Invincible Provisioners

[Talwyn224]

I was watching a lone provisioner take out numerous threats with ease as they wandered about the wasteland and came to the conclusion that this is yet another example of a flawed design in the game.

 

Even the caravans have a minimum of 2 guards but it appears that the provisioning supply runs you create become amazing killing machines that can pacify the wastes from all hostile encounters.

 

Discuss..

[Warmaker01]

Until you can assign guards to these Provisioners, outfit and equip as you see fit, then they need to stay "Essential." If they weren't, none of your supply routes would ever get through.

[CaptainPatch]

They pretty much had to make all provisioners Essential (unkillable) or else the entire Settlement Supply System would NEVER function. A provisioner and his brahmin wouldn't be able to go even one mile before something turned up to kill them both. And to build and maintain a settlement really, really needs to link the resources of all of the settlements in the network.

[Warmaker01]

They pretty much had to make all provisioners Essential (unkillable) or else the entire Settlement Supply System would NEVER function. A provisioner and his brahmin wouldn't be able to go even one mile before something turned up to kill them both. And to build and maintain a settlement really, really needs to link the resources of all of the settlements in the network.

Throw in Survival Difficulty and the Commonwealth can very quickly be a huge circus for a single, non-essential Provisioner.

 

If we can assign guards, that opens things up and maybe we can get rid of the essential tag, especially since we can outfit settlers and provisioners even in Vanilla FO4. But the game's UI would need to be accurate in showing you what supply routes are still running, what got cut off due to provisioners getting killed. Telling you what exactly is going on with your settlements is a problem right now due to inaccuracies, i.e. Worskshops button in your Pip Boy not reflecting what's going on in a settlement, much less Supply Route status should Provisioners be allowed to get killed. High CHA and Settlement Radio Beacons would be important in having enough Settlers to replace losses while still keeping the settlement running smoothly.

[CyrusAmell]

The engine as it stands simply would not be able to cope with the necessary mechanics one would have to implement to ensure a provisioner gets from point A to point B safely. Making said provisioner essential and therefore immortal is a massive headache off Bethesda's mind.

 

As for me, I like to equip my provisioners with Sturdy or Heavy armor, lowgrade ballistics weave under-armor, a Militia Hat, Patrolman Glasses, a Bandana (preferably Red) and finally a Super Sledge and then send them on their merry way. Melee weapons make more sense because they will never run out of bullets and even if they did not it would still be better because the AI can shoot at each other for quite some time.

 

Super Sledge Hammers make everything simpler.

Edited December 15, 2015 by CyrusAmell

[CaptainPatch]

If we can assign guards, that opens things up and maybe we can get rid of the essential tag, especially since we can outfit settlers and provisioners even in Vanilla FO4.

This, I believe, would be a micromanagement nightmare. First, because a settlement has so few settlers that setting even ONE aside noticeably affects the settlement's productivity. Having to assign another one, two, or three additional settlers as escorts for the provisioner erodes the settlement's productivity that much more. Second, just think how many battles the main character has to blast his/her way through going from Point A to Point B. That's how much fighting a provisioner has to go through every time, both ways. Battles are time-consuming. Third, if by adding guards, Supply caravans become NON-Essential, that means it would become necessary to frequently check on the status of each and every Supply caravans to see which have had casualties -- or been wiped out entirely -- that need to be replaced. Forget about doing any of the game's main quests; Supply Caravan Traffic Manager just became a full-time job.