How do you automate mining?

[Jack Niggleson]

I finally have a working base set up, but I can't seem to figure this out. How do I get two of my guys into a routine where one mines stone while the other picks it up and takes it to the processor? I assigned them both the proper jobs but half the time one or both of them just stands there with his thumb up his ass and I wind up having to micro manage everything.

I kind of want to build a gigantic city-base eventually and if I have to drag and drop every peice of stone and building material into multiple inventories myself a stack at a time, it's going to be a massive pain in the ass.

[LazMon]

Shift-click to make it a job and you should be able to see it the character's JOB list. Mining raw stone then turn it into building materials will require a Stone Mine and a Stone Processor which both at early levels requires characters to function.

Shift-click the Stone Mine will create a JOB for the character to work it till it is full capacity (10) then it will unload them into a storage or Stone Processor.

Shift-click the Stone Processor will create a JOB for the character to look for available Raw Stone either in storages or Stone Mine and work on the Stone Processor.

Is this how you set it up?

[Pyracles]

There are many problems with the "jobs" system, any of which can cause the problem you are having:

1) You need inventory space for a character to pick up stuff and move it to another machine. This is the most common problem I have for someone standing idle when they should be working.

2) If you have two or more guys working the same machine, it is very common for both to pick up something to feed a machine that only needs 1 of the something. This regularly leads to someone filling their inventory which leads to problem 1) above. I wish the devs would fix this so before someone picks something up for a machine, it would check if someone else was already carrying something to it. Sadly it doesn't.

3) Engineers often collect 2 of something when they only need 1 to finish building something, this again leads to problem 1). They really ought to only pick up no more than they need for the thing they are building. Sadly it doesn't.

4) When upgrading a machine, people working the machine will also try to obtain materials to upgrade it. I've had as many as 4 characters all trying to grab stuff to upgrade a machine, most of which ended up with stuff they could not use, and no where to put it, because of course someone else has already replenished the material from where they obtained it before I noticed the problem. This also leads to problem 1) but would be fixed if they only fixed 3)

5) Placing machines too close to each other sometimes causes problems. The game can be very bad at pathing between the machines, and there are some places near machines that look close but in fact are not exactly the right spot to work the machine. The character looks like he should be working the machine but his goal is showing "aimless". You can test if this is the problem by making the character move to a different side of the machine and seeing if he then moves back and starts working it.

6) Related to 5) but where you do have lots of room. Sometimes the characters will unluckily have a path between a machine and stuff they are collecting from or delivering to it which just doesn't seem to work. I had a case where someone was walking between a box in a building and a metal plate machine, but his path took him exactly to a corner of that machine where he got stuck on the machine without being able to operate it. I had to fix that problem by building a storage container directly in his path. This deflected him enough that he no longer got stuck in the corner of the machine he was trying to reach

This game would be so much better if only they fixed all of the above issues and pathing in general

[Papasaurus Rex]

^^
Make sure the Job option is also turned on.

[Jack Niggleson]

Originally posted by Pyracles:

5) Placing machines too close to each other sometimes causes problems. The game can be very bad at pathing between the machines, and there are some places near machines that look close but in fact are not exactly the right spot to work the machine. The character looks like he should be working the machine but his goal is showing "aimless". You can test if this is the problem by making the character move to a different side of the machine and seeing if he then moves back and starts working it.

6) Related to 5) but where you do have lots of room. Sometimes the characters will unluckily have a path between a machine and stuff they are collecting from or delivering to it which just doesn't seem to work. I had a case where someone was walking between a box in a building and a metal plate machine, but his path took him exactly to a corner of that machine where he got stuck on the machine without being able to operate it. I had to fix that problem by building a storage container directly in his path. This deflected him enough that he no longer got stuck in the corner of the machine he was trying to reach

This game would be so much better if only they fixed all of the above issues and pathing in general

It might be one of these. The processor is pretty snug between the wall of a building and another half-built processor. I'm still not sure why the miners would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up though. When I take another crack at it tonight I'll try reloading an earlier save and shuffling the machinery/mines around.