What priority category does composting fall under?

[Vasco Da Llama]

I'm not talking about the flipping of the compost piles (that's Farming afaik), I mean the actually bringing of items marked for composting (e.g. egg shells or contaminated food) to the compost pile.

I marked some contaminated Liceloaf for composting and it's just been sitting there on the ground while the dupes have walked past dozens of times. There isn't an option to set a higher priority on them. So what "job" does it count as and is there a reason why it isn't being done? (e.g compost full)


It's annoying that you have to click on every item you wish to compost (and it falls out of the container it was in as well), rather than having the compost pile have a clickable menu like with storage containers...


EDIT: I didn't catch it, but the Liceloaf did end up in the compost eventually... still would interest me to know who did it though! :D

[Elidrin]

It's an OPERATE function.

I put a storage box next to my compost heap for this that need to be composted. Once you have 'marked an item for compost' it becomes an option for containers. Once the container is in place you can use either sweep or wait for storage.

[SKull]

Pretty sure it's farming, not operate. It might be both, but definitely farming.

[cainboy]

And here I thought it was a supply job to get the liceloaf to the compost, and farming job to flip it.

And sweep/mop usually are filed under Tidy jobs no?

Only time I've ever worried bout something being composted asap, is lately when I've been breaching into the oil biome. I DO NOT WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT ZOMBIE SPORES DO.

[SKull]

Mop is tidy, sweep is storage. But some things are two activities at once, usually something and then operate. In fact that might be all of the doubles.

[Vasco Da Llama]

Really liking the consensus here :D
I also thought it was more of a SWEEP or SUPPLY job, but sadly it's not defined in the Errands list.

Originally posted by SKull:

Mop is tidy, sweep is storage. But some things are two activities at once, usually something and then operate. In fact that might be all of the doubles.

Can you give examples? I wasn't aware that some jobs fall under 2 categories. Might complicate priority designation and increase travel times if that's the case (I'm quite strictly assigning certain dupes certain roles using the priority screen).

[Elidrin]

Making medicine requires the care skill, but the tool is a operate task uses tinker speed.

Cooking grill requires cooking, but the tool speed is tied to tinker even though it is using the cook task.

Hamster wheel is a operate task that does not use tinker but uses athletics.

There are others but I'm too tired to think of them. Because of this there is some synergy to linking up your dupes interests instead of taking what ever is there.

[wolfdwg]

One thing I have found set all dups high priority Toggle. Else wise, they walk past many tasks, many cycles.

[SKull]

Cooking, the apothecary and possibly the compost. I think the grill responds first to cooking and secondarily to operate. Ditto with the apothecary, except with care instead of cooking. This stuff might be changed before release though, since it makes things a bit clunky.

[SKull]

But this is not a problem as long as you have someone with high prio in the primary activities for that building. For instance if you have a cook with max cooking, he'll probably spend most of the day cooking at the grill. Engineers might sub if they have unlocked cooking. It's not the worst thing in the world, and you can turn cooking off for them if it's a problem.

[Vasco Da Llama]

Originally posted by Elidrin:

Making medicine requires the care skill, but the tool is a operate task uses tinker speed.

Cooking grill requires cooking, but the tool speed is tied to tinker even though it is using the cook task.

Hamster wheel is a operate task that does not use tinker but uses athletics.

There are others but I'm too tired to think of them. Because of this there is some synergy to linking up your dupes interests instead of taking what ever is there.

Oh cool, I didn't know that tinker affected the cooking speed!
I'm pretty sure that the manual generators don't depend on athletics, though. Their output is a fixed 400W regardless of the attributes of the dupes running. And I've read that it levels up both athletics and tinkering.

Originally posted by SKull:

Cooking, the apothecary and possibly the compost. I think the grill responds first to cooking and secondarily to operate. Ditto with the apothecary, except with care instead of cooking. This stuff might be changed before release though, since it makes things a bit clunky.

The compost flipping is 100% a farming job, because I only have one dupe allowed to farm and she's always the one that does the flipping (fun fact: the flip speed is apparently linked to strength). The question that I originally posed, though, was who supplies the compost pile when items are manually composted?

[Elidrin]

Officially anyone able to do the supply task in their personal priorities will fill any tool needing supplies including the compost pile. Just has to make it high enough on their personal priorities. But just because they 'supply' the tool does not mean they will 'operate' it.

That said operators will supply a tool if they are going to operate a tool and it is low.

[SKull]

Originally posted by Vasco Da Llama:

Originally posted by Elidrin:

The compost flipping is 100% a farming job, because I only have one dupe allowed to farm and she's always the one that does the flipping (fun fact: the flip speed is apparently linked to strength). The question that I originally posed, though, was who supplies the compost pile when items are manually composted?

I think that is supply. Relatively simple to automate this though. Sieve, compost and a container with just an auto sweeper above means very little work. I usually put auto sweepers at the bottom of my fish tanks too, and then ship polluted dirt to the sieve and things. Almost no work required then. Well, delivering stuff that is. The farmer still has to turn the compost manually.

[Vasco Da Llama]

Originally posted by SKull:

I think that is supply. Relatively simple to automate this though. Sieve, compost and a container with just an auto sweeper above means very little work. I usually put auto sweepers at the bottom of my fish tanks too, and then ship polluted dirt to the sieve and things. Almost no work required then. Well, delivering stuff that is. The farmer still has to turn the compost manually.

I don't think you get what I am asking. I'm not talking about something that can be automated:
When you click on seeds, most food items (except Muckroot, Nutrient Bar) and egg shells, there is the option in the info panel to Compost. This isn't available on any other item, as they automatically get supplied to the compost pile. The compost pile doesn't have a selection menu either.

So when you MANUALLY decide to compost a bunch of items (e.g. unnecessary seeds, contaminated food), it gets dropped out of whatever container it was in and lies on the ground and someone has to manually bring it to the compost pile. There is no automation for composting these items I just mentioned.

Either way, long story short, I tested it in Sandbox mode and manually picking up the items for the compost is both a farming job AND a supply job. Priority is based on the priority you set the the compost pile.

My supplier was probably busy supplying a bunch of high-priority construction tasks and my farmer must've just preferred to tend her crops. Both of them ignored the item marked for composting on the ground for so long (my compost pile is priority 5) that probably someone else did it when they were idle.

[SKull]

But that can be set with the priority on the actual compost, right? If the farms are 5 and the compost 6, the farmer should always turn the compost if it is possible to do it. And I've never tried to compost seeds, since you apparently have to do it manually for single seeds. I don't care what that gives me, I'm not doing it. There has to be a limit somewhere...

[Vasco Da Llama]

Yeah like I said, setting the compost to a higher priority would mean it's always done first. I just happened to have it on 5, so the dupes had other more important things to do.

If the seeds/food/egg shells are in a container, you can compost stacks directly from inside the container or drop them out and compost the entire stack (depending on stack limit, number of stacks etc.)