Set priority of growing zones

[lilsandstag]

It would be nice if there was a system to allow you to set the priority of your growing zones, like with stockpiles. I've just had colonists starving themselves due to harvesting smoke leaf and hop plants before corn or rice.

[Lys]

Yeah, priorities on growing zones and crafting tables would be godsent. Right now you'll have to right click and prioritize... which works but is obviously tedious.

[schizmo]

On one hand I agree, and yet on the other hand this is literally what the "harvest" order tool is for. Do we really need two ways to do the same thing?

[Lys]

On one hand I agree, and yet on the other hand this is literally what the "harvest" order tool is for. Do we really need two ways to do the same thing?

It's not the same thing really. Harvest is using the Plant cut job as opposed to growing. And also it is rather for harvesting early/stuff that you haven't planted yourself.

[schizmo]

On one hand I agree, and yet on the other hand this is literally what the "harvest" order tool is for. Do we really need two ways to do the same thing?

It's not the same thing really. Harvest is using the Plant cut job as opposed to growing. And also it is rather for harvesting early/stuff that you haven't planted yourself.

I've tested it and it seems that regardless of whether or not you set a Harvest order they will still work from the top left to the bottom right and harvest whatever is available, and since Grow is by default a higher priority than Plant Cut, they just follow standard AI behavior regardless.

The testing environment is skewed because I have like 30 colonists and no other active work, but I imagine that in a real game it will likely continue to behave in this manner.

So yes this is a good idea and I hope it's implemented, and I'm somewhat amazed that I didn't notice before now.

[MikeLemmer]

You would get a similar solution from automatically prioritizing edible crops over other crops, without the added complexity of assigning priorities to fields.

[Lys]

You would get a similar solution from automatically prioritizing edible crops over other crops, without the added complexity of assigning priorities to fields.

Of course, but that would only be limited to this special case as well then. What if I want my smokeleafs to be prioritized over my cotton fields? Leaving the choices to the player would be better than yet another "fixed" priority that a new player wouldn't be aware of (similar to how hauling corpses is a prioritized job over other hauling).
Imo gnomoria did this very well where you could assign priorities from 1-5 (or 1-10?) to fields, not too much asking for a single control for such a (sometimes important) feature.