Aimless engineers bug

[TVPR]

I'm running latest version, no mods. I've searched around and seen this reported by several others, but nobody seems to know how to fix it. For me this started yesterday. Can't really make out what triggered it, but I did add a fair few things to the construction queue, including heaps of spotlights, lighted Crossbow MKII's and lighted Harpoon MKII's, a wall which intersected a piece of terrain quite heavily, and I dismantled a few basic Crossbow turrets as well.

Problem: My engineers won't work. When reloading a game, they'll stand around stating "Engineering" is their current objective, but they're doing nothing. If I give them any manual order, they'll do it, and then revert to "Aimless".

If the order I give is to build something, and they have materials in their inventories, they will add materials as normal, then build as normal, and then one of two things happens:
1: Either they finish building the thing, and move on to the next thing they're supposed to build. They will then add materials and start building. At some point though, this will lead to the other thing which can happen:
2: Or, the thing they were building needs more materials, in which case they will run to the closest relevant storage container, pick up some materials, and revert to being Aimless. They'll literally just hang around with required materials in their inventories and do nothing.

Both have plenty of free inventory space and backpacks, and needed materials are abundant in nearby storage boxes. None of the "ordinary" quick-fixes seem to work.

[Morkonan]

Does this only happen when you have a lot of items que'd up for Engineering? Will it happen with just two buildings/items, for instance?

I've seen this happen when a character that is, one supposes, targeting a Job but can't do it for some reason, usually because they have no more room in their pack for the required materials. They'll still be assigned to that task and, for some reason, other characters will stop until that one character gets "fixed" by being forced to dump inventory.

Can they reach what they're supposed to be building? CTRL SHIFT F11 can help as well as going into the in-game editor with SHIFT F12 and clicking on "Fix Stuff" and then exiting without saving (IMPORTANT) can help, too. (I know, it's an ordinary quick fix, but had to mention it just in case.)

Lastly, there have been some reports of some workers not working due to a Gate being closed, even if they don't have to go through the Gate to get to where they need to work. Solutions have been to either open the offending Gate or, unintuitively, to build a second gate somewhere else in the base and always leave it open. The second gate does not have to be connected to anything... :) (Dunno if this is fixed yet or not.)

ie: In before "Post a link to your zipped-up saved game files" :) But, you may as well do that if you want the devs to actually look to see where the problem is and if it's a real "Bug" to be squished or not.

[TVPR]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Does this only happen when you have a lot of items que'd up for Engineering? Will it happen with just two buildings/items, for instance?

I've seen this happen when a character that is, one supposes, targeting a Job but can't do it for some reason, usually because they have no more room in their pack for the required materials. They'll still be assigned to that task and, for some reason, other characters will stop until that one character gets "fixed" by being forced to dump inventory.

Can they reach what they're supposed to be building? CTRL SHIFT F11 can help as well as going into the in-game editor with SHIFT F12 and clicking on "Fix Stuff" and then exiting without saving (IMPORTANT) can help, too. (I know, it's an ordinary quick fix, but had to mention it just in case.)

Lastly, there have been some reports of some workers not working due to a Gate being closed, even if they don't have to go through the Gate to get to where they need to work. Solutions have been to either open the offending Gate or, unintuitively, to build a second gate somewhere else in the base and always leave it open. The second gate does not have to be connected to anything... :) (Dunno if this is fixed yet or not.)

ie: In before "Post a link to your zipped-up saved game files" :) But, you may as well do that if you want the devs to actually look to see where the problem is and if it's a real "Bug" to be squished or not.

Thank you! I tried a bunch of things, and finally resolved it - my workers are back to work, at last. I think the whole thing was caused by one of the following:
- One of my rarely-used outer gates had taken a single point of damage. As the inner gate was closed, the engineers couldn't get to it to repair.
- I had ordered building of stuff really far apart, and as my base spans a HUGE chunk of land, these build orders were considered to be outside the base area (different landscape cell or whatever) but simultaneously relevant to the engineers since it was inside settlement territory.

[barenski]

it happened to me to, i think i saved and loaded and it was ok, but im not certain, but i had aimless engineers and even right clicking on w/e being built dint make them do it