How do you make people forage?

[Dregora]

I've got the game on GOG. I've been getting into it and the game is absolutely fantastic. Love it. I somewhat have gotten the hang of early game, so I started over to be a bit more precise now that I know the basics, but one issue remains.

I have a few spots (cotton, veggies, mushrooms etc) that I want to forage. The game starts in spring or early spring. Tooltip says you can harvest these things around summer/late summer. I've selected them with the forage option, but they refuse to forage it at any time.

I'm in autumn now. Did I miss something obvious why they won't forage? earlier game i've foraged apples the same way and this went fine.

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

I had the same problem, what worked for me is plant down a workstation at the spot (it literally is called workstation). It is not a building, but a marker of some sorts. But it is for free and one oddjobber will come to the designated area and fulfill the jobs there, if any. The more workstations, the more oddjobbers will come.
That's how i got them to forage, picking up what they foraged is something else. ;)

I understand the mechanic behind this, but this is very peculiar to work with imho.

[madpraxis]

Forage is more of a 'lower' order. If they have other more important things to do then...uh...they will do them.
Big one that is probably taking them away from foraging? Building. If there is, basically, any thing needed to be built they will run off to do that instead.

2 solutions: Either make sure there isn't much to do, if anything, for oddjobbers when it's time to 'harvest'. Or just get more population, since that just means more free hands.

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

Originally posted by madpraxis:

Forage is more of a 'lower' order. If they have other more important things to do then...uh...they will do them.
Big one that is probably taking them away from foraging? Building. If there is, basically, any thing needed to be built they will run off to do that instead.

2 solutions: Either make sure there isn't much to do, if anything, for oddjobbers when it's time to 'harvest'. Or just get more population, since that just means more free hands.

I literally tested this by cancelling all jobs, and they just stood there waiting for the end of time. Foraging did not occur automatically by being a lower order in my case.
I needed vegetables yesterday and they simply did not forage them and almost starved to death.

When i planted the workstation, finally something got done.

[Dregora]

Originally posted by ⎝Apostate⎠:

Originally posted by madpraxis:

Forage is more of a 'lower' order. If they have other more important things to do then...uh...they will do them.
Big one that is probably taking them away from foraging? Building. If there is, basically, any thing needed to be built they will run off to do that instead.

2 solutions: Either make sure there isn't much to do, if anything, for oddjobbers when it's time to 'harvest'. Or just get more population, since that just means more free hands.

I literally tested this by cancelling all jobs, and they just stood there waiting for the end of time. Foraging did not occur automatically by being a lower order in my case.
I needed vegetables yesterday and they simply did not forage them and almost starved to death.

When i planted the workstation, finally something got done.

This for some reason still didn't work for me. I placed down a few at every resource I needed, the oddjobbers went there staying until (i assume) the stuff was ready for harvest. They stood there more than a year doing nothing lmfao.

I just abandoned the plan and traded the stuff i needed so I could grow them myself.

[Geeves]

1. You don't need multiple workstations in a single area. You can select the workstation and adjust how many workers are assigned. This is for tasks that are otherwise too far away. If a task is too far away, it might not get done at all without a workstation.

2. Harvesting will only happen when the object in question is "ripe", whatever season that is. Putting a workstation there and assigning workers for the task at times when it is not ready for harvest is a waste. Do not do that.

[Catsander]

Originally posted by Geeves:

2. Harvesting will only happen when the object in question is "ripe", whatever season that is.

Used to be 3rd day of summer until 2nd day of autumn in the games I have played (4 days in total). Seem to be nerfed though so now it is only 3rd and 4th day of summer. Or maybe it has to do with the cold climate map I am playing.

[Micromanicment]

A somewhat easy to overlook issue might be that the foraging job is inactive? Could happen if the Planning Mode was on while issuing the foraging jobs, for example. If inactive, the plant-to-be-foraged would show text to the effect of "Job is inactive and needs to be manually activated".

[Dregora]

https://imgur.com/a/LeQYiHG


Maybe i'm stupid but I feel like they... ''foraged'' it and instead of bringing it to the warehouse, they just leave it sitting there. Am I seeing this correctly?

[heres johnny3112]

I have the vegetables and other items foraged - have a workstation nearby to do this. However nobody is grabbing it to return the item to a warehouse.

Starting off with 10 people and needing to drop several work sites to forage is a little population heavy early game. Any thoughts on how to make citizens pick up the vegetables hat have been foraged at a distance?

[Solanix]

Either you haven't extended your warehouse range to include that area, or you don't have enough deliveryman for warehouses. Not a bad idea to temporarily hire some of your oddjobbers as warehouse deliveryman after harvest if this doesn't get done.

[Dregora]

Originally posted by Solanix:

Either you haven't extended your warehouse range to include that area, or you don't have enough deliveryman for warehouses. Not a bad idea to temporarily hire some of your oddjobbers as warehouse deliveryman after harvest if this doesn't get done.

Warehouse range is a thing? How do you check something like that? I also fail to understand if a workstations entire function is to get jobs done at a distance, wouldn't building a warehouse close to the job place.. seem redundant?

[Solanix]

Originally posted by Dregora:

Originally posted by Solanix:

Either you haven't extended your warehouse range to include that area, or you don't have enough deliveryman for warehouses. Not a bad idea to temporarily hire some of your oddjobbers as warehouse deliveryman after harvest if this doesn't get done.

Warehouse range is a thing? How do you check something like that? I also fail to understand if a workstations entire function is to get jobs done at a distance, wouldn't building a warehouse close to the job place.. seem redundant?

When you select a warehouse, there's a radius option right under the worker amount slider. In v66, it now defaults to minimum range which is annoying.
Workstations are there to harvest the plants not do hauling. You wouldn't want them to do hauling anyway since they don't have the carry capacity bonus of deliverymans.

[Dregora]

Originally posted by Solanix:

Originally posted by Dregora:

Warehouse range is a thing? How do you check something like that? I also fail to understand if a workstations entire function is to get jobs done at a distance, wouldn't building a warehouse close to the job place.. seem redundant?

When you select a warehouse, there's a radius option right under the worker amount slider. In v66, it now defaults to minimum range which is annoying.
Workstations are there to harvest the plants not do hauling. You wouldn't want them to do hauling anyway since they don't have the carry capacity bonus of deliverymans.

Oh jesus I never knew this was a thing. Thank you so much for elaborating on that fact. Maybe the issue was they foraged it but never hauled it, which explains it. I'll try this out asap!

[dakin1]

If your warehouse range is too low, you can also build a hauler between the warehouse and the forage area and assign 1 worker to it--that worker will go and collect foraged items and bring them back. The warehouse can then go and collect from the hauler (or people will just go to the hauler and eat directly from it, which is also usually OK with me as well).