Just can't deal with the AI :(

[Yasmin]

I adore so many things about News Tower but the AI makes it unplayable right now.

At a 2-page paper I felt like I struggled sometimes to get 6 finished articles in time for Sunday. So when I upgraded to 3-page I invested in a lot more staff. I ended up with 5 telegraphers, 6 reporters, 3 typesetters and 3 assemblers.

With this many telegraphers and reporters I managed to churn out plenty of articles, but it didn't seem like the production teams were keeping up. I spent ages re-arranging the building and decided to put 2 reporters on each floor, with their own dedicated typesetter and assembler. However when I tried it in action, every reporter just put their article on the desk of the typesetter on the ground floor, creating a bottleneck.

So I re-arranged the whole building again, this time putting all the typesetters on the ground floor and the assemblers just above. Again, the reporters all came in and gave their reports to one single typesetter, ignoring the ones nearby. So I have one typesetter working on 4 articles and the two next to it just idling.

I keep trying to move things around but can't seem to fix this problem. I refuse to manually distribute every single article.

The other staff are not much better. I keep getting long queues for the bathroom because it gets clogged and we have to wait for the cleaner to fix it. I wonder how my cleaner cannot handle 3 toilets by herself. I look up and she is idling on the 1st floor despite the toilet on the 3rd floor being disgusting and about to clog. She only cleans it when I drag her to it. I wondered if staff only attend to things when they're broken, which would be very annoying - however my mechanic is sitting two floors up from a broken coffee machine and isn't moving a muscle. No wonder everything is broken.

Sometimes I see staff with very low needs, so I watch them for a bit. They walk up and down the stairs, down the hallways and back, just wandering. They often make their way up to the printer room, and spend ages just walking back and forth, complaining about how loud and hot it is.

Why is my cleaner currently doing laps in the printer room when there are two clogged toilets below her? One of the toilets is literally right next to her washing station, so I know it's not a pathing issue.

[some (momi)]

Before I unlocked the elevator, I put all my typesetters on the first floor, alternating each one on the other side of the big door - this went a long way, as reporters only need to drop them off before they can go back out. I know you said that's what you've done, but I don't recall having particular issues with it - maybe it was potentially layout related? The thing is, Typesetters work really quickly, their biggest delay ends up being the distance to the Assembly Tables. I've seen some reporters pile some pages onto the same assembly table, but it never slowed me down at the end of the week (I think it was pages different parts of the same story?).

I also placed my assemblers directly adjacent to the typesetters, to minimize on travel time (until I had too many stories to report in which case having reporters need to walk to floor 2 can slow you down).

Additionally, reporters themselves can be placed on the highest floor with free space, as they teleport out of the building to begin reporting on the articles - they only need to stop in for a moment and drop it off at a typesetter before you can send them back out again.

With regards to the printer, only the first section [paper loading] needs to be accessible - the rest can easily be shoved behind a solid wall, helping to reduce the noise and heat. Ideally, the first section is alone in a small room at the topmost floor, so there's no need for anyone but the paper-loader to need to walk up there.

I can't speak regarding the maintenance/cleaners not doing their jobs; I don't recall them having a particular issue/being bugged while I was playing, but maybe it's a problem with a later patch - I'm about to resume playing and we'll see. :shrug:

Don't underestimate travel times, especially up floors; I'm not sure what your layout looks like, but having 3 toilets on one floor versus one toilet on three floors would be a big difference to a cleaner, and likely a smaller difference to the rest of the team (esp if the floor with the toilets is in the middle of two other floors, then its both a 1-stair distance to them , which isn't bad).

Since I can't imagine you not having the incorrect Workbence/Sweeping Closet/Resupply Desks in use, I'm going to think that the workers (not just the maintenance staff) wandering through your halls is a layout issue that could be re-arranged somehow.

=Telegraphers+Reporters can go on the highest floors, as they don't need to move much (besides telegraphers going to the bathroom).
=Typesetter -> Assembler is the next two connected items, so placing them adjacent (which works with the trolley unlock) helps a lot, or at least keeping them both around the exit of a stairwell, so it's just a stairs-walk up/down to drop things off. I believe a 1:1 ratio of the two has worked best, just due to their nature; but you might be able to get away with a slightly greeder amount of typesetters (maybe? they tend to be a focal point for production due to reporters; it's been a while since I started though).
=The Resupply Desk needs to go from the street -> shelves -> printer; largely it just works but relocating the storage unit might randomly help. You can also manually load the printer with paper if you're in a crunch for time and whantot. Additionally, this guy is the main one that suffers from lower moods (due to heat/noise), so a painting and plant in his desk area is generally the answer.
=Positioning the Sweeping Closet close(r) to the main restroom also helps a lot; personally I had Cleaner+two toilets in one room, so the travel distance was as small as possible.
=Every employee needs to eat and use the restroom, so trying to centralize those (especially around stairwells) goes a long way. There's a gumball unlock that's a one-tile size food item, but even without that the water containers can generally be one a floor without issue, they can be spread out.

The only thing I can really say aside from all this is that if you had a screenshot of your current tower layout, we may be able to help diagnose/begin figuring out where issues might lie (if they're not simply bug/otherwise related, outside of our control).

[Robronic]

Originally posted by Yasmin:

I adore so many things about News Tower but the AI makes it unplayable right now.

At a 2-page paper I felt like I struggled sometimes to get 6 finished articles in time for Sunday. So when I upgraded to 3-page I invested in a lot more staff. I ended up with 5 telegraphers, 6 reporters, 3 typesetters and 3 assemblers.

With this many telegraphers and reporters I managed to churn out plenty of articles, but it didn't seem like the production teams were keeping up. I spent ages re-arranging the building and decided to put 2 reporters on each floor, with their own dedicated typesetter and assembler. However when I tried it in action, every reporter just put their article on the desk of the typesetter on the ground floor, creating a bottleneck.

So I re-arranged the whole building again, this time putting all the typesetters on the ground floor and the assemblers just above. Again, the reporters all came in and gave their reports to one single typesetter, ignoring the ones nearby. So I have one typesetter working on 4 articles and the two next to it just idling.

I keep trying to move things around but can't seem to fix this problem. I refuse to manually distribute every single article.

The other staff are not much better. I keep getting long queues for the bathroom because it gets clogged and we have to wait for the cleaner to fix it. I wonder how my cleaner cannot handle 3 toilets by herself. I look up and she is idling on the 1st floor despite the toilet on the 3rd floor being disgusting and about to clog. She only cleans it when I drag her to it. I wondered if staff only attend to things when they're broken, which would be very annoying - however my mechanic is sitting two floors up from a broken coffee machine and isn't moving a muscle. No wonder everything is broken.

Sometimes I see staff with very low needs, so I watch them for a bit. They walk up and down the stairs, down the hallways and back, just wandering. They often make their way up to the printer room, and spend ages just walking back and forth, complaining about how loud and hot it is.

Why is my cleaner currently doing laps in the printer room when there are two clogged toilets below her? One of the toilets is literally right next to her washing station, so I know it's not a pathing issue.

Many of these exact things have been fixed for quite a while. What version of the game did you play? Feel free to send us the save game, would help us tremendously identifying bugs. You can send it over to [e-mail]!