A Fallout 4 newbie failed to figure out the supply line mechanics and turned the Commonwealth into a web of settlements, with an entire army of provisioners wandering between them

Logistics in games rarely worries anyone until players get too creative with it. A tidy route scheme between bases slowly turns into a conspiracy theorist wall covered in red string. And along every strand marches a postman armed to the teeth.

One Fallout 4 player shared exactly that kind of map. Settlements across the Commonwealth are linked almost on an "everyone to everyone" basis, and the supply lines have merged into a dense web. The player admitted not quite understanding how the mechanic works and asked whether "The more the merrier?" applies here.

The top answer turned out to be the best caption for the screenshot too:

If you're trying to connect your settlements efficiently, you could do better. If you're trying to summon some kind of ancient undescribable evil, you could do worse.

Supply lines unlock with the Local Leader perk, and the connections work as a chain. If settlement A is linked to B, and B to C, all three share the same workshop storage. A central hub like the Starlight Drive-In or a simple chain, where each new settlement sends a provisioner to the previous one, is enough. Extra routes come at a cost: provisioners eat, sleep, and count toward the happiness of their home settlement, and the crowd of NPCs causes real traffic jams on the bridge in Sanctuary Hills.

On the other hand, extra provisioners mean extra guns on the roads. Give a settler a minigun with a single 5mm round and the ammo becomes infinite (the trick doesn't work with missiles and mini nukes), and since the Automatron DLC, routes can be handed over to Sentry Bots from the Mechanist's Lair. "Trade routes" literally turn into clearing operations, and the Commonwealth, according to one player, becomes safer than it was before the war.

Wardrobe is a tradition of its own. The classic is the postman uniform with the cap, and the main rival is the mining helmet, whose light can be recolored to tell provisioners apart in the dark and turn a settlement into a rave. One player went further and dressed the provisioner heading to the Railroad safehouse in a Courser outfit, so the Institute would assume the area is already under control.

Bethesda came up with supply lines to move concrete between settlements, and players built an army of postman caps out of them.