Early Bedtime

[Manxome]

I'm trying to make my wizards got to bed early if they are especially low on sleep. I'm not succeeding, and I want to check if anyone sees a way to do this that I've overlooked.

(I'm aware that mages will automatically wake up early if their sleep bar is full, even if they are scheduled for more sleep. For complex reasons, I want the extra sleep time added onto the front instead of the back, if possible.)

I tried making a custom group for mages with the "Very Tired" or "Exhausted" statuses, and creating a schedule for them where their sleep period starts earlier.

Unfortunately, as soon as they've slept enough that they no longer have "Very Tired", they leave the custom group, their schedule switches back, and they wake up. Then a moment later, their sleep bar drains, they get "Very Tired" again, and they go back to bed. They repeatedly pop in and out of bed until their regular bedtime, as their sleep bar hovers around the threshold. Very inefficient. I'd like them to just keep sleeping once they start.

The ideal way of handling this would probably be to have different conditions for entering the group and leaving the group, such that once they're in it, they stay in it (even if they no longer meet the conditions that got them in) until some other condition is met (like a particular time of day).

I could mitigate the issue (but not truly solve it) if I could make groups that are based directly on the current level of a mage's sleep bar, so that I could catch mages as soon as they need just a little extra sleep, instead of waiting until they're Very Tired. Unfortunately, groups don't seem to allow conditions that check needs directly, only the statuses from needs being in particular ranges.

Ideas?

[ExMachina14]

I just micro-manage it.

Make an individual schedule for an exhausted mage. Make his entire schedule sleeping. Once he wakes up, delete his individual schedule.

It's not elegant, but it gets the job done.

[Manxome]

If you're going to micro, you could also issue a direct order to sleep starting a few hours before their regular sleep time. But I was hoping for a solution that doesn't require me to constantly monitor all my mages to check whether they are low on sleep.

[Kahri]

It's a little too much micro'ing for me.

I'd either just direct order them to bed, use my top override schedule (one that sits at the top of the schedule list and I just add anyone in if their having particular issues), or simply have one extra sleep block more than needed on the end of the sleep scheduled. I usually do the last option anyway since anyone who's caught up on sleep just do chores until the next scheduled activity. The ones who need extra sleep get it, and the ones who don't help the school get a jump start on the day's activities.

I also have 'low conviction' alternate/override schedules so that lc mages get extra party and sleep time from their usual schedule when needed. Since conviction is a lagging indicator of issues (because the conviction bar has to change over time to meet it's current mark), it changes at a rate of 2/hr, I have everyone on split shifts, and the bar for breaks is 25, meaning it'll take a half day to drop 24 points, so then I set the 'low conviction' alternate/override groups at 50 points (25 break mark + 24 points over 12 hrs, then rounded up just to look good).

If you find the sleep deprivation is reflected in their conviction, maybe using a low conviction alternate scheduling might do the job, given it's a lagging indicator.

If you have sleep deprived who have high conviction, then do they really need to be micro'd so much?

If they get tooooo tired, they'll go to bed of their own accord anyways.

[Ilthe]

isn't there a status for sleeping mages? or I'm mixing up with recreating ones...

but if your custom group has requirement for membership both low sleep AND sleeping they should keep on the special sleeper schedule (set to be active on whatever time you want) untill they are done resting

[Kahri]

...

Originally posted by Ilthe:

isn't there a status for sleeping mages? or I'm mixing up with recreating ones...

but if your custom group has requirement for membership both low sleep AND sleeping they should keep on the special sleeper schedule (set to be active on whatever time you want) untill they are done resting

...but then they wouldn't enter the schedule while they were not yet asleep. So it won't be an early bedtime schedule.

Maybe using alternate schedules which utilise some combination of 'sleeping', or 'NOT:sleeping', and sleep status level, and maybe time of day rule?

A recently slept status would help prevent a mage from flipping back into a sleep schedule. Don't think that one exists, but would the various 'slept in a ....' status' do the same thing?

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Manxome:

I tried making a custom group for mages with the "Very Tired" or "Exhausted" statuses, and creating a schedule for them where their sleep period starts earlier.


Ideas?

You're on the right track. What you may want to do is make a second group that keeps people who have status=sleeping on the same schedule. They will still get out of bed once the bar is full.

People can be in two groups at the same time, so the first group will send them to sleep. Then that second one will keep them asleep. Once the sleep bar is full, people wake up automatically, which will drop them out of the 2nd group as well.

[Manxome]

Originally posted by Ilthe:

isn't there a status for sleeping mages?

Thank you! I didn't realize that was a status. I think that did the trick.

Originally posted by Kahri:

...but then they wouldn't enter the schedule while they were not yet asleep.

Ilthe said "tired AND sleeping" but it should be "tired OR sleeping" and then they enter the group fine.

This also means that all mages enter the group while sleeping, which is a bit kooky but I think it normally shouldn't matter, as long as both schedules have the same wake-up time.

Though I guess it might cause some weird things to happen if someone goes to sleep in my hospital for medical reasons, and then the alternate schedule keeps them asleep in the medical bed when they would otherwise have woken up? I think I can live with that, though. "Mage goes to bed a bit early if they finish a hospital stay at exactly the wrong time of day" is pretty minor as far as side effects go.

(Though I guess I should check if there's a separate status specifically for recovering in a medical bed so I can add that to an exclude list...)

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

You're on the right track. What you may want to do is make a second group that keeps people who have status=sleeping on the same schedule.

One group seems to be enough, but thanks for adding detail.

[n3mes1s]

I dont get it what problem are you having? Why do you need groups for it?? oh my...

Maybe you changed the top priority of essential tasks? because sleeping is automatic in the sense it has top priority by default. Unless you touch something in the priorities tab your mages should go to sleep no matter what...

If a mage is very low on speed i dont even care. I wait to the next time they go to bed, and since i have plenty of hours of bedtime they will recover and call it a day.

[Manxome]

At the "Very Tired" level, sleeping will pre-empt tasks of "high" priority or lower, but not tasks of "top" or "emergency" priority, and not recreation.

Most of my mages use "top" priority for their specialty and/or for teaching.

The game doesn't give you very many priority levels, and almost all of them have special rules that can't be chosen separately from just wanting to be higher/lower than some other task category. This is not as convenient as they seem to believe it is.

[ExMachina14]

Originally posted by Manxome:

If you're going to micro, you could also issue a direct order to sleep starting a few hours before their regular sleep time.

If you direct order to sleep, but they are scheduled to do something else, they will wake up and go do whatever they're scheduled for. So, the schedule has to be changed for them to remain asleep until fully rested.

If I'm not mistaken, that's precisely the issue you described in your OP, so I'm a little taken aback at this reply.

I hope you found a more elegant solution to your liking.

[Manxome]

Originally posted by ExMachina14:

If you direct order to sleep, but they are scheduled to do something else, they will wake up and go do whatever they're scheduled for. So, the schedule has to be changed for them to remain asleep until fully rested.

My tests say otherwise. I just tried giving someone a direct order to sleep, and they slept until fully rested (almost 6 hours) despite being scheduled for tasks the entire time.

Originally posted by ExMachina14:

If I'm not mistaken, that's precisely the issue you described in your OP, so I'm a little taken aback at this reply.

The issue in my OP didn't involve a direct order. Direct orders behave differently than if a mage decides on their own to do something using the regular system.

[Manxome]

Addendum: While I had a custom group set to make people sleep while they were tired but NOT while they were already asleep, and my mage started popping in and out of bed, I tried issuing a direct order to sleep, and this failed a couple of times (mage slept briefly then woke up) before I got it to work on roughly the third try (mage stayed asleep).

My guess at what's going on there is that the direct order for sleep is broken if the mage's schedule changes from a sleep block to a non-sleep block; that is, if you order them to bed early, but they continue sleeping into their normal sleep time, then they'll wake up at the regular time despite the direct order.

Although another possibility is that the direct order is cleared when a custom group rule causes the mage to switch to an entirely different schedule. If it's that one, I'd guess it's a bug.

Either way, I think the reason it worked on my third try is that I managed to get the mage back into bed before they became "Very Tired", and so they stopped swapping between groups.