Material Shipments- what is up with their insane prices?

[Dr. Livesey]

Anyone noticed that material shipments from vendors are totally out of sync with the price of items which feature them, or the individual scrapped components? For example a shipment of glass is only 25pc but it costs 325 caps, yet if you have a single piece of scrapped glass it's only worth 2 caps. I've just started to make a simple mod aimed to make manufacturing food and drink profitable (so ensuring the base components don't sell for more than the finished product), but this has led me to finding this big irregularity with the shipments. Inside the game files, there are 2 entires for glass, one being the scrapped item and the other I'm not sure what it's for (I'm not a real modder). The unknown purpose one has a value in it of 13, where as the scrapped one is 2. The shipment uses a calculation system, where it multiples the number of component glass unit in it (so 25x) by the 'unknown' value.
I really don't get this at all. Why would a buik shipment cost 6 or so times the amount a single piece would cost? At the very least it should be equal, but really there is reason to say a bulk shipment should be discounted.

I'll be making a mod to equal out these amounts too, but has anyone else noticed this? Any thoughts?

[Jeruzalem]

i think its only fair. usually you scavange the wildlands for parts, and you sometimes get something with screws, then you get some adhesive, and then you get some glass, and then some oil. never in huge quantitees. now, you suddenly buy 25 or 50 or 100 (in case of steel) of that single item, its a huge upgrade. instead of scavanging 25 different items, you now got 1 item that has 25 of that.

i see it as real life items. you work ur ass off to get 25 of oil by scavanging the wasteland, but with a simple click, you dont have to scavange. you BUY your way towards your goal.

[SuperBobKing]

What seems like the reasoning to me, is that shipments themselves are meant to represent a contract for getting the items shipped somewhere, and they just have them be worth the amount of junk when scrapped instead of actually having any shipping going on. So the added cost is for having the items shipped.

From a gameplay standpoint, it could just be an extra charge for the convenience of the items being weightless.

[Mringasa]

Because noone is mass producing these items anymore. They are being scavved by various people in their completed form, a Nuka-Cola bottle for example, which is then broken down into a useable form, the glass. You have to add on the cost of the labor to assemble that shipment.

Or it's just a cap sink and a settlement building limiter. Caps are easy to come by once you've gotten a few levels, and scavenging for the junk to build up your settlements is a pretty big part of the game itself. Not surprising that the vanilla values are so high as it pushes you to wander, kill, and loot to build large settlements.

[Dr. Livesey]

Originally posted by 3rc Jeruzalem:

i think its only fair. usually you scavange the wildlands for parts, and you sometimes get something with screws, then you get some adhesive, and then you get some glass, and then some oil. never in huge quantitees. now, you suddenly buy 25 or 50 or 100 (in case of steel) of that single item, its a huge upgrade. instead of scavanging 25 different items, you now got 1 item that has 25 of that item.

Hm, yes and no. For glass in particular, 25 isn't much. Some bottles have 4 glass in them. It's probably you can get just as many, or only slightly less, from just the random junk a trading emporium has. Only if you come up short, like get only 20 glass, you'll probably only pay 40 caps at max. Some glass containing items have a value closer to 1.5 caps per unit of glass included.
As for bulk of steel, well that can be time saving. But is it worth 6 times as much (if it's the same ratio as glass)? That's over board. Yeah I guess I would pay a little more, but since vanilla game requires trundling to a rare shipment supplier, it's easier and better value to just keep harvesting money in the settlement then waiting/sleeping to the next restock to buy out the vendors whole inventory all over again. I've built up my settlments this way, without buying many shipments at all. I'd say 80% of my supplies can from my settlment vendors, with the rest split between what I carried home or bought elsewhere.

[LordMikey]

The paper has does not load you down as the parts you go get will.... Its like marking it up BC you get bulk

[Brandybuck]

*Shipping and Handling extra...

[Doombringer]

Since when does price matter?
1billionty purified water = you can literally buy everything every merchant has every time they reset...
(build more purifiers)

[ReallyMeanGoldfish]

One reason the scrapper perk comes in handy....I buy pipe pistols now and scrap them out. It is cheaper than an aluminum shipment.

[Doombringer]

Yeah, scrapper rank 3 lets you get 2x uncommon mats now (such as aluminum and screws), just buy every gun you can find and smash them ;)

[Dr. Livesey]

Originally posted by Doombringer:

Since when does price matter?
1billionty purified water = you can literally buy everything every merchant has every time they reset...

Actually for me, I'm trying to make a practical excuse to use Contraptions.
This started with me trying to find a new and alternative method to get caps at a settlement that doesn't have a water pool for industrial purifiers. I decided to expand the farm already there then manufacture food products to sell instead of building up water. This would give me something to put together and tinker with, than also the practical money side. Only first problem I find, is the food products made have the same, or even less, value than their base constituents sold separately. So I've started making a mod to make sure manufactured food has a higher value than it's base constituents, but then I come across the need to get more of the other materials needed. For example Instamash needs Cloth and Bourbon (using the manufacturing extended mod to add the machine in the fashion of contraptions) needs glass. While trying to stock up glass, that's when I realised it's stupidly expensive. That's ok for cap drain to make settlement building more effort, etc, but i want to make manufacturing a practical thing in the game, so I will be altering these values.

[Doombringer]

Eh, in my game I have 26871 glass because there are so many bottles/glasses laying around and nothing really uses glass.
For the no deep water settlements you can build the dirt plots and put powered water pumps on them (or just place powered pumps on the ground).
With the much smaller footprint of powered pumps (compared to purifiers) and the 100 power generator, dirt farms can make as much water as settlements with deep water.

[Albino Noodle]

I agree they are too expensive, a few of my mods are aimed just at fixing the shipments.
one for x4 the amount of units per shipment and another for x10 the amount of shipments available on merchants.

If you're building any large settlements the vanilla one just don't cut it.

[Rex Powercolt]

I assume the extra price is for delivery

[Xyzzy]

more expensive but more convenient. you don't have to buy them.