Weapon durability/repair is an issue

[jorvinn]

When a tool goes bad, your workers drop the broken one off and pick up a new one.. not so with weapons.. then they just lug their broken weapon around.. or sometimes in a blue moon drop them off at a crafting station they are manning.. and then just run away every time there is a fight.

There is no way to assign a worker to repair - at least not in the most-of-tier-2 tech I have researched - so that is an irksome micro management issue in a system that seems to revolve around making the player _not_ do a thing when a worker can fill that role.

On a side node.. it would be nice to be able to assign archers to the front/archers to the back in the companion formation.. loadout does not matter in how the formation is formed.. I think it is formed by alphabetical order of the first name of the workers.. or it looks like that at first glance.

Your only "tactics" is making your companions hold.. or making them charge.. and making them hold while they block the line of sight of your own archers is.. less than optimal. As is not making your archer/quiver equipped workers top up their arrows automatically.. they tend to leave all their quivers, arrows and bows at the hunter hut.. even if only two workers can be assigned to it at any given time.

But I realize this is early access, and I only gripe because this game has huge potential. I am really liking most of it - aside from the time scale, and whatever super bacteria plagues the produce.. ;)

[Muladas]

Have you used multiple squads?
Press O, then click add squad.
For each squad you form, click the person icon, then the pen to rename so you can keep them straight.

Within the specific squad click the recruit button or hit esc to go back the the squad list and click the + sign in the squad window. This brings up a list of villagers and shows their martial skills.

Click on their line to place them in the current squad. Villagers already in a squad will have the squad name on the far right of the line (clicking on them moves them to the current squad).

Have a chest with just arrows and bows. Pick the archer squad (use middle mouse button to cycle through squads), press E and move the flag onto the chest (it should say 'interact with warehouse') and left click. They will grab a bow (if thy do not have a melee weapon and if the chest does not contain any melee weapons) and grad a stack of arrows if they have none (if they have a quiver, they put the arrows there, otherwise the arrows just go in inventory. They will NOT grab arrows if they already have even 1 arrow though, and they will grab a bow even if there are no arrows to pick up).

Looking at the squad, there is a button where you can set their equipment priorities. The default is a question mark which is for 'pick best weapon with their highest attribute.' The other 2 options are to pick best melee weapon and to pick best ranged weapon - BUT this does NOT SEEM TO WORK. I set them to ranged weapon, exit the squad, reenter and see the choice reset to the question mark, and the question mark always picks a 1 hand melee weapon unless there are none (at a guess, bows do not display a damage number which melee weapons do so they pick the highest damage weapon maybe regardless of attribute score)

Using a chest with shields in it and having the squad interact with the chest will get them to equip the shields. Getting them to interact with a chest with food should get them to eat up to 3 food items (if available) although I'm not sure if this works 100% since I have done it and found some villagers with less than 3 food buffs after doing so (did not see if they ran out of different foods, or if something else happened).

edit: ok i've been trying and though I had read elsewhere that they would top themselves off with 3 meals from interacting with a storage spot with food, but I could not get them to eat that way :(