Colonists keep changing jobs?

[sindri42]

Periodically I go back to check on my buildings, and I keep discovering that, for example, my rare metal extractor is missing a geologist. So I track him down, and it turns out he's working in the electronics factory, in a slot that's supposed to be occupied by one of my engineers. I track her down, and she apparently decided to work on the farm, pushing a botanist out to play security chief, while my officer pretends to do science, and my scientist is picking up a few shifts at the diner. Naturally, every single one of them is getting huge penalties to productivity due to incorrect specialty. So I pause, spend five minutes manually rearranging things to where they actually function, and go about my business. Only to come back the next morning and discover they've shuffled again.

What's causing this? Is there any way to stop it? Is it a (stupid) part of the game, or a (huge) glitch?

[Felix the Swift]

I noticed this as well. It is driving me insane. I don't mind them wandering, but I want geologists to do gelogists stuff as well as botnists, do botnist things. That simple. If there is no geologists jobs, then I would love to see them do something else.

Dev's. Fix it.

[mr. Sombre]

stupid or glitch - both of them.
Research "General Training", and don't worry about, there is not very big difference with few workers have different specialty. Better to open more shifts and make them "heavy workload".

[Nox]

Yes this is basically what is happening for everyone. The combination of this clumsy as hell specialization system and the buggy AI behaviour is really problematic.

It's odd too that they designed it this way when tropico which was done by the same team had it right. Instead of specific specializations, you had education levels. untrained, high school, college. Some jobs required a certain level of education.

The current design is really problematic and poorly thought out

[morph113]

He shouldn't be somewhere else the next morning. Ingame somewhere I read that if you manually assign someone to a job he should stay in that job for the the next 5 sols. Which itself of course is still stupid. But since this is a big issue for many, I assume they will probably patch it so that they stay in that job indefinitely (until they will be a senior citizen or die). Personally I don't even bother assigning anyone anyonewhere. Way too much hassle with hundreds or even thousands of citizens. Would also be nice that they would fix it so that people specialized for a certain job will ALWAYS try and get a job fitting their specialization.

[DeathYoda]

What I have noticed with colonist working is that where a colonist works is decided by two things:
1. The specialization of a colonist (geologist will alawys prefer miners)
2. The average number of workers on all Workshifts of a Dome

To explain - If you have 4 workshifts in total to a dome, each shift can have 6 workers max
Now lets say you bring your first ship of colonists you will probably only have 12, thus the game will sort it to 3 colonists per workshift

this will ignor if you had brought 4-5 geologist to work just the miner/extrator

[BelZeqihr]

So eventually if I keep bringing people to the planet. The certain specialist jobs will eventually get filled with specialists?

[DeathYoda]

Originally posted by FireRat:

So eventually if I keep bringing people to the planet. The certain specialist jobs will eventually get filled with specialists?

that is correct, but remember that as more jobs become avalible specilist will leave their prefered jobs due to the averaging

This is why its better to specilise you domes to specific job types

[Nox]

Originally posted by DeathYoda:

Originally posted by FireRat:

So eventually if I keep bringing people to the planet. The certain specialist jobs will eventually get filled with specialists?

that is correct, but remember that as more jobs become avalible specilist will leave their prefered jobs due to the averaging

This is why its better to specilise you domes to specific job types

This is completely feces-d. This is one of the reasons this game is such a mess.

[Frizoggy]

I checked the help menu for "Colonists" in-game, and it says Colonists will prefer to work the jobs they're specialized in. Well, that's complete BS!

I have a bunch of engineers. Heck, I've got a Martian University that only teaches engineering, but do those engineers want to work in the Electronics Factory? NOOOOO! They want to work at the **** Grocer! There are 3 flippin' open slots at the damn Grocer, and 20+ open slots at the **** Electronics Factory, and they'll choose to work at the Grocer!

It's not like real life where there are more supermarket jobs then engineering jobs. It's the complete opposite on my Martian colony! I have 2 Grocers with 6 whole slots, but I have an Electronics Factory, Machine Parts Factory, Polymers...etc. 40+ open slots for JUST engineers, and they all wanna work at the Diner or Grocer!

[mr. Sombre]

Originally posted by Frizoggy:

and they all wanna work at the Diner or Grocer!

try to switch em off )

[BubbaGump_skrimp]

Its not that bad when they change it to a unskilled job like a grocer but when they go to another special job its annoying. Theres a bit to much micromanagment with the jobs that I'm not a big fan of. Also I've noticed that they tend to get stressed out when working outside the dome for a long time and then I have to switch them to a grocer to get their sanity back up. I could see how this would be a problem later in the game managing lots of people. Its not to bad now but I'm still only like 50 sols in so I will have to see. But yes they should definetly fix this, its not a bad system just buggy imo

[Tikigod]

It is sadly one of those silly things that the developers didn't really put much (if any) attention into with the base game.

Fortunately there are already two mods out there that pretty much patch up this behaviour.

1 - Specialization filter. Adds a button on buildings so only colonists with a related specialization will work there. This can be used for things like the grocery as well to stop engineers/geologists/other trained colonists from working general jobs unspecialized colonists would be suitable for.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1337172830

2 - Smarter Worker & Migration AI. This mod changes colonist employment behaviour so they will only ever consider a non-specialization job if there are absolutely no other jobs available within working or migration range.

Thanks to this mod, it's finally possible to do things like have a childrens education dome inbetween multiple other domes, and as colonists breed the offspring will automatically migrate to the education dome, grow up and then migrate to whatever dome provides specialized employment options (Unless absolutely none are on offer, then they will make broader decisions).

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1338867491




The two mods work well together, though the Smarter Worker mod author does advise making sure Specialized filter is enabled before Smarter Worker mod within the games mod manager.

Only downside to fixing the behaviour so colonists make better migration and employment decisions is it highlights some annoying little elements in how the game tracks unemployment and homeless colonists.

Using the mods (Smarter AI especially), you'll constantly be seeing homeless and unemployment figures jump then zero out again thanks to how the game treats all colonists moving domes as homeless and unemployed. And as it takes a short while for newly migrated colonists to assign themselves a new job, sometimes a colonist will migrate for a available job but by the time they get to the new dome and settle in they find the jobs are gone and may migrate yet again.

But overally it's a MASSIVE improvement over the base games lack of any kind of attention in this area, and cuts out most (if not all) the colonist micromanagement juggling and brings more focus on colony design planning to create efficient migration and employment behaviour.

Example:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1342357433

This is a early colony I have going on using both mods. The two domes on the left are focused on Machine part, Polymer, Metals and Rare Metals production. The dome in the middle serves as a childrens education and migration hub to bridge the two domes, with a single apartment building, housing spire, two nurseries, basic living needs and education buildings.

As the colonists in the left domes breed, their children automatically now migrate to the central dome to live in one of the two nurseries and attend the school there. As they grow up they then either move into the apartment building or spire to work the local services, or migrate back to one of the left domes to keep the factories and services there ticking over.

I've not had to drop off any new colonists in a shuttle for the middle dome, it has been populated and cycles through colonists automatically since its construction with no involvement by me.

Sadly the starting location has very little concrete, so I've got an almost constant shuttle relay bringing in more concrete to allow me to continue building up my colony.

[sindri42]

Thank you! I kept not getting around the starting the game up again because it was so annoying to constantly micromanage individual job placements, and now I think I'm ready to resume attempting to conquer the red planet!

[Black Jesus]

I use workplace filter and it is a lifesaver it also helps me keep track of which workplaces need more people cause I don't have to play musical chairs with a bunch of people who are cheating (is it even possible to cheat at that game?)

[Bunyan]

Awesome, Tikigod.... Was just getting frustrated with this very issue. VERY helpful post