Fix the caravans!

[Boomer Remover]

Since the 1.3 update, preparing a caravan has become so long and such a hassle that my colonists all go sequentially crazy so the caravan never actually gets to leave. I've tried twice now with reloads, attempting to make the process faster each time but nothing works. I don't see why making caravans should be sooooooooooo much more difficult than before 1.3. I have a stable, happy organized colony on peaceful, I can't imagine how impossible it must be for ppl playing adventure...

[Cormac]

set all your colonists to haul, every other task secondary to it

if you have lots and lots of things to load, set your caravan spot near the majority of things you want to transport


and its not a 1.3 problem, when i was playing a 1.2 trader colony, i had the same problem with only 2 pawns free to haul and they had to haul so extrem much into the caravan, that it took days

[Zalzany]

Yeah this isn't a 1.3 issue... Its a you got too much stuff and not enough haulers issue. Unless you use to have freaking monkeys or soemthing random doing all the loading for you...

[Boomer Remover]

Originally posted by Zalzany:

Yeah this isn't a 1.3 issue... Its a you got too much stuff and not enough haulers issue. Unless you use to have freaking monkeys or soemthing random doing all the loading for you...

It's definitely a 1.3 problem, you guys don't know a lot lol, why even post? I've been playing up to and since the update and this definitely wasn't a problem before. Plus I'm trying to leave to get stuff from my other camp 2 tiles over so I'm not loading anything at all in my caravan so what are you even on about with your too little haulers and too much stuff???

[Security Cam #7]

OP is right, this wasn't a problem before. Work priorities should *not* matter when a pawn is assigned into caravaning. Back in 1.2 all colonists who were assigned to a caravan went to pack resources into it right away ignoring other tasks.

[Cormac]

they still do that for me in 1.3..... it sounds more like a mod issue for you both, not a game issue

again: i am playing 1.3 since release and i am playing a raiding colony, i am forced to send lots of caravans out there, and none of them took more than a few moments to leave. getting the pack animals, getting the 1 stack of food, getting the 2 stacks of hay and directly leave, no long waiting around, no long geting crazy

[Astasia]

I haven't seen any changes with caravan loading mechanics in 1.3. I've been sending a lot of caravans out to do the ancient complex quests and raid encampments, everything works pretty much the same as it did in 1.2. AFAIK the only changes to caravans are related to how fast they move on the world, and the mounting mechanic for some animals to speed caravan movement up.

[Boomer Remover]

(Running vanilla no mods)
Ok well I tried to send a single colonist (!00% all health stats) with 2 bedrolls and 2 stallions and 10 food and 5 meds to go pick up some guy. It took an entire day to collect the horses and resources despite having a medium map and a convenient caravan spot. Right after she set off to "moving" she threw a food binge because she was so hungry from collecting that stuff for hours... I have other bugs like this bed in this room that just pops automatically back to unowned after 2-3 secs of assigning it. Also colonists seem to be a lot more prone to bad mood swings than before, makes managing a siege a lot more complicated that it already was. Otherwise I like the changes made by 1.3, just need to fix a few things.

[Zane87]

Originally posted by Gérard Deltell:

(Running vanilla no mods)
Ok well I tried to send a single colonist (!00% all health stats) with 2 bedrolls and 2 stallions and 10 food and 5 meds to go pick up some guy. It took an entire day to collect the horses and resources despite having a medium map and a convenient caravan spot. Right after she set off to "moving" she threw a food binge because she was so hungry from collecting that stuff for hours... I have other bugs like this bed in this room that just pops automatically back to unowned after 2-3 secs of assigning it. Also colonists seem to be a lot more prone to bad mood swings than before, makes managing a siege a lot more complicated that it already was. Otherwise I like the changes made by 1.3, just need to fix a few things.

Because you didn't optimize your colony, bluntly said.

It takes so long for the animals to rope as they have a huge pen with huge space in between and it's far away from your storage.

You can largely alleviate that issue by placing animal sleeping spots as close to your storage as the pen allows and start forming your caravan while the animals still sleep (+temporary add more pawns to the caravan and remove them after roping). This speeds up the roping time TREMENDOUSLY. like, the difference is from several days to only 2-3h to form a huge caravan.

Second, caravan spot as close to your two main storages as possible to reduce loading time and as others said, increase hauling priority for all.

Third, mental breaks are a huge issue but are mostly because of the long time a badly optimized caravan needs to form, something your really can solve with above advices. The caravan AI is super dumb though and should be fixed, at least that they fullfil their needs.

Regardless, I can (after some strict optimizations regarding storage and pen placements) start and send a caravan considering of 30-50 animals + inventory within a day now, thanks to the above. It's not great, but it's solvable by good organization and that is, despite terrible caravan AI, mostly a player issue.

[Premu]

The 1.3 update also lead to a significant longer loading time for caravans. Before two pawns were more than enough to load up a large amount of goods, as my pack horses would follow the to the different storages where they loaded them up. Now they have to bring the horses to a central caravan loading spot, and then bring all goods to this spot. It's worse if you want to sell lifestock, as this has also to be leashed and brought over.

My counter measure was to accept it and assign more pawns to the caravan - I had 30 pawns at this time, so sending 5 out for two or three days wasn't such an issue anymore. To speed it up even more, you might manually assign more people to the caravan, so they'll concentrate on loading it up, but remove them before the loading is finished. Just make sure to do the removal not too late. ;)

[Helios]

Its a 1.3 issue someone sleeping from caravan? caravan dont progress missing item? ( food got eaten by other colonist ) caravan dont pregress mental break same also they dont start packing from start takes along time until all animals are on packing spot o they remember we need to pack them we are all standing idle and dont progress but dont haul missing items...

[Boomer Remover]

TL;DR , Like I was just saying, it wasn't like this before the forced patch and I don't appreciate that change, I doubt anyone does. AI is retarded and will be for the foreseable future, so let's not make changes that make gameplay smoothness even more reliant on AI smartness. Also, mood debuffs like ugly environment and others seem to weigh down a lot more than before. I'm all for changes to balance the game and all, but at this point it doesn't feel like the game is any harder or complex, just more unpredictable and unstable and if that's what you want just play Randy.

Originally posted by Zane87:

Originally posted by Gérard Deltell:

(Running vanilla no mods)
Ok well I tried to send a single colonist (!00% all health stats) with 2 bedrolls and 2 stallions and 10 food and 5 meds to go pick up some guy. It took an entire day to collect the horses and resources despite having a medium map and a convenient caravan spot. Right after she set off to "moving" she threw a food binge because she was so hungry from collecting that stuff for hours... I have other bugs like this bed in this room that just pops automatically back to unowned after 2-3 secs of assigning it. Also colonists seem to be a lot more prone to bad mood swings than before, makes managing a siege a lot more complicated that it already was. Otherwise I like the changes made by 1.3, just need to fix a few things.

Because you didn't optimize your colony, bluntly said.

It takes so long for the animals to rope as they have a huge pen with huge space in between and it's far away from your storage.

You can largely alleviate that issue by placing animal sleeping spots as close to your storage as the pen allows and start forming your caravan while the animals still sleep (+temporary add more pawns to the caravan and remove them after roping). This speeds up the roping time TREMENDOUSLY. like, the difference is from several days to only 2-3h to form a huge caravan.

Second, caravan spot as close to your two main storages as possible to reduce loading time and as others said, increase hauling priority for all.

Third, mental breaks are a huge issue but are mostly because of the long time a badly optimized caravan needs to form, something your really can solve with above advices. The caravan AI is super dumb though and should be fixed, at least that they fullfil their needs.

Regardless, I can (after some strict optimizations regarding storage and pen placements) start and send a caravan considering of 30-50 animals + inventory within a day now, thanks to the above. It's not great, but it's solvable by good organization and that is, despite terrible caravan AI, mostly a player issue.

[Astasia]

So your issue is you have a giant pen and it takes a long time for a single pawn to rope multiple animals and lead them to your caravan packing spot? What is your proposed fix for this issue? They aren't going to revert the ranching changes, a lot of people enjoy them and a lot of work went into it.

[Boomer Remover]

Are you OK? Are you trolling?

Originally posted by Astasia:

I haven't seen any changes with caravan loading mechanics in 1.3. I've been sending a lot of caravans out to do the ancient complex quests and raid encampments, everything works pretty much the same as it did in 1.2.

Originally posted by Astasia:

They aren't going to revert the ranching changes, a lot of people enjoy them and a lot of work went into it.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Gérard Deltell:

Are you OK?

Are you? You are going to have to elaborate if you have some point you are trying to make.

[Ashiver]

I haven't had much issue with caravans this patch, although I have only packed smaller ones.

Set a storage area near your caravan packing spot with the things you commonly take. For me that would be some medicine, packaged survival meals, and bedrolls. Possibly silver or a trade commodity. That'll speed things up if you do it well before hand. As someone else mentioned if you set animal sleeping spots near your packing area and start packing just before the animals wake up they won't be far even if the pen is big.