Roofs and clothes

[SymbolicFrank]

Colonists only build roofs at the start of the game, because when they have a lot of different jobs to choose from, there is always something with higher priority. Potentially I could remove all tasks from all workbenches and turn off every job but construction, but even then they tend to find more important things to do, like socializing.

Also, I have a toxic fallout for about a week now. And at the start, one of my colonists was wandering around in a daze and dropped all her gear. So, she dropped from toxic buildup and had to be rescued. Now, every time she can stand again, she refuses to do anything else but eat (forced, when not full) and go to the other side of the map to don some armor that is lying around there. So, she drops again and needs to be rescued. This happens every few hours.

I can lock her into her room and only let her go out for food, but after that there is nothing stopping her from trying to don that armor. And drop again, and having to get rescued, etc. Limiting her to the home zone doesn't work at all. What might work is having someone else grabbing the nearest armor outside, dropping that in a stockpile in the base, and forcing her wear that.

But I think it's a bug that you cannot prevent this behavior in any way.

Well, I could shoot her, I guess...

[14m1337]

did you ever consider using zones and restrict your pawns there, as long as the toxic fallout lasts ?

[SymbolicFrank]

did you ever consider using zones and restrict your pawns there, as long as the toxic fallout lasts ?

Yes, they don't care. The only thing stopping them is a closed door. (Except when beserk? That one got out.) And I don't have a wall around my base yet.

Anyway, after keeping them all in their room for a week and managing them by hand (unlock door, have them treat a patient / eat some food, draft them, march them back to their room, lock the door, undraft), I quit. It's not fun, it's irritating.

Btw, the verification required for posting is excessive.

[Serenity]

There are some mods that give roofing a higher priority. For example Raindrops No Longer Fall On My Head.
A simple workaround is to look your constructor into the room for a bit. He will have nothing to do and do everything very quick. Also works with cleaning.

The standard way to deal with toxic fallout is zoning. Unless your pawns have a mental break they should always obey zones. What you are seeing is indeed not normal behavior.

[Jimyoda]

Your pawn has dementia. She will periodically get the 'wander confused' broken state. Broken pawns disregard allowed areas. Dementia is permanent.
Now comes the creative part of all the possible accidents a pawn could have.

Of course if it's not dementia then we'll need further details. Try following the steps outlined in the stickied thread How to Report a Bug.

[SymbolicFrank]

I uninstalled the mod that made it possible to have roofs (just to make sure), removed all the areas except Home, made a new one that is only the part that has a roof, and assigned it to all colonists. It works, a bit, somewhat. Now they still go outside it quite often, when they want some gear across the map, or when running away from the berserker, or for whatever reason, until they are a few squares outside, and then they stop. They keep standing there for a while, wander around a bit, still outside, and then they go back inside. For a few seconds, before they run back outside.

Anyway, either remove toxic fallout or make it possible to order all colonists to stay indoors without a wall around the roofed area. And building that wall fast is not an option, if they have to run across the map to gather stone blocks.


The only thing you can do is queue up jobs. The only ways you can control them directly is ordering them to do a job, which most often requires them first to go and gather materials, or draft them.

When the game throws an event, like toxic fallout, and you notice that they have to stay under a roof, which they refuse to build, and even then rather die than stay underneath it, it is either buggy or broken.

Or how about a rush of 40 man-killing boomrats from the edge next to the base? That's just sadistic.

On the other hand, colonists are hard to come by, many of them are mostly useless (more than half of them cannot even haul and clean (!) ), but they often survive having more than 50 shotwounds (!!). It's like the opposite of X-COM 1. Which was very brutal, but honest. And recruits were easy to come by, and directly useful.


Anyway, it's like Bethesda, I guess: mods will fix it. Instead of a first-day patch, a required first day modpack to make it playable? Then again, Bethesda has the huge number of fans that make that work.

[Serenity]

As said, aside from mental breaks, zones work just fine. I never had issues with toxic fallout. Since it takes a bit to build up beyond initial you have some time to construct roofs between buildings.

Similar to what I said about locking constructors into rooms, you can also restrict them to a zone to make sure they stay in an area and work only there.

[SymbolicFrank]

If you have to know the workarounds, it's a bug. And it might work for you, but not form me. They still go outside the zone. They even ignore it completely if they want to equip some shiny piece of gear across the map.

[Serenity]

I was talking about roofs not being constructed. Which is not a bug. A bug is an error in the programming that leads to unintended consequences. This behavior is by design, but it's badly designed. The issue is just the proprieties in the sub jobs of the construction task. Roofing isn't even that low in the list, but other things coming before it is very noticeable.

The zoning thing is another matter.

[Jimyoda]

Based on a comment from Tynan, he 'refactored the construction priorities so roofs are looked at first'. So expect the mechanics/priority of roof construction to be better in the next release.

[SymbolicFrank]

When you have a roofed space that is 11 wide and you remove a single piece of wall, sometimes a piece of roof will collapse, and even after fixing the wall (by building the door or whatever) there is no way to get it repaired.

Edit: you have to build a pillar near or below it, but as soon as you remove the pillar, it collapses again. It's clearly a bug.

[SymbolicFrank]

Also, it is really hard to deconstruct a building with a roof without having some roof collapses. Then again, that might depend on the mod I have installed that prioritizes building roofs. Normally that won't be a problem, as you won't have many roofs. But it will probably still happen with roofs on random structures on the map.

[nccvoyager]

The 11-tile one is a new one for me.

The "roof collapse logic" should already be fixed (or refactored at least) for A16, resulting in less pawn "suicide by roof" incidents.

[Darth Fool]

As for your wandering colonist, can't you just forbid the clothes that he wants to go pick up until after the toxic fallout ends?