Child 'Graduates' not leaving Kinderdome - HELP ! Plz

[LuckyDog]

Hello - I'm hoping for a tip from more experienced players on what I may be doing wrong, or if my expectations are wrong in the scenario here:

I'm well into this particular game, with 11 domes. They are properly filtered for certain Ages, Specializations, etc, and that works fairly well. Birthing is turned off (on dome & birth control at infirmary) on All domes, with exception of the two Mega-Domes attached to the Kinderdome via passages. When Children are born, they 'mostly' move into the Kinderdome if living space is available, and so it starts off working as designed.

My Kinderdome is as follows - a mid-sized Dome filtered exclusively for Children, and it is equipped with multiple -> School, Nursery, Playground, Dining (automated) & and an Arcology for the overflow.

HERE IS MY PROBLEM - When the Children 'Graduate' from School, they become Youths ready for University (and whom have been filtered to be excluded from Kinderdome).

BUT THEY WON'T LEAVE. The Youths will spend their entire life cycle homeless in the Kinderdome unless I painstakingly reassign them to other living quarters in other domes one-by-one. This really Blows !! So, If I'm doing something wrong, please point me gently in the right direction. If it is just a shortcoming of SM, is there a workaround you might suggest.

Thanks in advance All - Cheers

[SkiRich]

Thats a tough one to figure out without actually seeing how you do filtering.
Filtering can be a good thing or totally work in the opposite of your intentions.
Its why I developed the Incubator Mod. Link below.

The best way I work with filters is to avoid them at all costs unless absolutely necessary.
Lets take your example or two domes connected to a child dome.
A better way of doing this exact model of birthing is to create that child dome large enough to hold some nurseries, some schools, some playgrounds, and maybe even a university, but the university is optional if the child dome is connected to a dome with a university.
The incubator mod will control birth rate by limiting all births to the maximum open slots of a nursery in a dome nominated as the Incubator dome. This way you do not need to restrict any birth controls on any dome.
Add a filter to the incubator dome to not accept middle age and above. Also add a filter to toss out any colonist with a specialty.
Any colony wide births will automatically send their children to the incubator dome.
There they will grow up in the nursery, go to school and if available go to university.
Once trained or reaching adulthood they will leave as long as there is both a home and and a job in another dome. That is key.
In the incubator dome you must have a one to one or more relationship to nursery slots and apartments. So if you build several nurseries make sure you count how many slots you have and then build enough housing to hold them plus a few extra.

You can do all this without the mod, but it will require you to micro manage the children a bit.
Here is the mod, read the guide. Check out my setup example.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1438832844

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1578090107

[Prometheus]

Did you set up university domes set to draw unspecialized pops? Thumbs down is only a block for pops moving in. It has no power to get them out. Thumbs up draws them to the dome if housing is available. The trick is to get a pipeline going.

Set up the kiddy dome which draws in kids.
A university dome which draws in unspecialized.
Set work domes to draw in specialists.
Finally set up a seniors dome.

This way when a kid is born they go to a kiddy dome. Then when they grow up they are drawn to the university dome. Then when they graduate they will be drawn out of the university dome to work somewhere. Then when they get old they are drawn to a seniors dome to free up space in the worker domes.

[LuckyDog]

@ SkiRich - many thanks for the detailed reply, and I will definitely look into using your Incubator Mod - it sounds like a smoother solution than the in-game filters.
@ Promethian & SkiRich - Yes the domes to either side have at least one University each & available housing slots (my thinking was that these would act as magnets for the unspecialized Youth, but no dice ).

FWIW - I have Universities in almost all the domes and use the NASA Education System mod to re-educate Specialists if my needs change. For example, in early game, I had one or two Renegades per dome wrecking havoc until I trained Officers (guards) & built Security stations. But since then, I haven't had a Renegade in over 100 Sols & retrained the Guards into other professions long ago. Also, the NASA Ed Sys mod has the ability to 're-educate an Idiot into something useful - I was so tired of them taking down my power grid by breaking the reactors)

Am enjoying the game so much, but the learning curve can be tough at times. Cheers

[Prometheus]

When I say thumbs up and thumbs down. I am literally referring to an in game mechanic. Notably the dome filter. Setting thumbs up draws people to the dome. They will move even if they are properly employed to a dome that they fit the thumbs up filter. Thumbs down is a hard, you may not move here. Domes will heavily overpopulate and none of them will move to a thumbs down.

If you have your kiddy dome directly connected to the university dome you are giving them the option to attend the university without moving. Thumbs up will still make them move but if you haven't been using the filters then they will stay where they are.

[Blake Walsh]

Population filtering only works properly when there is free accommodation slots for colonists to shuffle around. Homeless citizens wont leave their current dome to be homeless in another dome regardless of filters.

This is pretty annoying, there are various ways to manage it without mods, for example adults eventually become seniors and can be directed into a seniors only dome, that frees up slots for other citizens to move around. What works best is using filters sparingly and being tolerant of a bit of sub-optimality, I find normally 80-90% of colonists end up in the proper place.

It's not necessarily bad if youths stay in the children dome, that means there no residence for them to move to, and probably no job either.

[LuckyDog]

@ Promethian & Blake Walsh - TY
I've been taking advantage of the thumb up / down pretty liberally in my domes
Also, try to keep at least one Apt bldg (per dome) mostly empty to encourage migration, but it's a challenge with growing population.

I'll take all of the above into consideration as I adapt my game play - much appreciated

[Blake Walsh]

I tend to find that thumbs up is too aggressive, it makes colonists come to a dome whether or not it otherwise makes sense. The only time I'd use thumbs up:

• To make a seniors-only dome. I thumb up seniors and thumbs down every other age group. I don't give seniors sevices other than decorations so don't need any non-seniors in the dome (I might be kind enough to thumbs down chronic condition because it's a death senence in a dome without medical care and I don't actually want to kill my seniors).
  
• To force renegades, idiots or other undesirables into a dome typically just before the oxygen is accidentlay cut off to that dome.
  
• To force tourists into a dome, though using thumbs-down wherever you don't want tourists going is even more effective.
  
• To quickly populate a fresh dome with a particular type of specialist, for example if I make a remote rare metals mining dome I'll thumbs up geoglist, or if I make a dome at a science site I'll thumbs up scientist. But once the dome is mostly populated I clear the thumbs up, because if you leave it on you seem to end up with the dome stuffed full of that specialist, even working service jobs, and it'll also suck them away from jobs in other domes.

When they're not being forced by thumbs up, specialists will gradually migrate to the proper residence and job, it's slow and only works 90% but it's better than trying to micro-manage too much with thumbs up.

Thumbs down can be used more aggressively. For example there's no harm in thumbs-downing engineers from a dome with no factories - engineers wouldn't prefer to move to such a dome, but homelessness could force them too if not for the thumbs down.

[Prometheus]

Originally posted by Blake Walsh:

I tend to find that thumbs up is too aggressive, it makes colonists come to a dome whether or not it otherwise makes sense. The only time I'd use thumbs up:

• To make a seniors-only dome. I thumb up seniors and thumbs down every other age group. I don't give seniors sevices other than decorations so don't need any non-seniors in the dome (I might be kind enough to thumbs down chronic condition because it's a death senence in a dome without medical care and I don't actually want to kill my seniors).
  
• To force renegades, idiots or other undesirables into a dome typically just before the oxygen is accidentlay cut off to that dome.
  
• To force tourists into a dome, though using thumbs-down wherever you don't want tourists going is even more effective.
  
• To quickly populate a fresh dome with a particular type of specialist, for example if I make a remote rare metals mining dome I'll thumbs up geoglist, or if I make a dome at a science site I'll thumbs up scientist. But once the dome is mostly populated I clear the thumbs up, because if you leave it on you seem to end up with the dome stuffed full of that specialist, even working service jobs, and it'll also suck them away from jobs in other domes.

When they're not being forced by thumbs up, specialists will gradually migrate to the proper residence and job, it's slow and only works 90% but it's better than trying to micro-manage too much with thumbs up.

Thumbs down can be used more aggressively. For example there's no harm in thumbs-downing engineers from a dome with no factories - engineers wouldn't prefer to move to such a dome, but homelessness could force them too if not for the thumbs down.

Thumb down martianborn in your tourist dome to keep its housing open as well. Birth rates are high enough you should never need to import people after a certain point so it'll block everybody eventually.

Permanent thumbs up works for child and university (unspecialized) domes as well.

Also you can connect your kiddy/uni/senior domes to a bigger dome with all the services. They will travel. Or you can put some services in the specialized dome and have a connected dome provide the workers. I do that with food distribution since its small and its easy to underestimate just how much you need. I also put a casino in the tourist dome since the tourist trait gives them a gambling interest.

[LuckyDog]

I am enjoying reading about your different play styles guys. I only tried one rocket of tourists & they seemed to stay forever, but did eventually leave (not worth the bother IMO). Also haven't imported Earth recruits since early game due to high birth rates. And, like Blake Walsh mentioned, I too have one of those problematic domes (wink wink) where the power periodically just seems to shut down, and coincidentally it is the Seniors dome. Maybe it will smooth out if I ever get that Fountain of Youth breakthrough tech to research, so everyone is earning their keep.

I'll rethink the whole Thumbs up/dn thing, too - Cheers

[Prometheus]

Tourists leave when the sol count on their info is 6. They also will only get onto a freshly landed rocket, you can't leave one on the pad. I have two rockets set aside for tourists. I keep one in orbit and one on earth. Land the orbiter whenever the current set's time is up and send the next set right away. Eventually I want to set up a dome for tourists large enough that I can have two rockets constantly going back and forth picking up and dropping off tourists on both ends.

Once its set up tourists are profitable if a bit micro heavy. They effectively turn food, fuel and a dome's worth of maintenance into money. It makes the tech and breakthrough that increase maximum passengers valuable. My current game I can haul over 30 people per trip.

[LuckyDog]

Oh OK, TY Promethian - With my 1st (only) tourists, I left the rocket on the pad until I got fed up with them, and loaded it with rare metals & sent it on its way. And yes, they did bail when the next rocket arrived, but I thought it was because food was tight - I was having a bit of a bad stretch Cheers

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by Promethian:

Tourists leave when the sol count on their info is 6. They also will only get onto a freshly landed rocket, you can't leave one on the pad. I have two rockets set aside for tourists. I keep one in orbit and one on earth. Land the orbiter whenever the current set's time is up and send the next set right away. Eventually I want to set up a dome for tourists large enough that I can have two rockets constantly going back and forth picking up and dropping off tourists on both ends.

Once its set up tourists are profitable if a bit micro heavy. They effectively turn food, fuel and a dome's worth of maintenance into money. It makes the tech and breakthrough that increase maximum passengers valuable. My current game I can haul over 30 people per trip.

This is a great gameplay strategy for tourism. Nice post.

[Blake Walsh]

Originally posted by Promethian:

Tourists leave when the sol count on their info is 6.

They'll also leave when they get earthsick which takes only 1-3 sols depending how badly you neglect/abuse them and there are NO negative consequenes to this, you don't have to refund the $10mil, 2 new tourists still spawn on Earth and best of all each tourist arrives with 5 sols worth of food, but if they leave early you get to eat some of their food (free food!).

Now I'm not trying to imply you should stuff all the tourists into a dome with no services and scant accomidation, but if you were to do this it would be really quite profitable...


Oh yeah and if you have the soylent green breakthrough you can kill and eat half the tourists, as long as you let half of them return to earth it is sustainable.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

I seem to have no problems whatsoever doing that. I have a dome for both kids and unspecialized youths, i.e an education dome. All domes except this one are thumbs down on kids and unspecialized, education dome has thumbs up for kids, youths and unspecialized and thumbs down for everything else. All kids (provided there is space) will go to the education dome and all university graduates immediately leave the education dome. But i also always have jobs and housing spare in other domes for the newly trained specialists to move into...

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Blake Walsh:

I tend to find that thumbs up is too aggressive, it makes colonists come to a dome whether or not it otherwise makes sense. The only time I'd use thumbs up:

I agree. Thumbs up should ONLY be used for age groups, like children and seniors. You can use it for a university dome for unspecialized.

Otherwise you end up with ALL scientists (or too many) in a dome with thumbs up for scientists.

If you want to filter for jobs you need to thumbs down the jobs you do not want.