Managing dupe priorities

[Sigma Cypher]

I'm a terrible duplicant overlord.  I am not deliberately evil to them, but they almost always blow me off.  I need your help with duplicant management.

I spend too much time in this game yelling at my dupes to try to get them to do what I want, and fiddling around with the job priority settings (with the arrows) or with the numbered priority overlay system.  I got really frustrated with the bottle emptier in particular.  I'm  guessing it is a "supply" errand but making everyone really really want to do supply jobs and giving it priority 8 or 9 in the overlay didn't get the job done.  You know what fixed it?  In desperation I filled the map including my base and all the potentially harvestable stuff with 1's from the priority overlay, and set the bottle emptier to 5 and voila!  This experience and others like it make me suspect I am doing this priority thing all wrong.  There must be some formula that combines the priority overlay setting with the individual dupe arrrow/double arrow settings (how are they weighted?), and there must be a way to avoid doing so much micro. 

@Nativel in his playthrough streams sets "toggle" to highest priority for everyone and then as near as I can tell never touches that screen again, and yet, they practically auto-build stuff as fast as he lays it down. That effortless mastery still eludes me.  Also -- I am not patient.  When I am building something I want them engaged, not stuffing boxes with sandstone or fluffing dreckos.  I believe it was him that suggested making everything in your base priority 4 or lower to encourage the dupes to go outside and play.

• Do you use default settings?  The "default" settings you get by clicking the selection box seem odd to me.  Caring is double down, so is building,combat is double up ... I forget the others off hand but they seem wrong mostly.  They aren't the same as you get from a new game start.
• Do you use the "Automatically set priority" option?  The one that prioritizes tasks based on the job the dupe has?  I first thought it was a way to reduce micromanagement but I have come to believe it is basically worthless, since effectiveness at the job is just a function of their skill level and not their job description, and I cross-train everybody because it takes me forever to get pepper bread going, and I don't dare give them the +12 morale jobs until I do.
• Do you enable "Use proximity?"

One thing is clear: giving a bunch of dupes up arrows or double up arrows for things they are good at does not work.  There needs to be some off-setting down arrows or basically everything is a priority so then nothing is.

My latest thought is to flat-line the dupe priority screen, (except maybe "toggle" to high) to effectively take that out of the equation, and to let the priority overlay dictate dupe behavior.  Maybe better is to use the arrows based on dupe skill, but for every dupe, to balance each up arrow with a down arrow so they are "net flat" if that makes sense.  It think it is ok to have an imbalance of arrows across different columns, as long as each row averages to zero.  I'm not sure.

Also maybe I have my priorities wrong.  My list looks like

• toggle, care, life support, dig, build, supply, storage (to fix stuff- eye roll), farm, operate, cook, research, tidy, ranch, combat

in that order.  I don't think there is a way to tell the game that other than giving more dupes up arrows in those categories you want prioritized.

Thank you for any advice or tips you can share about this.

[avc15]

When I was new, I had colonies paralyze the way you're describing, where dupes just never actually got to any of the things I wanted them to do. I fought with priorities a while until I figured something interesting out:

You really only NEED the second layer of priorities if your game is generating errands for your dupes faster than they can complete them; that's the only time you absolutely must force them to "do this before that". Otherwise errands are all just perpetually caught up and you know you can give your dupes more work when they start idling.

So here is what I am suggesting, maybe you don't need to find the correct arrangement of priorities (though it's there and pretty easy to find) - maybe design your base to be more efficient with movement and generate fewer errands. I mean, you can start from either end (prioritization or efficiency) but the one is tied firmly to the other.

 

 

[JohnFrancis]

One game a while back I tried to build a Electrolizer out near a cold biome, the dupes kept showing up lay down a few bricks and then run off to stock algae, farm crops, cook or some other junk. Then they ran all the way back to lay a few more bricks before running back to base again, repeat ad nauseam. I quit the game and spent several hours playing with the priorities system to figure out how to solve the problem. The end result. I set all my buildings to 4,5 or 6 priority no exceptions. Then I have one dupe dedicated to maintaining the base they have their build and dig priority reduced by 2, this ensures they take care of everything else, cook, scrub, stock etc. Everyone else has Build and Dig +1 priority and then usually a +2 specialization like Research or tinkering. I place level 5 build and dig commands now and dupes show up and do it straight away. My general all round dupe/s takes care of all the base maintenance so no one else has to (You will have to add more general dupes when your base gets bigger). The trade off is I have to stop all digging and construction if I want to get sweep commands completed, they are very dupe labor intensive. Additionally if you run ranchers you will have to give them +2 ranching priority to ensure that is all they do first.

[beowulf2010]

There's a few things that I've had to learn the hard way.

1) Auto set priority is bad. Do not turn this on. 

2) Specialize a dupe's priorities. With the exception of Toggle and Tidy, no dupe should have more than 2 double up arrows. And even then, only if they are complementary like Build/Supply or a Farm/Cook locked in your base. Everyone in my base except for my Ranchers get double up in Toggle and Tidy. 

3) The Proximity option is useful once your base starts getting big. I usually turn it on in the beginning, but there have been a few games where I forgot and thus "waited" a couple hundred cycles. 

4) Don't queue up multiple builds. It's ok to have a off Miner exploring, but don't expect good things if you're trying to build a gas sorting facility, finish a Drecko farm, and box in a geyser all at the same time. Pick one, finish it, move onto the next. 

[Lilalaunekuh]

4 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

1) Auto set priority is bad. Do not turn this on. 

I love the auto prioritize option, but there is something counterintuitive about it:

The wrench symbol acts like a very high / "+2" priority not like a higher one.

=> I only set toggle/care/combat on very high for all duplicants

(Nothing else gets ever two arrows up.)

 

7 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

2) Specialize a dupe's priorities.

That´s done by auto prioritize

7 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

3) The Proximity option is useful once your base starts getting big. I usually turn it on in the beginning, but there have been a few games where I forgot and thus "waited" a couple hundred cycles. 

One of the first things I turn on after starting a colony.

 

So here an example of my usual prioritization:

So some additional notes:

1. Research is just done by duplicants promoted to researchers. (I want to distribute the little chances to raise the learning skill.)

2. I try to have at least one builder/miner/farmer (In the early game I raise the priorities of my starting duplicants manually.)

3. Art is restricted to prevent duplicants learning the job from creating bad artwork.

4. The very low storage priority will impair any repair task, but if something is damaged I prefer rebuilding to save resources.

5. Most of the time my ranging is set to low instead of very low, but right now I am using just "open ranches".

(All my duplicants could work there full time and wait till some critters are close to be groomed ...)

6. All my cooking stations are on higher sub priorities than farms/deodorizers/ non power generating operate tasks.

(Most of the time I use 7/8.)

=> Cooking always done before doing something non critical.

7. All operate tasks except the manual generators are on lower priorities than all harvest tasks.

8. The water sieve is set to sub priority 8 and algae terrariums to 7/8.

9. I use sweep 1 and 8 to get something done.

Sweep 1 if I want all continuous tasks done before the sweeping and sweep 8 if I want my duplicants to do it right away.

=> Toggle / Care / Combat / "Auto prioritized job" / Life support (water sieve / algae terrarium) / Sweep (high subpriority) / Operate (generate power) / Cook / Farm (domesticated plants) / Farm (wild plants) / Life support (deodorizers) / Operate / Sweep (low priority) / Supply / Build / Dig / Ranch (right now I have all grooming stations on higher priorities than my compactors) / Storage

(If I ranch for food my ranching would be set similair to my deodorizers.)

 

[Sigma Cypher]

Thanks guys these are great tips.  This will help a lot.

A little googling turned up this interesting factoid:  bottle emptier is a "storage" errand not a "supply" errand which might explain why setting liquid locks has been the bane of my existence.  

[chemie]

one short term fix is to set all priorities to default.  then you can control via the number sub priorities.  also I agree to never auto prioritize so you can get the right number of dups in each priority regardless of the number training in the job.  finally, always have a few dups with all default priority so they do those 6 7 8 sub priority tasks.

[beowulf2010]

6 hours ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

I love the auto prioritize option, but there is something counterintuitive about it:

The wrench symbol acts like a very high / "+2" priority not like a higher one.

(Snip) 

6. All my cooking stations are on higher sub priorities than farms/deodorizers/ non power generating operate tasks.

The problem with auto prioritize is that it will continually update a dupe's specialization as you're training him in various things. (Or at least it used to. I haven't used it in forever.) 

I know how I want my Farmer/Rancher to be set up and I don't want the priorities changed to something else when he's training to be a Courier/Exosuit Engineer. 

As for cooking, my Chef is the only dupe that's locked in the base, never allowed to go on walkabout. He's set with 2 up in cooking and is also one of the few that gets pretty much flat or denied priorities in everything else. Sub priority on cooking stations is somewhere in the 5 to 8 range based more on what, if any, automation and sweepers I have set up around it. 

[DaveSatx]

i've set the following for a very long time:

Life Support, Care, Toggle to highest,

set cook and research to disable then pick who will be actually researching and cooking and setting them to highest.
Same goes for art and farming once I have one of them.

as I get more dupes I put some high priority on tidy and other on dig, etc as their stats roll in.

 

i rarely have to use the priority tool, but eventually when i do start using it I eventually end up with a priority clash and have to go in and set most things to priority 5 to get things moving, lol.

[Lilalaunekuh]

3 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

The problem with auto prioritize is that it will continually update a dupe's specialization as you're training him in various things. 

Yeah, it got some downsides. But I like my duplicants having the right hat while doing their chores.

Not 100% optimal for cross training duplicants, but if your not training all in the same order you can keep a duplicant on each "important" job.

=> If want a perfect priority management don´t use auto prioritize and set your priorities manual for every duplicant.

[beowulf2010]

Just now, Lilalaunekuh said:

Not 100% optimal for cross training duplicants, but if your not training all in the same order you can keep a duplicant on each "important" job.

And that's the rub, I'm always crosstraining dupes. 

In fact, I go so far in cross training I refuse to take dupes that won't do certain jobs so I can easily see which jobs have dupes that haven't mastered them yet. In the long run, every dupe of mine learns every job up to at least Tier 4.

Yeah, I'm weird. 

[Lilalaunekuh]

Just now, beowulf2010 said:

In fact, I go so far in cross training I refuse to take dupes that won't do certain jobs so I can easily see which jobs have dupes that haven't mastered them yet. In the long run, every dupe of mine learns every job up to at least Tier 4.

Yeah, I'm weird

Gone down that rabbit hole and even trained my duplicants to be seasoned ranchers. (The only job that give no benefit at all.)

But at the moment I like the wrench symbol to see which duplicant is prioritizing a task over my normal settings and that the wear the right hat xD

Most of the time just my miner/builder will do a certain job because the rest is prioritizing something else.

=> If just one/two duplicants are performing a job there is no benefit in training a duplicant to do that job.

(Research/supply/tidy jobs are something else ^^)

[beowulf2010]

18 minutes ago, Lilalaunekuh said:

Gone down that rabbit hole and even trained my duplicants to be seasoned ranchers. (The only job that give no benefit at all.)

But at the moment I like the wrench symbol to see which duplicant is prioritizing a task over my normal settings and that the wear the right hat xD

Most of the time just my miner/builder will do a certain job because the rest is prioritizing something else.

=> If just one/two duplicants are performing a job there is no benefit in training a duplicant to do that job.

(Research/supply/tidy jobs are something else ^^)

Agreed. It's just that my weird version of OCD makes it extremely hard for me to let a dupe sit around with a mastered job when he could be training in something else.  

[Hellshound38]

Specializing dupes saves TONS of dupe time though.

Even if you cross train all the jobs eventually, having 1 dupe be the only cook forever maxes out the skill much faster, and that means much faster cooking saving you enormous amounts of dupe time over thousands of cycles.

Same for some other tasks but less meaningful gain, and often better managed by a single ^^, without locking out other dupes.

 

 

[Grimgaw]

1 hour ago, Hellshound38 said:

Specializing dupes saves TONS of dupe time though.

Even if you cross train all the jobs eventually(...)

These two are not exclusive.

[Lilalaunekuh]

31 minutes ago, Grimgaw said:

2 hours ago, Hellshound38 said:

Specializing dupes saves TONS of dupe time though.

Even if you cross train all the jobs eventually(...)

These two are not exclusive.

That´s a reason I like auto prioritize:

While cross training my duplicants in different orders I have always specialized duplicants and don´t have to use my priority screen after an initial setup.

(Except for preventing some duplicants from doing art or research But that is not always required when switching jobs.)

[Skrivener]

Here's what I do just for another perspective. I typically cap at 8-10 duplicants. the first 8 aim to fill most of the main jobs, sometimes art is left behind as I find I can do pretty well with basic decor (plants and molding) up to tier 3, and ranching as I may just cross-train the farmer. The last two dupes make up gaps if I feel the need or are space candidates (note I haven't actually built a rocket yet despite 3000+ hours as I restart after almost every update or when I just feel like it).

After I set the first 3 to digging, I put priority up to 1 on life support and toggle including for new dupes. At the start I always have a researcher, a cook, and a builder (Build and/or Mine). Researcher gets Research set to 2. The cook gets everything lowered by one (so toggle and supply are now zero for them), then also gets Cook raised to 2 and supply back to zero. All other dupes including new get their Cook set to -1. Sooner or later someone will get Farm increased to 2 to make sure that the plants are getting harvested.

Early building priorities include: ration box 7, toilets 9, wash basins 8, algae deoxys 9, generators at 8.

As I work towards jobs I will likely raise one or more Tidy priorities to 1 or 2 depending on athletics and strength to make sure the bathroom is maintained. I will use priority 6 or higher to rush jobs through to meet a need or my transient convenience  This usually includes bathroom, beds, pitcher pump, that sort of thing. I would prefer I could set a lower default priority as I rarely use anything under 5 and thus 1 and 4 amount to the same thing. For at least the first 100 cycles I am unlikely to have idle duplicants so lower than 5 will never get done.

Once jobs are unlocked I use auto-prioritize. I cross-train later also but I would rather have dupes doing their new assigned tasks and leveling it up than just getting the training which doesn't add a lot. I wish we could assign permission and priority groups like you can, for example, with operating system file and folder permissions. This would make switching jobs much simpler as I wouldn't have to go to change door permissions and such.

Farmhands and farmers will also have Ranch at 2 or Wrench. Gofers will get Store increased to 2 and probably Tidy at 1, possibly Toggle at 2 - basically anyone fast I don't mind getting distracted will get Toggle at 2 and probably Life Support at 2 also. Architects and miners will get Build and Mine at 2/Wrench and Supply at 1. Engies will get Operate at 2/Wrench and anyone else except the cook may have it increased. (I keep my cook chained to the stove and my plumber chained to the bathroom - but less so - by priorities.) Researcher otherwise unchanged, Tidy guys get Storage increase to 1, and the primary will have Farm increased to 2 but be locked out of the Farms and is the only one allowed into the waste disposal room with the compost.

I probably missed a job, but I'll take a break anyway to say I wish we could customize the task assignment by specific sub-task or by building or material so, for example, flipping compost or emptying polluted water bottles could be moved to Tidy if we want. Some of the current groupings either don't make sense or don't work with specific playstyles. This would be a whole lot easier if there were fewer changing of numbers and checkboxes and arrows and more drag and drop into a hierarchy - I so wish I could just drag and drop fabrications into a visual queue - but enough digression.

Other building priorities include food generation up to 7, Water sieve for sewage at 8, and for CO2 at 6, power generators at 8, specific storage (metal ores, algae, fertilizer, seeds, coal, some others) at 6 unless it's taking over too much, or the polluted dirt storage and polluted water emptier and the compost are all 7, crusher at 6 sometimes. Power control at 7. If there's something else I don't remember it now.

This system is mostly arrived at by both trial and error and a little logic after the priority system changed, probably informed by posts on this forum. I still think priorities and tasks are the most confusing and poorly presented features to date and sometimes illogical or ambiguous - especially the Tidy, Store, and Supply groups and where they overlap with each other and the rest of the groups.

[Sigma Cypher]

@Skrivener:  Once jobs are unlocked I use auto-prioritize. I cross-train later also but I would rather have dupes doing their new assigned tasks and leveling it up than just getting the training which doesn't add a lot.

Do dupes level up faster if they actually do the task associated with their job?  I hadn't noticed that.  I thought it was only based on learning skill.  And the speed at which they do the task is only related to their base stat + the training stat buff ... which seems to add a lot ... especially noticeable with stats effect on movement speed.

[impyre]

I generally don't fuss with it too much. I find that optimization is the most important thing, so that everything always gets done in a timely manner. Although I did find that bumping up the subpriorities for certain critical tasks help ensure they get done faster. Terrariums, waste disposal, and hygiene devices are all subpriority 7. Also this allows me to reserve subpriority 9 for emergency use. This means I can use 8 when I really want something done now, but not if it means someone dies because of it.

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

Yes, performing tasks helps. Cooks don't gain job mastery from cooking, but all the other jobs gain mastery from performing jobs. The act of performing jobs also helps to raise the associated skill.

[bigsuirlife]

20 hours ago, chemie said:

one short term fix is to set all priorities to default.  then you can control via the number sub priorities.  also I agree to never auto prioritize so you can get the right number of dups in each priority regardless of the number training in the job.  finally, always have a few dups with all default priority so they do those 6 7 8 sub priority tasks.

I'll use ever this method...it's more easy to manage 

[Nova_Belle]

I'm still fairly new, and keep small colonies (generally 8 duplicants), so take that into account for the following...

I do very little with the priorities screen.  I bump up Toggle for all, and then mostly let it go (except for recently now that I have to micromanage research).  At some point, I'll train one duplicant in each of the four 'specialties' I identified (Farmer, Chef, Artist, Rancher), but I generally only change priorities for farming, where both the farmer and rancher do the bulk of that.  Chefs and Artists seem to prioritize these tasks just fine on their own, so I leave it alone.  Duplicants who aren't trained in Chef/Artist/Rancher jobs can't do those tasks anyway, so no need to lower anything (I guess a microbe musher can be used, but I generally don't use one).

When setting priorities, I (usually) stick to the following system:

1 - Things I don't want done, but too lazy to have a dupe disable.  Doesn't work for everything (bottle emptiers in particular).

2 - General Storage

3 - Specific Storage (ex, bin for coal, bin for algae)

4-6 - Regular tasks - building, digging, whatever project I'm having my duplicants work on, I use these.  4 if I want them to do it but it's not too important.  5 as the general setting, 6 if I need them to hurry up with something specific.

7 - What I call 'Chores' - Wash Basins, Outhouses, Bottle Emptiers, Deodorizers, etc

8 - Important Chores, or things I need done now (such as if you really want them to be emptying bottles).

9 - Formerly for emergencies only, I'll have to re-evaluate now given the !! priority.  Possibly less-urgent-but-still-emergency Emergencies.

!! - Someone's dying

I adapt as needed, but this generally serves me pretty well.  Setting low priority storage bins means that my duplicants aren't idle unless they're stuck somewhere (or I ran out of storage space), so that's a nice alert for me when someone's stuck but not yet suffocating.