Article transfer between production stations seems inefficient

[Kellamity]

First of all - I'm in love with this game. This version is a little more challenging than the demo and that was actually a pleasant surprise. Kudos to the developers!

I noticed weird behavior in my production stuff and maybe someone can help me clarify if this is intentional or maybe just not addressed at all in game mechanics.
I placed my typesetters and assembly in pairs - one of each together in the same room. I have multiple such rooms on a couple of different floors.
I noticed that instead of moving articles from typesetting to assembly in the same room, they choose randomly (maybe?) and waste a stupid amount of time walking around. It doesn't seem to matter if Assebly is free or not (I wonder if they are taking into consideration where each article is going, not sure), when 3 Assebly stations are available they often choose one with the lowest skill (which is most likely further away)...
It doesn't break the game, I just need to micromanage the article production chain a little by the end of the week and I don't mind that (nice additional layer of gameplay for me which is nice).

I wonder if maybe this could be addressed in future updates. I am not struggling with micromanagement yet but my paper has only 3 pages - I can imagine the mess that will happen with more.

[Pinstar]

I think it has to do with who has free space. If the nearest assembler already is working on an article but another, more distant, assembler has no articles at that moment, the article will make the journey to the more distant assembler. This can happen if your typesetters have a higher effective skill than your assemblers.

[Kellamity]

Originally posted by Pinstar:

I think it has to do with who has free space. If the nearest assembler already is working on an article but another, more distant, assembler has no articles at that moment, the article will make the journey to the more distant assembler. This can happen if your typesetters have a higher effective skill than your assemblers.

I thought so as well, but verified multiple times that when more than one is free they will choose at sort of random instead the closest. Same with reporters - they sometimes won't deliver to the closest free typesetter.
Not a big deal for now, but I smell chaos later.

P.S. I plan to test this issue against different floors because sometimes it seems like they prefer stations on higher ones.

[Sparrow Night]

Just creeping in the back ground.
Curious about your finds
Always looking to improve ai

[Kellamity]

Okay so I spend one whole week observing what they are doing and ummm.. I didn't expect some of the findings (I don't count any of them as bugs or gamebreaking, more like suspicious or funny). Setup: typesetter lvl8 + assembler lvl7 in one room on floor 1 (or 0, but I look at it as first available), typesetter lvl6 + assembler lvl5 on floor 2 and typesetter lvl8 + assembler lvl7 on floor 4 (just to spice things up). It went like this:
1st reporter went to typesetter on floor 4 and article stayed there
2nd reporter went to floor 2, then typesetter went to floor 1 (I don't know why, guy next to him was free)
Then I added 1 ad to the mix, it went to floor 1, then floor 4 (sales are on floor 4, typesetter was free at that time)
3rd reporter floor 4 -> floor 1
4th reporter floor 2 -> floor 1 (this was the first article carried by supply guy, I suspect he can't wait for prints to read the stories as he carried multiple between the floors)
5th reporter floor 1 -> floor 4
6th reporter floor 4 -> floor 2 (understandable, because around this time all other were busy)
7th reporter floor 2 -> floor 4
8th reporter floor 1 -> floor 1 because asembly guy took it from typesetter table on his own!
9th reporter floor 4 -> floor 2
10th reporter floor 4 -> floor 4 again asembly gal intervention
11th reporter floor 2 -> floor 1
Most of the time according to my knowledge more than 1 station was available, and if asembly worker took article then it was from the same floor. I have no idea how they choose where to go but I can't stress this enough - It's not making the game worse by any means for me.

[HazardHeadline]

In my last playthrough I just placed all typesetters on the first floor and all assemblers on the second one. I could fit 4 in an layout of large bin + typesetter + large bin + bonus shelf + large bin + typesetter + large bin. Probably not the optimal layout, since as you said, placing them in pairs could be more efficient, but I valued reporter delivery time first.

[Rusteve]

How about having pneumatic tubes as an upgrade option to speed up movement between floors?

[Kellamity]

Originally posted by Rusteve:

How about having pneumatic tubes as an upgrade option to speed up movement between floors?

Uuuuu, that would be so cool!

[Sparrow Night]

Originally posted by Rusteve:

How about having pneumatic tubes as an upgrade option to speed up movement between floors?

Omg did you see our future secret plans :D

hehe yes this is going to come to the game and something we planned to do from the beginning. But likely not in the first bigger update other fish to fry first.

But this would bring a totally new element to the game and makes for lots of layout
rethinking. Will be fun.

[Sparrow Night]

Originally posted by Kellamity:

Okay so I spend one whole week observing what they are doing and ummm.. I didn't expect some of the findings (I don't count any of them as bugs or gamebreaking, more like suspicious or funny). Setup: typesetter lvl8 + assembler lvl7 in one room on floor 1 (or 0, but I look at it as first available), typesetter lvl6 + assembler lvl5 on floor 2 and typesetter lvl8 + assembler lvl7 on floor 4 (just to spice things up). It went like this:
1st reporter went to typesetter on floor 4 and article stayed there
2nd reporter went to floor 2, then typesetter went to floor 1 (I don't know why, guy next to him was free)
Then I added 1 ad to the mix, it went to floor 1, then floor 4 (sales are on floor 4, typesetter was free at that time)
3rd reporter floor 4 -> floor 1
4th reporter floor 2 -> floor 1 (this was the first article carried by supply guy, I suspect he can't wait for prints to read the stories as he carried multiple between the floors)
5th reporter floor 1 -> floor 4
6th reporter floor 4 -> floor 2 (understandable, because around this time all other were busy)
7th reporter floor 2 -> floor 4
8th reporter floor 1 -> floor 1 because asembly guy took it from typesetter table on his own!
9th reporter floor 4 -> floor 2
10th reporter floor 4 -> floor 4 again asembly gal intervention
11th reporter floor 2 -> floor 1
Most of the time according to my knowledge more than 1 station was available, and if asembly worker took article then it was from the same floor. I have no idea how they choose where to go but I can't stress this enough - It's not making the game worse by any means for me.

Really interesting. Going to share it with the team tomorrow.

[Jinkeez]

This is just a notion, I haven't done any cool experiments or anything, but as I've been playing, I think I've been generally noticing that articles head toward the desk with EITHER the highest Idle Time (ie, if there is an idle Typesetter, the article goes to them; if there are two idle Typesetters, the article goes to the one who has been waiting the longest), OR the lowest Time-to-Idle (ie, if all typesetters are working, the article will go to the desk of the typesetter who will finish their current task first).

I think this also factors into which idle worker will move the article to its next station (ie, if the Supply Clerk has been idling longer than the Assembler, when the article becomes "free" at the Typesetter's desk, the Supply Clerk will "claim" the article, and move it to the Assembler's desk, rather than the Assembler going to pick it up from the Typesetter's desk -- even if the Supply Clerk is further away).

[Lancival]

I also agree this worker AI needs improvement. It's really frustrating to watch a typesetter insist on carrying a slug to a backlogged assembler on the opposite side of the building when the guy he's working next is reading a newspaper, waiting to work on another slug.

Tangentially related, but it would be nice to be able to assign sweepers to certain floors. Currently, the sweepers end up grouping up and running up and down floors to each paper mess. If they split up and just stayed around their assigned floor, messes would be cleaned up much more quickly.

[Kellamity]

Originally posted by Lancival:

I also agree this worker AI needs improvement. It's really frustrating to watch a typesetter insist on carrying a slug to a backlogged assembler on the opposite side of the building when the guy he's working next is reading a newspaper, waiting to work on another slug.

Tangentially related, but it would be nice to be able to assign sweepers to certain floors. Currently, the sweepers end up grouping up and running up and down floors to each paper mess. If they split up and just stayed around their assigned floor, messes would be cleaned up much more quickly.

I don't think AI should be improved much. I'm launching a game to interact with it and if everything is perfectly optimized then all I have to do is click on the map to choose articles and then drag them into the printing press (yes, I hate idle games). I enjoy fixing up the mess my little employees are doing and improving the article ratio by dragging material around.
What I would want is for the player to have more ways to intervene e.g. if I drag a sweeper to a paper mess they should start cleaning this particular mess, not others on the same floor (something similar is in Two Point Hospital).

[Nukra]

Originally posted by Sparrow Night:

Just creeping in the back ground.
Curious about your finds
Always looking to improve ai

I also have a problem with my Supply worker, he needs to relief on the toilet and eat, but no matter what he is not prioritizing filling up his needs. the AI should act the lower the need are getting, the more priority should get replenishing it, regardless of what current work he is doing.

Currently, that doesn't seem to be the case, instead worker only replenish their need when they idle ?

[Beloega]

Originally posted by Nukra:

Originally posted by Sparrow Night:

Just creeping in the back ground.
Curious about your finds
Always looking to improve ai

I also have a problem with my Supply worker, he needs to relief on the toilet and eat, but no matter what he is not prioritizing filling up his needs. the AI should act the lower the need are getting, the more priority should get replenishing it, regardless of what current work he is doing.

Currently, that doesn't seem to be the case, instead worker only replenish their need when they idle ?

This should be fixed with next patch!

[Lancival]

Originally posted by Kellamity:

Originally posted by Lancival:

I also agree this worker AI needs improvement. It's really frustrating to watch a typesetter insist on carrying a slug to a backlogged assembler on the opposite side of the building when the guy he's working next is reading a newspaper, waiting to work on another slug.

Tangentially related, but it would be nice to be able to assign sweepers to certain floors. Currently, the sweepers end up grouping up and running up and down floors to each paper mess. If they split up and just stayed around their assigned floor, messes would be cleaned up much more quickly.

I don't think AI should be improved much. I'm launching a game to interact with it and if everything is perfectly optimized then all I have to do is click on the map to choose articles and then drag them into the printing press (yes, I hate idle games). I enjoy fixing up the mess my little employees are doing and improving the article ratio by dragging material around.
What I would want is for the player to have more ways to intervene e.g. if I drag a sweeper to a paper mess they should start cleaning this particular mess, not others on the same floor (something similar is in Two Point Hospital).

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. The parts of the game I enjoy most are deciding how to allocate my reporters and laying out the newspaper, not pausing constantly to drag sweepers to messes, dragging reporters to deliver their finished reports sooner, and dragging crates to resupply stations. If you enjoy this sort of thing, you can probably get away with not hiring a resupply person and only having 1 sweeper, but for everyone else who doesn't want to spend inordinate amounts of time dragging things around, it would be nice if the employees didn't waste most of their time walking around.