Water usage - somethings not right

[Tazmo]

The warehouse stores water for all to use however everyone uses the wells. Some walk past the warehouse to get to the well. When the well goes dry the npc's just wander around the well ignoring the rest of their duties and the water stored in the warehouse. They even ignore a second well thats just across the road. I've had up to 5 npc's waiting at one well and the only way to fix it is to log out then back into the game.

In my Ghost Town I have four wells to combat this stacked up npc mess. I originally thought this was a pathing problem but now I'm not so sure. If there is no water in the well they should move on to seek another source or return to their duties.

In the old days this was an "if-then-else" issue. Don\t know what it's called or how it's programmed today.

EDIT: My chicken lady now uses well #2. The rabbit lady still uses well #1 but will now go to well #2 when needed.

Note: I did quit the Beta test and then re-enter the Beta test two days later so my Beta test game may have been broken. However both of my wells (1 and 2) go down to less then 10 units during the day and I currently have over 1,400 units of water in the Warehouse. Is there an upper limit for water stored?

Old well - Looks like I'm the only one using it. It starts at 30 units (equivalent of 3 buckets) and I can play for 3, 4 or 5 hours and not drain it. Yes I use other wells, river and ponds around the map but I don't think I use over one bucket per day. So why do the goats, rabbits and chickens require so much water? Wells 1 and 2 have a joint capacity of over 300 units and constantly refill at a slow pace. Needs re-balancing I think.

[leonie214]

Hi Tazmo, I think I have explained it well in this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3336325151

You basically need a well for each animal shelter. For small animals there is a max limit cap on food and water that will prevent the worker moving to and from the well and warehouse.

I take all the empty buckets in the Warehouse and fill them up at the river, then split them amongst the small animal pens. As long as the warehouse and animal pens don't run dry this should not be a problem. If you build a Water tower with a Windmill to fill it, you can assign a extra worker there to carry water to the warehouse, the only other worker that will collect from the water tower is the warehouse worker, that should relieve some strain on the wells too and ensure ample supply for your settlement.

If you want, share your saved file with me, then I will have a look at your layout

[Tazmo]

Thanks leonie214,
I already have it worked out. I think the real problem is in the coding of the game. Something was overlooked or coded incorrectly. A larger team would have quality assurance members testing all aspects of the code. Smaller teams overwork themselves, get tired and make small mistakes. That's normal and to be expected.

That is the reason I am playing on a TEST branch release. I'm trying to identify anything that looks broken or out of order then reporting it. Hopefully, my findings are helpful to them.

Workarounds are great for the player but the problem you are working around needs to be reported back to the Dev's for review and correction where needed. In essence, we are doing some of the quality assurance work for them. Atleast that's how I look at it. It is a choice I made, to try to help. Playing this game, in it's current condition, can be frustrating but remember this is not a release version, this IS a test branch version. You had to go thru a process to gain access to this test version.

I no longer see this as a game but more like a project that will eventually become a good quality game. Not only checking what's there to play but also what's missing, mislabelled or find what you can't see. For instance. Taxation needs a barn for all the farmers but nobody asked you to build one. This might be an oversight and should be reported for review. The Dev's will decided what if anything needs to be done. By reporting it, I think I've done my part.

Your willingness to help others is commendable but helping identify and reporting all the problems is equally if not more important at this stage in the games development.

[Tazmo]

Sorry Gold. This should be in the bug section of the forum. My bad.

[leonie214]

I agree, that is why I link the bug report references in the guide as well. Creating the guides helps me to investigate specific details. I am already working on the next one and that is why you will see an increase in bug reports from me.... and comments in the guides are welcome if I get it wrong. The dev's has already made some changes due to these findings and I will update the guides once the non beta branch is updated.

The workarounds I give is so that you and others coming across your post can continue to enjoy instead of giving up. It gets people past that hold-up to explore other areas.(in other words it is not a game-breaking issue)

I find a lot of guidance from your reports too, it makes me look in more detail at things to mention in guides, so thank you for that.

So I hope I do not offend by giving the information and I appreciate your comments on my findings even if it is just a +1, it gives it some weight, don't you think?

[Tazmo]

I have close to 570 hours in this game and sometimes I overlook some of the problems and fail to report them because I know the workaround. Ii is always good to have more eyes on the progress. Your making guides helps you discover other problems which is a good thing. Keep it up.

No offence was taken or intended. I just thought you should know that I'm not new to this game. I'm no expert by any means but I do know my way around most of what's available to be played.

[leonie214]

Great, I have 672 hrs, So can we agree that when we comment on each others bugs that is to the benefit for others and maybe for just in case we weren't aware off it

[Tazmo]

Sounds good. Agreed.

[Goldi_Toplitz]

Tazmo, do you happen to have the save for us? It could be a pathing issue.

[Tazmo]

Sorry Goldi I don"t. I did exit then reenter the game and have since overwritten that save. I only keep two active saves and I overwrite both every time I exit the game for redundancy.

[Tazmo]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3468511207

You might be able to recreate it. This is a shot of part of my town and shows two of the well locations. In addition the original well is to the lower left and a fourth is down by the goat pen.

Well (#1) is next to the warehouse
Well (#2) in front of barn
Well (#3) the old original well
Well (#4) next to the goat pen

In this shot,
The guy by the nearest well is the warehouse worker. The guy by the warehouse food storage is the goat keeper. The rabbit and chicken keepers you can see. The goat keeper would use the well beside the warehouse and the rabbit and chicken keepers would also use that well and of course the warehouse worker drained that same well dry.

When the well went dry these three keeper/handlers and warehouse worker would que-up holding everyone in line so to speak. The warehouse worker does go to well (#2) when well (#1) is dry but he always goes to well (#1) first. But if he's stuck in a que he stops working like the others.

This is when I built well (#4). The goat handler no longer uses well (#1) and that seems to have fixed my problem.

I built the well beside the warehouse first and may be the reason the rabbit and chicken keepers go there. There is a closer well (#2) (the nearest one in the screenshot) to the chicken pen but the chicken keeper still crosses the path to the first well next to the warehouse.

My turkey keeper and farmer use well (#2) nearest to their location.

The farm is to the right, near the back corner of the barn, out of sight. Chicken pen is lower right and turkey pen is out of the shot, to the left and beside the barn. The goat pen is behind the general store down the slope and across the road.

The questions for me were, why did the chicken keeper bypass the nearest well and continue going to the first well?
Is it hard coded for some of them to go to the first well first?
Is there coding to check for water content for some and not others? For instance the warehouse worker goes to another well when the first one is dry but some of the other workers won't.

The farmer switched from well (#1) to well (#2) Without any problem and the turkey keeper went to the nearest well (#2) right off the bat. They all seem to have different pathing code to follow.

Weird.

Anyway, I hope this help in some small part.

[leonie214]

That is how I lay it out as well. Seems the warehouse worker always gets stuck on the first assignment, the only time they did not was when I build the well after appointing them.... even if you switch workers they get stuck.... need to save - Exit - load to fix it. Having the barn build helps in allowing the Well to refill a bit, since the warehouse worker alternate between the barn and well. Maybe we should build the first well a bit further away?

[Goldi_Toplitz]

Thank you both! I think this will help.

[Tazmo]

Hi Goldi!

I don't know if you saw my edit so I'll recap here. I quit the Beta test version of the game because of a game load failure. I thought the test period was finished so i left the Beta Test and played in the Public version for a few hours. After two days I reloaded the Beta test version.

Since then my game has been working just fine. All npc's go to their nearest well for water now. I also observed the rabbit lady go directly to well #2 when well #1 contained less than 10 units of water.

I don't know the What, How or Why's of it all but everything has corrected itself after quitting then reloading the test version of the game.

It looks like my copy of the test version of the game became corrupted somehow and after quitting, playing a few hours in the Public version then reloading the Test version all seems to be working as it should.

That being said, we should consider that this could also be a Steam game load malfunction. At least don't rule it out.