Fallout 4: Local Leader Perk

Building Shops, Caps Collector, and Using Supply Lines

Gameplay Effects & Utility
Fallout 4's Local Leader Perk allows you to take better control over Settlements, and make them much more like the major cities you'll visit in your travels. The first rank of this Perk is all about building, though it's not immediately obvious based on the description. Rank 1 of Local Leader requires 6 Charisma and will only be upgradeable to rank 2 at level 14.

Rank 1 of Local Leader: Using Supply Lines
Making a Supply Line is accomplished by speaking to one of your Settlers while in Workshop (build) mode. Select the Settler and you can find the option 'Establish Supply Line', initiated with a single button press. When you do this, you will get to pick where the Settler will travel and deliver materials to.

What Supply Lines do is basically make all crafting materials - anything in one Settlement's workshop inventory - available in the linked Settlement, as well as any excess food and water. As you likely know, every crafting station in a Settlement shares the same inventory. Put tatos in your weapons workbench, and it's available at the cooking station. You can make it so that Sanctuary's Supplies are available in Tenpines Bluff and vice versa - but ONLY for crafting, food and water stat purposes. You can't withdraw Sanctuary or The Castle's purified water and tatos from the other workshop inventory, but you CAN make things with them.

Now, if you want to do this really effectively, you do not want to use all the Settlers in your best Settlement to send supplies. Have all of your Settlements connect to your best Settlement, and even if a Settlement is 2 hops away on the Supply Line (two Settlements connected to Sanctuary hop from Sanctuary to each other), you'll have access to the materials. You're thus expanding the shared inventory. This prevents one Settlement being attacked from causing all of your Settlements to lose access to resources - though you'd better protect your best even if you must leave a mission in progress or else all connections are broken. It's better to have one good, well-defended Settlement being the hub, as it's less likely to be attacked anyway!

Rank 2 of Local Leader: Building Stores & Workshops
Rank 2 allows you to make Vendors, some of which require Caps Collector but ALL require an investment of caps. Each type of the 6 stores you can make (Trader, Armor, Weapons, Food & Drink, Clinic, and Clothing) have various caps investments and different 'ranks'. Obviously an emporium is better than a simple trading post - it will have both more money and more variety in offerings. The better the store, the more likely it is to have Legendary armor for purchase, though that is super expensive. Still, you should probably start at around level 15-20 to have a normal Trading Post and Weapons shop so you can buy ammunition and components, while also being able to sell items in your main Settlement. Later, when you have the steep 3,000 caps it costs to establish a weapons emporium, you can do so. Building these smaller ones first will help attract villagers and let you make the money you need to get the better shops established.

The simple general store type, traders, boost Happiness in your Settlement, as do Clinics (requires Medic Rank 1). This is another reason why Local Leader is so important to establishing good Settlements. The more Settlers live in your town, the more money these stores will have available - meaning you don't need to go to a place like Diamond City in order to sell expensive items, and you can attract more people by having a happier Settlement and using the Recruitment Beacons. Also, know you can tell Settlers to move to other areas if you want to make one town particularly booming.

Local Leader's Trader, Clothing Store, Clinic, and Food and Drink shop are all required to get the Benevolent Leader Achievement for Maxing Happiness. Each of these four buildings will allow your Happiness to creep up so long as you've got the Settlement's needs taken care of - plenty of defense, beds, food, and water.

Avoid setting questgivers like Preston Garvey to shops, because currently they will not do any trading if they are asking you to do a quest every time you speak to them. Use others. Know that there are special NPCs that make good vendors for certain types, and eventually I'll make a list on how to meet them and get them in your Settlement. Obviously, a Doctor would be good for a Clinic, for example.

As an aside, you're also able to build the Workshops that may be missing in various Settlements, allowing you to make whatever one your prefer your main crafting destination. I go into build mode and go to Resources > Miscellaneous and place the fast travel destination in an area right where my weapons/armor crafting stations are, along with my stores, so it's a very fast trip home to drop off junk and sell the loot, buy ammo and stimpaks, etc. Local Leader pretty much MAKES the Settlement system, and you'll only want to avoid it if you're completely ignoring the system for some reason. You can, at the very least, build up one good Settlement to suit your needs.

Caps Collector
Saving up for the Emporiums later in the game is a good idea, but getting commerce started in your Settlement is important. The aforementioned Cap Collector Perk is required to establish the best stores, and honestly you'll need it to speed up the process. Rank 1 gives a 10% buying/selling boost, Rank 2 an additionally 20%! Not just going from 10 to 20, 10 and 20, along with your Charisma's buy/sell bonus.

Rank 3 of Caps Collector
This unlocks at level 41, and will let you make an investment of 500 caps to permanently increase a shop's cap availability. This lets you sell big items you find while exploring without having to take a loss. It will eventually pay off, and much sooner than you might think. This Perk is awesome in that investing in one trading store of any kind will boost ALL trading stores, even emporiums, throughout every Settlement. Do this to all 6 and you've spent 3000 caps to make many, many more available for when you're selling items.