Direct Orders and dogs question

[Gleitfrosch]

what the game is missing is the option to give single survivors direct orders to do something specific and do nothing else until the task is finished. setting priorities is just not enough. I lost a lot meat because all survivors just walked past the dead animal although I ordered them to butcher it.

Are dogs more or less useless? they seem to eat much more than my survivors and provide no real benefit. I finally decided to butcher them.

[Flin Fredstone]

When not drafted you can take control of a character by selecting her/him and rightclick on the object they need to interact with. If there are multiple objects like plants or carcasses then you also have the option so pick the multiple que option. Or hold down shift and select the item in order.
Note that the person will stop the task when she/he gets to hungry or might faint on the spot when to tired.

A dog i only had once and it got butchered too. I stick to manure farming herbivores.

[Rockoloco]

I love how people don't take their time to learn the game and then they take the time to post "missing feature" I mean clearly the devs must be angry after they made tutorials and people not taking their time to watch them

[Gleitfrosch]

I did all tutorials but don't remember that direct order part besides a basic "go there" etc. info.
I only used the direct control for defense or hunting (not butchering). I also tried to select single survivors and give them orders but they just stood around, guess I did something wrong.

Will check it again.

@Rockoloco
I recommend that when you assume that someone skipped the tutorial, write that the answer is in the tutorial instead stating your assumption as a fact. That gives the impression of arrogance.

[Rockoloco]

ok, will do, next time instead of stating as a fact that there is a missing feature, ask first, lots of people are willing to help instead of giving the impression that you skipped the tutorials

[OKOK]

I see did I see u can give dog orders?

[Gleitfrosch]

Originally posted by Rockoloco:

ok, will do, next time instead of stating as a fact that there is a missing feature, ask first, lots of people are willing to help instead of giving the impression that you skipped the tutorials

Agreed :)

[Actual Malice]

In fairness, the tutorial gives this mechanic only glancing attention. A graphic headlined "Farming and Direct Orders" instructs one to click on a survivor and then right-click on a field to be planted. The next graphic says another way to control survivors other than direct orders is to play with the priorities. That's it.

This is a vital and game-changing mechanic. Even just an additional sentence explaining that direct orders can also be given to observe, butcher, cut, etc. would be helpful, or another hands-on illustration of the mechanic (e.g., left-click on survivor and right-click on a tree and choose whether to observe or cut it) could save hours of frustration.

I empathize completely with the OP. I did two play-throughs and became very adept at manipulating the priorities (the tutorial never exactly explains that you can zero out an activity when not in the Simple Priorities menu either), but it involved an insane amount of micromanagement, and I thought the devs surely must have offered an easier way. It was only after watching a number of vids (ty TheOnlyLonZY) and re-watching the tutorial that I grasped entirely the left-click, right-click mechanic.

So thank you for raising the issue Gleitfrosch and thank you Flin Fredstone (great name btw) for your excellent response. You both might have saved many new players from throwing their mice at the screen.

[Bjørn]

Originally posted by Actual Malice:

In fairness, the tutorial gives this mechanic only glancing attention.

Yes, these threads are very useful on forums, for players doing searches looking for help. Normally how I find most of the answers. Always nicer to read when people are civil (not too fond of watching other people play, so I don't go on youtube and such).

I liked the tutorials very much, and played some of them twice, but I had missed how you queue up tasks by holding shift, for example, so I found out here.

But it's good there are tutorials, at least, and things like that are normally polished before full release, and I've played many ea games with little or no tutorial. Feedback like this is probably appreciated.

Originally posted by Actual Malice:

(the tutorial never exactly explains that you can zero out an activity when not in the Simple Priorities menu either),

How is this done, please? Don't have to click until it's blank? That would be nice.

I put up a suggestion on the other feedback forum here on Steam that it would be nice to disable an entire activity-column by clicking on the activity name or something, to quickly prohibit anyone from doing outdoors tasks during ash storms and such.

Or simply a 'stay indoors' button, like in Dawn of Man (although that is stay within fence, which would also be good to have here, come to think of it).

[Gleitfrosch]

Direct orders and taks priority settings should be handled more prominent or even get an own tutorial. They are essential to the game and are unfortunately barely covered in the current tutorial.

[Actual Malice]

By "zero out," I meant clicking through the numbers on the activity until you reach what would be zero, except you get an empty box instead of a zero, which completely disables the activity for that toon. Sorry for the confusion.

A column button to nullify that activity for every toon is an interesting idea. I shouldn't say this, because the devs might decide to up the ante, but toxic ash seems to be a bit of a nothing-burger -- a momentary annoyance to the toons and an inconsequential hit to the crops. It could be, though, that on Very Hard or Insane, it might be more of an issue to lose a few crops, when you're playing on the knife's edge and counting every meal.

But I could see using such a column button during severe cold to keep my toons from venturing too far, instead of clicking off the resource, e.g. Or on those occasions when I want all hands on deck to concentrate on harvesting and planting or construction, I could column-click everything else off, and then column-click them back on when through, instead of zeroing out all the other ones and twos for each toon.

Thanks for tip on using the Shift key to queue activities. Good to know.

(My daughter just visited Norway, btw, and couldn't believe all the wine stores closed at five!)

[Bjørn]

Originally posted by Actual Malice:

Thanks for tip on using the Shift key to queue activities. Good to know.

You're welcome! For some reason I thought that was one of the things you mentioned in your post, which was why I mentioned it, but it's good to be wrong as well in cases like these!

Originally posted by Actual Malice:

(My daughter just visited Norway, btw, and couldn't believe all the wine stores closed at five!)

Hah yeah very strict alcohol laws here, and immense taxes. People living close to the Swedish border usually shop alcohol there, as well as everything else, as they have much lower taxes / prices.

All the stores selling wine and stronger are sold in special government-run stores. They close at 8 PM on weekdays and earlier on Saturdays, so she probably went then? On Sundays everything is closed except for gas stations, so it was good she didn't go then! No alcohol there, and normal shops only sell beer (but not on Sundays).

Was she here because of the 'wine-release day', or something? It was a few weeks ago. Another peculiar thing here is that they're not allowed to make profits on the alcohol (or not much), so every year when new wines are released around the world people flock to Norway to get 'cheap' wine, strangely enough. A bottle costing 1000 euros in France, for example, may only cost 100 in Norway for this reason.

Weird country we live in... Sorry for the long off-topic. Your daughter is not the first to have reacted to weird rules over here. Hope she had a good stay otherwise!