Firefighting... also applies to other multi-person tasks

[siliconaut]

I think we have all noticed, that once your colony has grown to +20 pawns, firefighting becomes ridiculous. Whoever is there first probably walks into a tile freshly on fire, gyrates whilst screaming and burning and then goes somewhere else to clean some dirt. After a long time, the next couple of colonists arrive and find themselves in similar circumstances, as the fire has spread even further.

After they finish whatever small patch of fire they started to extinguish, they also don't try to take care of the bloody forest fire around them, because the next batch of colonists, miles away, have already taken those jobs. And so on and so forth - the only relief is that it may start to rain and my brainless rats can retire to their unearned sleep.

It would be really helpful if the AI could decide that colonist A (who just finished his bit of firefighting) is WAY closer than colonist B and should continue firefighting.

The same applies to other tasks, but since fire (e.g. from exploding power conduits) is a real grief, it would be great to see improvements here.

[Kirkules]

+1

This may be related to or combined with the "Override" suggestion, which is also fairly popular.

[Mikhail Reign]

Why dont you just assign only a few to fire fighting duties? I normally have my assassins/other people only capable of combat and fire fighting set to do it. If there are only 2-4 people set to do it, it works out ok.