Is it better to build colony in small clusters ?

[PY5RA]

Cluster of some beds, some services, and workplace. And copy & paste em around the map ?

Or how do you plan your colony with good work efficiency.

[glass zebra]

It really depend what you are aiming for and possibly also how your map generated. Some resources spawns can not be reallocated. If can definitely make smaller production chain areas with shared chests and then have hygiene and joy around (never saw much reason for all the beds nearby), but then you have to take care that the service workers there are also in the range of another service point, so unless you want to put down 2 services of the same type into every one of those clusters, you might put those work areas rather close together anyway.

Another way is have a recreation area near your food/necessity area, since Ratizens will go there every day for food (not necessarily every day for necessities unless you have various), they can then spend the time there to get some recreation. It very much depends on how much you want to buff them or if you just want to fulfill joy/hygiene/food, since Ratizens do try to prioritise keeping buffs up over doing the same joy/hygiene activity (unless they don't see others when the need arises).

It also depends on how many Ratizens you want to have in your city. If you only have a few, you can have pretty much everything almost on the same screen or 2 screens. If you have a ton you might need to make clusters or overlap/puzzle and even then you will probably end up with a lot of running due to necessities and food.

[Crow]

i recommend spreading sleeping quarters as you gotta consider they consume resources such as food/energy etc. the further they travel so build sleeping quarter areas in small groups spread out evenly.

that will secure that you can re-alocate for different jobs if need but also that if an area is overrun or a criminal spreads their ill behavior you dont risk mass spread easily or loss of all areas at once.

[PY5RA]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Problem I have is rats walk from work to sleep, then back to work, then back to toilet, back to work, then back to recreation, then etc etc...

Is it time I set schedule ??

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by AD3DA:

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Problem I have is rats walk from work to sleep, then back to work, then back to toilet, back to work, then back to recreation, then etc etc...

Is it time I set schedule ??

You can make toilets basically next to the work place and the bed only needs to be used once each day or less (if you don't do schedules). Did you build your base very spread horizontally? If you only do very little horizontal spread and mostly build vertically, they can use the very fast elevator to get around. E.g. having some sleeping quarters in the bottom of your base should not really take much time out of their day.

To be honest I have not played with the new shared beds yet, so those could be an option. Toilets can be shared on the workplace and most joy services have more than 1 slot and take just a short time to use, so at least the old beds where the thing that took the most space per Ratizens and did not really seem super good to put into your base (unless you put them at the horizontal edge of the workplace I guess).

If you have a ton of Ratizens and a giant base, even the elevator ride can take rather long though. Schedules bring their own issues, since Ratizens need to have the right need thresholds in those times and recreation workers also need some time of, which should not overlap with the need time of other Ratizens. Imo it brings more problems than solutions unless you already know rather well how to handle your base and Ratizen needs.

[PY5RA]

I see. Thanks for the suggestions. I will move the beds further out and put the recreations closer then.

[Red Bat]

There's 2 recommended "optimal" strategies. Although depending on what you want to focus on, you might want to try something else.

1. Build a multilevel base in units, with beds built right next to a ratizen's work area, a toilet on every level and a joy building on every other level. Storage buildings should be near the center and there should be a central elevator. One level should have a storage that only stores food, right next to a few tables. Ideally joy buildings would be close to the elevator to cut on travel time. This mostly minimizes travel time and keeps everything as compact as possible. This is usually what I do.

2. The second is to split your base up a bit, with beds being in some central area and work areas being split up on either side but on the same level as the corresponding ratizen's bed, with joy buildings and toilets in between the work areas and the beds. In roughly the exact center floor and between levels of beds, make a food storage with some tables. This means more travel time between beds and work areas but you can reduce the radius of your joy buildings and effectively optimize travel to those areas. Also means your rats will bunch up around the bed area at around the same time making tax collection easier. Also ends up looking a bit nicer than the borderline cubicle farm that the above strategy ends up looking like.

The problem then becomes how to optimize storage, because even if you cut travel time between beds and work areas, or either and joy buildings, you still have to deal with travel time between storage and work areas. You can eventually fix this by adding a mini storage to each level that only stores the most relevant materials for the nearby work areas, but it's kind of a pain.

There's also some ratizen jobs that don't involve them working in the same area all the time (hunter for example). Those work buildings don't really have to be placed anywhere near the ratizen's corresponding bed. You can try to optimize it a little bit by making like a mini community around them with toilets, joy buildings, etc, or you can just make them run back to where the rest of your rats work and just plop down an extra bed for them somewhere if you end up with extra space but not enough for anything optimized.

[PY5RA]

Hmmmm, even if I build storage with food everywhere, it's not like food gonna be there... Unless I use extensive Porters, or spread out the farms and stuff.

The ratizen limit kinda makes things more complicated.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by AD3DA:

Hmmmm, even if I build storage with food everywhere, it's not like food gonna be there... Unless I use extensive Porters, or spread out the farms and stuff.

The ratizen limit kinda makes things more complicated.

Well you can set a storage chest that only takes food (well food items you've already discovered), and you can disallow other storage chests from having food. Any new food items will be brought to your food storage chest. It's gonna take a bit of micromanagement, but it's doable in a way that you can have ratizens consistently go to a food storage chest next to tables to grab food and then eat it at the tables. It's not a big deal if the food storage chest also ends up holding a few non-food items as you discover them, just as long as it's the main location your rats bring food to. In fact if you build the food storage in the center of your base like I recommend, having it hold a few non food items might actually be close to optimal as the travel time between there and workstations should be fairly low anyway.

The storage system takes a bit of micromanagement. But unless the map generates in a very unfortunate way you can technically get by without porters. Although once you have a lot of storage chests you can use porters to move things around between them to save a little time even if you've managed to condense everything a bit.

You could also put all your storage chests in one central area if you want so you don't need porters at all. It's a little less travel and space efficient than just having specific mini storage chests near workstations, but it's more resource efficient than building a bunch of storage chests and then setting them to only allow a few item types. Granted I've never done this, but it's an option if you want to try it. If you do this I'd make sure there's elevators leading to the storage chests.

I don't know exactly to what extent optimizing a base layout is important so long as you don't make a giant mess with excessive travel times. So I wouldn't fret too much if there's some inefficiency. I usually don't optimize storage at all beyond having a dedicated food chest. It gets to be a lot of work and micromanagement if you want a bunch of storage chests that only carry the most relevant items of the closest workstations.

[PY5RA]

I will see what I can do yeah. Too much optimization definitely seems like a pain indeed.

Thanks for the help and the insight.

[Hex]

i build around the chest,, then the beds on the edge of the city. i really like the new religious tents tho, dont need a billion bunk beds anymore

like yeah i COULD strategize to have the bunk beds near where each rat is working but that just feels like a pain so i dont bother.