Any hauling tips?

[Makeithappen]

So I have it setup where I have hauling at 4 and cleaning at 3 for my skilled pawns that do planters, cooking, etc.
I have 2 haulers that are joggers that pick stuff up like crops in the field and bring it to the freezer. Or crafters that have items they finish crafting set to "drop on ground" and just have my haulers or a pet pick it up.

However sometimes I have issues with construction or planters bouncing between tasks.
For example:
I have 3 planters that bounce between sowing and harvesting with little consistency. Sometimes they go to the animal pen half way through their work to sow dandelions for the animal pen. Which takes up so much wasteful time. Or when they go back inside the base for some other duty or recreation I'd like them to at least pick up some raw food they harvest back to the freezer just so the hauler doesn't have to do more work.

The other issue I have is construction. Sometimes they deliver resources to a section of walls or room and instead of constructing after delivering the stone or wood, they leave to go do something else.

There just seems like a lot more walking going on than needed. I wonder If I'm not setting up my work tab correctly so that the pawns work more efficiently.

[glass zebra]

Planters:
Harvesting stuff that is finished has a higher priority than sowing. It can be beneficial to try and weed out some plants in fields that have a much differing growing level (I avoid having single rich soil spots in my fields because of this), so your planters do not run around to harvest single plants but usually the whole field. Does not matter much if your fields are not giant and I never really had this issue with hydroponics.
Dandelions will always cause the issue of planters going there to fill up the field with single plants that just got eaten, because bigger animals will just eat them completely and they have to be resown. It's usually best to swap to hay asap for many different reasons, this being one of them. Needs hauling, but will likely still cause less work than what you are facing right now.

Construction:
Constructors will only haul to construction sites if there are no sites they can be working on. If you build a wall and your constructors go to sleep when there is still a site left being currently constructed, they will wake up and go there and finish the construction instead of bringing stuff with them. Haulers can bring stuff there too and there are several mods to work around this, but the issues this causes in vanilla should not be that giant unless you have stuff like multiple forced joy breaks each day. Eating and sleep should be the only thing messing with this otherwise.

Non-hauler hauling:
People will go and haul stuff when stuff is close to them and their drop site is close to where they are heading. They will not bring stuff into the freezer when they are heading for the dinning room and the freezer is too far away from that.

I am not sure why you have issues with people leaving to do other work. That just sounds like they have multiple overlapping tasks and the ones you want them to do are lower then the tasks they are leaving for. Constructors should always keep constructing and then haul new stuff to the blueprints, then construct again. If they leave for other jobs, those seem to be higher.

[sono]

Looking into work priority on the wiki can help in understanding why pawns do certain things. If a more 'urgent' task pops up in between a series of small tasks, they'll go do that instead. This can cause silly things, like walking halfway across the map and back, but is generally beneficial.

More importantly: Planting is always higher priority than cutting when set to the same level (left=higher priority), so they'll stop cutting if there's sowing to be done.

Giving less simultaneous tasks can help, since there's less chance of something popping up.

For construction: a lot of the time, unless they're going to sleep/eat, what seems like dumb behaviour is caused by one of 3 things: insufficient material, ie most of the steel is placed but you're out, they're going to get even more material to work on everything all at once, or more infuriatingly: the job is reserved. If you have 2 builders, there'll often be a wall segment left unbuilt because the second builder from across the map decided he's going to build it next, even if the first builder is standing right next to it. The more people assigned to building, the worse this gets. Due to the way this works, mods can't really fix this.

Edit: I suggest the What Is My Purpose mod, to see what a pawn's task is. That'll at least help in identifying what they're off to do, if not why.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1346064449

[Makeithappen]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Planters:


I am not sure why you have issues with people leaving to do other work. That just sounds like they have multiple overlapping tasks and the ones you want them to do are lower then the tasks they are leaving for. Constructors should always keep constructing and then haul new stuff to the blueprints, then construct again. If they leave for other jobs, those seem to be higher.

Thanks Glass Z, I might have to fiddle around with my work tab a bit more.

Its possible my sleep and eating schedules could have gotten out of sync. Sometimes I have a crafter or constructor making stone blocks or building past the scheduled bedtime. I did have fiburous mechanites disease that was causing pawns to go to bed earlier. But most likely it was my recreation times have been all over the place. Thus they stop working.

I could have sworn I've seen a player have their pawns chop down trees and then haul them right after. Like maybe I should be setting my hauling to the same number as my growing or chopping, so that when they are done they will do hauling right after.

[Makeithappen]

Originally posted by sono:

Looking into work priority on the wiki can help in understanding why pawns do certain things. If a more 'urgent' task pops up in between a series of small tasks, they'll go do that instead. This can cause silly things, like walking halfway across the map and back, but is generally beneficial.

More importantly: Planting is always higher priority than cutting when set to the same level (left=higher priority), so they'll stop cutting if there's sowing to be done.

Giving less simultaneous tasks can help, since there's less chance of something popping up.

For construction: a lot of the time, unless they're going to sleep/eat, what seems like dumb behaviour is caused by one of 3 things: insufficient material, ie most of the steel is placed but you're out, they're going to get even more material to work on everything all at once, or more infuriatingly: the job is reserved. If you have 2 builders, there'll often be a wall segment left unbuilt because the second builder from across the map decided he's going to build it next, even if the first builder is standing right next to it. The more people assigned to building, the worse this gets. Due to the way this works, mods can't really fix this.

Edit: I suggest the What Is My Purpose mod, to see what a pawn's task is. That'll at least help in identifying what they're off to do, if not why.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1346064449

Great thanks! I'll have to look into that. Yeah I do have that problem with construction sometimes since I have multiple people with the skill. It really helps with a bigger base, but can be a pain sometimes with these issues you mentioned.

[glass zebra]

They will haul the wood afterwards if the tree shop was their last plant work job or their next one is next to the wood storage. If you have other tasks for the people to do after that, they will do those. Not overloading your people with tasks is usually beneficial, especially since they have a hard time getting good at a task when they are doing several. If you have 1 person really good at planting and 1 really good at crafting, that is better than 2 people who are decent at both.

[gimmethegepgun]

As for growing/cutting, another important bit is that Plant Cutting is NOT harvesting from a grow area. It is cutting/harvesting things that you have specifically marked to be cut/harvested. Harvesting plants in a grow zone is part of the Grow priority, and is internally a higher priority than sowing.