Forced inefficiencies are killing it for me. Any advice, please?

[dergefata]

For starters, managing Blight. Even with everything but plant cutting turned off, the pawns still want to go harvest some hay halfway across the map rather than deal with the blight right next to them, so unless I just want to wash my hands of my entire field, it's manual control for every single blighted stalk. There must be a better way. Anyone know one?

Hauling is so bad it makes my teeth ache. I set up shelves in the kitchen to hold one ingredient type each, but as soon as one shelf gets empty, it's back to hauling a single ingredient at a time rather than a restock and profound efficiency improvement. A pawn will pick up stackable_A x6 and carry it right past stackable_A x34 without combining them and saving a trip (this is always the case only when delivering to a partial stack in storage, though, so the failure is in destination choosing, I suppose). This can't be release AI. Is there some clever setting that makes this better?

Clean rooms that have a dedicated role given by the game UI which clearly benefits from higher cleanliness won't prompt pawns to auto-clean them. There's no reason a cook should just wade into a pit of offal to make a souffle when they can tidy up the ropes of rotting intestine first; similarly, the researcher should spare two seconds to unclutter the room before spending two days learning how to tell jokes to an AI. I'm a little more tolerant of the hospital since it's always pretty close to highest-priority when someone comes in. But, honestly; space-age tech, interstellar travel, and nobody invented a Roomba? There must be a better way. Anybody got one?

There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to force_high_priority for a sequence of tasks or an area; say you really need to get your harvest in immediately, for some reason. It seems there should be a way to drag out a rectangle and say, "Do this now even if your damn feet are on fire". Requiring each individual pawn to be manually microed for each individual task is the sort of thing no programmer could ever think was a good idea. I must be missing something. What is it?

Pawns will wear tattered clothing and complain bitterly when there's perfectly good stuff in the stockpiles, but maybe it doesn't have the same defensive stats - they'll cling to that starting synthweave T-shirt until it rots off them and ignore the cloth button-down shirts waiting to be worn. Manually forcing them to put something on then locks it to them until it's manually dropped or swapped out again. This level of micro is ridiculous. What's the fix?

Is this really just a tiny little Bethesda-wannabe release? "Here's a steaming pile of framework. Mod it up until it doesn't suck so hard." Or am I just missing some highly useful tricks and tips?

[BlackSmokeDMax]

For the blight: Make a zone for them in just that area. Assign them to that zone with Plant cutting set higher than Growing. Should be quick work.

For clothes: Adjust their clothing assignments. Early game I leave it alone, but shortly in, I just raise the minimum level of clothing they are allowed to wear. Increase that as your clothing production improves.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

For the blight: Make a zone for them in just that area. Assign them to that zone with Plant cutting set higher than Growing. Should be quick work.

Zone control. That sounds like a really good idea. Thank you for that.

[Stormsong]

Right first up, get yourself the Allow Tool. Yes it's a mod, hopefully you're not one of the people who melt into a runny paste when even looking upon a mod. We have a few of those on this board. Among a number of other things it has a haul urgently feature. It's basically a separate haul job, set much farther left than the default one and has its own key. I set Haul+ as it's called to 1 on everyone who can do it, no exceptions. Then come harvest time, picking up trade items time, or looting raiders. I mark all those things for urgent hauling. Then the entire colony, unless quite literally bleeding out in the hospital asking the gods that be to end it all, drop what they're doing and haul until the job is done. Lovely.

For blights, make a zone around your fields and only your fields, and then for most of the game you can ignore this zone. When blights come, assign everyone who can cut to it. And mark the blighted plants to be dealt with. They will not leave the zone unless they mentally snap and your blight will be dealt with just be sure to let them loose again afterwards.

For cleaning, I hire on a lackey pawn. 1 per ~7 people seems to be a good number. If they can do other things great, but I really only need them able to pick up a duster. Pawns that I might otherwise turn away for being grossly untalented may make good lackeys so long as they can still do dumb labor. Old war vets with eyes blasted out or missing fingers also fill the role well. Just set cleaning as a 1 for these people. If they have other jobs great make them 2 or below. Crusading against dust and detritus is the purpose of their lives.

For clothing, make friends with the outfit bills under... assign, I believe, not at the computer atm. Anyway set the bill how you like but most importantly change the minimum on the slider at the top to 50%. When a piece of clothing on someone assigned to that bill hit <51% they will take it off the next time they're not bedridden and off duty. If a replacement is available they'll take that, if not they'll complain to you about being naked - something that should be easy for you to fix.

I may have missed some stuff but this should help with most of it.

[Tekel1959]

When there are certain incidents that I simply dont get or that bring no enjoyment to my game play, I simply prevent them from occuring. I have a starting template that forbids everything - and I remove/allow the restrictions I want for a given playthrough, rather than the reverse. Far less tedious. It used to be alphabeavers that I hated, but it is quickly becoming blight lol.

The suggestions above are great. I will add that outfits should be gradually pushed from 50-100% to ~85-100% as you get mending in place - it also helps to have a "spare" repaired outfit lying close by that can be a ready swap when a pawn feels the urge to swap worn for repaired..

[dergefata]

Wish I could mark you both. Thanks for the tips. I've been playing unmodded but I'm not opposed to mods, just usually like to try to figure out the game without mods first, then see what's out there to make it better/more fun for what I want. I'll certainly try that Allow tool. Sounds very helpful.

There are still several options I haven't learned properly, and you're both quite right that the clothing problem is PEBKAC since I didn't go in an clear forced and set up a durability filter. Got to go do that next time.

Guess I have to waste a pawn on cleaning duty. If I could do placeholder art, I'd try to mod in a charging station and a "not-a-Roomba-for-any-legal-purposes" constructable. Maybe a project for end of year down time.

Thanks for the help. The game certainly does seem to warrant its glowing reviews; I just need to learn how to do All The Things mo' betta.

[snuggleform]

I never had the trouble you described with blight. When blight hits, I pause the game, everyone who has plant cutting as a job I set to priority 1 (manual control), I use the cut plant architect tool I just drag out a huge rectangle. Also, I disallow sowing in the areas with blight so they finish cutting before sowing again. I have no idea why your pawns would be harvesting hay since harvesting hay is a "grow" job not a cut plant job.

Clothes -> click assign or restrict or whatever it is then I edit the worker outfit and change the acceptable durability range to 51-100%. No micromanagement at all necessary.

The rest of your concerns are perhaps valid but perhaps you are making too big a deal for efficiency. As the base gets bigger I have one or two guys put haul on higher priority and one guy on clean. On smaller teams if I have too much stuff lying around I'll have everyone do hauling for a day or two and things usually get sorted out fine. I do have to micromanage cleaning up blood in the hospital after a huge fight when I have like 10 wounded soldiers bleeding everywhere, and as far as hauling every once in a while I do find myself having to tell people to manually haul certain weapons/items before they degrade, but I think there are bigger issues with the game.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by dergefata:

Guess I have to waste a pawn on cleaning duty. If I could do placeholder art, I'd try to mod in a charging station and a "not-a-Roomba-for-any-legal-purposes" constructable. Maybe a project for end of year down time.

Already been done. =p

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=724602224

[Immortalits]

For me, dust cleaning is done by 1 out of 10 pawns at start as priority along with some other jobs, then this glorius job gets earned by the resercher, when everything is reserched.
Initially, the trader-medic-drug crafter colonist does this for me.

For dealing with blight, either tilt it from scenario editor before you start the game or create (which you inevitably should in the lategame) greenhouses with sunlamps in the middle, separated by walls and a door, prefferably spread around your base.
I personally do it in a way so my ~square base has 4 entrances in the middle of each side, and these greenhouse sections are in between the 'square corners and the entrances... kitchen is at a corner, so I can set up at least 2 realy close so harvested corn gets in the fridges with minimal haul time.
Get a good haul mod.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1279012058&searchtext=haul

I'm using this one.

Use the tools you have, set up job priority manually every time, baseline one just sucks hard.
Prefferably you should have some with high/first priority haul, and clean, for haul, you could even use more than just one colonist.
For job priority, I'm using complex jobs mod to better spread out things.

In case of sowing/harvesting, I like to have at least 2 capable pawn, both set to harvest-1 sow-2, cut-1, so they harvest-cut-sow and ignore later ones until there are anything to do in the higher priority places.
For cooking, I'm using a cook-1, butcher-2 priority and a separate pawn with butcher-1, cook-2 just in case the other is downed ater a raid or something and somehow my food storages are dwindling because of a mirracle.

[kevinshow]

I handle blight pretty quickly the same way you described, so maybe there is something else you have set. For example, I have 4-6 colonists with 1 on Plant Cut. When blight happens, I select to cut the plants, and then those 4-6 colonists take care of things right away.

Hauling issues happen if you have too many tasks going on. That is hard to control since obviously, our colonies should have lots of things going on.

But it is doable, so have some dedicated haulers, or reduce the number of tasks going on.

[Myriad]

The 'Allow Tool' mod is indispensable when it comes to harvests. I have the same problem with crops. If left alone, everything would deteriorate before they got around to hauling it. But now I just click 'haul urgently'and it's done.

Blight can be a real pain. Even with zones you have to click each individual plant to designate it for cutting, and stay there clicking as it spreads. I hate it. I have huge fields and keeping on top of blight when it happens is A LOT of work. I thought I seen a mod that could select all blighted crops with one click, but I can't remember which mod it is.

[kevinshow]

Originally posted by Myriad:

Blight can be a real pain. Even with zones you have to click each individual plant to designate it for cutting, and stay there clicking as it spreads. I hate it. I have huge fields and keeping on top of blight when it happens is A LOT of work. I thought I seen a mod that could select all blighted crops with one click, but I can't remember which mod it is.

Good point. this could happen for the players that don't like to pause the game.

I pause often in any game. One of those times would be for blight. Pause, select all plants, unpause. all plants are selected, and as I mentioned above where Cutting Plants is on a high priority of 1, the colonists take care of the blight pretty fast.

Note that cutting plants is like deconstructing. You can select a range of plants by holding down the mouse button and moving the mouse. so an entire row of blighted plants can be selected in one swift motion.

[Jaasrg]

Originally posted by Myriad:

The 'Allow Tool' mod is indispensable when it comes to harvests. I have the same problem with crops. If left alone, everything would deteriorate before they got around to hauling it. But now I just click 'haul urgently'and it's done.

Blight can be a real pain. Even with zones you have to click each individual plant to designate it for cutting, and stay there clicking as it spreads. I hate it. I have huge fields and keeping on top of blight when it happens is A LOT of work. I thought I seen a mod that could select all blighted crops with one click, but I can't remember which mod it is.

That would be Allow Tool, upon blight click a plant (any plant, tree even), right-click cut plants and select the blighted plants option.

[MisterSpock]

For farming, there are 2 diffrent task in the working tab. You should always go manual priorities. One farming job type include automatic only. And the second is for manual task, which are given by the player.

[Myriad]

Originally posted by Jaasrr:

Originally posted by Myriad:

The 'Allow Tool' mod is indispensable when it comes to harvests. I have the same problem with crops. If left alone, everything would deteriorate before they got around to hauling it. But now I just click 'haul urgently'and it's done.

Blight can be a real pain. Even with zones you have to click each individual plant to designate it for cutting, and stay there clicking as it spreads. I hate it. I have huge fields and keeping on top of blight when it happens is A LOT of work. I thought I seen a mod that could select all blighted crops with one click, but I can't remember which mod it is.

That would be Allow Tool, upon blight click a plant (any plant, tree even), right-click cut plants and select the blighted plants option.

O.M.G... I thought so but couldn't figure it out. Thanks!

[sbhink805]

For your first issue, plant cutting is only for the manual cutting of plants/trees. The Grow skill is what is used to sow and harvest in a grow area.