Need a system to prioritize active orders

[WeirdoCello]

I would like to be able to tell survivors: "Make sure someone is doing research before anyone goes transporting", or "fix the defenses before butchering the bugs", etc.

I think the priority system used for cooking/crafting orders would work. Taking all active orders and placing them in an ordered list, in which the player can move items up and down.

[spacedog]

If you click on "Manage" (along the bottom of the screen), and then "Activities", and then click where it says "Simple Priorities", it changes from checkboxes to priority values that go from 1-5. (Although I wish it went from 1-9.)

Are you asking for something different than that?

[Furball]

Yes, the Activities window takes care of task prioritization.

Just remember that some tasks (like "handling") never end... like in my case, I need at least 2 people to keep feeding resources to furnaces, barrels, construction sites (repair/build), etc.

You can set Construction (for repairs) to priority 1, and Hunting (butchering) to priority 1 as well... and since it follows tasks from left-to-right, the survivors will repair first, then butcher next.

Research is to the left of Deliver, so that takes care of that as well. Unless research has a lower priority than deliver, of course.

[NukeAJS]

There's still a need, but not how the OP says.

There should be a priority for what to build within a given skill such as crafting. Now, you might say "but that's what the queue is for" and you'd be right if you only had one crafting station. I have three crafting stations because I have 2ish permananent crafters and one part time crafter. There should be a "master list" of crafting priority where all stations share the same priority.

Crafting - Clothing and crafting - objects should share the same skill but have their own priority in the assignments as well. You rarely need people crafting clothes at the end of winter/spring and playing around with the tailoring table only to have to put the exact same recipes back in when summer/autumn arrives is kinda tedious.

[Martin]

The activities need to be broken down more, like hunting and butchering.. there's 10 dead cows in my yard, i assign 2 guys to go chop them up and invariably, one decides to chase down that one cow that got away that's on other side of map... and usually gets perforated by the rest of the herd.

[spacedog]

Originally posted by NukeAJS:

There should be a "master list" of crafting priority where all stations share the same priority.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1324130/discussions/1/3486374957068675249

[WeirdoCello]

Originally posted by spacedog:

If you click on "Manage" (along the bottom of the screen), and then "Activities", and then click where it says "Simple Priorities", it changes from checkboxes to priority values that go from 1-5. (Although I wish it went from 1-9.)

Are you asking for something different than that?

That's a good system for automation. But sometimes, I just need something to be taken care of, and I find the activities system to be pretty obtuse for that purpose.

I have handling set to a higher priority than construction, because it's generally more important to keep the torches fueled than to add a shack to the base. But if there's a hole in the fence, and creatures can (and have) just wander in and cause trouble, then I need that ♥♥♥♥ done NOW.

We already issue direct orders to the survivors. I would just like to have final say on which particular orders take priority, as opposed to which type of orders.

[spacedog]

"Construction" covers both building and repair. I agree that it would be nice to be able to assign separate priorities to these. There are a few other cases like that too.

I suspect they are trying to balance the ability to control things against overwhelming people with a wall-of-checkboxes.

Anyway, you should post this in the suggestions subforum to make sure they see it.

[mansman]

Something I've found is you basically need to abandon any hope of setting up a production chain where you set basic needs for each item in the production chain and as they get used they'll naturally get refilled based on those standing orders. This is something I used to love about Space Haven. It simply doesn't work in this game currently.

You want to batch activities together, and I mean LARGE batches. I usually have 8+ furnaces built. I have most of my survivors doing nothing but furnace handling for a few days until I have like 1.5k alloys stocked up. I then remove the production rules from the furnaces and never return there unless I need to refill the stockpile.

If you are going to cut some wood outside your base. Pick a single area of the map and completely clear the entire area using your entire group of survivors. This will greatly increase overall throughput as you will ensure the fewest possible trips made by each survivor to the area and they will nearly always carry full loads back to base instead of piecemeal in response to some other construction job.

You should deal in thousands of a single resource each time you gather that resource. My first year is typically devoted to clear cutting/strip mining outside the base. Once that is over I never leave the base or go just outside it to reach my stick/wood/hay farming plots.

If farming, ensure that all survivors have plant/gather on priority to clear and replant each field. Don't bother doing anything else (except cooking). You will loose a LOT of grow time on fields if you leave it to a single person or let the current priority system have a go at it.

If you have a problem with your survivors sitting in the ? idle state and not eating/relaxing, you can draft/undraft them to trigger a reselection of priority. You can also do this to someone heading off across the map when there's already another survivor in the area.

If you going to construct a new building, ensure you have all the materials gathered and located close by before starting construction. When you start the project make sure everyone is participating. You basically can't split your survivor's attention between tasks or you won't get anything done at all.

[Ceredh]

@ mansman: that seems to be very good advice, from my limited experience so far (started just recently). However I find it a bit "immersion killing".

I think the manage system is more or less ok for most things but there should be the possibility to give "emergency orders", maybe to drafted persons. It is painfully annoying if some survivors are bleeding out (from allegedly superficial wounds), and the unharmed persons go to sleep, eat or watch a plant in the distance. It is equally terrible that they (at least in my campaign) always heal first the least wounded person and let the severely wounded bleed out. At least there has to be a "Heal x" command which overrules all other tasks.

BTW why cannot survivors bandage even small wounds themselves? That's ridiculous and so far from reality that it hurts.

[jojobe]

The need to PRIORITIZE order

vecause the NPC DO NOT complete task correctly (stop half way through a task and go somewhere else) you need to be able to prioritize orders. Right now i cant get my food brought in from the rain with 6 npcs. They will not prioritize deconstructs.

[gizmo6023]

Originally posted by jojobe:

The need to PRIORITIZE order

vecause the NPC DO NOT complete task correctly (stop half way through a task and go somewhere else) you need to be able to prioritize orders. Right now i cant get my food brought in from the rain with 6 npcs. They will not prioritize deconstructs.

+1
The happiness hit taken for directing those that dropped a load of XX to go pick it up and finish the job needs to be eliminated as well. The base issue is lack of ability to prioritize what WE need/want done not what the game thinks is important.

[Alphatucana]

I constantly have issues with materials being delivered to construction projects when they are needed for some urgent repairs. It doesn't matter what priority I set for the jobs if the materials are not being made available to the task I want done. Is there a way of controlling this? The option to pause construction jobs rather than cancel them outright would be very handy. The option to rearrange the order in which constructions are to be completed would also be useful - I might not always set them up in the order I finally want them to be built in, especially if I make a mistake with that.