Emergency Zone

[insanityfarm]

I understand that this would likely be fairly complex due to interaction with pathfinding, taskfinding, and general AI, but I would love to be able to declare an "Emergency Zone", such that, what I toggle an "emergency mode", all colonists will stay within that zone. Right now, when facing a combat threat, it seems almost mutually exclusive to get non-military colonists to stay inside the defenses and still perform tasksâ€"either I can set them to military and they'll stay in place and be useless, or keep them as non-military and they risk running outside for designated mining, hauling, growing, fetching resources for construction, etc. I want them to continue to performing jobs, but only if they can complete the job without leaving the zone.

A lesser version of this feature would at least being able to set a gather point for non-military troops when you declare an emergency (even if they stop performing tasks). This would be a nice stopgap, but no where near as helpful as the above.

[_alphaBeta_]

I came here to suggest exactly the same thing, so I thought it best to bump this thread rather than create a new one.

I'm also having a major issue keeping non-drafted units inside and/or out of harms way during battles. The issue usually presents itself when you've just flagged a whole bunch of hauling jobs outside the base, and some enemies make an appearance. Only option at this point is to go around cancelling all outside jobs, and hope you didn't miss one. It's very distracting to accomplish when you're trying to deploy your defense.

At first I was going to suggest that there be an "emergency mode" the player can turn on which confines all colonists to the home area. This would temporarily suspend all jobs outside this area without the player having to manually cancel them all, and then bring them back afterwards. Then I had the same thought the OP did in that another zone type (similar to the home zone) used in conjunction with an "emergency mode" would be best since the player may want to further constrain and/or shift non-recruited colonists to another location within or in addition to the home zone. For example, my home zone usually extends a half-dozen or so tiles beyond my outer walls. But during a battle, I don't want them to go outside at all, but I still want them to repair the wall itself. This would be much easier to control with another zone type and would avoid having to make temporary changes to your home zone.

Expanding the "emergency mode" further and my previous suggestion regarding priority presets, I think it would be good if the player could designate a different set of priorities while this mode is active. I would think most would want repairing activities to be near the top of the list and most colonists capable of repairing, as an example.

The player can accomplish all of this currently, but it's a lot of clicking. When attackers present themselves, I find myself doing all these steps, and many of them again to put things "back to normal" when the battle ends.

• Cancel all outside jobs that would draw non-drafted colonists out of the compound
• Manually change every colonists repair priority to high (very tedious)
• Pull back the home zone so it doesn't include anything beyond outer walls (turrets may be included depending on the type of attack)
• Repel the attack / Constantly ensure colonists don't leave
• Extend / adjust home zone to what it was
• Adjust all colonists' priorities to what they were
• Select (again) jobs outside the compound that you want done

[cappie]

I agree with the previous two posts.. I just hate it when my colonists try to haul some Uranium from halfway accross the map while walking straight through the line of fire of my turrets... it's completely retarded.

A emergency-zone or home-area lockdown mode would be best... with all the new AI implementation, I think this should be quite easy to add.

Priority resets or different priorities for this emergency state would help as well.

Since we're already commanding people by giving them jobs, we should also be able to raise an alarm... or at least have it raised automatically as soon as the raiders attacked.

[Reaper]

Yes Colony controls zones need to be put in. We need safe zones and war zones. and war task zones and job zones to give each pawn.

War zones should only become active when a troop is drafted and someone has started aiming, the war zone should then only let the pawns ai to cross it if there drafted or need to cross it to get to safe zone.

[windruf]

we want something like that since prealpha and we want it more than anything else.
Tynan! PLEASE! WE ARE BEGGING YOU!!!!!

[SSS]

I love this suggestion. This is one aspect of raids I don't like, so seeing something like this to give you better control over your colonists in one would be great.

[Xerberus86]

i suggested something similiar, that we can designate burrows / activity zones which we can control by defining certain colonists there and can designate an area where we can send those colonists with the press of one or two buttons.

it is really essential because some colonists aren't so good at fighting and are important to the colony duo to their skills and drafting them is too micro-intensive sometimes and also if they are drafted they won't eat when starving and while the raiders might not got to them, hunger does!

[Tumuel]

This could be much easier with the ability to lock doors in A7.

[Xerberus86]

it is a step in the right direction but locking the door isn't really a good substitute for zones / burrows.

[Redrabbitromp]

This is an excellent idea.  +1

[Cpt.Fupa]

This could be much easier with the ability to lock doors in A7.

I think that they should make the locked doors count as walls an A7 that way they wont try to path find out side