Employees walking to farther bathrooms and lounges

[GrenadesAndHamm]

I'm in a large building, and the employees walk to the farthest bathroom and lounge even though the one closest is larger and not being used. The same with the lounge. I have the same items in the lounge (and bathroom), but they'll walk across the building to get to both of them.

Both have dark green for both stars and temperature, so I'm at a loss as to why this is happening.

Ideas?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

That's a weird one. One reason I like the Sandbox map is, I can make an almost perfect "grid-like" pattern with rooms, so every toilet and lounge will be the exact same, and I haven't had employees walking off to the other side of the building since I started doing that.

Something about the way employees choose furniture to use makes them act weirdly if anything about one of the rooms is different.

[CyberDildonics]

All my bathrooms and lounges are identical, but my employees still do this. Very annoying.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Don't allow them to leave their building - and if it's inside the same building, you may have less 'stations' on those rooms than you need for the number of employees you have.

Or you need to avoid the bad mood debuff, which is the only time where either room gets overloaded if they're big enough.

[CyberDildonics]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

Don't allow them to leave their building - and if it's inside the same building, you may have less 'stations' on those rooms than you need for the number of employees you have.

Or you need to avoid the bad mood debuff, which is the only time where either room gets overloaded if they're big enough.

It's all one building, my employees are happy, and in trying to fix the problem, I've built too many lounges and bathrooms for that to be the issue.

Pretty sure the game's pathing just needs to be tweaked.. but since this thread is from 1.5 years ago, it doesn't seem like a priority for the devs.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

It was tweaked, this thread is from before that. Anyhow, not seeing that problem happening at all, haven't seen it since it was mentioned in this thread, and had frankly forgotten about it ever being mentioned, so it seems like a very specific issue that may have a very specific origin.

[CyberDildonics]

Does the niceness of a bathroom's corridor impact their pathfinding as well? or just the interior?

[Kyouko Tsukino]

No idea, since I tend to have all corridors dark green in the quality filter. I guess building boring, repetitive, half-barren "grid" patterns for offices does have its advantages.

I have 1-square-wide corridors, and use paintings as the only decoration in them. Employee AI doesn't really have any noticeable or frequent hiccups, and the only time my bathrooms or lounges may overload is when I fire someone and trigger the bad mood debuff.

I think that, since in the past employees used to go do their silly, useless animations (reading a newspaper, or eating something, or other animations that only trigger with insufficient number of need-related stations,) to the middle of freaking nowhere (in the cold, empty, far corner of the Warehouse, for example,) it was changed so they prefer dark green quality+heat areas and avoid the rest. Which works fine for me as I don't leave any square with less than dark green quality/heat.

[CyberDildonics]

Hm. My halls are in a grid as well. 2 squares wide, warm, and fairly evenly decorated, but probably not exactly matched in quality. I'll remove the hall benches and try to even out the decorations more.

After your last comment, I demolished and replaced all copies of the bathrooms and lounges. I must have added a painting to one or something, because doing that helped a bit, so thank you!

The persistent issue now is that some (but not all) of my employees will exit their workroom, walk roughly 1/3rd across the warehouse map (passing or ignoring at least one bathroom/lounge on the way) and then turn around and run back to whichever necessary room was closest to their original exit.

It's like they reassess their pathfinding after a certain point and double back, but I don't understand why their initial routes were set farther away in the first place.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

I've never seen that behavior, even when modding the game (which shouldn't affect pathfinding unless the mod used messes that up somehow.)

I also have never used any seating after realizing the game's packed full of useless animations which only trigger if the furniture piece tied to them is available. Seats seem to* share the same "need**" as TVs or radios, and radios can be placed inside the work rooms, so seats aren't needed. Same happens with the fridge: It shares the same "need" with the water and coffee dispenser, which can both be placed inside the work rooms.

As a side note, employees don't care for wide corridors, and robots won't block them - while employees normally don't "teleport" like they did in the first game (thankfully, I found that very silly,) they will still 'noclip' through robots or other things that should be making it difficult or impossible for them to pass through. I've been putting robots everywhere for many months now, and I never bother having corridors more than one block wide. Employees have no respect for their robot overlords, and walk right through them.

Anyhow, it's one reason I like the Giant Warehouse map, and wish all maps were as "square" and "boring" as that one - it makes it really easy to have standardized rooms, corridors and lounges.

* I'm only 99% certain of this. Can't look at the code myself, so all I have is observation and repetition, which tells me some items are redundant (way too many, counting the dozens of same-thing-slightly-different-shape decorations.)

** Think about it as in The Sims. Several different furniture pieces take care of the same requirements from employees, so having more than one type of them, when some types have extra requirements or take up a lot more room, is not needed.

[CyberDildonics]

Yeah, it's definitely odd. I have no idea what's causing it.

Regardless, thank you for all the good information! I, too, find that anal grid-mapping scratches a very particular itch. Next game, I'm taking your advice for a legendary warehouse map with claustrophobic corridors and many robot overloads :]
(..and no fridges)

[Nascentes]

Sorry for necro, but this still seems to be an issue. I'm running into this currently on the same large map. Here's a picture demonstration: https://imgur.com/a/A2CAtwc

As you can see, her source room (circled in red) is RIGHT NEXT to a lounge entrance (also circled in red). Her activity is "Go to: TV", and as you can see, there is a TV located in that lounge.

Nothing blocking the path, no other people using the lounge currently, and the lounge she is going to is on the exact opposite side of the entire building...

I did use the "copy" room functionality. My lounges are identical.

What gives? I have tons of employees doing this from BOTH directions and it's a huge waste of time. Makes me regret choosing this map for my legendary run : - /

They also do this for toilets and I've even seen employees go to the other side of the building to sit on a random bench even though I have benches everywhere... Do they just do a "pick random activity" and then "pick random place for activity" with no mind for what is close by?

Please advise...

It would be nifty if we could "mark" areas, so-as to create sort of pseudo "buildings" that can forcibly restrict employees (and sputniks) to their areas that have everything they need. Or even if we weren't forced to keep the rest of the building accessible if employees aren't missing anything.

NB: I am using a couple mods, but I've tried disabling them to no avail. The behavior still occurs.

[Kyouko Tsukino]

I fixed a lot of the issue (in fact, I'm still not seeing it happen at all, and I play hundreds of hours of this per month,) by learning to fit all the "needs" furniture that are actually needed (medkit, radio, and one of either water or coffee dispenser) in each work room. This also saves them a lot of walking time, increasing productivity. Most of what I said in my last comment in this thread still applies - a lot of the animations are basically filler and not needed for employees to function, and a lot of pieces of furniture are just there to enable said animations (see: the seats and the fridge, two furniture pieces I only remember because I see them on furniture lists and screenshots.)

For toilets, there's a "cheaty" way to bypass the need for toilets. Just add more robots, then you won't need toilets at all. Seeing how not having toilets replaces three animations for one animation that takes less than the toilet one (and is usually done right next to the desk, instead of walking to the toilet) then it also saves time, at the expense of a bit of motivation for everyone in the room.

And another culprit may be large rooms. Understand I say "large" meaning "anything with more than ten employees in it." I've been using 5-people rooms since forever (before that last comment, actually) and small-ish toilets and lounges spread evenly (one 3x3 lounge can fit six arcade machines, which can keep up with a lot more employees than one would expect, same with a 3x5 toilet which can fit three toilet/drier/sink combos.) The only large rooms I have are for MoCap and Sound, but that's becuase Eggcode never got around to finding less obnoxiously-sized workstations for those rooms. :)

Edit: Also, radios are better than TVs. Why? They take up less space. Same reason why I use arcade machines in the lounge - you can fit two threadmills in the same space you can fit six arcades. Six arcades can take care of six people at the same time, against the two that could be recovering motivation with threadmills. This is specially important if the "bad mood" debuff ever triggers - you'll be taking care of a lot more employees in the same number of square feet than you would if you wasted space with threadmills or minigolfs of other bulky lounge equipment.

[Nascentes]

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

I fixed a lot of the issue (in fact, I'm still not seeing it happen at all, and I play hundreds of hours of this per month,) by learning to fit all the "needs" furniture that are actually needed (medkit, radio, and one of either water or coffee dispenser) in each work room. This also saves them a lot of walking time, increasing productivity. Most of what I said in my last comment in this thread still applies - a lot of the animations are basically filler and not needed for employees to function, and a lot of pieces of furniture are just there to enable said animations (see: the seats and the fridge, two furniture pieces I only remember because I see them on furniture lists and screenshots.)

For toilets, there's a "cheaty" way to bypass the need for toilets. Just add more robots, then you won't need toilets at all. Seeing how not having toilets replaces three animations for one animation that takes less than the toilet one (and is usually done right next to the desk, instead of walking to the toilet) then it also saves time, at the expense of a bit of motivation for everyone in the room.

And another culprit may be large rooms. Understand I say "large" meaning "anything with more than ten employees in it." I've been using 5-people rooms since forever (before that last comment, actually) and small-ish toilets and lounges spread evenly (one 3x3 lounge can fit six arcade machines, which can keep up with a lot more employees than one would expect, same with a 3x5 toilet which can fit three toilet/drier/sink combos.) The only large rooms I have are for MoCap and Sound, but that's becuase Eggcode never got around to finding less obnoxiously-sized workstations for those rooms. :)

Edit: Also, radios are better than TVs. Why? They take up less space. Same reason why I use arcade machines in the lounge - you can fit two threadmills in the same space you can fit six arcades. Six arcades can take care of six people at the same time, against the two that could be recovering motivation with threadmills. This is specially important if the "bad mood" debuff ever triggers - you'll be taking care of a lot more employees in the same number of square feet than you would if you wasted space with threadmills or minigolfs of other bulky lounge equipment.

Excellent insight. Thank you for taking the time.

5-employee rooms?! Wild. I actually have seen you mention pathing issues/oddities in a couple of other threads but I'm using a mod that disables object collision (mostly for aesthetics honestly. Placing a plant next to a desk rather than 2 feet away type things :-P) and it seems to help allow larger rooms? Maybe I'm crazy though. I'm only on my second game so still plenty to learn here & behaviors to watch with studio growth. I'm going to give 5-employee rooms a go for sure, though. Half the fun of this game is optimizing efficiency, of course!

I've actually scrapped my warehouse run after getting frustrated watching employees do this while I'm still very-much toeing the "will we go bankrupt?" line. I can only speculate that it is due to leaving so much of the warehouse "empty" in between units of rooms.

Perhaps If I'd kept all employees on the same side & grew outward naturally, it would not have been an issue. Or at the least their "distant" options would have been close(r). Even-so, I've gone back to secret bunker because it's a nonissue for me there and I can put employees in distant places to my heart's content :-)

Good note on radios, as well... I'm going to adapt to this ASAP. I do put coffee & med in each work room but it hadn't occurred to me to include an entertainment source! That's a great suggestion.

Originally posted by Kyouko Tsukino:

For toilets, there's a "cheaty" way to bypass the need for toilets. Just add more robots, ....

This is hilarious. I probably won't do this simply out of human rights concerns, but this is hilarious

[Kyouko Tsukino]

Bigger rooms look nicer, but ever since I stopped using rooms bigger than what's needed for five or ten people, I never saw any pathing issues happen.

The minimal size for a 5-people room (not counting Sound and MoCap) is 5x4 squares, and in it you can place five desks, three radiators, four rugs, a radio, a water dispenser, a medkit, a trash can, and you'll have room for a coffee dispenser too, if you want to give them variety (they don't need it, but to each their own.) And all that without using any mods to mess with hitboxes, and in most cases, without even disabling grid-locked placement.

Sound and MoCap rooms can also be built "compact" and have all needed items inside them - except for the 'elephant in the room' of medkits not being allowed in the Sound room, but you can just place one right outside the door.

The only "disadvantage" of small rooms is that you lose squares the more rooms of a type you consider (one 10-people room uses one or two less squares than two 5-people rooms, a 20-people room uses around four or five less squares than four 5-people rooms,) but since I don't use a lot of the rooms that eat up space normally (training rooms, server rooms, and usually console dev rooms,) then I can afford to 'waste' space.

The one advantage 5-people rooms have over any other room, is that the door's not far from any employee inside - which may be a part of why it avoids the pathing issues.

Also, in the warehouse I always start on one side and grow outwards, as it keeps the heat and 'quality' in corridors easier to spread. It also helps using less robots, although for me, after 1980 I build quite the robot army, to make sure no mess is left uncleaned.