Priority system is broken?

[HubertNNN]

I feel the priority system in this game is broken.
I have an employee set like this:
- Highest priority on ligistics
- High priority on construction
- Not allowed to work on derelict ships
- Work and study overlapped

I would expect him to do all the hauling, then all the construction on the ship and then go to study.
Instead he starts by going to deconstruct the derelict (despite being disallowed to do so).
If I disable his construction skill, then he immediately goes to study (despite studying being described as "secondary tasks are carried out if no primary tasks are available")
If I also disable his study time, then he goes to hauling.

This is a problem because my ship keeps getting overloaded by hauling jobs and every machine, and airlock just gets filled with no one doing the hauling, and the only solution seems to be micromanaging.

Am I doing something wrong, or is the priority system that badly broken?

[Nordil(Hun)]

Please provide a screenshot/screenshots of these settings, so we (players) and the devs can also have a look.

[HubertNNN]

Here's the screeshots of my settings. Travis is the person with those issues.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3729266554
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3729266902
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3729266999

[Nordil(Hun)]

Could you also post the study settings? (I know i played around with it ages ago to make it a priority to learn asap, but by heart i will not be able to tell which setting might be the cause)

Also Travis has other jobs on the same prio, shielding and gunner. (though they should not matter much).
The derelict work as you say should be prohibitted for him. No clue why he still goves over when he should not.

edit: I would suggest to re-enact the issue you encountered withim him.
Keep the settings, and wait until he moves toward a shuttle to reach the derelict. Send a bug Report to Bugbyte. (I usually write my username as well:P Though haven't sent one in ages:D)
Then once Travis is on the derelict dismantling with these settings send another one.
This way they can have a better look at what might be causeing the issue.

[Rayburn73]

Seeing the same issue, i have a industry character, highest prio, the rest of the skills are - but still goes out to strip a derelict ship, seeing the same with other, not sure, feels like after 1.01 they don't listen to well to the priority system (or alteast some don't). haha Haven't been able to identify the issue (figured perhaps stripping a derelict was industry as well (but its anoying having your recycler go off ship. (And there is plenty to recycle)

[HubertNNN]

Here's the study settings
He should only be affected by his own shooting training.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3729304539

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by HubertNNN:

Here's the study settings
He should only be affected by his own shooting training.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3729304539

Thanks yes just as i suspected you added work priority there as HIGH.
I am unsure how that compares to normal task priority, but it is at least around equal, might be even higher occasionally. That is why he goes to study instead of doing logistics.
What likely happens is that he transports one box and then he gets the study session as his next job thereafter another logistics.
However Study is a contious long task.

[Flin Fredstone]

Just looking at a glance, but Llama also has logistics set to highest priority. But all the rest her tasks are set to low.
She would get most of the hauling jobs isn't it ?
With high construction Travis also handles deconstruction as his primiairy task.
Maybe because no one else has any high(er) rank in construction it overrides his ship destination with Llama doing the hauling ?
Or is he also part of the boarding team and was undrafted on the derelict ship while deconstruct orders were given there ?

[Parallax]

Slightly OT but you should research hauler robots, they are amazing. They solved all my hauler issues until some raiders shot them up.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Flin Fredstone:

Just looking at a glance, but Llama also has logistics set to highest priority. But all the rest her tasks are set to low.
She would get most of the hauling jobs isn't it ?
With high construction Travis also handles deconstruction as his primiairy task.
Maybe because no one else has any high(er) rank in construction it overrides his ship destination with Llama doing the hauling ?
Or is he also part of the boarding team and was undrafted on the derelict ship while deconstruct orders were given there ?

Nah. Logistics jobs can be given to multiple people. I had 14 characters do logistics on one ship and 2 bots. (3 airlocks:D)

[Evilslug]

The fact that deconstruction tasks are (in general) by necessity rated higher on the scale than construction tasks is why your builders will ignore constructing your own hull or things onboard to zip off and deconstruct a derelict even if you haven't checked the expedite button for salvage.

More important to note, deconstruction jobs via POD are counted as jobs on the pod's origin vessel. This is why if you set people to disallowed on a derelict they will still hop into a construction pod to go dismantle it. You should disable hull salvage on the derelict until you are ready for someone to jump in the pod and go do it.

You can see how task priority works through things like setting your botanist to disallowed work on derelicts, max on plant tasks, and absolute minimum on construction. If nobody else is in the pod and they hit a point where no plant tasks are needed right at that moment, there is a good chance they will dive into the pod and go deconstruct until their next breaktime or the pod is full. Cheers.

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Please provide a screenshot/screenshots of these settings, so we (players) and the devs can also have a look.

Why do you need screenshots, this is a known problem, reported many times across the forum. The cumulative feedbacks on this are like:
1. Jobs have hidden prioritiy points outside of that what you see and almost in accordance to how the are positioned in the schedule from left to right.
2. When deciding priorities, crews ignore the setup in favour of what is closest what results in doing exactly those jobs that you wanted them to focus on last.
3. Priorities are overriden by battlestations and threats.
4. Priorities are overriden by health state and enviromental hazards.
5. Priorities are not attended if some other crews mark those jobs in their chain and thus exclude the main responsible for going to that job even though he is closer and would do the job faster.
6. Tasks are given to crew by RNG, not by their vicinity, thus situations like hull breaks in gardening area where is a crew member with top priority on maintenance, yet he simply walks away while anotjer crew from another corner of the ships starts walking ti fix this = destroyimg all crops, venting oxygen, cooling down the part of the ship, thus creating the need for several additional actions just because of this weird handling of tasks.

All those problems were causing mainly logistics problems which are present still untill today, because crews are not following priorities per highest priority and closest action, but at random what you can allways see by them doing very stupid routines with going from one end of the ship to the other and back, instead of reacting to closest item of their top priority and moving to the next closest one. This is mainly visible in logistics, but even more with derelict disassembly where they waste most of their time walking around instead of dismantling one thing after another in their closest range = thus increasing derelict works times like 3times more than needed.

This is why logistics robots are so important, even though they have the same weirs behaviour, their incability to do other jobs makes them efficinet at their isolated tasks, but you need to have enough of them so that at minimum one is allways on a break, otherwise they also be waating a lot of time walking around.

I could imagine a fix for this if the top priority was added in a sense that if a tasks associated with that skill pops up, the closest crew with that highest priority drops anything he was doing and would go immediately to attend that task. With that I could work.

[HubertNNN]

Originally posted by Flin Fredstone:

Or is he also part of the boarding team and was undrafted on the derelict ship while deconstruct orders were given there ?

Yes he is the only person with a gun (instead of pistol) in my team.

Originally posted by Evilslug:

More important to note, deconstruction jobs via POD are counted as jobs on the pod's origin vessel. This is why if you set people to disallowed on a derelict they will still hop into a construction pod to go dismantle it.

This explains some of the issues. Yes, he was doing deconstruction via pod, not by hand. I don't think I have seen him do deconstruction without a pod.

Originally posted by Flin Fredstone:

Just looking at a glance, but Llama also has logistics set to highest priority. But all the rest her tasks are set to low.
She would get most of the hauling jobs isn't it ?

I was so focused on my 3 item hand size hauler, that I did not even check on my 2 item hand size hauler. But yes Llama wasn't doing the hauling either. No idea what she was doing since I was fully focused on Travis.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Swato85:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Please provide a screenshot/screenshots of these settings, so we (players) and the devs can also have a look.

Why do you need screenshots, this is a known problem, reported many times across the forum.

Because the person here has voiced multiple issues. Which rely on multiple settings that the player must select. (I used to work in application support for years, and it never hurts to double check the settings.)
I know there are issues with the priority system. As i can see the many threads.
I myself did not find many issues with it. But that is probably because I probably play a different way or something.

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Originally posted by Swato85:

Why do you need screenshots, this is a known problem, reported many times across the forum.

Because the person here has voiced multiple issues. Which rely on multiple settings that the player must select. (I used to work in application support for years, and it never hurts to double check the settings.)
I know there are issues with the priority system. As i can see the many threads.
I myself did not find many issues with it. But that is probably because I probably play a different way or something.

All clear mate. I am a kind of statistical perfectionist in games with management mechanics so I see and get iritated by wasted time and actions quite fast and the cfew in Space haven has serious efficiency problems when it comes to their handling of priorities. Would love to see better or more sttict and direct approach to priorities. Their asymetric behaviour to the planning can be iritating 😁

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Swato85:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Because the person here has voiced multiple issues. Which rely on multiple settings that the player must select. (I used to work in application support for years, and it never hurts to double check the settings.)
I know there are issues with the priority system. As i can see the many threads.
I myself did not find many issues with it. But that is probably because I probably play a different way or something.

All clear mate. I am a kind of statistical perfectionist in games with management mechanics so I see and get iritated by wasted time and actions quite fast and the cfew in Space haven has serious efficiency problems when it comes to their handling of priorities. Would love to see better or more sttict and direct approach to priorities. Their asymetric behaviour to the planning can be iritating 😁

Nah i get it about the priority system frustration. (I have my peeves with it here and in Rimworld as well:P) Probably is why i use specialized crew these days. Everyone has Construct (as at least 8 possible skill), then there are the fighter+2 something characters. Weapon skill poss 10 and 2 skills on poss 10 and this leaves them with an additional skill 8-10. (Int 1.) Botany, industry, mining etc. Medical and Research (Medical min 8 max 10. Research min4-max 10 but usually 6)
There are the ship ops crew members. These will be nav+ops nav+shielding specced. And maybe one char with ops+shielding. They get also max poss weapon skills, but construct might not be given to all but one or two get medical instead.(Speed up the breather implanting:P).
This way everyone is able to do 2 jobs perfectly. (I set the starting values to reflect this, so start with at least one industry 6 char, botany 4 and medical 6:P) To be precise 2 jobs + construct/maintenance. So maintenance will also not be an issue since the higher the maintenance skill the less likely they fail to repair or cause additional damage instead of repairing.
This way most of the priority issues are eliminitad. Though it makes recruiting a lot harder:D