I don't think there is something as advanced as actually having a caravan like the already existing ones. Would be nice though.
there are a few things though.
Local leader 1 lets you set up "supply chains."
with the workshop menu up, hover over a settler with no job, or that you want to assign, and hit q. then a menu will pop up allowing you to send them to another of your settlements.
the primary use of this, is instant access to workshop storage in both locations. the npc you send on the supply runs WILL physically walk between both locations. So give them some good armor.
Settlers are flagged 'essential' so you don't have to worry about them dying.
I think supply chains might be the reason some of us are not getting as much water to sell as we think we should. Example, I have 11 settlers, and 30 purified water(36 total) in sanctuary... but, I never get any water added to my workshop aid... I think this is because I have like 5 or so camps chained. only 1 other has a purified water source. so total I have 35 settlers, and 30 purifed water.
There seems to be a limit to how much water will get put in the workshop. I have a cooler next to mine, and whenever I head back to Sanctuary I make all the paste I can and then put all the leftover water into the cooler. As far as I can tell my cap is 164, which is the 180 water I produce minus the 16 settlers I have at Sanctuary. Going to add four more industrial purifiers this afternoon and see if the cap becomes 324 as expected.
Merchants. you can also build merchant tables. and assign settlers to man them.
No physical scavenging or trading is done though. stock magically appears.
your settlers, will crowd around the BAR at night though, and sit and drink, read papers, etc. its a very nice addition.
I was flipping through a PDF of the Prima guide last night and came across something I was not aware of--certain named NPCs you can add to your settlements are actually "Level 4 Workshop Merchants". For example, you should have the Vault-tec dude man your Trade booth. [Edit: Now that I look at it more closely, it appears you need to have a level 3 emporium to get their effect--which means that not only do you have to waste points on 6 CH and LL 2, but also two more perks into fucking Cap Collector and/or Medic. Really wish I'd never put a single level into CH or any of its stupid perks. Too late to undo it with the console now, since I have supply lines set up and level 2 shops built. Never again though!]
Full info from guide:
Scavaging shelf.. I am not sure what this does..
Assign someone to it and they just find random shit that gets dumped into your workshop. Hard to say how useful it is, but I always build one.
I'm always hit or miss on voice in these games.
The worst part is that it's another Bethesda game where they hired four dudes to voice 90% of all characters in the game, and one of them is Brandon Keener. "Sup Garrus, what are you selling today?" "Oh hey Garrus, mind tending those crops over there?" "Fuck you Garrus, time to die." At Bunker Hill he's both the barkeep's son AND a dude sitting at the bar that he talks to. I mean, sure, the guy has a cool voice, but unlike most voice actors he only has that one extremely distinctive and instantly recognizable voice that never changes in the slightest.
Really wish they would just spend the money and hire Troy Baker, Nolan North, Steve Blum, Liam O'Brien, Laura Bailey, Tara Platt, Tara Strong, etc. like pretty much every other big budget game.
Edit: BTW, the guide is typical Prima quality. Just a massive dump of spoilers that will all be on the wiki soon if not already, and pretty much no useful analysis of any game systems. I was considering buying it if they provided any sort of math behind how AP/shot is calculated, info on which things are additive and which are multiplicative, etc. but there is nothing like that. It sucks that they get to do most of the big games instead of Piggyback or Future Press, companies that actually put some effort into their guides beyond just organizing an info dump and making it look pretty.
