Even colonists with "hauling disabled" will haul:
- animals they killed via hunting
- construction materials to construction zone
- stone chunks to stonecutting table
- food to cooking table
- food to hoppers (count as Cooking)
While it makes those restrictions less harsh, sometimes I really just want to make sure the person walks as little as possible. Rimworld may as well be called Crippleworld. Half of colonists come with afflictions, the other half gets leg and torso scars from gunshots. I would really like an ability to just let a colonist only construct or only do the shooting. Let someone else haul the materials. I've had my share of colonists who are excellent builders but move at a turtle's pace.
This change would make cooking really, really bad without hauling, but that can be improved too. Bulk cooking. Similar to brewing (25 hops produces 5 beers). Less hauling this way. Or, colonists with hauling disabled would have maximum hauling distance. If a construction requires hauling farther than 15 squares, he won't haul. He will try to choose a construction which already has materials.
Thoughts ?
By the way, enabling Growing without Plant Cutting is dangerous: if such a colonist replants, he doesn't harvest the plant that was there before. For example when you switch 75% grown Potatoes to Corn, he will destroy the potatoes. He won't harvest what's possible.
Quote from: b0rsuk on August 12, 2015, 03:39:29 PM
By the way, enabling Growing without Plant Cutting is dangerous: if such a colonist replants, he doesn't harvest the plant that was there before. For example when you switch 75% grown Potatoes to Corn, he will destroy the potatoes. He won't harvest what's possible.
Strange, is that if cutting is disabled or only if they are incapable of it?
This sounds like it could be a bug to me.
The main reason not to do this is that it adds UI complexity. You have to be able to configure it. This is the reason I avoid a lot of features, actually. It's a tiny player tweak that costs full-price in player learning burden and UI complexificaion. Some things just aren't worth it, even though they sort of make sense within the gameworld.
Quote from: b0rsuk on August 12, 2015, 03:39:29 PM
By the way, enabling Growing without Plant Cutting is dangerous: if such a colonist replants, he doesn't harvest the plant that was there before. For example when you switch 75% grown Potatoes to Corn, he will destroy the potatoes. He won't harvest what's possible.
You do know the plant cutting has NOTHING to do with growing zones, and harvesting of plants in those growing zones. That is all part of the growing job.
Plant cutting is for wild plants that you designate, or for early harvest of plants in a growing zone if YOU designate them to be harvested early.
Changing the plants in a zone, if the plants are ready to be harvested, the grower will harvest, otherwise the plants are destroyed.
Quote from: TLHeart on August 12, 2015, 11:18:22 PM
Quote from: b0rsuk on August 12, 2015, 03:39:29 PM
By the way, enabling Growing without Plant Cutting is dangerous: if such a colonist replants, he doesn't harvest the plant that was there before. For example when you switch 75% grown Potatoes to Corn, he will destroy the potatoes. He won't harvest what's possible.
You do know the plant cutting has NOTHING to do with growing zones, and harvesting of plants in those growing zones. That is all part of the growing job.
Plant cutting is for wild plants that you designate, or for early harvest of plants in a growing zone if YOU designate them to be harvested early.
Changing the plants in a zone, if the plants are ready to be harvested, the grower will harvest, otherwise the plants are destroyed.
Oh, I didn't realize I could of just left my plant growers to harvest the plants when at full themselves...
Quote from: TLHeart on August 12, 2015, 11:18:22 PM
Quote from: b0rsuk on August 12, 2015, 03:39:29 PM
By the way, enabling Growing without Plant Cutting is dangerous: if such a colonist replants, he doesn't harvest the plant that was there before. For example when you switch 75% grown Potatoes to Corn, he will destroy the potatoes. He won't harvest what's possible.
You do know the plant cutting has NOTHING to do with growing zones, and harvesting of plants in those growing zones. That is all part of the growing job.
Don't lecture me the tooltip. Playtest it.
More arguments for this change:
Construction involves a lot of hauling. The hauling part requires absolutely no skill, it just needs decent movement speed. Yet only colonists who are enabled constructors will carry materials to construction zones. So you can
significantly speed up construction by manually micromanaging a few colonists who are crap at constructing (say 0 Construction skill). You either enable Constructing on their work overview screen and order them to haul the materials, or you place a temporary stockpile for construction materials next to construction zone.
Quote from: Tynan on August 12, 2015, 08:14:00 PM
The main reason not to do this is that it adds UI complexity. You have to be able to configure it. This is the reason I avoid a lot of features, actually. It's a tiny player tweak that costs full-price in player learning burden and UI complexificaion. Some things just aren't worth it, even though they sort of make sense within the gameworld.
It sounds like you don't play your own game. The last time I played on Ice Sheet I had 3 bad backs within my first 5 colonists.
In my opinion you're pushing the burden on the player already. Player can speed construction up a lot by using non-constructors, he just has to do this manually.
It is technically possible to do something sort of like that using allowed areas - a Hauler can take loose resources from the ground to a stockpile which they have access to, but the builder only has access to that stockpile and the construction areas.
In essence, if a colonist with movement issues could have the autonomy to put down a small temporary stockpile for building, then they could get on with the building, and the haulers could get on with moving stuff as close to the construction job as possible. Then, when the construction is finished, the temporary stockpile is removed and the resources are picked up and moved to where they are needed.
Another point where autonomy which would be useful - sometimes miners and constructors behave a bit oddly when they don't have access to the tile next to the place where they're supposed to be working, they will do one tile, move away and then go back - they really need at least one tile of space to properly path to the next thing needing work. So a temporary area allowance of one tile on each side would be beneficial.
I've made a mod (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=11249.0) to make the chance for bad backs and frailness (and the others) a bit lower. That might help. :)
Another benefit of manually creating temporary stockpiles:
You're building Geothermal Generator (400 steel). If you do it the straightforward way, one colonist will go to stockpile, then will haul 75 steel, then go back to stockpile, then haul another 75 steel... for a total of 5 times. Then he will go and start building. This is because when construction is reserved, no one else can interact with it.
Another approach: create temporary steel stockpile near the geyser. Make it 5 tile big (5 * 75 = 400) and give Critical priority. Up to 5 people can now go and haul steel to the stockpile. Then one strong builder arrives and raises the construction.
Another benefit from cutting out hauling out of construction:
When you assign a bunch of people to constructing, they will haul some materials first. Then a great builder may reserve a wall or floor tile, while a skill 1 Constructor with no passion reserves a granite autodoor. Now you might notice this, pause game, draft them both, and make them exchange construction. But if player had more control over priorities, those pathetic constructors would just do the hauling. They wouldn't reserve the autodoor, which takes long to build, and the good builder would reserve it.
Hunting example: Alphabeavers arrive. You want them dead as soon as possible, you don't care about corpses being hauled to the fridge or butchering table. If hauling wasn't a part of Hunting job, they would just kill the beavers. This could be improved without touching hauling, actually: a way to hunt in such way that beavers are left alone (forbidden) once downed.
All in all, I think hauling is complex enough to have its own tab and settings. Not all changes would always be beneficial. I keep writing down optimization ideas because Tynan is probably not going to do another pass before alpha12 is out.
Quote from: b0rsuk on August 13, 2015, 07:51:45 AM
-snip-
All in all, I think hauling is complex enough to have its own tab and settings. Not all changes would always be beneficial. I keep writing down optimization ideas because Tynan is probably not going to do another pass before alpha12 is out.
This pretty much nails it, a tab for hauling that is probably similar to the priorities tab. You can leave it alone, or mess with it to optimize your colony.
Quote from: Menuhin on August 13, 2015, 09:31:52 AM
Quote from: b0rsuk on August 13, 2015, 07:51:45 AM
-snip-
All in all, I think hauling is complex enough to have its own tab and settings. Not all changes would always be beneficial. I keep writing down optimization ideas because Tynan is probably not going to do another pass before alpha12 is out.
This pretty much nails it, a tab for hauling that is probably similar to the priorities tab. You can leave it alone, or mess with it to optimize your colony.
Eh, I disagree. Having more complex hauling priorities feels like it will just require more micro-managing. And as discussed in a thread about traits, when people won't do a skill like hauling, usually it's more they refuse to then they actually can't, meaning if they were hunting so they carry it back, or they were constructing so they brought resources, they have a reason to instead just carrying things to stockpiles normally because it's beneath them to haul or some such.
As complex as hauling is, I would kind of like to make it far more complex still.. I mean, smarter. So the colonists don't waste so much time, doing stupid things. So efficiency of my deep-mountain base with crops, defense and power outside doesn't double (or more) whenever I feel like micro-managing the hauling. So skilled colonists use more of their time doing skilled labor, and haulers waste less time on trivial hauls, and I waste less time constantly ordering manual hauls and changing zone priorities.
I agree that hauling jobs should be separated from construction and hunting jobs.
It would even allow you to work faster by allowing multiple colonists to pitch in when they don't all need the same skills.
While your colonist is busy shooting down animals one of his helpers could be dragging the corpses to the freezer. I want my hunter to stay on his post shooting animals and worry about hauling them after he's done hunting.
If a colonist is busy building something, the only thing he should be doing is a) plopping down a construction site and b) doing the construction. Putting materials in the site does not require any skills and should be an open job for any haulers. Possibly including the builder.
I would opine though that hauling jobs related to other jobs should possibly inherit the other job's priority, so general hauling is hauling, but hauling materials to a construction site is construction.
So, about these optimizations.
1. I'm constructing a long perimeter wall, or upgrading it to be 2, 3 tile thick. The first few times colonists go and haul materials to the wall, start constructing. Then they become hungry or go to sleep, fine. The next time many of them arrive directly to construction site with empty hands.
This causes many more trips than necessary. It's common to see a constructor go and build the one remaining wall tile with materials, then go back for materials.
As long as constructors are also material haulers, they should avoid walking to construction site with empty hands! You're very close to the stone block stockpile, go fetch some blocks and bring them to the construction site, THEN continue building the wall!
2. I'm upgrading a wooden house to stone blocks. I designate the whole wall for deconstruction. A colonist comes and deconstructs it all. Then he starts working on granite wall (1x). He hauls wood away from the blueprint, but only for a single wall tile.
What should happen instead: when a colonist starts hauling materials away from a blueprint, he should try to haul ALL materials of the same type from the blueprint (capped at his carrying capacity, for example haul 75 wood away from stone wall blueprints and then proceed with the wall constrution).
3. Miners or farmers finish mining, harvesting, sowing for the time being, walk back to the colony empty-handed.
Can we finally have opportunistic hauling ? When colonist goes wants to go back to colony, the colony is far away (with a stockpile), and there's some unforbidden resource close by, he should take something back with him.
4. Constructors can reserve multiple constructions for work, especially walls and conduits. I think what they reserve should be based on their Construction skill and the expected work time. For example, a single colonist should often reserve many squares of conduit or wall to build. Construction_Skill/expected_work_time . What I often see instead is 5 people make a 2 hour long trip to build 5 pieces of a wall/conduit. Don't assign so many people to a trivial task.
5. You designate construction of 2 wind turbines and some conduits. 3 colonists come, two lousy constructors start working on turbines, the master builder builds conduits and goes home.
The system should prefer sending strong builders to demanding tasks, and poor ones to those anyone can do quickly.
6. A constructor hauled 40 stone blocks to the final section of the wall. He succesfully built 7 sections, and goes home. I zoom in to see what's going on. Cannot prioritize wall, wall is reserved by Sleepy. Sleep is 3 hours away, he's the one with Bad Back. The original constructor focuses on a remote furniture construction. The furniture construction is close to Sleepy.
Sometimes I feel like colonists act to maximize travel time, not work time.
In such case I manually intervene, pause the game, draft both colonists, and make them exchange construction sites.
Similar situation: I'm building a hydroponic room. I don't have too many colonists, so everyone is doing everything. I can't really afford to disable Construction on Time, who is a good grower but bad constructor. Some tables are getting finished and plants need to be sowed. At the same time, tables remain to be built.
So at one point he starts constructing a table. Then Grim comes and starts sowing plants. He's a good constructor, but poor grower.
Both colonists are in the same place. Both are working. But they're both doing what they're bad at. I would love the game to be smart enough to realize they could exchange tasks they are currently doing.
I think that you should require construction skills to
1) create a construction zone
2) start work on a site once it has all the materials
But putting materials in the site should be an anyman hauling job.
And don't forget there are animal haulers. Animals can't be constructors, therefore they can't haul wood and stone to construction zone.
Man I would hate it if colonists couldn't haul what they build and hunt, I have enough annoyance trying to find one of my colonists to haul that box of medicine to the Medicine storage, as several of them are incapable and I can never remember which, so I end up clicking on the people nearby and attempting to order each of them over and over until one will do it.
You just got yourself the main reason why not to do it. What else do you need. If this is a must have for you then just make yourself a stockpile closer to the construction site. Micromanage.
I'm all for this, efficiency and all.
There's a bit too much necessary micromanaging going on...
It's because hauling and plant cutting are different jobs you can assign and some other reasons. Such as cutting plants, giant areas of a farm are harvested at a time depending on your base, if they hauled every single one back it would be extremely inefficient compared to just harvesting every plant and then replanting them. it's why all items on the map are automatically set so they aren't hauled, and you manually set chunks to be hauled. So that using a hauler you can haul the most important stuff.
I somewhat agree with the OP, I have been thinking the same thing, but as has already been mentioned, you can already half-do this with stockpile zones etc. I usually do that for big projects I want finished faster like Geothermals or the spaceship.
Never thought about specialised haulers though. A colonist with 2 bionic legs who only hauls could be cool.
Generally it's that one colonist who isn't too good at other stuff but can haul. If you have an abundance of food, or your crafter isn't necessary right now, setting them to cleaner/hauler is a good move.
Quote from: shentino on September 08, 2015, 06:13:26 PM
I think that you should require construction skills to
1) create a construction zone
2) start work on a site once it has all the materials
But putting materials in the site should be an anyman hauling job.
That is an interesting solution.
Quote from: Regret on December 07, 2015, 08:03:33 AM
Quote from: shentino on September 08, 2015, 06:13:26 PM
I think that you should require construction skills to
1) create a construction zone
2) start work on a site once it has all the materials
But putting materials in the site should be an anyman hauling job.
That is an interesting solution.
I make top priority specific temporal stockpiles next to big construction sites and my hauling animals take care of it so workers don't have to move much.
I also have a steel stockpile next to my killboxes for quicker turret reconstruction.
Quote from: b0rsuk on August 12, 2015, 03:39:29 PM
Even colonists with "hauling disabled" will haul:
- animals they killed via hunting
- construction materials to construction zone
- stone chunks to stonecutting table
- food to cooking table
- food to hoppers (count as Cooking)
While it makes those restrictions less harsh, sometimes I really just want to make sure the person walks as little as possible. Rimworld may as well be called Crippleworld. Half of colonists come with afflictions, the other half gets leg and torso scars from gunshots. I would really like an ability to just let a colonist only construct or only do the shooting. Let someone else haul the materials. I've had my share of colonists who are excellent builders but move at a turtle's pace.
This change would make cooking really, really bad without hauling, but that can be improved too. Bulk cooking. Similar to brewing (25 hops produces 5 beers). Less hauling this way. Or, colonists with hauling disabled would have maximum hauling distance. If a construction requires hauling farther than 15 squares, he won't haul. He will try to choose a construction which already has materials.
Thoughts ?
By the way, enabling Growing without Plant Cutting is dangerous: if such a colonist replants, he doesn't harvest the plant that was there before. For example when you switch 75% grown Potatoes to Corn, he will destroy the potatoes. He won't harvest what's possible.
If haulers would automatically haul materials to the placed blueprints, that'd be good, as construction workers often have to walk around for more materials.
I don't think this feature would add any complexity to the UI. I support that idea.
But that's where the benefits end.
- Hauling food for the cook would be hard to code imo (what stops another hauler to haul it back to a stockpile?), and the cook would have to wait for the next haul, or worse, would run off in the meanwhile. Bulk cooking would merely decrease the pain involved.
- Hauling material to worktables would have the same issues,
- hunting would make the (even busier) haulers have more running to do, while the hunter is already there,
-maybe more I haven't realized yet.
In the end, it would improve construction time, but would make other jobs painfully slow and complex.