Redoing the Hauling System

[MikeLemmer]

I haven't even thought about allowed zones, just stockpile zones. Gosh, so many possibilities.

Ah, well I've used stockpiles for hundreds of hours. The problem is that, even with stockpile priorities set up appropriately, it sends out hauling requests the moment a single item is missing/available. This is most problematic with food supplies, which are gradually diminished/replenished, are usually located near a common area, and everyone needs access to.

The moment a colonist eats a single meal from a 20-meal stockpile, it immediately requests more meals. A nearby hauler promptly gets stuck constantly shuttling 1-2 meals to that stockpile over & over again until everyone has finished eating. A similar problem occurs while you're cooking meals; either the chef is walking into the freezer 2-3 times per meal, or you risk a hauler getting caught in a constant loop of continuously topping off a chef's ingredient stockpiles and hauling just 1-2 meals back into the freezer. (And yes, I know you can cheat it by setting the Stove in the Freezer itself, but judging by the Cold Temp penalties Tynan implemented this patch, it's not an intended solution.) It's even worse when dealing with animal feed, where a hauler will panic and deliver more kibble the moment a cat devours 4 kibble from the stockpile.

Sure, there may be ways of tricking the AI into only checking such stockpiles sporadically through some Frankenstein's monster of carefully set work schedules, allowed zones, and proximity to common locations, but going through that mess feels stupidly complex compared to an elegant solution of telling the AI to quit worrying about such small quantities.

I'm not sure where your point is. You're defending the limited AI in one post and lamenting about stupid pawns in the next one.

Because the calculations involved for both are different complexities. Pawns overriding each others' work tickets to maximize how much each one is hauling is a theoretically difficult problem involving calculating which stacks are nearby or on the path to/from the initial stack, calculating how much a pawn can carry, which of 2 competing pawns is best suited to finishing the order, etc. It's a problem that looks bloody simple to us but can actually be quite difficult for an AI routine to handle.

Meanwhile, solving the problem of pawns getting stuck moving 1-2 meals back & forth instead of waiting for a full stack to complete should be a simple matter of tweaking when the Haul/Do Not Haul toggle for that particular stack is flipped. Granted, it may be more complex than that (estimating coding difficulty is always fuzzy), but at first glance it's a matter of changing an IF/THEN statement or two compared to asking the AI to estimate which of two pawns is better for a job.

[b0rsuk]

I'm not sure where your point is. You're defending the limited AI in one post and lamenting about stupid pawns in the next one.

Is MikeLemmer a dumb human, or a smart AI ?

Seriously though, it's nice to know I'm not the only one who finds programming hard.

[Britnoth]

As I said, I had stopped reading at:

Currently, haulers can easily get occupied hauling just 5-10 berries across the base every time someone cooks a single meal

If your stockpiles are set up so badly that using 5 berries to make a meal causes a hauler to go out and haul 5 berries from outside, then you need to look again at how large your stockpiles are.

I looked at the crafting hysteresis mod briefly, but I did not see anything that couldn't be done adequately with well set crafting bills.

If someone has a specific situation to solve as a challenge, I am open to it. 

[makkenhoff]

I have to agree with others, making the hauling system more complex will cause more problems than it will solve. That said, I don't think you're completely off base on prioritizing deteriorating and spoiling items, but as long as you aren't having to wake pawns up from their rest, you can always prioritize this yourself, and it will give you something to do. I don't really want too much automation, because that just encourages people to run at max speed, and "wait" to play the game.

[Thyme]

Crafting Hysteresis is great to pin your cook to the stove, he makes 10 meals and is done for the day instead of cooking 2-3 meals and walks through half your base to do something else.

However, I said Hauling Hysteresis, which is far more important to me. It helps preventing a hauler getting stuck in a supply chain carrying 10 units of raw food to the stove and the meal away unill the cook is done. Applies to all such scenarios.

makkenhoff has a point. 3 haulers can haul huge amounts of stuff in shor time when controlled manually. Automation vs OCD will never be optimal for all players, but I enjoy going at 1x speed more than speeding up.

[ChaosOverlord]

You can't put the stove in your freezer or you get temperature penalty, so they walk back and forth constantly. Putting a tiny stockpile next to your stove however, they would leave the items there when not cooking and spoiling can occur, especially overnights.

I personally have plenty to do in this game and all this manual prioritization is beyond what I can handle. Instead of complaining about the automaton of boring, repetitive waste-of-time tasks, if you really don't have enough to do in the game how about you consider how to expand your actual 'fun' gameplay. Make combat more tactical rather than these stupid 'killboxes' with 50 auto-turrets. Play the game differently. Like me, you will find something to do that doesn't involve doing the brain-work of 10 different pawns all at once all the time.

[Thyme]

Whenever my haulers fail to haul away 2k potatoes I do it manually and change the work priorities (or get animals) so that this won't happen again. Eventually, it will, when the colony gets bigger, but it's definitely nothing I do permanently. The last two runs I didn't build a single turret.
*Maybe I'm just too stupid to play RimWorld more time effective, but I like it.*

[minakurafto]

gathering and supply stockpile can be simplified like in Gnomoria
each stockpile has an option to "push" and "pull"
so gathering stockpile should push item to inside base stockpile (can push item to multiple stockpile)
and supply stockpile should pull from inside base stockpile (this stockpile cant take item beside designated pull stockpile)
it is easy to copy wisdom from other game

[RolanDecoy]

You are essentially saying that RimWorld got worse with every update. I guess you're still playing the first release?

That's not what I said, nor implied.

[Trylobyte]

People like different levels of complexity.

Some people get stoked when they work out a series of 5 stockpiles with shifting priorities and an optimized work schedule with manual tweaking to solve hauling problems.  Other people just don't have any interest in the topic and want to focus on something else, such as planning defenses or making a pretty base.  The game needs to work for both micromanagers and macromanagers.

I hope we can stop bickering about whose style is better and find a solution that works for everyone.  Adding more options is not dumbing down the game.

[Swat_Raptor]

People like different levels of complexity.

I hope we can stop bickering about whose style is better and find a solution that works for everyone.  Adding more options is not dumbing down the game.

I doubt there is a solution which will satisfy everyone equally.

If we are to increase complexity (more stockpile/ hauling options) then people can do better with equal or less resource (haulers),

If we are to simplify things then the easiest way to do that is to just increase resource (more haulers, or better haulers) or make Stock Piles more accommodating somehow, (example, increase stockpile capacity per tile)

to be honest I can think of mods and many ways which the haling system can be improved by adding options and complexity and if done right a player still can setup a network of stockpiles to be as complex or as simple as they want. and those that want to automate can and those that want to continue manually control haulers can still do that.

as far as how to improve the system by simplifying it, I can't think of any good way of doing this, and haven't seen one presented that would actually simplify things and can keep the relative difficulty of the game. You could just add more haulers or increase stockpile capacity, but this would just dumb things down and make the game less challenging.

thus I'm of the opinion that more options to tweek hauling is the better route as to maintain balance, if I didn't want to focus on hauling at all I'd just add robot haulers and increase stockpile capacity and forget about it.

[TheMeInTeam]

Couldn't you accomplish stockpile typing by adding some options into the current stockpile mechanic?

Note that both a superior sniper rifle and a roof-less potato are both "deteriorating", so further customizability here might be useful.