pawns doing half ass job?

[Caliell]

So... set the order for some power armor to be made, but the pawns keep doing the half ass job, of making half finished (unfinished power armor(s)) and dropping them off in the storage. When I try to prioritize them to finish the project, I get the message "not enough materials" but I definitely do have plenty of plasteel and components.

Is that a bug or am I doing something worng?

[corisai]

Only person that started crafting anything - can continue it.

So make sure that authors of your unfinished power armors have access to them - no zone restriction, not behind forbidden doors, and unfinished armor is in range of "ingredient radius" of that bill.

Better never even allow unfinished crafts in any storage.

[KrysisMode]

It's why having dedicated wrench monkeys is important. Sounds like your having the entire colony do it at once which is causing massive waste. Find your best passionate/interested crafter and make THAT git the only one doing it, it'll be slower but way less of this crap AND all that experience in one pawn means you go from crap quality to best quality faster.

As for access that's up to you on figuring out, go with corisai's advice there. Odds are you accidentally blocked it off with zones/doors/shenanigans.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Caliell:

...Is that a bug or am I doing something worng?

You're fine. Just to reiterate, but restate:

When you have a work order that is being filled by another pawn carrying a needed material and, especially, if the pawn you're trying to get to do it does not have access to something they need, like an unfinished crafting item or they are not allowed in the zone where materials are stored, they will often report back "not enough materials or don't have access to materials."

It's likely the pawn that sends you this report when you try to force them to work at the bench already has an unfinished crafting item it has started but another pawn is using the bench it needs to finish that crafting item. So, it can't take the unfinished item to the bench and just interprets it as it being unable to obtain or reach a needed resource.

Whenever you can, limit your Crafters to just a select few and micromanage who crafts what and when they do it if necessary. If you have to, temporarily suspend Bills to work out confusions.

I'd also recommend having a close-by area that is resered only for unfinished items just so you can see who still has something left to complete. Force these pawns to complete their crafting project before you let a new Crafter take over the bench.

You can also make more than one crafting bench to clear up backlogged orders.

PS - I don't assign unfinished crafting items to storage so the pawns will just drop it on the floor near the bench. That way, I have a quick way to tell who left their station early, just in case someone doubles up on the Bill and pushes that unfinished item back in the que.

[corisai]

^ This problem can be also caused by mods expanding stock limits.

When all your steel stacked in single 750-size title - only one pawn can use it in same time (use = take or bring more steel here)

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by corisai:

^ This problem can be also caused by mods expanding stock limits.

When all your steel stacked in single 750-size title - only one pawn can use it in same time (use = take or bring more steel here)

Ah, good to know! I don't use any mods right now, but I can now assume that if a pawn is currently accessing a "stack of items", a lockout effect wil be the same in vanilla play. So, for instance, if I only have one stack of a needed item and a pawn s accessing or carrying it at the same time I order another pawn to do a task that needs access to that stack, it will report that "item unavailable/unreachable" message?

I've gotten that message a few times, but usually when I've forgotten I temporarily changed a pawn's zone and it couldn't reach the resource. A few times I could not figure out what caused it and this is probably the reason. Thanks!

[corisai]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Ah, good to know! I don't use any mods right now, but I can now assume that if a pawn is currently accessing a "stack of items", a lockout effect wil be the same in vanilla play. So, for instance, if I only have one stack of a needed item and a pawn s accessing or carrying it at the same time I order another pawn to do a task that needs access to that stack, it will report that "item unavailable/unreachable" message?

Exactly.