Closing Time! Hauling in the hay at sundown.

[JKTD1919]

If a colonist is preparing to walk a long way (for instance, from the fields to the base at night, or back in the morning) could you have them look around a bit for anything that could be hauled in that direction while they're at it? I find myself harvesting a lot of corn, just for it to sit there, because hauling rarely reaches the top of my colonists' priorities. This would at least make it so SOME of it reaches the refrigerator, and so debris and steel from mines actually make it to stockpiles instead of sitting around in my mountain base until used.

The best way I could see doing this is by adding a restriction; in addition to "Anything," "Work," "Joy," and "Sleep," add "Haul," which prioritizes hauling over other work/joy/rest activities. You could set hauling to happen the first hour and the last hour a colonist is awake.

There are probably better ways than that, though! I challenge you!

[Toggle]

Isn't... this like identical to a suggestion already posted? Exact same wording? I'm sure I commented on this exact post...

[skullywag]

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=13182.msg187685#msg187685

[MisterVertigo]

What I do early on before I have dedicated haulers is use zone restrictions. When I have a huge harvest and I wanted it hauled ASAP, I make a zone allowing only the fields, storage areas, dining room, and beds. As long as the colonists are set to be haulers, they will haul it all pretty quick.

I allow the dining room and beds so they can eat and sleep as normal until all the fields are hauled in. I may allow the prisoner area too if I have any, so they can be fed as normal too. Once everything is hauled, then I remove the restrictions and they go back to doing what they were before.

You can do the same for mined out areas or your kill-zone after a raid.

[Toggle]

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=13182.msg187685#msg187685

Oh, yeah. Didn't even notice the fact that was a 5 page thread was I usually open all my replied topics in a group. So another person completely ignored it.

[Britnoth]

There are probably better ways than that, though! I challenge you!

Setting hauling above other work just means if there is any hauling anywhere they are allowed to go, they will do that instead. Either the pawn is going to be hauling hauling hauling, or it is never going to haul even when it would make sense....

~~~~~

You could try my WorkFlex mod.

It prioritises work firstly on being close to the pawn, not a rigid priority list work from most important to least while totally ignoring how long it will take to get there.

With it, setting a pawn to say mining 1 hauling 2, will result in them walking to the nearest mining location and staying there until the job is done or they get tired and go back to sleep. If the job ends there however, they will then prioritise hauling materials that are near them over say, walking 200 tiles to the other side of the map to try to mine there.

They will also stop and clean dirt, rubble or blood close to them if allowed to, rather than walk off to do work far away. Also they don't stop working while 100+ tiles from base to walk back to clean 1 spec of dirt because you had to put cleaning above all other work to get any cleaning done. At all. Ever.

~~~~~

Getting the AI to realise 'hey im on my way back to base, maybe i should look for hauling work that needs to be taken back to base too!' is... gods, pretty damn difficult with how work priorities, permissions and timetables are done.

You could set a 5th, hauling only work time on their restrictions. What then happens if they are not quite tired enough to want to sleep at the time you think they will? They will stop work, haul their steel back to base, think; hey I'm not sleepy just yet! Go back to work.. walk 100+ tiles to the mining site... hit the compacted steel once and then feel tired enough to go back and rest.

All you have done there is turn a good miner into an everyday hauler for their last 3 hours of work. :/ If you have specialist miners and other pawns or animals hauling, you just made your pawn a lot less efficient.

Area restrictions based on time of day face the same kind of problem, with the added one of how you stop them mining the steel but still allow them to haul the steel when both work locations are in the same area.

Most promising would be a more dynamic priority order based on HOW tired or HOW hungry a pawn is... once a pawn gets near the fatigue to head back to sleep within the next hour or so, it would swap from its full list of possible works to ones containing only 'end of day' work types.

This is another level of complexity for the player however. But this time partly hidden from view unless you include a horribly complex UI change. Is cooking an end-of-day work? Might be if the ingredients are close to the kitchen. If however you are chopping up raider corpses and they have to walk 100+ tiles there and back that might not be the case....

[JKTD1919]

Isn't... this like identical to a suggestion already posted? Exact same wording? I'm sure I commented on this exact post...

Probably because I posted both it both places, one because the other thread is a Tynan thread and it'd likely get lost there, but still relevant by the name "Mod Requests for Vanilla" (By that name, suggestions sound totally okay, btw. But I digress.)

Then I posted it here to challenge modders to do it. I never said it would be easy. I just thought it would be a nice feature in Vanilla, and would make the colonists seem that more competent, for immersion purposes.

[Toggle]

Isn't... this like identical to a suggestion already posted? Exact same wording? I'm sure I commented on this exact post...

Probably because I posted both it both places, one because the other thread is a Tynan thread and it'd likely get lost there, but still relevant by the name "Mod Requests for Vanilla" (By that name, suggestions sound totally okay, btw. But I digress.)

Normally you read the actual original post though, because there's an entire "suggestions" forum, wouldn't make sense to post suggestions in that thread.