[M|0.10.779] Game start work priorities askew

[Mystic]

Prior to Alpha 10, the colonists usually started out with pretty sensible work priorities in the "Overview / Work" view, with people being assigned to work they had some talent for.  However, in both releases of Alpha 10 thus far, the game seems to be making (on the face of it) irrational decisions about those initial assignments.  See the following example of the defaults selected by the game for my most recent colony start:



Examples of what I am talking about from the screenshot: both Cooking and Construction/Repair are assigned only to the least suitable colonist, by far.  There is also one colonist who has much greater Growing ability than the others, and once again, they are not assigned to the Growing job.  And although all three of the colonists have some Mining capability, the one with the highest (by a little) rating in that area (Rush) was not assigned to Mining for some reason.

[StorymasterQ]

[Coenmcj]

Hmm, If it is a Design choice it may be to mimic real life somewhat. whereas you can have some people who are absolutely terrible at something but still want to do it, or someone who is brilliant at something, but hates the hell out of it. (ie. Finances, Art, Coding)

[Mystic]

Hmm, If it is a Design choice it may be to mimic real life somewhat. whereas you can have some people who are absolutely terrible at something but still want to do it, or someone who is brilliant at something, but hates the hell out of it. (ie. Finances, Art, Coding)

If it was a design choice, then it is one I can't get behind, because the end result is that I still end up with the proper colonists assigned to the jobs they are suited for (since these selections can be modified) ... it just means more work on my part to clean up the mess of mis-assigned priorities at the start of the game.

If there really was a desire to have colonists who insist on doing certain jobs even though they are not well suited to them, I'd say that those should be colonist characteristics that cause those particular checkboxes to not merely be selected by default, but to be selected and locked from editing so that the player cannot deselect them from those jobs. I doubt that I would enjoy that, either, but at least this might make it a gameplay mechanic, rather than just an annoying requirement for a bunch of extra clicks on my part.

Also, having a colonist who is great at a certain job and refuses to do it would make that high skill rating completely pointless, and we already have a gameplay mechanic where certain colonists can't be assigned to certain jobs at all anyway, so to me this would feel redundant.

[Darth Fool]

If it was a design choice as suggested, then they assignments would be based on interest, the little shaded flames, which it is clearly not.  There might be some design algorithm to it, but to me it seems random.

[Coenmcj]

If it was a design choice as suggested, then they assignments would be based on interest, the little shaded flames, which it is clearly not.  There might be some design algorithm to it, but to me it seems random.

Ah right, fair point. Most likely some dodginess then.

[Tynan]

By golly, you are right. I'm going to have to review this algorithm.

I think right now it's doing each colonist as they're added, so it can't 'trade off' between different colonists. Since it uses the same algorithm for the starting colonists and for ones that join the colony.