How to deal with Idle guys?

[Helios]

Hi guys, currently im starting new game, but in old one i had one serious problem. I was expanding into ice biome, and i had plenty of dupes...about 26 i think. When i started some big dig/build job, many dupes moved there and did it fast. But after there was no other work for them, so they started to be Idle, ofc spreading into most cold and toxic areas. I got from 20 stress to 90 in two cycles....
Is there any way how to assemble dupes somewhere? I can think about emptying high priority storage...but its so micromanaging. I think that Idle mechanic should be changed, dupes should go back to his bed whie Idling... or portal..just somewhere in base.
Btw side question, how do you manage expanding into very cold/hot areas? Do you try to cold/warmup that area or just quickly pass over.

[Jacob]

you can click on a dupe and use the "move to" command. from there, just move each dupe manually to where ever you want to put them.

[Helios]

Originally posted by Jacob:

you can click on a dupe and use the "move to" command. from there, just move each dupe manually to where ever you want to put them.

Well thats true, but can you imagine doing this to 10 dupes after each work?

[stormdude]

Why so many? I'm in awe. Well done. Aren't they busy looking after your massive food resources?

[Greep]

Well there's 4 solutions I got for you:

A) Just kill off half your dupes so you don't have this issue.

B) Get more anal with your prioritizing. Basically, make large backlogs of digging so your dupes always have something to do. Use priority 6/7 ladders, priority 4 digging, and you'll always have something to dig. Use priority 5 digging for whatever your active project is.

C) Build lots of massage tables, set to very low stress limits (max 25, min 3) with lots of batteries. They'll get stressed when they go idle, but will quickly go back to base. Also, hook these massage tables to a completely off the grid circuit powered only by hamster wheels. Then when this mass idle happens, half will go to the wheels, half to the massging, and you won't waste any of your resusable power.

D) If you just have lots of dupes to make the game harder, I think a fun way to do this instead would be to only use 3 dupes, and lock away all new dupes into a small room using airlock settings. Or use a sane amount of active dupes (12 in my experience) and do this with the excess.

[Helios]

Well i never thought about getting more dupes to make game harder...i just wanted to have anything made faster :D. Anyway a like option C very much, will realize it in my current game later to test it.

[NewbieKit]

just give them job

[ultraSsak]

New dupes arrived
They took our jobs!

[Butts McGee]

Yeah, always have a P4 backlog project. When you see dupes starting to work on it, you know they're all caught up on current tasks including passively sweep objects into storage.

[Ackranome]

Originally posted by ultraSsak:

New dupes arrived
They took our jobs!

Drk R Jrbs!

[zOldBulldog]

A bit of a necro reply but this kind of thing happened to me (very near the original spawn) and I figured it out:

A piece of sand hand fallen blocking the exit path from the tunnel that they were in.

I would have missed the caused if they hadn't relieved themselves on the floor.