Vanilla Alpha 9 Micro management

[Darth Fool]

I have compiled a short list of things in vanilla alpha 9 that I find that I need to micro-manage, most of which are not adding to the experience.  I realize that some of these can be addressed with mods, but I think that these AI/UI issues should be fixed in the vanilla.

The good: 
I find that while I generally have to micro-manage combat, overall this is a good thing.

The Bad: 
Harvesting wild plants.  It should be possible to set up regions where your plant cutters will gladly harvest whatever plants are fully grown, regardless of whether you planted them or not.

Multiple haulers going after same collection of goods when one is sufficient and the other should go after a different set.  This is mostly a problem near the beginning when I am trying to get all the survival meals out of the mouths of Muffalos, but it also effects the random pod drops later. 

Opportunistic Hauling.  On a similar note, when someone has finished a job far from the main base, or decides to take a break to rest or eat, for maximum efficiency I need to tell them to haul items that are on their way.  It would be nice if they naturally would do this.

Completing Construction tasks:  I want the geothermal generator built, please build it.  Great, you hauled metal to it and have now decided to go back to doing something else, please go back and prioritize constructing the generator again.  and again. and again.   It would be nice if once a task had been set to prioritize, the colonist would automatically prioritize the related follow on tasks unless they are dying,starving,being attacked or about to drop from exhaustion.

Deconstructing v. Construction.  For some reason my colonists think that deconstructing a wall half way across the map is more important than building anything.  It would be nice if they would change how they prioritize building/deconstruction, so that they worked on what was closest first regardless of whether it was a construction or deconstruction task.

Prioritizing working on nearby furniture with same raw materials.  When you instruct a colonist to prioritize working on an item with other items or walls nearby that have similar raw materials, the colonist will happily haul the raw materials to all of them, which is great in that it saves hauling time.  Then the colonist will pick something random to construct, not the item that you asked them to prioritize.  This is bad.

Hunting creatures that are running away.  When hunting creatures that are leaving the map or crossing the map, my hunters tend to run just until the creature is in range, then start aiming.  With the survival rifle, by the time they are ready to fire, the creature will be out of range, so guess what, they repeat the process, never firing a shot, but running all the way across the map.  It would be nice if they actually got close enough to shoot it.  It is quite possible to do this manually through drafting them, telling them where to go and what to fire at, but the hunters should do this on their own.

Clothing/weapon Management.  A lot has been said about this by others to which I heartily agree.  With fraying clothing/weapons and other gear, colonists should automatically pick up demonstrably better items on their own.

Doctoring choosing which one is most likely to die and treating first.  Doctors will decide to treat the nearest patient, but they should really choose among the most likely to die soonest, at least amongst the nearby patients.  Triage would be nice.

So, you can manually deal with triage on the battlefield by dropping emergency medical sleeping spots for colonists and guests out near where they have fallen and "rescuing" them and setting a doctor/medic to bandage their wounds (while forbidding any medicine so that the doctor doesn't run all the way across the map).  It would be nice to be able to stabilize wounds, preventing death by blood loss, and then work on them later to improve the bandages from poor to good.  Also, for enemies, there is no choice but to haul them back to base as a prisoner, which can be fatal.

Eating priorities are just really whack.  I am hoping the changelog indicates that A10 will fix some of this. 

But... not yet listed on the changelog...
Starving colonists will not eat food in prisoner room unless ordered to.  When starving, colonists should eat whatever they can get their grubby hands on that has not been marked forbidden.  And if starving enough, they should eat even forbidden foods.  And they should pass out and "need rescue" from starvation long before they die from it.

And feeding prisoners can be weird.  Occasionally I have had prisoners die because the warden takes them food while they are asleep, then immediately picks it up and takes it to a different prisoner.  If this happens a few times, the first prisoner dies of starvation.  I can avoid this by drafting my warden and removing the sleeping spot (or changing it to colonist), but this just seems wrong.

The Ugly, things that I can't fix even by micro managing:
Which wounds to heal first.  Instead of healing the most deadly wounds, doctors seem to heal them in some random order.  Colonist bleeding out from a major gun shot wound to the torso and several slight squirrel scratches can die because the doctor thinks that the scratches need to be patched first.

Similarly, there is no way to stop a colonist from bleeding out if they are the only caring capable colonist.  Colonists that are not unconscious should be able to attempt to patch themselves, even if it is really awful.

Ok, hopefully the powers that be will find these observations useful.  Please feel free to add your own list of micro-management hell in alpha 9 vanilla.

[skullywag]

Prioritizing working on nearby furniture with same raw materials.  When you instruct a colonist to prioritize working on an item with other items or walls nearby that have similar raw materials, the colonist will happily haul the raw materials to all of them, which is great in that it saves hauling time.  Then the colonist will pick something random to construct, not the item that you asked them to prioritize.  This is bad.

Hunting creatures that are running away.  When hunting creatures that are leaving the map or crossing the map, my hunters tend to run just until the creature is in range, then start aiming.  With the survival rifle, by the time they are ready to fire, the creature will be out of range, so guess what, they repeat the process, never firing a shot, but running all the way across the map.  It would be nice if they actually got close enough to shoot it.  It is quite possible to do this manually through drafting them, telling them where to go and what to fire at, but the hunters should do this on their own.
Similarly, there is no way to stop a colonist from bleeding out if they are the only caring capable colonist.  Colonists that are not unconscious should be able to attempt to patch themselves, even if it is really awful.

Ok, hopefully the powers that be will find these observations useful.  Please feel free to add your own list of micro-management hell in alpha 9 vanilla.

1. I would class this as a bug and would raise it as such.
2. I would put a check to see what the weapons most effective range is and move within that range before engaging.
3. I could be wrong but i saw comment regarding self healing in the change log thread recently.

[b0rsuk]

Darth Fool:
- making "Prioritize" command more elaborate would just lead to people using it more. Any good idea to automate a boring task could be shot down by saying "but you can prioritize it manually and he will do it."

- wild plants could be handled by a new special kind of Growing Zone. Imagine you select "Wild plants" from the pull-down menu.

- repairing clothes could be initialized by a tailor table bill. "Repair frayed apparel". This would cause an ANOTHER colonist come by to a table and leave their frayed apparel there. Then try to take similar clothes from the stockpile. MEanwhile a tailor would come and use some material to fix the thing. Repeat: 1x, 2x, infinity.

Two things I want to add to your list:
1. when hauling materials to a construction site, if you're NOT* taking them from a stockpile, try to take 75 materials instead of the exactly needed amount. Many times there are several related constructions taking place somewhere (for example conduits, wind turbines, batteries; or floor, walls, door and bed). The colonist will be short-sighted and only take materials for the immediate task.

* why do I make an exception for stockpiles ? Because this optimization is not meant to create a mess. If you're taking from outside stockpiles, it will likely end up closer to your stockpiles or other construction, where someone can make a good use of it.

2. On colonist Overview screen, I'd like to see enabled by default "avoid combat" checkbox. When checked, the colonist will run away from people and things shooting and being shot at. Unless currently drafted. Tasks being near such people wouldn't be completed. You may still want to have a combat repair man or rescue man, equipped with personal shield and a helmet. But no random harmless colonists should wander in the crossfire. "Avoid combat" could also help with hunting accidents.

[Eleazar]

I haven't personally witness all of the situations Darth describes, but i've seen most of them.

One minor oddity i've seen is that when refilling the nutrient paste hopper, the hauler always carries a full stack, and thus always has to haul the remainder back to the freezer.  Not a huge deal in itself but may be part of a hauling logic glitch.

Deconstructing v. Construction.  For some reason my colonists think that deconstructing a wall half way across the map is more important than building anything.

Similarly i've seen my construction colonists seem to prefer smoothing floors over all other construction jobs regardless of queued order or distance.

Opportunistic Hauling.  On a similar note, when someone has finished a job far from the main base, or decides to take a break to rest or eat, for maximum efficiency I need to tell them to haul items that are on their way.  It would be nice if they naturally would do this.

I wonder if this would make more sense if only invoked when outside the home zone.  When you are out in the field, chances are the difference between the path you are already going on and the path to a stockpile is trivial.  When you are in the base the detour to a stockpile may double or more the trip to the next activity.

[b0rsuk]

Opportunistic Hauling.  On a similar note, when someone has finished a job far from the main base, or decides to take a break to rest or eat, for maximum efficiency I need to tell them to haul items that are on their way.  It would be nice if they naturally would do this.

I wonder if this would make more sense if only invoked when outside the home zone.  When you are out in the field, chances are the difference between the path you are already going on and the path to a stockpile is trivial.  When you are in the base the detour to a stockpile may double or more the trip to the next activity.

If it was only outside home zone, you'd have to forsake repairs and cleaning near your fields or hydroponics. When you are in the base, you're not likely to have random resources lying around, and if you have, you end up with a tidier base so it's not exactly a downside. If you don't want that, you can still disable hauling for miners and growers.

[Bradicus Prime]

Is it not common knowledge that NPDs act as walls?

http://i.imgur.com/CcFZiAx.jpg

[Kegereneku]

I would like to point out that "fixing" some of those would break the workflow of other players who are used to such habit from colonist.

- Multiple haulers going after same collection of goods
Some good cannot be stacked or will be too heavy for one colonist to take all. The colonist might also not see it can stack two item on its way back as it is outside it "pick up range"
Hence I go with the current system of multiple colonist, finding micromanaging trick to solve those "rare" problem

- Opportunistic Hauling.
I kind of agree with this one but some solution could pose problem like a colonist hauling an object far away although it ought to sleep or eat. (I have stockpile away from base sometime)
So the not-opportunistic hauling sound "safer" for me

- Completing Construction tasks
Myself all my colonist aren't constructor so it is appreciated when colonist deliver material for thing they don't build.
Those who build usually do so, or haul raw material for another construction anyway making it as efficient.

Aside, other problem like
- Clothing/weapon Management
Is being worked on by Tynan, he plan to have the colonist choose best clothes.

And many people ask for equipment/carrying slot on colonist.

[Darth Fool]

Another one that I was just reminded of ... the perverse incentives of attack size determined in part by wealth computed based on, amongst other things, what is in your stockpile , thus leading to micro-managing stockpiles to collect resources, but then forbidding their use and deleting the stockpile beneath them.

[b0rsuk]

Another one that I was just reminded of ... the perverse incentives of attack size determined in part by wealth computed based on, amongst other things, what is in your stockpile , thus leading to micro-managing stockpiles to collect resources, but then forbidding their use and deleting the stockpile beneath them.

You can cheat the AI so easily ?

I wonder how they pick mortar targets. They're not just spamming my home zone perchance ? Could I affect their targetting by messing with my home zone ? I had an outside base with a large perimeter wall in the last game. They mostly kept shooting my granite walls all over the place, rarely close to colonists.

[skullywag]

deleting stockpiles does nothing for the wealth calculation, the wealth calculation looks at every cell on the map, even if something is dropped in and you never touch it its added to your wealth.

[b0rsuk]

So the workaround is: don't mine it until you need it ?

[Kegereneku]

deleting stockpiles does nothing for the wealth calculation, the wealth calculation looks at every cell on the map, even if something is dropped in and you never touch it its added to your wealth.

Last I heard it worked with Silver and traders. Empirical test seemed to match theory. Should I find a new way to attract traders ?