Confustion about JOBS. Can not get much higher than 40-55%!

[Tragic]

So one of the problems I am having in my games is filling jobs. It seams that there is a sliding scale that always makes the job cap more further and further.

For example.. you stop building and just let the immigrates come in and fill your jobs.. Oh.. now you need more farms.. this adds jobs. Then you need more housing, which requires more happiness structures, more jobs. You may need to expand.. so new Drones, New Scrubbers, maybe new cops, new power.. etc etc.

In most city builders I like to slow down the expansion to fill out all the jobs for efficiency. In this game though even when you are trying to build nothing, just to keep them happy, or even a place to live means you have to constantly make more locations that require jobs... so not matter how large my colony grows I always seam to hover around 35-55 employment... normally in the mid 40s.

What am I doing wrong?

[ForgeTec]

you also forget places like farms and power plants and such also only work at less efficency when not staffed - so as new people arrive you slowly tick up and up - what I'm suspecting your doing is using to many facilities that require people rather then the lesser and more expensive ones with out the need for people

for instance geothermal takes allot of people and produces allot of power - but early on I prefer solar and wind farms in the more desolate parts of the map backed up by batteries this free's up 10-15 people that could be farming

another thing I've noticed is people not upgrading or optimizing farms and such - friend needed 27 farms and I only needed 12 cause I'd maxed the worker population on them meaning they were at 100% output

also allot of this game is playing the min/max function at times - like water I often set water to a higher stock pile then once its over filling I min the facility and I can go a hour with them not doing things - like during summer I set my geo plants to gather water and drop my water staff to doing farming then soon as winter comes around and half my farms are frozen I pause set them to no workers real fast then boost production of other things (normally nanites) that have been stocking in the summer months

there is allot of micro / macro management you can do - some people like more micromanagement setting each building to different levels as population joins - others prefer a more macro scale by just importing people by the hundreds and over planning on the essentials to keep happyness at a decent level then using no worker happyness boosters to push up the happy level or just making stuff that makes them happy in bulk

[Tragic]

I always upgrade my farms before adding new ones.

I have no interest in using the priority buttons much apart from some emergencies. Micro is not fun and I am happy to be less efficient and actually enjoy myself!

The thing is "moving workers around" is not really what I am talking about. The goal for me would be to have 100% employment with everything set to "normal".

The issue I am having is that as new people come in you need to build new things.. housing for example, then you need entertainment and health for those new home structures and they all take workers and power. This in turn means the total job numbers increase. It feels like you are chasing a dragon. Each % you gain you add a % of new jobs. I always seam to hover around the same employment value.

I think maybe your idea of switching to solar power and batteries might be a good idea, as they do not take any workers. I normally rush thermal generators to stop poison gas emissions. Then as they are online, may as well upgrade them. You can use wind turbines to blow has away from the base right?

I also tend to only use Air Systems instead of fans. To assist with air flow but make it harder for infections and stuff to get into the base... but again.. they all add workers.

[ForgeTec]

I normally just make big fields of wind turbines since they are cheap and work 100% of the year and just stuff them in a corner of the base I'd never build in since the land is bad or in between buildings spaces

also I understood what you meant - I said different people different skills - that said I feel like you probably could reduce the numbers by using a few optimizations like only using green houses since they have a all year round quality thus not needing to turn them off during winter and similar concepts

though I'd also check your storage your probably over producing goods of one kind or another and have far to many of something like early on I often placed to many mines realizing I had 10 warehouses of random ores just sitting there

[DVN]

I played until I had a population of 1000+. No, it isn't an endless game of getting more people and having to provide more facilities for new people. As the others suggested, you probably need:

1. Upgrade your buildings
2. Make sure you have them fully staffed (close residence though I don't know if it's necessary now with transport hubs)
3. Make sure the people are happy (unhappy = lower efficiency)
4. Use high productivity land and appropriate high productivity crop for the land for farms

You can have 100% employment on normal work priority. I actually had unemployment problems at one point where I'm duplicating entertainment buildings just to make new jobs while stopping immigration.

I think the most common problem is that people don't take in consideration the importance of placing desirable residences close to the workplaces. For example, in one game, I had unemployment and 90% jobs filled because the residence close to the building requiring workers didnt have entertainment and was overcrowded. So people preferred to go to a less crowded residence and didnt want to commute to a far workplace and therefore stayed unemployed. But I think that problem is now solved with the transport hubs. I also found that my sweet spot in many games was 2 immigration centers for a nanite production of 2mines and 2 processors. Once everything stabilized, I would switch to 1 immigration center with periodic immigration bans.