it depends what he means by upgrades, if you're prepared to spend cash on a car you can get a second container and a pretty impressive piece of machinery right at your tent + fire gecko skins can be used as carpeting because of their unique dropped look, gamma gulp beer and roentgen rum can be used as lanterns and broc flowers and xander roots can be used in your "garden" so that's about all the upgrades I can think of at the moment, and, yeah, mercs and slaves can be used as containers and guards, but that is charisma dependant. Rocks&iron ores can be used as really low walls.
Working on a small wasteland farm myself, using spears as diagonal wiring, pain in the ass hunting fire geckos though, and Jo as well as Joe ar my two guards, got lucky, and got a combat slave while under mentats with Tom Ace before the "bug" was rectified, if it ever was, only using them as Decór though. Nobody can follow Tacitus at all (I like to think of him as The Original LongHairDude, I stick to the leather jacket and combat leather jacket for aesthetical reasons) not too bad for a "loner" eh?
