New zone: Do X

[Ink.]

Now, pardon me if this has been suggested before. I looked around a bit but 59 pages is a lot to look through.

My idea is simply, a new type of zone of action. Essentially what I'd be able to do is create a custom temporary zone that lets me select who does what. Lemme show you what I mean.


(click the image for full resolution)

See all those bodies there? It would be cool if I could create a zone over that for "Taz" that says "Strip" and does that for every body in the zone until done. With behavior like a bill. Afterwards, being able to create another zone for "Taz" to "Cremate" all said bodies in that zone. Or maybe I could set it to cremate 10 so I have more room.

So far cremating and stripping is an individual click job for these things (from what I've found at least, and it can be a little encumbersome).

Another way this could potentially be beneficial is by being able to set priority of a job by a zone. For example, let's say I have someone whose job is simply to haul and collect everything I deem of value and put it in the right spots. After a battle however; theres no way I can really tell my "hauler" to focus first on hauling the bodies and weapons of the people we just killed before hauling anything else. Being able to utilize these custom zones I could have my hauler prioritize to clean up the battlefield before he carries my rocks and metal to their appropriate places.

tl;dr - A new type of zone with extensive controls in the style of a bill so that you can designate who does what, where, how much, and when for most (if not all) actions.

(sorry for spelling/grammar, it's already nearing 3am and I need sleep, I normally go to bed 3 hours ago)

[BetaSpectre]

So linking a zone with a particular colonist for him to do work there?

Interesting idea and in fact sounds like a must have. Most colonists would not stay put in different bases around the map. This idea could make that happen.

Cool idea.

[Ink.]

So linking a zone with a particular colonist for him to do work there?

Interesting idea and in fact sounds like a must have. Most colonists would not stay put in different bases around the map. This idea could make that happen.

Cool idea.

Yeah basically. It would allow people to have more priority in what someone should be doing. Or imagine that you have a level 20 builder and you have 3 buildings you're trying to make: a prison, an equipment storage, and a barracks. With these, theoretically you could have your skillful builder first make the barracks, then the prison, and finish with the equipment storage, instead of a kind of random(ish) order. It basically brings a deeper meaning to priority work and can act kind of like a general orders management tool.

[_alphaBeta_]

Stripping bodies is currently a manual process, but cremation is automated. As I said here, if you're not seeing cremation happen, you don't have enough colonists set to crafting, OR those colonists have too many tasks checked on their priorities list that are a higher priority than crafting.

I like micromanagement in games like this, so I'm fine with the idea of specifying specific colonists to do specific jobs. Zones sound like an interesting way to handle this, though if used in excess could be confusing. I'll suggest an idea from another indie game called Banished where the player has the ability to drag out a selection box that bumps everything that selection box touches to the top of the queue (actually it bumps it up one step every time you drag, but I wish it just went to the top of the queue). In your case, you could drag over the cremation object so your crafters would prioritize its staffing over other crafting tables. Same with hauling, drag over the objects you want hauled first, and they go to the top of the list. You can even order the tasks somewhat with this method by dragging the priority box over objects in reverse order. Nice and simple with the player being in control without adding a lot more interface.

I've been trying to watch hauling priorities as they are now. Is it proximity of the colonist at the time they decide to start hauling or the order in which the player designated objects for hauling? If it's proximity, this priority drag system would have to override that.

You can control to a certain extent the ordering now with the use of the forbidden designation and how much you select to haul (for slag and rocks). The use-case that's annoying is if you have a good amount of objects set for hauling and a battle takes place or some other event. Removing forbidden from the bodies doesn't necessarily mean they'll be hauled before the previously selected objects. This forces the player to cancel those hauling jobs, which IMHO, should never be necessary. That's where a priority drag tool comes in handy.

[Ink.]

Didn't know crafting related to cremation. I don't really have anyone on crafting so that could be why. Guess I'll be checking that out soon.

But yeah. Zone was the best way I could think of doing it, so that it could designate specifically areas, in case you had multiple places where a job could be done, but you wanted only a certain area. Or as a way of building your queue, at least a little bit. So you can be sure the things that need to be done critically get done first, so if anything should happen you're not SoL.

[_alphaBeta_]

As a side note, if you're ever wondering why a job isn't getting done, take a colonist and right click on the object in question (I believe power needs to be applied if applicable, but that should be obvious to the player). If that particular colonist can't do the job, it will identify why in parenthesis. This gives you the clue of what type of job it is. Very neat system. In this case, it should be telling you that the colonist can't prioritize because they're not a crafter.

Only place it's failed me was with my primary higher-level cook being hurt recently. I couldn't understand why my newly assigned (temporary) lower-level cook wasn't cooking. I finally realized the stove was only setup for fine quality meals, and he lacked the skill to cook them. Right-clicking the stove with him didn't bring up a menu.

[Shinzy]

ooh
Having specific people prioritize their tasks in a certain zone
before wandering off to do other stuff outside them would be very helpful with
especially the case BetaSpectre mentioned

I tried to have a separate village once, it just cause lot of needless traffic between the two

I'd imagine people could come up with lots of cool ways to utilize these kind of zones with.

I like zones, zoning is fun =P I want more zones