Survivor task behaviour (the millionth post about it, I know)

[Ralesk]

That the survivors can't bring food with them (only to expeditions), don't prepare (eat and relax before going out on your long journey to bring home carbon), and just generally don't understand travel distance when a more "important" task comes up, is a known thing, we've mentioned it many times.

I have two marginally related things.

Day start seems to be especially prone to this behaviour, and it's especially noticeable with tasks that are made of multiple little components, rather than one long one like crafting. The survivor wakes up, decides their most important task is, say, harvest grain grass (build walls, butcher skarabei, etc.), goes out, cuts a single one of them and then turns back, casually walks to the kitchen and eats breakfast.

This is such an incredible waste of time. There's a few things that could be done I guess, one being to fill up before starting to work, no matter the schedule setting. Another might be to bundle farm / construction jobs that are "related" more strongly together so the survivor isn't as likely to interrupt them willy-nilly.

The other odd behaviour I've seen from my survivors was inside such tasks and it has to do with their pathing decisions. I've seen this while laying new flooring in the bedrooms, and I've seen it with someone trying to harvest or plant fields. Both were done by one person so it wasn't really like they had to work around someone else or anything. Connor kept walking in and out of the three bedrooms deconstructing my previous flooring in a really unoptimised order, and then putting down the new flooring the same way (and then going to sleep in the middle of it all because he took several hours longer at this than if the had just gone room to room... giving debuffs to everyone involved :D), and Anette planted some graincob (leaving a hole right next to her in the field), slowpoke walked to the other field to plant glittercap and some siliconleaf, then returned to finish the graincob field, and went back to plant the final siliconleaf. It was a mess.

I'm sure this is done to make the survivors behave in a more organic way, so they don't look like robots — but I do feel like these kinds of tasks are things that even humans try to do in a systematic manner... at least ones who aren't completely new to doing it.

Somehow this also seems to have a "maybe if they didn't enjoy walking so much they'd do things right" theme to it, just like the other task queuing issues.

[76561199056944839]

Hey Ralesk!

Thank you for the comprehensive feedback!

The Activities setup and the Schedule work together in order to set up how your survivors' choose their next task. Your survivors' wants and needs are also a part of this, but it depends on how you've set up their prioritisation.

Tasks listed in the Activities menu are prioritised from left to right, so the leftmost things are usually handled first. Whoever has a certain task prioritised higher (if you're using Complex Priorities) will do that task first, and then so on, if your survivors have a scheduled "Work" hour. Things like eating and relaxation are mostly only carried out during designated "Relax" spaces.

If you have your survivors set to "Anything" in the scheduler, they will usually automatically pick whatever they consider to be their most prioritised thing, and they'll re-pick every hour. Which means they might start whirring about and interrupting an activity to then go do something else.

It's up to you as the player to help them manage their time. I usually give them an hour of relaxation time right after they wake up. That way they can grab breakfast or do a leisure activity to boost their happiness before they start to work.

Feel free to ask any follow-up questions or comments!

[Ralesk]

I didn't think eating would count as a relaxation thing (and it kinda does surprise me :D) but I'll see if scheduling them that way might help. It's kind of odd when this happens to someone who just popped some level of hunger debuff before waking up.

But as for relaxation/anything allowance around or during the work day, as they don't seem to have much of a concept of distance, they'll still easily decide to play didgeridoo instead of taking a walk or having a sit on the ground to relax. (bonus bonus question: can I order a survivor to take a walk, somehow, just like I can click on relaxation items and order them to use them? would be amazing to be able to avoid a meltdown with some micromanagement like that without having them walk home before their shift ends)

Any thoughts on the second one? As there isn't any need (other task's priority or their hunger, or someone reserving the nearby planting spots) that would interrupt the job, they just do it in the most haphazard way for some reason.

[Cirfain]

Hi,

When I wake up in the morning, I don't go working before having breakfast or taking shower.. who do that ?