All credit goes to Mapex from the Datamining Discord.
Caravans 101: Speedrunner Version
- Unlock Caravans by completing the quest A Bump in the Road in Skyline Valley. You'll see a new map marker in the southern region. Completing the quest grants you 100 Supplies.
- When speaking with Marley, the NPC who completes the previous quest, you can hire new Caravan employees. You want to immediately invest those 100 Supplies from the previous quest into the Brahmin Trainer. Doing so unlocks more lucrative Shipments.
- Once unlocked, you can spam Medium and Large Shipments. Large Shipments grant you 50 Supplies (as the Caravan owner) for the cost of up to 1400 Caps each. This cost will lower to 200 over the course of 10 real life hours if don't want to spend the full price to do the Shipment.
- Supplies can be used to hire and upgrade employees and buy plans for the V63 Laser Carbine's mods and for decorative and other cosmetic items for your Caravan Outpost.
How to Unlock the V63 Laser Carbine ASAP
- After doing 3 Large Shipments for 50 Supplies each, you can hire the Ammo Merchant (by speaking with Marley).
- After doing another 8 Large Shipments for 50 Supplies each, you can upgrade Theo, the Ammo Merchant (via another dialogue choice that Marley provides).
- Speak with Theo the Ammo Merchant to obtain a quest to find the V63 Laser Carbine plans. Completing the quest will grant you the weapon plan and in turn unlock all the mod plans for sale via the Ammo Merchant.
Mapex's Notes on the V63 Laser Carbine
Please keep your expectations in check with this weapon. You need to do a fair amount of work for it to deal an acceptable amount of damage.
You may want to invest in an Overclock Capacitor (build up Heat faster) and either Quad (stay at max Heat longer) or Anti-armor / Bloodied (do more damage regardless of Heat level) as well as Rapid (build up Heat faster). Unless otherwise changed from PTS, Explosive will not scale in damage at higher Heat, despite what the floating damage numbers might show.
You may want to also consider using a VATS Crit build via VATS Optimized and Coffee / Company Tea to compensate for the weapon's damage, despite the base 40 AP cost.