Really struggling with caravans :(

[Chibiabos]

For some reason when trying to form a caravan, colonists I put in the caravan refuse to sleep in their own beds while forming the caravan or take part in any joy activities.  Every single time I'm having to contend with breaks.  I heard drugs sell well so I started manufacturing them but didn't allow colonists to take them except pot or beer, but during caravan formation multiple colonists went on drug binges. :/

How the heck do you deal with this?  Make the caravan formation insanely luxuriant with art or something?

[Chibiabos]

FFS, attempting to form a caravan just killed a colonist   Hard break, drug binge, overdose, died.

W.T.F.

Are caravans really supposed to be this hard to form? :/

[milon]

I've done *very* little with caravans myself (just haven't had time yet), but I thought that problem had been dealt with. Are you playing A17b?

[Chibiabos]

I've done *very* little with caravans myself (just haven't had time yet), but I thought that problem had been dealt with. Are you playing A17b?

Yes.  Just lost a colonist to an overdose from a drug I hadn't allowed colonists to take but went on a binge due to hard break from no joy due to forming a caravan :/

[anikan]

Forming a caravan with only people is very simple. They load the items into their inventory and leave. Unless its one colonist taking many small items scattered throughout a large base, they shouldn't be having mental breaks over it. It becomes an issue when you tey to use pack animals though. They'll spend forever forming because they have to rub each individual item to the muffalo. Not as big of an issue if you have stockpiles specifically set for stuff you want to trade, and placing the caravan spot nearby.

Unless somehow absolutely necessary, I wouldn't bother woth pack animals when forming caravans, and load the extra trade goods into a pod for when the caravan gets to the settlements. Or load the animal with the goods and then fire at caravan.

If its a drug binge from chemical fascination/interest, then there's nothing you can do. Its not the forming of a caravan that should be triggering those, it should be random. If its the lack of joy, you can always manually force them to smoke a joint and drink a bottle without cancelling the formation.

But really, avoid making them load pack animals unless you've set up your stockpiles for this specific purpose.

[Canute]

For some reason when trying to form a caravan, colonists I put in the caravan refuse to sleep in their own beds while forming the caravan or take part in any joy activities. 

Yes this is standard behavior, the forming caravan task override all other nessesary task.
When the loading caravan takes long time, that lead to the problems you describe.
You need to shorten this time
- assign more colonist to carry stuff, at last 1 colonist each pack animal.
- shorten the way, you can setup a caravan forming spot now, set this spot to the trade goods.
- plan the trade goods, art&furniture can't be stacked, the colonist need to get each one by one. 75 small scruptures take alot more time to load then 75 joints.

Maybe start with smaller caravans first (3-5 colonist with 2-4 animals) before you form a big one.

[tonakis2108]

I haven't had any problems with forming my caravans yet, the problems start when I need to travel to a good distance and make a small camp. Joy problems and mental breaks are common.

[RemingtonRyder]

The more people you have loading the caravan, the more there are who will potentially break due to low needs, but the quicker the pack animals will be loaded. It can also help if, for example, you place down a caravan packing spot in between the warehouses you will be packing from, as this shortens the individual trips to and from stockpiles.

[Nainara]

In A17, other non-caravan colonists can help to load your pack animals and launch pods. Hauling animals cannot assist in loading pack animals and launch pods. If preparing a caravan with a lot of goods and animals here are some tips:

• Create a small animal zone around the caravan spot and confine all caravan animals into it before creating the caravan
• Create a high priority stockpile around the caravan spot and move non-perishable trade goods into it before creating the caravan
• Temporarily de-prioritize all work above hauling on any colonists that you can spare to help load the caravan

As I've mentioned before, I feel that caravans are still unwieldy in A17 because:

• there's a lot friction in setting up and loading caravans, especially with pack animals
• the creation screen does not provide enough visibility into colonist/animal movement speed
• there's no way to manage the risk exposure of your caravaneers to costly adverse events like raids and manhunters

[AngleWyrm]

Caravan range and the multiple 'fuel' types

• How long can a pawn go without joy activities before they begin accumulating morale debuffs that will eventually result in a disaster? That length of time is one maximum sustainable trip duration of a caravan. They must then stop traveling and set up camp.
• How long can a pawn go without food before they need to eat? That is the usable time span between meal breaks, and the amount of time that a caravan can spend on the road before needing to eat another meal. But there's some odd over-ride behaviors on food though, in the form of abnormal automatic consumption rates and additional rotting away of supplies that isn't consistent with in-game food shelf life.
• How long can a pawn go without sleep before tiredness debuffs start to accumulate? That is another maximum length the convoy can travel between sleep breaks.

Without clear design goals, the nerfs and destructions of the world screen as a playing field will continue to accumulate. Eventually modders will have to create teleporter pads, orbital transports and other alternatives, not for the fantasy and story aspect but as a work-around for self-imposed hobbling of new features as some sort of psychological pricing function.

Look around at the mods that come into existence, grow to their best day, and then are nerfed into oblivion by their own authors. It is a common behavior pattern, and what I'm suggesting is that it is a tragedy of human existence, a reflection of mortality and a retaliatory construal to a bigger is better fallacy.