Job command overhaul

[colonistPally]

This's starting to drive me nuts so I hope you'll take a sec to read it.

If there is an emergency and I need to repair something let's say, mid battle. Or if I need to cut food when everyone decides to eat the food and starve at the same time.. I don't want to sit there and stop everything I'm doing just to check the boxes and stuff and come back to do 1 move and try to remember which character and stuff.

If I need to repair something or get a boulder or corpse or whatever, I want an option to have the person do the command ONCE and then go back to their regular routine. Sort of like, "allow this once?" "make permanent switch" right from the context menu.

My brain has a hard time and is getting really flustered trying to continually remember who is doing what and when and where. It's much easier for me to go, "oh I need cutters, I don't see cutters, everyone's starving." I don't want to go and have to immediately sort out what all of my cutters are doing as soon as I figure out which ones my dedicated cutters were. Usually they're cutter/haulers or cutter/growers and I have to go figure it out and it gives me a massive headache.

I'd rather just say, "do this once" or "add this to your list." Then after the emergency has passed I want another option on the job menu that unchecks EVERYTHING for EVERYONE so I can just redo it. Likewise I would like to add little notes to everyone's name as to what in my mind their job really is. So once I get around 10 colonists I'd like to name them like, "dedicated repair," "dedicated clean." Stuff like that, so I can remember.

Also I would like to narrow down gathering so I could tell a specific person to prioritize cleaning up bodies, another to clean up guns, and another to clean up boulders. Earlier there was literally like 25 pistols sitting on the ground because it must be at the absolute tail end of the priority list. Which I understand but until you clean everything else out of the pipeline they just sit. Either that or allow us to go to the pistols and reset their priority or something, but I'd rather handle it on the person by person level so a) it gives them personality and b) it makes me feel like I'm actually managing instead of being at the mercy of a partially invisible priority system.

Don't get me wrong please. I love the game. I think this's the last little tidbit of the job system to be taken care of... I don't want to micro manage. It would be ideal to stop everything and have everyone have the right job from the top down but I feel like I'm the management and the fireman and the police officer all at the same time. So I have to switch my command structure and instruction techniques based on the situation.

I need the top-down and also the bottom-up. Gotta be both management types.

Hope all this makes sense. Correct me if I screwed anything up like actually being able to prioritize picking up bodies over pistols or rocks, etc.

Thanks.

[Untrustedlife]

You can select a person and right click on an item to temporarily prioritizes it (for example building/repairing/gathering food) and they drop what they re doing and do it already.
Without messing with the menu ,and when they are done with the task they will go back to what they were doing.
So it is implemented already.

[Flebe]

He's got a good point but one thing that would be great if it was changed is the overview menu its self. Its works and its great but when every one is dying of hunger and people are still just mining and refusing to haul stuff its gets on my nerves. I know the priority menu can be used and I can change all jobs I want done to be put on the highest but I think it would be a lot better if you could physically move the whole column of the task. For example if I want hauling to be done because there was a crash I could go use the priority menu but if I constantly run out of food I could move Plant cutting, Growing and Hauling further up on the list. I hope you understand what I mean but would any one else find this useful? or is it just me.

[harpo99999]

personally, I use the MANUAL priority setting and individually give each colonist their own priority for the tasks

[Galileus]

personally, I use the MANUAL priority setting and individually give each colonist their own priority for the tasks

That's not the point - sometimes you want to prioritize one thing for whole colony. If you want a sudden boost in food, you need to manually assign 1 priorities to all your colonists in growing, cutting and cooking - and then de-assign 1's from other tasks - AND THEN after it's done manually restore previous state.

It would be good to have the ability to save and load pre-sets and to change manual priorities globally - assign task priority to all colonists at once. It would mean a minimum of 3 clicks to prioritize food in 12-people colony instead of whooping minimum of 36 clicks we have now. If you ask me, that's a HUGE difference.

[colonistPally]

I'm going to try again. There are a few people on this board I've noticed (this's already the 2nd thread in 2 days) that just respond with how they *think* the game is acting instead of what's actually going on in the game. I appreciate the rest of you making smart, constructive comments.

Here is my experience and why I'm suggesting this overhaul. Also I have video after video showing how all this does is get in the way of the game...

If the job is unchecked in the job menu, you can't prioritize something related to that job unless there's some way I don't know about. What you will want to do in game will be grayed out and it'll clearly tell you that you cannot do it, because "they aren't a "hauler" or whatever." Even though they are a hauler, they just don't have the hauler box checked.

So you have to stop everything you're doing, open up the job menu, check the hauler box, go back, then you can command them.

What I'm proposing is change in game, the context menu when you try to prioritize, if they aren't set up in the job menu for it to say, "not currently assigned to "hauling."" "Assign them once?" "Assign them permanently?"

Then have another button in the job menu that can wipe all jobs at once, so you can reset and start over as needed.

Then have a way on the job menu to add comments next to each person so you can remember what you wanted their job to be.

So examples.

You're in combat. A turret is damaged. You want someone to repair it, you find the nearest person. Oops they aren't a repairer!!! Stop everything set them to repair, go back, then they can repair......

Again in combat. Someone gets injured. You go to grab them. Oops they aren't a hauler!!! Stop everything set them to haul go back, haul the body off.....

Someone traps themself in a room. You go to build a door, oops they aren't a builder!!! Stop everything!

You're out of food, you need to go cut some down really quick, oh wait you can't! Stop everything and switch some people over to cutting!

It gets ridiculous after a while. You can't "manage" from both levels from a single level. It's like the CEO of the company trying to manage the board room and the office at the same time. You can do it, but it doesn't work efficiently.

We need to be able to make the "boardroom" decisions at the "boardroom" level and the "ground level" decisions at the "ground level." Checkboxing everyone to everything isn't a viable solution either. They'd all just start from left and go to right on the job menu board and the stuff on the right may never actually get done unless you sit there manually prioritizing everything the whole day. That's why you need top-level controls and bottom-level controls.

And you know we don't want any "middle-management" in this game? Coding in foremans/supervisors that can prioritize on their own. The game would play itself, hehe. So we need low level and high level management.

Thanks.