Cleaning woes

[lazyl]

I have over 300 hours in this game and love it, but I still struggle to manage cleaning for small colonies. For large colonies there's no issue, just assign a dedicated cleaner and go, but for small colonies I find it's always a problem. If I set cleaning priority too low then it never gets done and if I assign it too high then pawns will interrupt what their doing every three seconds to run half-way across the base and clean a single tile of dirt.

Are the devs satisfied with the way this works? I find there is no solution except to constantly micro-manage cleaning. Is there some vanilla solution that I'm missing? I think what I would like is to be able to assign a cleaning schedule. Along with work/sleep/rec let me specify a time of day for cleaning during which cleaning tasks get a higher priority. But I'm open to other solutions as long as I don't have to micro. 

Thoughts?

[Listen1]

I have over 300 hours in this game and love it, but I still struggle to manage cleaning for small colonies. For large colonies there's no issue, just assign a dedicated cleaner and go, but for small colonies I find it's always a problem. If I set cleaning priority too low then it never gets done and if I assign it too high then pawns will interrupt what their doing every three seconds to run half-way across the base and clean a single tile of dirt.

Are the devs satisfied with the way this works? I find there is no solution except to constantly micro-manage cleaning. Is there some vanilla solution that I'm missing? I think what I would like is to be able to assign a cleaning schedule. Along with work/sleep/rec let me specify a time of day for cleaning during which cleaning tasks get a higher priority. But I'm open to other solutions as long as I don't have to micro. 

Thoughts?

For small colonies, like 3-5 people start, everyone has their primary task (growing, crafting, cooking, constructing). For better management I keep everyones secound task as hauling, except for one, usually the grower, to do the cleaning.

With this, you can usually maintain a colony clean (making most of the growers clean and then haul) until you can afford a dedicated sweeper.

[ashaffee]

Rimworld really needs to implement fluffys work tab. Only way I can effectively clean is manually telling them to do it. 1-4 work priorities isn't near enough to properly assign cleaning imo. I do have some people set up to do it like the guy above said but it still can get left behind.

[Canute]

At the beginning i assign my Main research for cleaning.
Since Researching is the lowest priority job he is doing allways cleaning first.
Ok, at first it can take awhile until he will research until anything is clean.

Or like ashafee use the mod WorkTab from Fluffy.
Then you can just assign a timeframe and set a higher priority for clean, or disable other task.

[Kirby23590]

Pawns that are incapable of dumb labor would mean that they don't cleaning and they won't do it.

There is a reason why i get pawns and recruit aren't good nor bad like the ones with the sheriff backstory. Since they might do cleaning and run around the colony doing so. If not i mostly banish them out since they are mostly useless or laughably bad.

Just keep an eye on the home area and zone if a manhunter pack or a raid arrives.

[ashaffee]

Pawns that are incapable of dumb labor would mean that they don't cleaning and they won't do it.

There is a reason why i get pawns and recruit aren't good nor bad like the ones with the sheriff backstory. Since they might do cleaning and run around the colony doing so. If not i mostly banish them out since they are mostly useless or laughably bad.

Just keep an eye on the home area and zone if a manhunter pack or a raid arrives.

Well to me all types of restrictions have usefulness. I like having colonist that can't do combat to be my social talkers, medics and cooks. All tasks that injuries will hurt them way to much to do their job. Dumb labor guys I am cool with because they can specialize in a skilled labor and always stay busy. The ones that can't do skilled of course to be back on topic be assigned purely as a cleaning/hauling character. Of course they need to be able do other things as well to be worthy.

[Kirby23590]

Pawns that are incapable of dumb labor would mean that they don't cleaning and they won't do it.

There is a reason why i get pawns and recruit aren't good nor bad like the ones with the sheriff backstory. Since they might do cleaning and run around the colony doing so. If not i mostly banish them out since they are mostly useless or laughably bad.

Just keep an eye on the home area and zone if a manhunter pack or a raid arrives.

Well to me all types of restrictions have usefulness. I like having colonist that can't do combat to be my social talkers, medics and cooks. All tasks that injuries will hurt them way to much to do their job. Dumb labor guys I am cool with because they can specialize in a skilled labor and always stay busy. The ones that can't do skilled of course to be back on topic be assigned purely as a cleaning/hauling character. Of course they need to be able do other things as well to be worthy.

That is true

[antibodee]

The halls of Valhalla echo with the wails of brain damaged janitors.

[DariusWolfe]

I've had good luck with (using Fluffy's Work Tab, but it could be done manually) setting Cleaning to Priority 1 across the board for a few hours in the evening. It doesn't massively disrupt anything else, and it's been keeping my colony fairly clean.

[RemingtonRyder]

In an early colony I would probably assign cleaning as the first job for whichever colonist isn't assigned to doctoring or cooking.

[gimlet]

Early on, when it's getting a bit grungy I just have a Field Day - everybody who's not doing a vital task gets cleaning set to 2 for a while.   If I'm really in the weeds I use areas to restrict them to only clean the important stuff.

I'm looking at a couple of mods that might help - Work Area Priority Manager/Composite Area Manager and Cleaning Area, but I haven't bitten the bullet yet.

[Snowcaller]

I just manually set high priority on cleaningfor all but essential tasks for a minute when the colony looks like a pigsty.

[Scavenger]

How cool would it be to craft a roomba late game?

[cultist]

Early on, I don't bother cleaning everything. If you keep your kitchen, research and dining areas clean, that should be fine for the early game. Just clean rooms up manually before you do any medicine jobs. I find this is better than wasting for instance the researcher's time on cleaning.

Take the crashlanded scenario. Very early days, I have one pawn constructing, one hauling and one growing (if possible). Hauler or grower switch to research and stonecutting when they have done most of their tasks. I can't spare a pawn for cleaning, even if it's only part of the day, since you're never not going to need a hauler in the early game and I don't want to cripple my research. This is without even considering animal taming, cooking, hunting and other important jobs.

[I Am Testing This Game]

Cleaning zone should be in the game

Early game, you should only clean your kitchen, bedrooms, living rooms, etc.

Cleaning whole home zone is a terrible waste, especially if you put the cleaning labor high up, in hopes of keeping a clean kitchen.

But you need to have a big home zone, so you can repair breakdowns, fight fires, etc.

In vanilla, the most efficient way is to expand the home zone manually when needed, but otherwise keep it small, at least early on, when you have low levels of labor and NEED some areas clean.

There should be a separate cleaning zone.