My 2 cents on hauling efficiency and zones.

[Rock5]

Zones could be, and should be, a very powerful feature but I often find myself avoiding complex set ups because of the inefficiencies of hauling. For example; to speed up cooking you could put a high priority 1x1 stockpile of meat and one of veg right next to the cook and they would cook really fast but then you would get a hauler topping up the stockpiles from 74 to 75 continuously while the cook is cooking. This happens with any higher priority stockpile. It goes down by 1 and a hauler makes the trip, regardless of how far, to top up that 1 item.

I had an idea that would 100%, I think, fix this. What if stockpile lists, besides having just a check mark enabling the different items, also had a min and max amount you could set. So for example, using the above cooking example, you could set the veg stockpile to accept 20 to 75 Corn. When you first create it it will be empty which is outside of the range so a hauler takes the maximum it can take (in this case 75) to the stockpile. The cook starts cooking and no hauler adds more corn until it drops below 20. After the cook makes 6 Lavish means the pile will have 15 so a hauler tops it up by hauling over 60 corn. No more wasted small hauling jobs.

The same applies to stockpiles that are filling. For example you could have a temporary stockpile to collect wood being chopped down in the wild to make hauling the wood more efficient. You could set it's list to accept a range, for example 200-300 wood. Because it is closer they would fill it quicker. When it passes 300 a hauler would grab a full load of 75 and move it to your main stockpile. So for example if it filled to 325, after a hauler takes away 75 it would change to 250 and then it would continue to fill up again. You could then delete the zone once all the wood is collected.

So in effect a stockpile is considered full if it has it's minimum amount and only considered over full if it has more then the max amount.

Working out the logic between low and high priority stacks and loose items could be a little complex but doable.

This feature, if a user sets up the ranges right, would make hauling hugely more efficient. Just a few haulers could get a lot of hauling done instead of like it is now where you struggle to get all the hauling done even with nearly all your colonists hauling.

Sorry, but that was a bit of a complex idea to explain clearly. Please let me know what you think.


Ps. Credit where credit is due. I had this idea when I saw how CraftingHysteresis uses a low stock threshold to make cooks more efficient (and other crafting jobs).

[Dingo]

Aren't you just describing Hauling Hysteresis here?

[Rock5]

I guess that's one way to look at it. Although the logic that needs to be figured out between the ranges for different stockpiles makes it more of a challenge than CraftingHysteresis which only need to deal with one range. It is the same idea though, a lower and higher threshold.

[Marvin the Martian]

I don't think Dingo wanted to add another point of view. I think he wanted to tell you of this mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=784324350&searchtext=Hauling+hysteresis+

[Rock5]

He he. You're probably right.