Different farmer bot harvest times?

[Darkchaos]

So I've encountered something strange. I have two bases with lots of farming, one on undeveloped island with lots of fields and pens and another on eastern island with lots of coral pens, wyrm pens and a coral farm.

The farmer bots are behaving differently between the two islands. On eastern island, they gradually harvest everything over time. On undeveloped island, they take a long time before suddenly harvesting everything.

Anyone know what is going on and how I can optimize their behavior?

[squirleybob]

It has to do with the bots' AI, which isn't real optimal. They tend to prioritize fast-growing things such as pens and crops over anything else, although it seems that they are in separate farms here. The Eastern Island farm seems to be doing pretty well, probably because you are using slower-growing animals. Fertilizer in the pens on the undeveloped island "grows" very quickly, so that is probably what they are doing until they notice that everything else has finished growing (possibly coinciding with when the fertilizer is ready).

[Darkchaos]

Originally posted by squirleybob:

It has to do with the bots' AI, which isn't real optimal. They tend to prioritize fast-growing things such as pens and crops over anything else, although it seems that they are in separate farms here. The Eastern Island farm seems to be doing pretty well, probably because you are using slower-growing animals. Fertilizer in the pens on the undeveloped island "grows" very quickly, so that is probably what they are doing until they notice that everything else has finished growing (possibly coinciding with when the fertilizer is ready).

I'm not entirely sure this is the case because they take so long to harvest everything that everything on undeveloped island is grown for quite some time.

[squirleybob]

Are they harvesting anything at all during that time?

[Darkchaos]

They don't seem to be harvesting anything while I'm watching them, instead clustering around single farms. While I'm not on the island, I get notification spam as if they harvested everything at once.

[David Maletz]

They do act differently when you're on the island and when you're off. When you're on the island, they will do a tending animation around the nearest crop/pen, and then move to the nearest harvestable pen and harvest it. When you are off the island, to save resources (as it'd slow thing down if bots were moving everywhere), they don't actually move, just wait a set amount of time and harvest the closest havestable crop/pen. This is usually slower than them actually moving and harvesting, but depending how you have your base set up, it can be faster if the travel time between pens is far (as they don't actually have to move).

[Darkchaos]

Originally posted by David Maletz:

They do act differently when you're on the island and when you're off. When you're on the island, they will do a tending animation around the nearest crop/pen, and then move to the nearest harvestable pen and harvest it. When you are off the island, to save resources (as it'd slow thing down if bots were moving everywhere), they don't actually move, just wait a set amount of time and harvest the closest havestable crop/pen. This is usually slower than them actually moving and harvesting, but depending how you have your base set up, it can be faster if the travel time between pens is far (as they don't actually have to move).

Thanks for clarifying the bot behavior! But something still seems wrong.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457878739

When I'm hanging around on undeveloped island and watching the bots, I can see one of them leave to go back to the barn once every few minutes while the rest mill around that field for an excessive amount of time.

Barely any fields or pens are getting harvested while I'm present even though there's 10+ bots.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457881288

Compare this with the eastern island. There's a lot of bots milling around here but they seem to work much faster than the ones on undeveloped island. They go up to each pen and harvest it. It's a bit slow but orders of magnitude faster than the bots on undeveloped island.

[David Maletz]

Make sure there's a valid path between the bots, your barn and your storehouse. If one of the ladders is missing and they are stuck up there on that floating platform, that could cause it. Sometimes packing a few up and placing them where you want them works too.

[Darkchaos]

Originally posted by David Maletz:

Make sure there's a valid path between the bots, your barn and your storehouse. If one of the ladders is missing and they are stuck up there on that floating platform, that could cause it. Sometimes packing a few up and placing them where you want them works too.

I double-checked that there is a clear path between all buildings and picked up and placed back down the bots.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457959509

I put them over at that pen. They moved over to the barn and performed their tending animation for a bit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457959420

But then they returned to the apple orchard and they're still tending forever. And quick note here, but the house in the bottom-right is to the left of the barn from the first screenshot.