Forming Caravan (Wandering)

[Jojo]

Fun fun fun.

Any of you lot have any basic tips/tricks to avoid a caravan formation ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?

[whatamidoing]

My trick is pretty much just not doing any large-scale caravans until drop pods.

[Steelfleece]

I'd suggest starting in the early morning and forming the caravans up a few people at a time. You can merge the caravans once they're on the world map. Also set a hitch post near your storage for the caravan animals.

[Jojo]

Thanks bros

[Wedge]

Would be nice if they would just fix the gd caravan AI already It's an expensive enough game. Have to pause them for a minute so they don't walk out into a newly dropped cluster well ♥♥♥♥ you the leader is just going to wander around and not rope the animals to set out again after or maybe they'll just go sleep at the edge of the map waiting to get killed. Can't even make them respect your zoning until the coast is clear. These issues have been a problem for ages now ludeon just refuse to revamp it.

[Greb]

I send the people out alone and then drop pod the stuff they need on top of them instead of making them muster for a whole day, usually.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Originally posted by Jojo:

Fun fun fun.

Any of you lot have any basic tips/tricks to avoid a caravan formation cluster♥♥♥♥?

Form small caravans and then merge them on the world map. Also, make really damn sure that the supplies you want to use are already sorted and stored within a few tiles of the caravan packing spot / caravan animal hitching post. Do not travel with far more animals than people unless you have to, and if you're having difficulties gathering them all at once, don't. Have a couple pawns round a few animals up at a time, merge the caravans, then split a few pawns off the caravan and send them back to the colony to help rounding up more animals.

Don't try to gather, like, 80 ducks at a time for instance.

If you keep your supplies sorted and your animal stock at a reasonable count relative to your colonists, even very large caravans can be pretty easy to use, but it's important to do the work to keep them sorted.

Last point. If your caravaneers are able to be more or less self sufficient while camped near your base so you don't have to reform caravans with a given core of animals that you don't want to keep rounding up.

[Toastie Buns]

I'm currently doing an extremely large caravan playthrough so lemme give advice.
100+ animals, 2 colonists; hauling ~5000 steel.

First; get the smallest pen you're willing to get; this speeds up animal roping.

Second; micromanage pawns; make them eat before the caravan then half way through it, eat and take some form of drugs; psychite tea is great, yayo is absolutely amazing and restores enough sleep, grants enough mood buff to ensure the caravan leaves smoothly.

Third: Get the 'Drop Everything' mod, because it'll save your sanity, clicking everything and being able to drop the entire caravan's inventory is a timesaver (you'd have to right click unload using a pawn otherwise, which is doable but takes forever)

Fourth: Everything you load onto a caravan can be used by said caravan, so always pack a horseshoe pin and between that and two colonists, recreaction will always be taken of.

Fifth: Animals graze and reproduce endlessly. Your caravan, if you think about it long enough, is essentially also a winter food solution.

Sixth: Simply try and zone items near a caravan parking area. Build shelves close, zone items close, abuse pawns literally picking up items and dropping them, do whatever.

Interesting note: Unlike transport pods, Caravans will take forbidden items. I use this to forbid survival meals, because this way only the caravans will use it. There's probably better ways to use this knowledge.

[Wasted]

give em all wake up when they get tired and chocolate to keep recreation up

[hardy_conrad]

Ugh I'm having a flashback to when I was starting out and DID try gathering 80 ducks. Without a hitching post. Went about as well as you'd expect. The only weirdness I've experienced recently was when a caravan returned and for some reason a pawn got stuck leading a donkey back to the pen. I had only just set up a seperate pen for males and females and his response was to just stand there next to the donkey in blank stupefaction. Had to draft and undraft him to break him out of the trance.