Suggestion for much needed feature

[Technosapien]

Let me preface this suggestion with the frustration I (and probably others) experience with the 'Home Area' zone.  Whenever an item such as a turret or firefoam popper is placed outside the base, the item is immediately flagged with a Home Area zone.  This in turn causes some of my pawns to clean up within the zone.  This becomes a teeth-grinding problem when you want your pawns to clean the garbage to actually clean inside the base. 

What we need is a new 'Clean Up' zone that allows you to define the specific areas you want to have cleaned by your peeps.   With the current system I always have to pause the game and constantly de-select the zone. 

Perhaps we could even have a 'Firefighting zone' that allows you to specifically define areas you absolutely MUST have extinguished. 

Now, one other suggestion that is not a necessity, but might be nice to have, is to allow trained animals (with advanced intelligence) to be selected and 'commanded' to do certain simple chores.  Obviously all of the training for hauling and rescuing would have to be completed previously.  Maybe add another training item for something called 'Command' and have it be the final stage of an animals training. 

Thoughts? 

Tech

[mumblemumble]

I suppose making home zone bring in both a fire prevention, AND cleaning zone might work. Then maybe a toggle for if new home zones add which, as well as zone creators for fire, and cleaning... That would be really handy, considering my burn chambers for burning trash will now be filled with ash in a17, but I guess I will need to micro it big time

Oh, ALSO, this really belongs in the SUGGESTIONS forum, not general discussion.

Besides that, welcome to the forum

[Toast]

There is an auto-home-zone toggle in the bottom right corner of the screen. It's on by default. Turn it off, and the game will no longer auto-create the home zone around structures and stockpiles, leaving you to decide precisely where you want to put it. Your pawns will no longer start sweeping up rock rubble in the middle of nowhere unless you tell them to.

Turning this toggle off is one of this first things I do now when I start a new game.

[mumblemumble]

Toast, that wasn't his point : the point is cleaning and firefighting zones cannot be seperated from each other : you can have a field for growing, put on a home zone to prevent it from burning down, and people will ALSO clean up the field, for no reason

On the flipside, if I want an area cleaned, but no firefighting done (like say, a burn chamber) then you are also screwed.

essentially it forces you to either take both, or neither : and if you REALLY want only one, you need to micro the living crap out of it.

[Toast]

Ah, I see. I guess I haven't had a situation where I wanted only one or the other... I try to keep my fields tidy so my ungrateful farmers don't complain about all the lovely fertilizer that's left there after a raid. 

Am I reading correctly, that in A17 burning things results in ash piles that must be cleaned?

[AngleWyrm]

Whenever an item such as a turret or firefoam popper is placed outside the base, the item is immediately flagged with a Home Area zone.  This in turn causes some of my pawns to clean up within the zone.  This becomes a teeth-grinding problem when you want your pawns to clean the garbage to actually clean inside the base. ... Thoughts? Create a new zone called CleanMe, and assign those who do the cleaning to that zone. This can also be done with animal zones to assign trained creatures a limited area for cleaning. Doing so presents the player with a decision about what those creatures will do: Haulers need the freedom to go just about anywhere, but cleaners need the structure of designated areas. So creatures would then be assigned to primarily participate in either hauling or cleaning.

[mumblemumble]

does that actually work? I thought pawns didn't clean a room unless the home area was over it, or if they were maybe locked there with literally nothing to do...

....Seems a clean / firefight seperation would fix this better, and honestly, shouldn't be hard to code I'd think, as you just take the home zone, and split it into 2 new functions, which are also combined under "home zone".

[khearn]

The CleaningArea mod already exists that lets you specify an area to be cleaned.

[Numar]

does that actually work? I thought pawns didn't clean a room unless the home area was over it, or if they were maybe locked there with literally nothing to do...

....Seems a clean / firefight seperation would fix this better, and honestly, shouldn't be hard to code I'd think, as you just take the home zone, and split it into 2 new functions, which are also combined under "home zone".

I think he's laying the cleanme zone on top of the home zone, restricting the cleaner pawns to a limited area within the home zone. Simply creating a cleanme zone doesn't achieve anything.

But yeah, some additional controls for cleaning would be nice. A dedicated cleaning zone tool would be nice. As a standard behaviour, as long as you didn't lay out a cleaning zone, the home zone will be used for cleaning reference (just like now). When you start to lay out a cleaning zone, only the cleaning zone will be cleaned.

Oh, thinking of it, another way to lay out these zones would be nice to have, like a "fill in" tool. With it, just click in a room and the whole room will be zoned.

[AngleWyrm]

I think he's laying the cleanme zone on top of the home zone, restricting the cleaner pawns to a limited area within the home zone. Simply creating a cleanme zone doesn't achieve anything.

You think correctly
I zone the whole map as home zone so that fire fighting takes care of itself.