Automated Colony world - New, unemployed, but has jobs available! Help please?

[Wryson Rose]

So, I'm not sure what's going on here, so I would appreciate some help.

Basics: New game. First colony established.

90% Habitability
15 current districts available (17 total - 2 from kelp not yet researched)
4 population currently (1 unemployed)

The Colony is set to automatically build as necessary.
The Planets and Sectors screen is set to build as necessary with a balanced approach.
Shared Stockpile is currently 5k available.

Why am I having to fight this thing to do anything? In theory, it should have ZERO unemployment, and be growin' like a weed, right? Granted, the population will not go nuts, and i expect that (immigration is currently rather low at a pull of +7.

Any help would be appreciated. For the moment, I'm stumped. I don't want to start on a new colony until this one is growing, but with it at a standstill, I'm foundering here.

Edit: Planet Deficit is currently: -3 Power, -1 Food, -3 Consumer Goods. I realize that it's consuming more then it produces, but wouldn't that be a solid REASON for the colony to...I dunno....BUILD SOMETHING? :D

[coolman552]

first turn off automation because it sucks

second make sure to remove every job priority on the planet since it sometimes somehow restricts a job from being worked on and lifting it fixes the problem

[Wryson Rose]

I have zero job priorities set. None. As for the automation...uhm, I'm not sure wht I'm doin' as yet, so I figured to let the system do its own thing for a bit, and study it. The automation sucks THAT badly?

[Wryson Rose]

Waait a minute. So let me verify something as well. When I'm looking at the PLANET screen, I have the option to AUTOMATE productin (the gear with the arrow circling) or turning Automation OFF (the hand with the wrench).

Why is it when i click the WRENCH icon, to turn automation OFF.,..it starts to automatically try to build things...

What in hell is goin' on here?

[coolman552]

in sectors and planets just set every auto build to disable
in the planet screen always keep it off also wtf is going on with ur game lol

anyway youll just wanna build things on ur own since autmation is ♥♥♥♥ game is easy anyway youll figure everything out quick watch a fast tutorial

[Wryson Rose]

While looking at the planetary screen for building structures, I'm seeing the two icons for automation.

The first is the gear, with the two arrows circling. That says "click to turn ON automation" The other is Click to turn OFF automation."

However, when you click the OFF, it builds things on its onw. I'm not sure what's goin' on.

[Asmodan]

You have the Sector automation in the Sector Screen, this will control autobuilding for all Planets in the Sector. Then you have the Autobuilding on each Planet, if you turn it off the Sector autobuild will control what is build, if you turn it on the Planet Autobuild will override the Sector autobuild. You need to set a Buildpreference for the Planet (in the PLanetscreen) as you set it for the Sector.

[Azor]

Unemployment when there's jobs available can happen there's chattel slaves, robots or droids, who can't take certain jobs, OR jobs not updating immediately. If the latter is case, you can wait a month OR set priority to a certain job which will force it to update, and then, if you want, deprioritize.

[Wryson Rose]

I've set both the sector and the planetary up, I think, correctly.

Sector is set to Balanced build.

The first colony now has six population, is set to Automation on
The Colony designation is also set to automatically be set (currently refinery world)

For a bit there, I was thinking the toggles were reverse-toggles.

IE, you click the button to *disable* that option, and the one that ISN'T clicked, is thereby on.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

Any form of automation is just not a good idea. The feature is unreliable and when it does work the results are worthless. The best you will get out of it is ruined planets and a ruined economy. If you want to actually succeed at the game you will need to learn to manage everything yourself.

The litmus test for automation is AI performance. Right now the forum is full of threads about how the AI is so terrible at playing the game, and the reason it is terrible is that properly developing planets and an empire is a problem that is beyond the capability of the game to solve. If you ever start seeing a bunch of threads about how it is suddenly so difficult to compete with the AI because its economy is impossible to match (and the reason is AI improvements, not increased AI bonuses), then that would be the time to give automation a try.