[B18] queing construction should act in a more sensible way

[arl85]

I was unable to find if it has already been reported, but if you right click to prioritize construction in some cases pawn will only bring materials to the prioritized building and then continues with his own priority.
For example, if there are damaged items, forcing building a door will only force pawn to bring materials there, then he will continue repairing other items, because repairing has an higher priority than building.

it becomes even more frustrating when you want to build several items in a row, for example several walls. If you queues the constructions, pawn will bring materials to all walls one after another without first completing construction. In other words, you'll have a lot of "frames" of buildings, but no built ones.

It is especially frustrating when you try to recover from a raid that breached your walls: pawns will prioritize repairing over building, even if you forced construction.

I suppose it is because working on blueprint is a different job than constructing frames: in fact, when you right-click to force construction, it only says "force working on blueprint" and only after that you can force constructing the real object.

so, to recap:

• you want to construct several buildings
• you place construction order and queue building order (right-click)
• pawn will bring materials to any single building and only after that* he will start building them
  *if there's nothing else with higher priority (ie: repairing)

expected behavior:
queuing construction should force pawn to bring material and build before bringing materials to other queued constructions.

[Calahan]

Are you able to provide a vanilla save file demonstrating precisely what issue you are reporting. And setup so that you load the save, select the specified Pawn, right-click on the specified blueprints, and then watch as the issue you are reporting unfolds.

Because some of what you are reporting might well be a bug, or it might be WAD. As...

it becomes even more frustrating when you want to build several items in a row, for example several walls. If you queues the constructions, pawn will bring materials to all walls one after another without first completing construction. In other words, you'll have a lot of "frames" of buildings, but no built ones.

... is certainly WAD as far as I know. If you have several pending construction blueprints in the same area, then a Pawn, when deciding to (or is ordered to) work on a blueprint, will try to deliver materials for several blueprints at once (for other blueprints that require the same type of materials). And a Pawn can't do any jobs while carrying anything. ie. He can't deliver materials to one blueprint, build it, and then move on to the next job "materials in hand". As the game just doesn't work like that (never has and never will). So the only option (from a mechanic perspective) is to have the Pawn deliver all the materials they are carrying to the respective blueprints, and only then move on to the building part of the job (see next).

Of course this does mean that you often end up with several frames (as you say). But that's how the game works, and how it has always worked, and I can't see how the game could work any other way to be honest. That is apart from a Pawn only hauling materials for one job at a time, which would be ridiculously inefficient and almost certainly lead to cries from the playerbase for things to work like they do now. Or the whole "make the X AI smarter" request, where X could be hauling or building or hunting or harvesting etc etc etc.

I suppose it is because working on blueprint is a different job than constructing frames

This does appear to be the case, although I'm not sure if it is a bug or not. The game used to work like it does now, with material delivery and the actual building being two separate parts of the construction task. But I'm sure I recall this being changed a few Alpha's ago because players were complaining that they'd right-click to prioritise the building of a construction blueprint, and naturally expect that to result in the building being built (without further supervision).

But what was happening then, and what is happening now in B18, is that the prioritised construction order would only cover the delivery of the materials, not the actual building of the blueprint. Meaning the player needs to manually prioritise the Pawn a second time in order to get the blueprint built (or mess with that Pawn's work priorities / allowed area). Which is certain to cause frustration to the player, and precisely why, or at least why I thought, this particular mechanic was changed a few alpha's ago.

I'll need to access my older versions to test/confirm if this (old) behaviour is now new (again) for B18 (which I can't do right now but will try to do this week). As I could just as easily be misremembering this entirely. I definitely remember players complaining about this issue before, and over a fair period of time. But I can only be partially sure that the devs made some tweaks to resolve the issue.


But if you could provide that vanilla save file I mentioned at the start in the meantime that would be helpful (so as to see precisely what you are reporting). Because your recap at the end seems to be an accurate summary, and easy to understand, but what you've written regarding the behaviour you expected is less understandable because the game has never worked like that, and as such I'm a little confused why/how you think you expected it to work like what you've written?

And please note there is a difference between "how you expected the game to work" and "how you want the game to work". And I can't see how what you've written can match "how you expected the game to work", because the game has never worked like that. Not in regards to Pawns only hauling materials for one job at a time (unless it's from VERY early alphas), or being able to build things with "materials in hand". So I don't see what the expectation you have for such behaviour is being based on? Although it does match "how you want the game to work", but as I said that's not the same thing, and bugs generally mean a deviation from how the game is expected to work (according to the developers design). Since any and every player could (and usually do) have quite different opinions on how they want something to work.


To Summarise

- Delivering materials to several blueprints at once is WAD, and this is how the game has always worked (with possible exclusion of very early alphas).
- Delivering materials and actually building a construction blueprint are two separate parts of the construction task. It may or may not be a bug that (in B18) prioritising the construction of a blueprint via right-click doesn't encompass both parts into one single prioritised order.
- Pawns choosing to repair things ahead of building things is WAD (AFAIK). And is the result of the Repair job type being merged (in A14 or A15) with the Construction job type, and repair being given a higher priority within the combined Construction job type (either use a mod that separates these jobs again, or use MM to remove the Home Zone of things that need repairing).

[arl85]

Hi Calahan, first of all I'd like to express all my gratitude for taking the time to write such a detailed answer to my post: I really appreciated it, because you make me think about how unclear and confused I was in my report.

To Summarise

- Delivering materials to several blueprints at once is WAD, and this is how the game has always worked (with possible exclusion of very early alphas).

you're right, it is absolutely WAD

- Pawns choosing to repair things ahead of building things is WAD (AFAIK). And is the result of the Repair job type being merged (in A14 or A15) with the Construction job type, and repair being given a higher priority within the combined Construction job type (either use a mod that separates these jobs again, or use MM to remove the Home Zone of things that need repairing).

It is WAD in strict terms: working as designed. Even if sometimes I'd want it to be reversed (ie: when you have to rebuild walls and pawns prefers to repair damaged one) it works exactly as expected.

- Delivering materials and actually building a construction blueprint are two separate parts of the construction task. It may or may not be a bug that (in B18) prioritising the construction of a blueprint via right-click doesn't encompass both parts into one single prioritised order.

perfect way to put it.

After checking again, it seems that if you right-click prioritize the build order, both parts of it are indeed merged in a single, prioritized order.

But in my savegame I saw a different behavior and I was not understanding what's happening until I noticed that I was queuing orders.

Indeed, what I should have reported is it the following (again, sorry for being very confusing in my first post)

when queuing several build order, only last one is indeed completed, before priority "take controls".

Pawns bring materials to all queued order, but start building just the last one.
after completing it, if there are more urgent jobs (ie: repairing) pawn will do them first.

In this savefile, Burton has been ordered to prioritize building wood walls (queuing right-click on every single section): she will carry materials to all of them but build only the last section, before coming back to repair granite walls.

in this case, it seems that order is queued in this way:

• deliver material to section 1
• deliver material to section 2
• deliver material to section 3
• deliver material to section 4
• build section 4
  ===END OF QUEUE - NORMAL PRIORITIES FROM NOW ON ===
• repair

please note that section 1->3 are not built, even if player clearly wanted them to be (prioritized!)

I'm not sure what a better solution would be, maybe

• deliver material to section 1
• deliver material to section 2
• deliver material to section 3
• deliver material to section 4
• build section 1
• build section 2
• build section 3
• build section 4
  ===END OF QUEUE - NORMAL PRIORITIES FROM NOW ON ===
• repair

in this case I don't know if it is better to keep the original queued order list (section 1->4) or reversing it (you just delivered to section 4: it's the closest one, so just build it).
Still, building in the order you queued orders seems more "expectable".

Another possible approach would be

• deliver material to section 1
• build section 1
• deliver material to section 2
• build section 2
• deliver material to section 3
• build section 3
• deliver material to section 4
• build section 4
  ===END OF QUEUE - NORMAL PRIORITIES FROM NOW ON ===
• repair

but this one will break the usual "deliver as much material as you can before start building" rule.
Still, if player really really wanted to build section 1 and only after that build section 2, I think it should be considered. In this case, breaking the "delivery then build" rule could be accepted.

I hope this is a better, more complete and understandable report of the problem.