Haulage Priorties

[Danceresort]

Is there a way to change in which order your little guys will haul stuff? currently it seems to have an order, but for example I'd rather them haul food over corpses or weapons to ensure food is available in the stores a bit like the old settlers game.

If there is a way to do this I apologies for the pointless question, but cant seem to find the answer anywhere.

Thanks!

[EscapeZeppelin]

Not as far as I'm aware. Usually to solve the hauling problem my fourth colonist is designated solely as a hauler. Otherwise nothing ever seems to get to where it's going and harvested food sits in the fields and there are corpses, guns, and rocks everywhere.

[Sir Wagglepuss III]

I don't know the code behind the hauling priorities, but from what I've noticed through play (And could be wrong) is that construction and hauling seems to be prioritised by what is closest to the colony member in question. Object value doesn't appear to factor into it.

[muffins]

I would like the hauling priority changeable too. Corpses are somewhere near the top of the list, while metal (vital for most constructions) is near the bottom, meaning most of the time my constructors are having to grab metal directly from the mines because none of my colonists have bothered to drag any to the metal store. This makes construction inefficient.

I usually end up manually ordering colonists to haul metal, and adding more dedicated haulers.

[_alphaBeta_]

No way to do this that I'm aware of. I also agree that the hauling priority seems to be selected by proximity of the colonist who's looking for their next job. Only way to really prioritize what you need is to micromanage what you flag for hauling or un-forbid. You'll need to notice when that task is done and manually flag or un-forbid more to get the order you want.

Having hauling jobs pile up can be addressed by adjusting the priorities of the colonist jobs. You'll need to select the manual priorities option, and have a few colonists prioritize hauling over many of the other tasks. You'll know you're in this mode if the checkboxes in the colonist / priorities list change to numbers. Unfortunately, we only have 4 tiers (numbers) to assign at the moment, which can be limiting if your intent is to essentially have some colonists take tasks in reverse to the universal priority.

[Mystic]

Maybe a new Hauling Priority screen tab in the Overview, similar to the "manual priorities" mode of the Work tab, but just listing the different categories of things that can be hauled along with a number for the priority of each that can be altered?  This seems like it would be fairly simple, and I don't think it would need to be broken down on a per-colonist level, especially since doing so might make it harder to update when I'd personally want hauling priorities to be applicable to anyone who is available for hauling in virtually any situation.  (There are ways to allow global settings with colonist-specific overrides, of course, but I very much doubt they'd be worth the extra UI complexity.)

[RemingtonRyder]

If your colonists are hauling to a stockpile, the priority of the stockpile seems to affect the order of hauling as well.

So for example, if I want the nutrient paste dispensers to always have at least 50% stock, I leave half of their hoppers set to the default 'Important' priority.  But since I want some stock near my cook stove to make more appetising meals, the other half will be set to 'Normal' and my cook stove stockpile will be set to 'Preferred.'

What this means is that if the haulers are super busy and have other stuff to haul at a higher priority, the cook stove stockpile may run out, but at least no-one will starve.  Conversely, when things are quiet, the nutrient paste dispenser will be fully stocked if there's a surplus of food and very few other hauling jobs to do.

Give it a try, anyway.

[bobucles]

Citizens seem to look for the closest job to their position. Priorities seem to happen in perfect order. In other words:
Fill all critical, then
Fill all important, then
Fill all preferred, then
Fill all normal, then
Fill all low.

This can lead to some fairly questionable behavior. For example citizens will go BERSERK trying to keep hoppers topped off, even if they run down by one unit. They will also enjoy spending half their lives picking up 2-3 potatoes for the food stockpile rather than doing something useful like hauling anything else. When using mods like conveyors they can go full retard moving goods from storage straight to the start of the conveyor system. Thus a good portion of their potential gets completely wasted.

There isn't much you can do about it beside forbidding all goods that you don't want them to play stupid with or running stockpiles at the same priority if you don't want to create an endless hauling loop.

[Mystic]

If stockpile priorities are being used by the haulers to determine what order to collect items in, I think that, for me at least, another method of prioritizing hauling is needed even more badly than I originally thought.  I use stockpile priority to specify where I want items stored, not how soon I want them hauled.  For example, I usually have an indoor stockpile that is set to accept foodstuffs only and is set to Preferred, with a separate outside stockpile that will also accept food (and a bunch of other stuff) and is set to Normal.  That way, my indoor stockpile (which is strategically positioned right by the kitchen in order to speed up the cook's job) gets filled up first, and only any overflow food ends up getting stored outside.  Conversely, I don't do any such trick with my stockpiles for steel ... which may well explain why steel always seems to be the last thing my haulers decide to deal with.

[_alphaBeta_]

If stockpile priorities are being used by the haulers to determine what order to collect items in, I think that, for me at least, another method of prioritizing hauling is needed even more badly than I originally thought.  I use stockpile priority to specify where I want items stored, not how soon I want them hauled.  For example, I usually have an indoor stockpile that is set to accept foodstuffs only and is set to Preferred, with a separate outside stockpile that will also accept food (and a bunch of other stuff) and is set to Normal.  That way, my indoor stockpile (which is strategically positioned right by the kitchen in order to speed up the cook's job) gets filled up first, and only any overflow food ends up getting stored outside.  Conversely, I don't do any such trick with my stockpiles for steel ... which may well explain why steel always seems to be the last thing my haulers decide to deal with.

I'd agree completely. I never considered hauling priorities would be influenced by stockpile importance. I also never tracked the situation that closely either. This would explain, however, why at times colonists would be obsessed with moving goods from one stockpile to a newly constructed, and higher priority stockpile. This comes up for me usually because I start the game with "catch-all" large stockpiles. Slowly as the game goes on, I'll create smaller higher priority stockpiles to bring the goods closer (such as the food in the kitchen example from Mystic, and putting medical kits in the room with medical beds etc.). I'd be curious to hear some theories, or Tynan's acknowledgement on exactly how this works. Behaviors like this I always dismissed as being driven again by proximity.

If this is indeed correct, I can think of situations where this makes sense, but also some that goes against the player's intent. As always, I feel exposing the options to the player is the best way to go. Another related topic has been colonist food consumption priorities, which have a few thread floating around (such as this one I posted in since it was easy to find).

[RemingtonRyder]

Well, I noticed today that Hoppers don't seem to obey the priority.  Probably because filling them is not considered a Hauling job (it's Cooking, oddly enough!)

[Cr0ss0vr]

a hauling priority system like Settlers 4 could be awesome. http://puu.sh/bwPvy/013c847ace.png

along with some decent stats for what kind of resources u have: http://puu.sh/bwPCR/3955adc515.png

[ShadowTani]

Well, I noticed today that Hoppers don't seem to obey the priority.  Probably because filling them is not considered a Hauling job (it's Cooking, oddly enough!)

I believe it's considered as both a cooking and hauling task, so the priority is considered by the haulers, but
not by the cooks.

[Reaper]

Yeh this need to be fixed..... Sure grab one or two potatoes and drag them to the hopper instead of idk grabbing the metal from the mines? or the silver on the other side of the map? or any other thing i don't currently own and would like to collect?

They should consider if the hauling task is petty in comparison to other tasks, in other words to small to worry about.

[RemingtonRyder]

Yeah.  Hauling is definitely one of those jobs which makes other jobs, like cooking, crafting or construction, much easier.  But it does need some tweaking.

For example, haulers will only move a partial stack to a stockpile if there is a partial stack already on the stockpile, even if there is room for a full stack elsewhere on the same stockpile.  That's why, when cooks take raw food from a stockpile, haulers busy themselves refilling just the ten or twenty units which are missing from a stack, before moving a whole stack of food over.