Building a business in Fallout 4?

[Týr]

Is it possible to build a business in the game that sells what you manufacture?
I'm not just talking about for your own needs but to sell of what's left.
I'm kinda new to this game and I'm looking to make Vault 88 a munition factory to produce rifle munition, explosives and rockets. I want some of it for my own needs, I have a minigun so I burn through 5 mm really fast, and sell of the surplus for either supplies or caps.
I'm not sure if this is possible in vanilla game.
Some other settlements, like Sanctuary, will likely produce food for themselves and Vault 88 and sell of surplus.
And maybe it's possible to add a drug factory to Vault 88 to produce drugs, rad-x and Rad-away.
Is any of this possible?

[Bored Peon]

Making ammo to sell is never going to be profitable.

Making jet from fertilizer and plastic is profitable, just can not do it in Vault 88 because no brahmin are allowed.

The other drugs not so profitable.

Purified water is how most new players make their money.

The real money is in selling cooked foods and excess ammo.

[deidian]

Generally the best in-game bussiness is scavenging: amunition, medicine and drugs are the best weight/value ratio. If you play survival any kind of bottle to fill them to create purified water is gold too.

Bussiness is more on a roleplaying league, you could theorethically invest in shops in settlements to get money, but a strong initial inversion in caps is neccesary(most good shops cost 1000-2000 caps to build and have high-skill requirements) so they are more suitable for mid to end game when you can spare some skill points in things that do not affect combat even in an indirect way without compromising the build.

[ut]

I'm wondering the same thing recently. In survival mode, the main problem is carry weight, so it is better to have shops in your own settlements as soon as possible.
In other difficulties, since you can fast travel, just make as many purified water and jets as possible. If you have strong back perk, it is like cheating.

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Making jet from fertilizer and plastic is profitable, just can not do it in Vault 88 because no brahmin are allowed.

This is a widely held belief but I think it's false. In the sense that there's no way you can make a profit by buying fertiliser and plastic and selling the Jet.

It works as a cheaper way of getting Jet, and it works as a way of monetising plastic and fertiliser that comes your way, and you might make a small scale profit if you used free fertiliser from Brahmin and paid for your plastic, but it would be pocket money, not a business.

Headlamp modding is profitable but only if you use respawn exploits to get free fiber optics. Otherwise again you don't make a profit if you have to buy the fiber optics.

Ultimately it's the harsh, capped buy-sell spread that kills the option of being a manufacturer. It's a real shame as I would like to play that way too. But the only option that actually works is water farming, or, at a much more basic level, crop farming.

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by ut:

I'm wondering the same thing recently. In survival mode, the main problem is carry weight, so it is better to have shops in your own settlements as soon as possible.

Correct. In Survival you build shops to sell the heavy stuff locally, and you reserve the stuff with high caps::weight ratio to take elsewhere to sell when you've stripped all the money from your settlement shops.

I have a Crops Guide somewhere that touches on the best cash crops in terms of either selling locally or having to travel to sell them.

[The Inept European]

In a multiplayer world, or one with a working supply vs demand mechanic, there would be lots of good trades you could run. Valuable stuff you could sell for more than merchants do, and stuff you could sell cheaper than merchants and sell loads of while still making a margin. But the merchants kill the market with their terrible buy sell spreads and their general ignorance of what's actually valuable. For example adhesive is woefully under priced. An Adhesive farm ought to net you a fortune (should be much more than a water farm).

I don't play FO76 so I don't know if there are profitable player to player trades in that game. The ones I've heard about second hand sound kind of artificial. But someone like BP will know.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Making jet from fertilizer and plastic is profitable, just can not do it in Vault 88 because no brahmin are allowed.

This is a widely held belief but I think it's false. In the sense that there's no way you can make a profit by buying fertilizer and plastic and selling the Jet.

Fertilizer shipments are 25 units which makes 12 Jet. 300 value
Plastic shipments 25 units for 12 Jet. 75 value
Jet is 50 value. 12 Jet is 600 value (480 caps with max perks)

That also does not even include scrap plastic and brahmin produced fertilizer.

From the wiki:
Jet can be sold to Bobby De Luca in Vault 81 for 75 caps each, making this an incredible, if time-consuming, money maker; dialogue must be initiated for each transaction. Even with all the required merchant perks, it can only be sold normally for 40 caps (50 base price with 80% limit applied to sale value) to regular vendors.

So yeah, once charisma is or you have enough magazines it is profit.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

I don't play FO76 so I don't know if there are profitable player to player trades in that game. The ones I've heard about second hand sound kind of artificial. But someone like BP will know.

Selling to players in Fallout 76 is a bit different.

1. You need a decent camp location. Nobody wants to spend 30-60 caps to visit your camp.

2. You need to have what people are looking for. The camp markers show how many armor, weapon, food, misc, ammo, meds, drinks, and scrap for sale. So you need to have a good variety and quantity to make a lot of caps.

3. Ammo (5.56, .308, and some shotgun shells) is by far the best sellers.

4. Sell dirt cheap. You can only sell 1500 caps a day to the vendors. However if you price thigns low enough people will buy them to resell it at a vendor so they can profit. You basically jsut used thier caps limit to make money, lol.

5. People are lazy. Easy to find items like Canned Dogfood and Nuka Colas sell good because the lazy players will buy like everything you have.

6. Excess legendaries are a good sell. Since you can turn legendaries in for for Scrip (which has a daily limit) you can sell even the crappiest legendaries cheap enough someone will buy them for the turn in.

On an average day I could make about 2-3k caps per day. On a good day I could make closer to 5-10k. Which having a 30k caps limit becomes a pain.

Selling to vendors is easy, sell off excess foods and scraps.

[leem]

I am trying out the lunch box factory. It is an exploit though but fun build.

[The Inept European]

Even with maxed trading stats and perks, on those prices you are looking at 480 caps (600 X 0.8) gross revenue on 375 of materials that cost you no less than 450 (375 x 1.2). So that's 480-450 = a 30 cap profit on 12 Jet and that's with maxed stats / perks for trading. Call it 6-7% profit margin - for a maxed trader character. And up until your combined CHA and perks hit - what, 15? - you are losing money on those trades. So meanwhile you've dumped loads of points into CHA that can't benefit you.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

Even with maxed trading stats and perks, on those prices you are looking at 480 caps (600 X 0.8) gross revenue on 375 of materials that cost you no less than 450 (375 x 1.2). So that's 480-450 = a 30 cap profit on 12 Jet and that's with maxed stats / perks for trading. Call it 6-7% profit margin - for a maxed trader character. And up until your combined CHA and perks hit - what, 15? - you are losing money on those trades. So meanwhile you've dumped loads of points into CHA that can't benefit you.

Your math is wrong.

Plastic is 75 for 25, and it is only one plastic per jet. So that is 37 caps, not 150 caps.

[The Inept European]

(I said 75 for the plastic not 150)

So 337.5 per 12 Jet, at a max 480 gross revenue, 337.5 costs you a minimum of 405 cost, for 75 max profit or 18.5% max profit margin

That's more reasonable but nothing to write home about when you need an effective 16 CHA to achieve it.

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Plastic shipments 25 units for 12 Jet. 75 value

Actually my math wasn't wrong, your data was wrong. :-)

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

(I said 75 for the plastic not 150)

So 337.5 per 12 Jet, at a max 480 gross revenue, 337.5 costs you a minimum of 405 cost, for 75 max profit or 18.5% max profit margin

That's more reasonable but nothing to write home about when you need an effective 16 CHA to achieve it.

You aint factoring in magazines or the bobblehead so it is a lot less than 16 charisma, and 16 charisma is easy with gear.

That 450 cost aint right. You also forget you really aint gotta buy plastic or fertilizer.

[The Inept European]

No, I covered the "not buying" aspects very clearly in my first post.

And I said "effective Charisma" which covers magazines, cool clothing, etc.