Caravaning system needs some major love.

Started by Orion Supernova, July 01, 2019, 05:20:05 AM

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Orion Supernova

Hi all,

I've been engrossed in a single rimworld map for a long time, my colony is 46 years old.
I have a couple of dozen colonists in a base that spans the entire map.
I hollowed out a mountain completely and built under it.
I strip mined 4 other maps and hauled the resources back to maintain my dwindling stock piles.
I've slaughtered some cities, and defended others.
Faced down raids of hundreds and recovered.

https://i.imgur.com/8TFSaQX.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/htt7ARv.jpg

As you can see i have devoted a lot of time and effort to this game over the last few months.

I feel it's fair to say i've had a long and varied game play and one thing i've noticed throughout the three weeks of play time i've dedicated to this map is that the caravan system is shocking, it's horrible, i audibly groan when i realise i have to set another caravan up, and i've finally gotten to the point where i got upset enough to mention it.

I am currently trying to move 14x Thrumbos from my mining colony to my main colony as they need their training kept up, and at the same time i am bringing back a load of resources on my 10x Muffalos and Elephants.

I did the standard load up from the world screen, that's not too bad.
I have to have to flick between several screen shots taken by a third party program so that i know which animals i want to include in the caravan; dependent on which master they are assigned to, their health and food status, and their training statuses. I'd also LOVE to be able to see which zones each animal was assigned to on the map from this caravan forming screen.

So finally i get my one colonist assignedto his Thrumbo mount, i added the other Thrumbos, Muffalos, and Elephants in, and loaded the caravan up with goodies, making sure to leave at least 1 kg for the forage that will be picked up in the first tile.
(BTW a caravan should not be able to add uneaten forage if it will make it immobile due to weight.)
I then finalise the route and left the caravan to pack.

After a day i got a warning message that a colonist was heading towards a break, this isn't unusual for a colonist packing a caravan, so i ignored it; the colonist usually perks up when on the road.

Three days later i checked up on the caravan because it hadn't left yet, to find the colonist about to snap due to hunger and recreation needs not being met.

The colonist had been wandering back and forth for three days, not able to do anything. Not able to load anything, not even being able to finalize forming the caravan to begin loading.
This was because there was at least one animal either asleep, wandering around, or eating at all times and the horrendous caravan system in this game SUSPENDS ALL CARAVAN ACTIVITY unless all animals assigned to the caravan are available.

I managed to force the caravan to form by removing all eating, wandering, and sleeping animals, immediately my colonist sprung into action, tagging the remaining animals and beginning the loading.
I then had to manually add each animal i had removed back into the caravan.

Before you all ask, i have many mods loaded, but almost 90% were added around year 5 after i strip mined and hauled my first satellite colony.
This issue persisted back then, even before the mods were loaded.
I believe this is an issue with the vanilla caravan system and im surprised no-one has raised this problem to be fixed already.

----

Another issue is that when animals are added to a caravan, they immediately ignore all zone restrictions.

I have lost uncountable volumes of devil strand because my animals got hunry while the caravan was forming and so wandered into the walled off devilstrand patch and started merily munching away.
At the same time the caravan would of course stop packing and wait.

Are there any plans to fix the caravan system?
Has anyone come up with a mod that makes it more user friendly?

I'd like to mention also at this point just how cancerous having to do this when you have 52x muffalos in a caravan.
It's even more cancerous than having to manually unload each animal individually because if you waited for the colonists to do it, they end up having to chase the animals around the entire map as they wander, picking up one item at a time to unload.
The alternative is to restrict the animals to a single area, at which point they begin starving because it takes so long to unload them.

Eventually i ended up just selecting each animal individually, and getting it to drop each stack individually, now that's cancerous!

Gadfly

It's most likely never going to change, the game is done.

Things I do to make it easier:

Create a building with a stockpile, move all stuff I want to move off map in here, keep some hay in there and the caravan packing spot.
Have a permanent caravan just outside my tile, I move stuff there with smaller caravans, larger caravans can get stuff from there.
Food should be done from another stockpile.

Unloading caravans can be done by having animals move in the stockpile and click on the gear tab and drop stuff directly in to the stockpile.

Large caravan do not work to well, because loading takes so long that pawns get hungry, rec deprived and what not.

Smaller convoys and everything you want to load close together helps a lot.

But yes, it could use some love.

Pangaea


Shurp

Maybe you could try making several smaller caravans, then merge them when they make it out to the world map?
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

Orion Supernova

Alright, so if the game devs are ok with calling such a shoddy system "complete" is there anyone out there able to create a mod that would make things easier?

I've noticed through my searches that caravanning is one of the least modded parts of the game, i've only been able to find the giddy-up mod that effect that part of the game, does anyone have any suggestions?

I feel there are at least 4 points that need to be improved to fix caravanning, although others might be able to make some more suggestions.


1) I'd love to be able to see more information regarding the state of the people and animals from the create caravan screen in the world.
This information would include a full readout of their health and status (both for colonist and animals); EG: food, rest, recreation, movement speed and more.
Additionally i'd love to be able to tell which masters each animal is assigned to, not just the bonded master.

2) Animals should not be allowed to consume food outside the zone they are assigned to.

3) Animals should be restricted to the zone that they are assigned to once they have been added to a caravan, they should not be allowed to leave that zone until they have been "touched" by a colonist forming the caravan, ignoring sleep, food, and medical treatment.

4) Animals should be able to be "touched" by colonists forming a caravan, even when wandering, eating and sleeping.
Alternatively
Animals added to a caravan should ignore everything until they have been "touched" by a colonist forming the caravan, including food, sleep and medical treatment.

Does anyone else have anything else they'd like to see with the caravan system fixed up?

Thisbrewwillmakeyougay

I've had similar problems with caravans... my caravans take 3 days to leave, during most of that that caravan colonist aren't doing anything because some animal is sleeping. Later, someone ate one of the meal I wanted to bring into the caravan and the caravan can't finish packing because they can't find it. The caravan finally leaves after having a colonist hit the animals to keep them awake and kicking 3 colonist out of the caravan. the caravan head to the edge of the map.... 10 seconds before they leave I get a raid warning message, no problem right , and can just kick any animals that isn't there yet if it spawn near the caravan... it spawn literally on top of my caravan even if I paused immediately my colonists are already down when I look... everyone dies...

A few thing you do that help:
Assign all the colonist to the caravan so they they all work on loading.
Don't make large caravans. If you want large caravan leave your caravan one tile away from base and ferry stuff back and forth in small quantities.

Personally I don't do caravans anymore and I've disabled all the cross-map events until either a modder or tynan make a fix.

1 - A single sleeping animal shouldn't stop the caravan from forming.
2 - We should be able to edit the caravan list at any time.
3 - There needs to be a "LEAVE RIGHT FUCKING NOW" button.

I know that the game is "complete" but tynan still make some occasionnal update(mostly bug fix) and this +cave bugs being counted as part of the colony are things I hope get fixed someday.

LWM

As far as possible fixes go, how about making it two:

1.  Colonists can happily load stuff onto sleeping animals.
2.  Caravan animals are assigned to a specific zone; you can specify a zone during caravan creation if you want.

A few other options that would be really good, but not necessary:
1.  Caravan animals ignore sleep when the caravan is leaving the map
2.  The Caravan creation page doesn't reset every time you leave it to go look at colonists/stuff/etc...  Heck, maybe it should be in the colony window, not the world window?

--LWM

FleshEater

#7
I don't have any real problems with the caravans, but I usually have/do the following:

- One main storage area that is set as the "caravan loading" spot that has everything I want loaded in the caravan except food.
- One main freezer that has food I want to be loaded.
- All the animals that will load the caravan have the same sleeping area.
- Start loading the caravan at around 2am on the morning I want it to leave.  I usually have 1-2 pawns in the caravan and 5-10 pack animals (Muffolos are my usual)
- The caravan usually gets loaded in a few hours by the 1-2 pawns assigned to it.
- It leaves the map.
- Profit.

This is on vanilla version 1 (current version).

I'm not sure what your caravans are doing when loading, but all my muffalos go to the storage area and the pawn that I've assigned to the caravan quickly loads it from that one area (usually by himself and within a few hours).  The pawn, with the muffalos following, then go to the food area, pack up the food and the proceed to leave the map.  I've never had the caravan stop loading if someone eats the food (it just doesn't take as much food).

Unloading the return trade can be a bit of a pain, but as I keep all my muffalos in factory-farm conditions they are at least all at the same spot.  The pawns will eventually unload them without commands, but I find it quicker to click on each one and force unload their items.

B@R5uk

#8
I also had problems with sleeping pawns (especially prisoners) during caravan formation. They needed to be kicked and that makes them hurt and stuff which is bad.

Quote from: Thisbrewwillmakeyougay on July 02, 2019, 03:44:53 PM1 - A single sleeping animal shouldn't stop the caravan from forming.
2 - We should be able to edit the caravan list at any time.
3 - There needs to be a "LEAVE RIGHT FUCKING NOW" button.
I'm signing under every word.

Quote from: LWM on July 03, 2019, 01:02:56 AM2.  The Caravan creation page doesn't reset every time you leave it to go look at colonists/stuff/etc...  Heck, maybe it should be in the colony window, not the world window?
Hell year!!! That is the way! Lets have caravan packing tab like work tab and wealth tab!

Quote from: FleshEater on July 03, 2019, 01:42:54 AM...but I usually have/do the following...
Quite obvious things actually (if everything will go as planned) but you can also set every pawn to haul and that will additionally minimize time to pack (at the price of other works).