Plant Gathering is TOO high-priority

[xDDD]

Why is plant gathering considered more important than 99% of tasks? There can be priority 2 designations and dozens of unconstructed structures, yet over half of my entire fortress is collecting plants.

Plant gathering is flat-out BUGGED. Even when I set the labors still nearly all of my dwarves try to do it.

[spear and magic helmet?]

It's buggy for sure. I've noticed dwarfs milling around under trees with ripe fruit, but several z-levels above ground, so even with a stepladder they can't reach. It also appears you can't gather fruit from the ground with 'g', only with a zone. If you're using zones they should move along pretty quickly if you suspend or delete it, though they may well move on to another zone and continue their obsession.

[spear and magic helmet?]

Also--not sure that it's the priority that's bugged as such, just that they start doing it and get stuck.

[graalGGTV]

Originally posted by Zebrant:

Why is plant gathering considered more important than 99% of tasks? There can be priority 2 designations and dozens of unconstructed structures, yet over half of my entire fortress is collecting plants.

Plant gathering is flat-out BUGGED. Even when I set the labors still nearly all of my dwarves try to do it.

Honestly, that wasn't a problem in the free version because only dwarves you assigned the plant gatherer labor would do it, so by default you usually started with it enabled for 0-1 dwarves and very few migrants would have it enabled by default.

The main problem is that they didn't adjust the priority of the task, and made it so that all dwarves do it by default, so you end up with the current situation where if you assign an area for gathering, most of your dwarves will just focus on that until it's done

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Zebrant:

Why is plant gathering considered more important than 99% of tasks? There can be priority 2 designations and dozens of unconstructed structures, yet over half of my entire fortress is collecting plants.

Plant gathering is flat-out BUGGED. Even when I set the labors still nearly all of my dwarves try to do it.

Well, uh.... :)

In games like this, "Plant Gathering" is usually only considered to be an early-game activity and, at that, usually done in desperation. Games like this generally put other mechanics in place like "Farming" to handle foodstuffs. Or, perhaps, in games like "Banished" will have "Gatherer Huts." DF has a "Gatherer Zone," btw. But, I don't use it 'cause it seems iffy.. :)

So, the point is that an early-game player is likely going to be using that mechanic and they are much better served if everyone rushes out and Gathers so that the smaller early-game Fortress doesn't starve to death.

That's the reason I could see why it's a high-priority, "survival like" task.

BUT...

It's not unusual for Dwarves that don't have anything to do to be doing something else... like boozing it up in a Tavern or looking at sculptures or walking around doing Dorf stuffs... Suddenly, ALL of those Dorfs get a command from on high telling them to go do something... That's probably a large part of what you're seeing happen when compared to the other sorts of Orders you normally issue, which are transmitted to a much smaller group of Dwarves.

You could create Custom jobs that ended up restricting all Dwarves from Gathering duties and then isolate that activity to just a few Dwarves, I "think." But, AFAIK, Children will still gather.

PS: To sum - It's not exactly too bugged, it just needs some tweaks, but those default-like "low-level, in the engine" tweaks are very hard to balance. I've never played a game that had this feature that did also not come with warnings like "don't give this order over a large area when you have a high population or you will be gifted with a slideshow effect." Truly. And, because it will come up, Rimworld can even have that problem with its similar mechanic and its not designed to really support more than 20 colonists.

[xDDD]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Well, uh.... :)

In games like this, "Plant Gathering" is usually only considered to be an early-game activity and, at that, usually done in desperation. Games like this generally put other mechanics in place like "Farming" to handle foodstuffs. Or, perhaps, in games like "Banished" will have "Gatherer Huts." DF has a "Gatherer Zone," btw. But, I don't use it 'cause it seems iffy.. :)

So, the point is that an early-game player is likely going to be using that mechanic and they are much better served if everyone rushes out and Gathers so that the smaller early-game Fortress doesn't starve to death.

That's the reason I could see why it's a high-priority, "survival like" task.

BUT...

It's not unusual for Dwarves that don't have anything to do to be doing something else... like boozing it up in a Tavern or looking at sculptures or walking around doing Dorf stuffs... Suddenly, ALL of those Dorfs get a command from on high telling them to go do something... That's probably a large part of what you're seeing happen when compared to the other sorts of Orders you normally issue, which are transmitted to a much smaller group of Dwarves.

You could create Custom jobs that ended up restricting all Dwarves from Gathering duties and then isolate that activity to just a few Dwarves, I "think." But, AFAIK, Children will still gather.

That is even more detrimental in the early-game when there's only 7-12 dwarves and they are all gathering instead of doing important work. :)
Maybe it would remain an early-game activity if the kitchen didn't default to auto-cooking every drink until you turn it off. :)

And I did do exactly that, created Custom jobs and restricted it to a few dwarves BUT still every dwarf attempted to do it. I say attempted because they indeed stood around the activity zone doing nothing like a few others have noted.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Zebrant:

...
That is even more detrimental in the early-game when there's only 7-12 dwarves and they are all gathering instead of doing important work. :)

Well... maybe? The game doesn't know what the player considers to be "important." Since "Gather" may often indicate a desperate need for food, since Farming "should provide," it may not be too bad.

It ain't perfect, though. :)

Maybe it would remain an early-game activity if the kitchen didn't default to auto-cooking every drink until you turn it off. :)

Yeah, that's kind of a "gotcha" thing. Seeds, too. Some default Standing Orders could use some tweaking so they're not all "enabled" in certain ways.

And I did do exactly that, created Custom jobs and restricted it to a few dwarves BUT still every dwarf attempted to do it. I say attempted because they indeed stood around the activity zone doing nothing like a few others have noted.

Ah! So, you couldn't get rid of or prevent it with custom Job/roles? Then, I agree - That should be fixed. I could see why it would be considered to be an important default skill/job, though, as a "new player" wouldn't be familiar with those mechanics.

Are you using "Gather Zones" and that's where you're seeing a bit of inconvenience/issues? I only use manually ordered Gathering sparingly, here and there, to offer some additional foods/drinks unless it's in the very early part of the game, so don't use the Gather Zone... cause I've read some reports of it being sort of squirrely, but I don't know that for sure.

[BonPadre]

Just stupid 2 cents here. You know you can (caps for emphasis, not shouting)
PAUSE the gathering zone (assuming it's a constant) zone ?
That way you activate said zones at will, when you seem to have less urgent works.

I use zones for fallen fruits only (for reasosn...) and I'm very happy with how they work. Just don't massive draw zones, and the collection of those fallen fruits (late summer, early automn) will be quite quick.

[Kylorian]

Just a though on priorities: it seems that dwarfs first go by needs (food, drink, heath) then ordered tasks (mining, building, gathering) and then everything else (work orders, zones) in general. But also do we know for certain that priority numbers cross for jobs say will they always do a fell tree set to 1 before a mine set to 2 or do they pick the job type first then go by number. Has anyone tested it? Ultimately though just set your plant gather to assigned only.

[xDDD]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Are you using "Gather Zones" and that's where you're seeing a bit of inconvenience/issues? I only use manually ordered Gathering sparingly, here and there, to offer some additional foods/drinks unless it's in the very early part of the game, so don't use the Gather Zone... cause I've read some reports of it being sort of squirrely, but I don't know that for sure.

Yeah I am. Maybe it's Gather Zones which are kind of messed up.

Originally posted by BonPadre:

Just stupid 2 cents here. You know you can (caps for emphasis, not shouting)
PAUSE the gathering zone (assuming it's a constant) zone ?
That way you activate said zones at will, when you seem to have less urgent works.

I use zones for fallen fruits only (for reasosn...) and I'm very happy with how they work. Just don't massive draw zones, and the collection of those fallen fruits (late summer, early automn) will be quite quick.

The pause didn't seem to work for me either. Dozens of dwarves still stood around until I deleted the zone completely.
Maybe they weren't done with their routines of standing around and were about to move buuuuut as it stands I just designate the zone when I need it and delete the zone when I don't need it. Far from perfect but eh.
Guess I gotta get some solid farm plots going and just ignore this issue altogether.