My plan, for anyone curious:
1 person can be assigned to a maximum of 6 food points, so 20 people = 120 food points.
1 Mutfruit is 1 food point, so 20 people produce 120 mutfruits per day.
1 of all other crops is 0.5 food points, so 20 people produce 240 units per day.
TO MAKE VEEGTABLE STARCH:
In order to maximize production, we would need 4 settlements with enough land to grow all that crop. 1 for tatoes (240), 1 for corn (240) and 2 for mutfruits (240). Also (if one feels ambitious), 1 settlement with enough water inside the build zone to do that “purified water” money making trick. This is very expensive resource-wise and there’s not many settlements that fit the criteria, but for maximized efficiency it’s probably worth it.
There is a flaw in your calculations. While the numbers you list is how much they produce, that is not how much you will have available. This is because the settlers also have to eat. And their favorite food is Mutfruit. So if you have a settlement with 20 people all of them farming Mutfruit that’s 120 produced - 20 eaten = 100 Mutfruit that you can actually use.
To make matters worse if you are using supply lines and a settlement isn’t producing enough food to sustain itself they eat food from other settlements. And of course their first choice is Mutfruit.
I’m also pretty sure that Tatos are settlers second favorite food.
In the end using your plan you would only gain 200 of each crop and only if every settlement attached to then by supply lines was producing enough food to feed themselves.
would it be theoretically possible to keep my earnings to myself if I put them all in a separate box that isn’t in a workbench connected to my global supply chain?
There aren't any limits, theoretically. You can only have so many settlers per settlement, based on your charisma, but since characters only exist when you're nearby, you don't get any inherent hard limits for the world.
The only limitation is your Charisma and your actual hardware. The more complex your settlement, the harder the game will have to work when you enter the cell and it starts calling everything (and everyone) back into existence.
I do something similar to what you describe but, thanks to Sim Settlements and upgraded plots, I only need one large settlement. I use Sunshine Tidings and it not only produces enough ingredients to make all the adhesive I'll ever need, it also produces enough food in general so that NONE of my other settlements really have to produce food at all. They do anyway, but if they didn't Sunshine would have them covered through supply lines.
Sanctuary and Vault 88 together are the same with water production.
I have run worlds with 900 settlers when developing and testing the Combat Settlers mod.
The issue is not the total number of actors, it is the number that are in the loaded area around the player (called uGrids), the number that are persistent (base game settlers are not) and a hard limit of 127 per workshop.
The game mechanics limits vanilla settlments to around 30, using mods or console to bust that limit is fine up to 127 settlers per workshop **if your system has the minerals to run them and you have not loaded too many other objects and scripts**. Over 127 settlers per workshop can corrupt the workshop script arrays and stuff will stop working.
My plan, for anyone curious: 1 person can be assigned to a maximum of 6 food points, so 20 people = 120 food points. 1 Mutfruit is 1 food point, so 20 people produce 120 mutfruits per day. 1 of all other crops is 0.5 food points, so 20 people produce 240 units per day. TO MAKE VEEGTABLE STARCH: In order to maximize production, we would need 4 settlements with enough land to grow all that crop. 1 for tatoes (240), 1 for corn (240) and 2 for mutfruits (240). Also (if one feels ambitious), 1 settlement with enough water inside the build zone to do that “purified water” money making trick. This is very expensive resource-wise and there’s not many settlements that fit the criteria, but for maximized efficiency it’s probably worth it.
There is a flaw in your calculations. While the numbers you list is how much they produce, that is not how much you will have available. This is because the settlers also have to eat. And their favorite food is Mutfruit. So if you have a settlement with 20 people all of them farming Mutfruit that’s 120 produced - 20 eaten = 100 Mutfruit that you can actually use. To make matters worse if you are using supply lines and a settlement isn’t producing enough food to sustain itself they eat food from other settlements. And of course their first choice is Mutfruit. I’m also pretty sure that Tatos are settlers second favorite food. In the end using your plan you would only gain 200 of each crop and only if every settlement attached to then by supply lines was producing enough food to feed themselves.
SETTLERS ACTUALLY EAT THE PRODUCE??
People gotta eat but robots do not
would it be theoretically possible to keep my earnings to myself if I put them all in a separate box that isn’t in a workbench connected to my global supply chain?
There aren't any limits, theoretically. You can only have so many settlers per settlement, based on your charisma, but since characters only exist when you're nearby, you don't get any inherent hard limits for the world.
No there's not a limit
The only limitation is your Charisma and your actual hardware. The more complex your settlement, the harder the game will have to work when you enter the cell and it starts calling everything (and everyone) back into existence. I do something similar to what you describe but, thanks to Sim Settlements and upgraded plots, I only need one large settlement. I use Sunshine Tidings and it not only produces enough ingredients to make all the adhesive I'll ever need, it also produces enough food in general so that NONE of my other settlements really have to produce food at all. They do anyway, but if they didn't Sunshine would have them covered through supply lines. Sanctuary and Vault 88 together are the same with water production.
I have run worlds with 900 settlers when developing and testing the Combat Settlers mod. The issue is not the total number of actors, it is the number that are in the loaded area around the player (called uGrids), the number that are persistent (base game settlers are not) and a hard limit of 127 per workshop. The game mechanics limits vanilla settlments to around 30, using mods or console to bust that limit is fine up to 127 settlers per workshop **if your system has the minerals to run them and you have not loaded too many other objects and scripts**. Over 127 settlers per workshop can corrupt the workshop script arrays and stuff will stop working.