Smart work alocation - any tips?

[Thangunis]

I am somwhere in midgame and should probably start to limit my colonists to 1-2 work tasks. Now the question is what are smart combinations for colonists (considering they have a "flame") and their workloads - i.e. you don't need the medicine guy all the time etc.

[Mehni]

By far my favourite combination of pawn skills is medicine/social/research/art. Put the research bench near the prison and they'll research + chat. Once you're done with all research (hah!), they can do art. Comfortable and beautiful surroundings means you can take on a Too Smart/Neurotic person without much issue.

Generally though, it depends on the state of your colony. Later on, a dedicated hauler and cleaner is required. Before that, you'll want a combination of things to avoid needless walking back and forth. Jobs fall into different categories: intermittent/finite and forever. It's good to give a pawn one or two intermittent jobs and one forever job. Depending on how your colony is set up, growing / cooking / mining / construction are all jobs that'll end eventually, or reach an equilibrium. These can be combined with other jobs. Don't be afraid to take on pawns with lower/reduced skills - if they can take over from another job that frees up a busy pawn to do something else.

In my colonies I aim to have 2-3 "main" jobs per pawn, and 2-3 pawns per job.

I wrote a long guide on it over on reddit. Slightly dated by now, but the information and the underlying principles in it still stand.

[sick puppy]

personally, i have slightly different priorities than the work tab has by default, which is why i use numbers and not just ticks. but first things first:

when deciding on who to recruit and what jobs to give a pawn, three things are to be decided upon: 1) urgency of having another worker in a certain area. 2) late game viability (if i used that word correctly). 3) current adeptness of the pawn.

the first point is easy. especially at the beginning of a game and even more important on non-tribal starts when you have 1 or three pawns, sometimes you JUST NEED a doc. no pawn is good at it and no pawn has a flame for it? well too bad. you still need a pawn that can get the job done, maybe even two to counter their slowness at work. a pawn with 2 or even 1 in medicine will need to be the colony doctor in times like these. also on caravans when you forgot to get a medic.

second point is usually more important than third one, because nigh-everyone plays longer games and doesnt go for spaceships and therefore escapes and short games. if you try to beat high scores in ending the game, you need to change point three and two. anyway. point two is all about late game. a pawn that starts out at 8 in a skill will not get above 12 in most skills if he isnt passionate about it. double flames will allow even a pawn with straight 0 skill to soon overtake a disinterested pawn, especially in late game. skills above level 15 are only really available for passionate pawns, so even if you can recruit a pawn with high skills, if the pawn is only passionate about sleeping and is maybe even a slow worker for some reason, the pawn will never be able to become one of the best in anything. well, actually, the pawn can become a decent allrounder. i have one that i always send on caravans because he has 8-10 in everything (except shooting). what i am trying to say is that double flames is way more important than a few points in skill. i'd say a level 0 medic with double flames is better than a level 6 without any in mid game. early game, you should pick the level 6 medic for obvious reasons. (also dont forget that passion is a good way of keeping pawns happy. seriously, a pawn with all in all 10 flames but all in all 10 skill points distributed evenly is better than a pawn without any passion but 40 skill distributed evenly, if you ever have a choice on who to recruit.)

finally the third point. i already said everything about it before. if you need another medic because your last one died or something, get any pawn to try and replace him over time, as even the worst ones will learn with time. but having even a level 3 one when all you have is level 1's and below is important in times of war. but recruiting one? meh...personally, i'd only do it for level 7's. i mean, the game is programmed to give you around 18 pawns. so having a few weaker ones among them to level them up for a while is no biggie.
too long; didn't read: you wont be able to get a high skill without passion. no skill, no legendary objects, no decent operations and no good trades.

after all this, there is the question what is how important to you. i like farming to be done quickly; my food to be cooked well and without giving my colony food poisoning; having a LOT of medics for bad times (like half the pawns); all the pawns to have infinite jobs aswell as finite jobs and lastly constructing, mining and hunting isnt the most important thing out there, i can survive with those tasks being delayed a few days as long as the rest gets done properly.
infinite jobs are research, cleaning, hauling, art and some people even consider crafting to be it. well, in some cases it is for me aswell. when i have double flame crafters for example and generally enough researchers and janitors.
finite jobs are anything else, with the sole exception of playing with randy and/or on lower difficulties, as you will get way more than enough prisoners to make wardening an infinite job aswell.( but not having enough pawns for a job type makes it infinite anyway, or having bad efficiency like long hauls for cooking for example...)
anyway. so you will have your own priorities, i have mine. i just put ALL my pawns (possible) to priotity 1 in plant cutting and sowing, fire fighting, aswell as the obvious ones like bed rest and all that crap on the left and ALL the pawns (that can) to priority 2 in construction.
the rest is skill and need dependent. if you have enough, you deactivate the bad workers or unpassionate ones. if you need more, you employ also the worse workers, like docs and cooks usually.
all good and/or passionate and/or needed cooks get a 1 in cooking. same applies for medicine, animals and social.
all good and/or passionate and or needed miners get a 2 in mining. same applies for hunters/shooting.
and in the end, you distribute the long term jobs: every pawn (that can) by default gets a 4 in both cleaning and hauling. then, you have to decide on your priorities. do you want constant research? (you will need many research tables for that or your pawns will occasionally get bored. i have 3-10 generally.) do you want a perfectly clean base? you might change the priority of cleaning to a two for all pawns, or just have a few full time janitors by default. do you have no animals to do the hauling jobs for you and dont have the prioritized hauling from the allow tool enabled? you might need janitors again just like before or maybe even everybody needs to help out. personally? i have animals for by far most hauling jobs. and lastly, crafting jobs. in my base, my best and most passionate crafters get a free pass on everything as long as they craft. (except medical, social duties and harvesting/sowing) so the top has crafting on 1, the medium to high ones on 2, the rest of the half decent ones have it one 3. they usually do stuff like crafting drugs, meds, clubs and anything that doesnt really require skill. double flame researchers have a similar thing going on in research, but it gets a 2, so that they will actually go out to hunt, mine and construct aswell, depending on their skill. but most pawns are neither super passionate aboit researching or crafting, nor naturally good at it, so by far most pawns have cleaning and hauling set to three and research to 4. depending on need i change them. sometimes i need more critical hauling, sometimes i need more cleaning. sometimes none of my pawns really have jobs to do (happens a lot with chillax in late game) so most of them will research.

damn i spammed way too much. i'll try to keep it short now:
i hunt with all pawns that have shooty weapons except the flame or explosion based ones and miniguns. bad shots get a pistol and have their hunting priority changed to 1, so that they can level it up as soon as possible.
with cooks, i am like this: either they are good, or you might aswell eat stuff raw. food poisoning can ruin your pawn's day and so does bad mood. at least you save some time like that.
i use many animals and therefore also many pawns with animals skill, even if they kinda suck. in many maps the animals skill is nigh infinite in early to mid game once your food production works to its fullest extent. corn really helps you out there, as you need little maintenance for a lot of food, even if rice would be a bit better at times.
by the way, being bad at plant work isnt really a reason not to do it. in the worst case you have to plant the same plant twice, fail with a single harvest, get a bit less wood or something of that sort. nothing important.
training medicine skill to level 8 - 10 is rather easy if you train it whenever possible. whenever you wanna slaughter an animal, try using a medic instead through the operation tab. operate a lot on useless prisoners. also, if you are really desperate for better medics, shoot the biggest animals on the map down (like megasloths, caribous, bears, elephants, rhinos and so on, but also muffalos and dromedaries, if you dont need them) and then proceed with healing them. a single elephant can have so many autoturret or minigun wounds that a healer will grow a whole level or two. and you dont even need to use meds for all that. (not sure if using herbal meds will help with gaining xp, but growing it is very easy anyway and well worth it)
art really depends on you. you like trading? it is a very simple method of being able to trade with anyone and get all their silver for lotsa sterile flooring or whatever you need it for. double flame artists have it on 1 or 2 priority, medium ones on 3. i once tried spamming art and growing my own wood, btw. not really worth it, but then again, that game i accepted any pawn and they all happened to be good at art and not too much else, so i was kind of forced that way by my gal, chillax

lastly, if you have certain pawns that are always bored or never really doing what you want (for example cleaning a ridiculously dirty base all on their own to no real avail) try to get some neurotrainers. they are quite expensive but also easy to get if you do the world map missions, be it trading or resource caches. a neurotrainer for an unpassionate level 0 pawn can make him a somewhat useful addition to your base from the getgo. while neurotrainers give more experience to passionate pawns, the passionate pawn can get the same amount of xp in the same amount of work as an unpassionate pawn with the same amount of work. so it is more about how to skip the unproductive phase of level 0-3 or 4.

sorry if the linked article said all this, i just figured that some people dont like using links or even the search function in the forum, so i wrote my experience here.
funniest thing is, some people dont even touch the work tab and play in the highest speed. well i like to micromanage. (duh)