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Hey all,

There is apparently a "ideal amount of colonists" number in each AI that bsically makes sure to offer you opportunities for new recruits if you are below that number (incapacitaed raiders, wanderers, slave ships ect.) but deny those same things if you are maxed. I read somewhere that this was 7 from kassandra classic and something like 14 for phoebe friendly.

I want to know - do prisoners count towards this number, yes, no, or partially in some way? It seems that if I have a lot of my total population in prison then I still sometimes get more people, although perhaps not as frequently? Getting 10-11 people on kassandra seems not too hard to do this way.

I know that doing this is a bit min/maxy but that's how I like to play the game, so I hope you can forgive me for trying to "abuse" the AI

I also want to know, what's this number for Randy Random currently?

EDIT: Also, is there some fairly easy way to mod this number? I think that it might be pretty fun to play a game on hard or random (which is hard in its own ways) but with a less restrictive amount of colonists - as manpower is very often a big limiting factor.

-Stigma

Hey all,

This will be a real short suggestion. For anyone who has played the game, it is a really common thing to experience that your colonist wants to go eat or sleep just before he finishes the last 3 blocks of your mining job, or the last few conduit pieces ect. Then you have to resort to right-clicking and "prioritize" for each and every block of work - basically babysitting the colonist through it. Sometimes this is a matter of survival or death (those missing conduits could be the thing you need to power your defense against the imminent big raider attack) so you are often compelled to do this.

What we need to fix this is very similar to the existing "prioritize X" we already have, but allow it to select a whole area of existing queued jobs. That colonist will do these tasks above all else, including sleeping and eating. This would be a pr. colonist kind of thing.

I think it could also be useful to have a priority category for all colonists combined that works a little different. Let's say there is lots of stuff to haul, but right now I need to grab a load of metal that fell down from orbit. I don't want to let them haul all the other stuff first because I need the metal right now. i don't want to select priority on a single colonist because I need the job done faster than a single man can do it (and it may be too much work to do in one go without sleeping and eating too).

Instead the solution is to set a priority area. Simply put, anything in that area is classed as higher priority, but ONLY higher than other tasks in the same class. Example: a hauling task inside super-priority area is more important than hauling task outside the area, but not more important than mining task outside the area.

Result: I can simply mark the minerals area with super priority and then go do something else. As soon as my colonists have availability to do hauling jobs, they will do that hauling job before any other hauling. Problem solved!

-Stigma

[- Customizable prioritization]

Hey all,

I've noticed a couple of problems that I want to draw some attention to when it comes to colonist task-handelig and priorities. I know it is early alpha still

This list is a little haphazard and not really organized, sorry. It is just a pile of issues in roughly the same sort of category.

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- Customizable prioritization is really needed. Current system is workable, but there are a lot of situations where you have to do less efficient distribution of tasks just because the priority line is fixed. A really simple example is this: miners and constructors often have skill-overlap (colonists good at one skill is usually decent at the other too). it would make a lot of sense to set one primary miner, and one primary constructor, but still have both of them do both things so that if there is no more mining then the miner helps out with the constructing and vice versa. Instead you now have to either toggle on and off skills all the time, or "bite the bullet" and set your miner to never construct - so that he spends his time when he is not mining not using his skills well and only doing something nonessential like cleaning.... A customizable priority list for each colonist would fix this and is probably not that hard to change coding-wise. For the UI, consider using color-coding? It could be a good way to still be able to see at a glance what things are high priorities.
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- Repair/maintainance needs to be its own job. It really really really needs to. Why? Because repairing is logistically a completely different job than constructing is, and it makes sense to assign very different people to it.

Currently it is part of constructing which seems to make sense, but when a base grows big and complex the repair job becomes bigger than the constructing job and mostly involves running around more than needing a good constructor. In short - new construction projects (lots of work in a small area) needs a good constructor to finish the job fast. Repair jobs need lots of people to do the job so that someone close to the job can do it, and they don't really need to be highly skilled because it is running to the jobs that takes the most time usually, not the job itself. Repairs would make sense to assign to the same types of people that you have set as cleaners, haulers, maybe even wardens.

If repair is not separated out into its own skill then there will be big big efficiency problems once bases become larger than small-medium because you become forced to enable most of your people to do construction just to be able to handle repairs.
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- Smarter task handling in general is needed. Everything works fine using "dumb" algorithms as long as everything is small-scale, but as complexity and size of the system grows these sorts of inefficiencies will cripple the system until the majority of the colonists time is spent not actually getting any work done.

There are a LOT of issues that need to be covered under this, and I'm not sure i can list them all here, but here is an example of what I mean:

Something far away needs to be mined, but the colonist is about half-hungry already. The dumb algorithm does not care and sends the colonist on the long walk to the site... and then he mines ONE block and starts walking home again because he is hungry. You yell curses at your colonist but it dosn't help Then he goes to eat and has to go back again to mine. When he finally gets back to the mining location he mines ONE block and then starts walking back because he is now tired. You slam your face into your keyboard until your eyes start to bleed...

Instead of course, the algoritm should do some simple checks before heading to a new task to see how far away it is and see if it needs to take care of hunger/sleep and other such needs beforehand, so that if you have to mine or construct something far away then just make sure that you are well rested and fed before you go (like a normal sensible human would).

IF the next task on the colonists priority list is not far to walk AND his bed is also close (typical base work scenario) then go to bed a little earlier than usual so you can wake up earlier. It makes more sense to be well rested and have good energy reserves for later if something important happens. Basically, when you can keep well resed and ready without sacrificing efficiency.

On the other hand, IF the colonist is close to a cluster of work AND that cluster is far from the bed THEN keep working until you are a little more tired than usual. On work projects far from the main base it makes sense to maximize the on-site work time so you don't have to make lots of extra un-needed travels (again, more common sense).

Let colonists know what the others are doing and make smart choices based on that. Let's say that there is a fairly small mining project far from the base, only 10 blocks, and you have 4 miners allocated. Currently, if priorities allow, then all 4 miners will get sent across the map to do the work. very often the first miner will finish before the others even arrive, and because the algorithm doesn't even check again until it arrives at the job the others don't even "realize" that the job is done ages ago until they arrive and try to start working. The correct response would be to analyze the task-cluster, see that it is a small job, and just send one guy to do the job - preferably the one that has the best combo of surplus sleep/hunger and is also highly skilled.
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I will draw a line here for now. I think this topic probably needs its own thread where people can make more spesific suggestions using pseudo-code for Tynan to tae sugggestions from.

Again, I realize its pre-alpha. I don't expect this stuf to be perfect yet, but in this sort of a game this is really important stuff. Half the fun is to watch your little guys be busy little worker bees after all, and if they become stupider and stupider the larger and more complex the pool of tasks become then that fun quickly turns into frustration instead.

-Stigma