greedy to share? Ugh.

This keeps coming up because people are too lazy to test basics and see for themselves food/water sharing does work, and just assumes from posts by people who also never confirmed. You can have a settlement produce zero local food/water but with supply line be just fine.

1-take over sanctuary, attract some settlers beyond initial starter named npcs, plant food and produce water in excess

2-take over red rocket (remove any stored food if present) - zero people there, but view build mode - food/water = 0 but green color because 0 demand = 0 problem

3- send ONE settler over to red rocket - view build mode, now food/water are in red, because demand = 1 , supply = 0

4-use that one settler pop at red rocket to establish supply line with sanctuary - instant you do, will see in build mode that food/water are now green. Send more settlers. Still have zero food/water produced locally, but as long as sanctuary produces enough excess, red rocket food/water status will not go red.

It will still say zero for both, which is maybe poor UI and needs better help text, but no red status, no starving settlers. Settlements with
large excess of food or water are good suppliers to places where you cant, wont, or prefer not to produce locally.

Setting up a 0 pop settlement to test this takes lkke minitutes. Stop perpetuating the myth that supply lines dont share excess food/water needs amd comfirm for yourself.

I'll admit I've noticed it go from red to green once a supply line is established, and it apoears it just doesn't show the food and water being added to the UI, but I haven't really seen happiness go up after doing so.

I'm guessing there is perhaps a glitch with the workbench in your case. However even if the other settlements have enough food and water I notice they end up with other things in the workbench that I conclude must of came from other settlements they are connected with. I may have them only farming say corn in a specific settlement, yet I will find all the other food in the workbench as well.

The happiness at all zero resource settlements, whether you insta-built 30+ food/water or not, takes time to grow from usual lower base to what seems like cap of 50-60'ish without special objects like happiness stores etc.

Do the red rocket scenario, produce absolutely zero there but have like 4-5 settlers you moved over plus supply line. Long as you have the other basics covered like beds, adequate defense, some radios which not positive but seem to help a bit, happiness will grow over time to about 50-60, same as any other settlemement with locally produce food/water but without extra happiness modifiers like stores.

Far as i can tell, there are some hidden modifiers for base happiness, some settlements start mich lower, some higher. Starlight drive for example starts much higher than a hole like Hangmans Alley. Red Rocket seems in between. Either way. All settlements with the min values covered for bed, defense, out of rain woth roof over heads, will grow to what seems like a soft cap of ~60.

At that point, shared suplly lines cap out and need actually local built medical, resto, clothing, and trade stores to go higher.

That may be, but the usual methods that new items not produced at settlement get added to that local inventory are by unassigned workers scavenging, and assigned scavenging station bringing in better/more stuff.

Ok,your settlements are linked,you are producing a lot of water at your settlement.the same one you are trying to withdraw from,so taking that into account i can think of a few things that may be wrong...

1.The time from when you last withdrew and you currently trying to withdraw a new batch is too soon.Takes at least a full day for new produce to go into workbench.

2.I don't know if this is real or a bug but i have had occurences of me getting wrong totals of food and water at some settlements,with some being empty,which suggests settlements with shortfalls in something are ferried that shortfall by your provisioners.One of my settlements had no water being produced but was supply lined,and on occasion water will appear in its workbench while i'm there picking up caps.

3.You may have missed an attack at some stage.Enough time passed before you got there for everything to repair again.I've lost 500 water from a workbench before from an attack i didn't go to defend.

4.My food and water totals do seem wrong on occasion,and rather than my suppliers ferrying them about perhaps there is some kinda bug affecting it,and perhaps you are experiencing that too.I wouldn't rule it out,being from Bethesda an all.

Ok, if food and water are shared explain to me this: I paid a visit to Red Rocket after having started it up a while back. It had no water and it was RED. Sanctuary and Red Rocket are connected through a supply line. Why isn't it working? I have plenty of food and water to share.

No, I didn't get it wrong. I was explaining how supply lines work, why they make perfect sense, and that "supply line" and "inventory" mean two totally different things.

Obviously, if you do not have more than one settlement, the only place you will see anything is in the inventory of your one settlement. There is no way to have even one supply line if you only have one settlement so there is no possibility of confusing "supply line" with "inventory".

Again, I will stress that IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE. Not sure how much more I can say as examples from real life. Cities do NOT stock all supplies they might need (not since the days of the ancient world and ancient civs such as the Greek and Roman times, perhaps... tribal people might, but we're talking about towns/cities/permanent settlements, not tribal groups). When a city has a demand that it cannot meet from its own supplies, it imports the needed supplies from another city with which it has some sort of trade/supply arrangement. This is true for not only cities but states/provinces or even entire countries.

You can plant or craft items with the pooled supplies because when you attempt to plant or craft, you are demonstrating a need for the settlement and the need will be met (1) with supplies from that specific settlement or (2) with supplies provided by another settlement that is connected via supply line(s). You cannot simply take items from a "pooled inventory of settlements" because there is no such thing just as there is no such thing in the real world. Supply and demand simply do not work that way, so the way FO4 demonstrates it makes perfect sense.

No... it still makes no sense.

Let's make it simple.

1. In the cooking menu I see there is 300 units of water available to use to create various recipes for my own use. I CAN see and use all 300 fine. They are not pre-allocated for other settlements use.

2. If I try to withdraw them from the workbench or shared resources then they are not available because they are pre-allocated for other settlements.

Both statements are exclusive... They are either not allocated to other settlements and are available for use OR they are in use by the settlements and are NOT available. It cannot be both. This is very obviously a bug or a design fault. If I cannot withdraw them to use then I should not have them available to cook with. End of story.

You have a bug. End of story.

It is regretable you have this bug but not a design flaw. A design people may not like, now thats open for debate. But the numbers add up for me - the total water I can craft with, is withdrawable if i visit every settlement.

The only effective way to test this though is to have low number of settlements or shut off water production so that you can visit all settlements to verify water stock without new water being added. Travel time to enough settlements will trigger water restocking so I used a save game where I only had 6 settlements, went to all of them to check local water stock numbers and the total i could withdraw was the exact total displayed as avail for crafting.

Either you dont have as much excess as you think, or you have a bug. If you want to believe sharing is not working thats fine. Doesnt affect my game any.

I have 14 settlements in my current game, 4 of them places like Hangmans Alley and Tenpines where land is small and prefer to build on vs plant crops. Those 4 produce zero local food and water. They all are at ~80-85 happiness by getting food / water via supply line, and having one each of the tier3 stores.

I use castle, sanctuary, and starlight drive as huge water and food producers to essentially feed my zero producing settlements. If your RR is red on water, the only obvious answers are bug or you dont have the excess you think.

In the red rocket example above he did it with 1 settler who was then not at the place but moving between places. Will that supplement a whole town full of people. It's all a moot point for me. I dont have supply lines and I checked and I dont even have a lot of water to use cooking and I've got multiple industrial WP, still only around 190 but should be plenty. It may only work on PC. I have a minimum number of settlers and they may all move to my food which is maxed at 30 for a pop of 10-13. 2 dedicated workbenches though, 1 guard, 1 or 2 artillery. If all food is worked thats 5 people. There should be 2 or 3 unassigned. I don't think they're collecting any water at all. I go to other settlements with lesss water and fewer people and they've collected a little and a lot of food.

I just go to my Workbench and then switch to the "Aid" section, and that's where the excess purified water from my settlement is stored. That number isn't always the same as what's available to me for creating vegetable starch, because that number is the accumulated amount available through all of your supply lines, as well as what is locally available from your personal inventory.

If this isn't how it's working for you, then you've likely encountered a bug. I know for a fact that food/water is supposed to be shareable between settlements using supply lines, yet currently doesn't work properly, so it's not out of the question.

There are some weird things happening with my game... I was told that the max population for a settlement was your charisma plus any bonuses you have. I have no bonuses for charisma yet Taffington Boathouse has 25 for some reason.... and a MASSIVE herd of Brahmin getting into everything.

Guess I'm just jinxed.

The way I understood it was you was able to get 10 settlers + 1 per charisma skill point. For example, if you had 1 charisma, the maximum settlers you could get is 11. I have not heard of any so called bonuses or perks you speak of that would affect this number.

Is it possible that the water is actually with the NPCs running the supply lines? I'm not sure if they actually carry the stuff or just walk from point A to B, but that could be why you can still build but not withdraw?

No. The reason how I know this is because I've watched a YouTube video of a player setting up a supply line. The building supplies/food/water is linked to settlement B instantaneously.