Why Priority 9 is worse than Priority 6

[Miravlix]

Let say we have some production machines set to priority 7, food production to 8, storage set to a range of 5-8.

 

If you don't set any Job Priorities and you make a build order at Priority 9, all the dupes go build, but I've never seen anyone not set job priorities.

 

So you have dupes focusing on Cooking, Building, Supply/Storage, Farming/Ranching and you give them a priority 9 build order. The dupes on Supply will see it's a 9 job and try to complete it, so the dupe run off to get resource and deliver them, now a builder dupe sees the priority 9 build job and go to build.

 

So you just had two dupes run to the build job, instead of having 1 build dupe do both the supply and build job in one trip.

 

The Priority and Job Priority system interacts in ways that can make giving something a higher priority worse.

[Yunru]

Don't get me started on the priority system.

I had a dupe dying because they decided not to build the ladder to get out. So that became a priority 9 task. Then break time came so they stopped working. Okay, fair enough, red alert. Cue my dupes ignoring all priority and just doing the nearest task, leaving the dupe to die because priority 9? Pah!

[MorsDux]

4 hours ago, Yunru said:

Don't get me started on the priority system.

I had a dupe dying because they decided not to build the ladder to get out. So that became a priority 9 task. Then break time came so they stopped working. Okay, fair enough, red alert. Cue my dupes ignoring all priority and just doing the nearest task, leaving the dupe to die because priority 9? Pah!

I always give prio 1 ladder build for stuck dupes to avoid other dupes from far taking that assignment. The priority system works fine, use it as it is and not how you imagine it is, and your dupe wont die. 

[Yunru]

1 hour ago, MorsDux said:

I always give prio 1 ladder build for stuck dupes to avoid other dupes from far taking that assignment. The priority system works fine, use it as it is and not how you imagine it is, and your dupe wont die. 

Uh no. The entire point is the other dupes need to build the ladder, and then don't. You post makes no sense, and is frankly insulting.

[MorsDux]

2 hours ago, Yunru said:

Uh no. The entire point is the other dupes need to build the ladder, and then don't. You post makes no sense, and is frankly insulting.

Watch out, being offended a lot may impact your happiness in life. 

[Christophlette]

My guess on the problem is that, for example, only 1 dupe allowed to dig will dig everything he can in a single trip. When you have 8 dupes digging then you have one dupe digging a tile and then you have a chance that another dupe takes the next task instead of the dupe already digging.

Priority 6 means a dupe will go there and dig and other dupes will have higher priority tasks so there is less chance that your digging dupe will be replaced by another.

In fact, to speed up my colony, I found (following multiple advices on this forum) that specializing dupes will actually speed up everything. When you have a lot of dupes specialized in a job like digging and building, restrict the area to only two dupes or three at most. This will speed up things by a lot.

[SharraShimada]

3 hours ago, Yunru said:

Uh no. The entire point is the other dupes need to build the ladder, and then don't. You post makes no sense, and is frankly insulting.

His post makes sense. If a dupe, capable of building, is stuck, prio 1 forces this dupe to build the ladder, because everyone else has better things to to. The stuck dupe has nothing to do, so he will build the ladder. 

And for the "insulting" part, the system is not perfect for everyones play stiyle. It never will be. And the game is not finished yet. You play an early access game. Everything may, or may not, change tomorrow. But at current state, it is, what it is. If you want to play now, you have to deal with it, or wait for some changes. There is nothing insulting in this. Its just the way it cuurrently is.

[Sasza22]

4 hours ago, Yunru said:

The entire point is the other dupes need to build the ladder

Most of the time the most effective way to unstuck a dupe is for him to do it himself. He is already in range of the build and as long as he has the resources he can do it right away while others would have to run all the way from base to help him. Moreso if a differnt dupe takes the task (which can happen at prio 9) the stuck dupe will stand there idle wasting time waiting for another dupe to deliver the resources from base while he has what he needs lying around. At prio 1 no other dupe will attempt to help while the stuck one will do the job as he has nothing else to do and leave the area as soon as possible without building the full thing if he can. It sounds stupid but it works.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

That's a good trick, but you have to make sure that the dupe has access to resources to get the piece of ladder build and can actually build. You wouldn't be the first screaming to your screen why the dupe doesn't want to build the damn piece of ladder.

[ONIfreak]

ok so i will try to put here all information i found out and understand how priorities works.

So we have 3 different places - job assignments (ergo "Job") priorities tab ( "Tab") priorities on particulars task ("Priorities).

First of all is Job - this will give dupes traits over time also allow to use "wrench" in Tab (explained later). That's it.

Tab: This will allow you to adjust certain priorities for every dupe . Every option there is like a pool of priorities. So in tab you can setup which kind of priorities will be most important for particular dupe. Levels (None ;very Low; Low; Normal; High; very High; super hyper duper High - Wrench)

Priorities: from 1 to 9 - they are grouped by Tab so number 9 on deodorizer is actually different then number 9 on meal-wood.

Now for buildings you have to bear in mind 3 things:

1. Construction in Tab - obvious thing

2. Supply in Tab -if you have 5 builders and 1 supply guy - they will hang around waiting for them to bring rss to build stuff. you can adjust supply priority for constructors - however make sure they have wrench on building, if you setup supply on Very high and construction on very high - they will treat both pools equal (which sometimes goes to situation where your dupes deliver supplies to buildings and noone building it)

3. Resources (rss) availability - if you setup building something at the end of the map to build from sandstone dupes will have to go to find nearest sandstone - which sometimes takes long time.

 

In case you dupe stuck somewhere - what i do is:

1. Pause game

2. check rss availability around him (not just in place where he is stuck - as this would be the easiest).

3. When found nearest rss i build ladder tile to rescue guy from this material.

4. Grab supply guy (not a builder) and manually send him to the location where you want to build (move to). he will pickup nearest supply job and bring rss to it

5. alternatively you can grab builder and send him there as well afterwards

This way i usually get job done within seconds.

Hope it make sense.

 

[Yunru]

8 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

His post makes sense. If a dupe, capable of building, is stuck, prio 1 forces this dupe to build the ladder, because everyone else has better things to to. The stuck dupe has nothing to do, so he will build the ladder. 

And for the "insulting" part, the system is not perfect for everyones play stiyle. It never will be. And the game is not finished yet. You play an early access game. Everything may, or may not, change tomorrow. But at current state, it is, what it is. If you want to play now, you have to deal with it, or wait for some changes. There is nothing insulting in this. Its just the way it cuurrently is.

 

7 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Most of the time the most effective way to unstuck a dupe is for him to do it himself. He is already in range of the build and as long as he has the resources he can do it right away while others would have to run all the way from base to help him. Moreso if a differnt dupe takes the task (which can happen at prio 9) the stuck dupe will stand there idle wasting time waiting for another dupe to deliver the resources from base while he has what he needs lying around. At prio 1 no other dupe will attempt to help while the stuck one will do the job as he has nothing else to do and leave the area as soon as possible without building the full thing if he can. It sounds stupid but it works.

Problem is the stuck dupe didn't have the resources to build it for themselves.

Not that I'm sure it would of mattered since all the other dupes simply ignored the priority 9 task (and I checked pathing, they could path to it), so it would of been left to the stuck dupe anyway if there was resources in reach.

[MorsDux]

1 hour ago, Yunru said:

 

Problem is the stuck dupe didn't have the resources to build it for themselves.

Not that I'm sure it would of mattered since all the other dupes simply ignored the priority 9 task (and I checked pathing, they could path to it), so it would of been left to the stuck dupe anyway if there was resources in reach.

sadly its possible the following happened:

dupe 1 takes the job to deliver goods for the ladder. dupe 1 spends 30 seconds picking the stuff and going to construction site. Then he gets disrupted by something like, running out of air, having a downtime started, etc. Drops the stuff. Then the next available dupe is like a zillion kms away, takes the job and this whole thing repeats.

The reason for this is that the game does not calculate if a dupe 1 tile away will finish a task in a second, the task will be given to the next available dupe.

If there is life and death situation i micromanage the crap out of it as no other way is 100% reliable if the stuck dupe cant dig/build out of his mess. I usually move 2-3 dupes to the stuck dupes vicinity and give prio 9 tasks to dig material in place (if none present) while making the dupes go to where they are and as such they will finish their task in half second and with good chance take the task necessary to save the dupe. If an interrupt happens i repeat but then i have already dupes close by.

If a rimworld-like option to force a dupe to handle a task existed (as if he was in red alert), it would help a lot.

[thejohn1567]

you could also dig a nearby tile or change the material of the ladder so that the dupe can build it

[Doddler]

Rather than the red alert system that they currently have, they should have a red alert priority where the closest capable dupe do a job without regard to anything else... or at least make red alert prioritize the shortest path to the highest priority task. The current red alert system doesn't really work for what it's intended for I don't think?

[DemainaNyx]

I might be off because I rarely use this, but there is that option in the priority options menu that makes dupes focus on tasks around them first.  Sometimes I toggle that on when I want one specific project done first that people are near by and it seems to keep them working around there.  That might work for instances when a dupe is stuck.

 

Generally though a stuck dupe can normally save themselves with a little micromanagement.  Generally just a Priority 5 job will be completed by that stuck duplicant if they are capable of doing that job.  If nothing else, dupes seem to love destroying thing, so you can use that to your advantage.