Zoning Important Hauling areas

[deadbiscuit]

Hey guys,

one of the things that frustrates me the most about my colonies is hauling, especially hauling food. I think it would be a good idea to add the ability to zone areas as high priority for hauling, so that when crops are harvested, they are not left out to rot while the colonists prioritise other hauling jobs over the crops. Maybe it could be programmed into the grow zones as standard, so that any grow zone you place down will instantly become a high priority for hauling. So many times I have lost crops because they haven't been hauled into refrigerated areas or I've had to manually instruct colonists to do it, which is a very time consuming process.

[BetaSpectre]

You can set zones to haul only food.
Then set that zone priority to really high.

I usually do this with my freezers. You can also forbid the other resources. The game is small enough so even on the largest map it isn't much of a problem.

[ReZpawner]

This is already in the game, though it doesn't make it awfully clear. A stockpile with high priority will get items hauled to it first - so if you do like BetaSpectre suggest, and only set food to be delivered to it - that will be hauled to it before the others. You may also want to consider using the areas, and make some people only work in one area (a few haulers who can only go to the vital areas + food areas, so they don't pick up anything else).

[JimmyAgnt007]

I think he means that since hauling is only above cleaning, colonists will do EVERYTHING else before they haul in the food before it rots.  Priority of the stockpile is irrelevant.

My solution is to switch to manual priorities, set hauling to 1, cleaning to 2, (unless they are a doctor then make that 1) and flick it back and forth as you need too.

It would be nice if there was a high priority haul selection you can slap down to suddenly make hauling in that area a priority right below doctoring until each item tagged was moved.

[deadbiscuit]

Thanks guys! I'm going to play around with all those ideas and see what works best for me.

[cultist]

It would be nice if there was a high priority haul selection you can slap down to suddenly make hauling in that area a priority right below doctoring until each item tagged was moved.

Agreed. A "drop everything and haul until I say stop" button would be incredibly useful. The only alternative right now is excessive job priority/zone/stockpile fiddling. I think it also fits thematically. Harvesting fields (as an example) is not traditionally a job for one or two people. It takes an entire village to get everything done on time, so everyone who can should pitch in.

[Vaporisor]

Well, it depends on how you want to run things, but I have done a sustenance style colony once.  Lots of farming and animals so hauling was very important over crafting.  Everything was quite minimalist and I wanted to do it buying as little as possible.  To keep this ascetic life, I even melted down and destroyed all modern style equipment and built no turrets.

Part of that meant that hauling was extremely important.  Crafting and such wasn't of much value.  As such, I had the manual priorities for all people (where you can set with numbers, the checkbox in work assignments) hauling to 1 for all people not my key growers.  Growers had it set to a two.  Their next key role, such as hunting, crafting, etc was the two, and tertiaries were 3.

It worked quite well.  With the farming community it also was great fun seeing my growers going hard and all the community out in the fields hauling away the harvest straight to the kitchen freezers and silos

[charkesd]

manual priorities and setting colonists to certain zones

even create a zone and name it "harvest"  - use Restrict menu to change zones when you want them to only be there, and obviously only haul things in that zone. (you can click drag took me like 3 months to work that out)

probably close enough