How Do You Like Current State of “!!”

[goatt]

Anyone find it frustrating to use “!!” as I do?

(Edit Added) My thought on this is that alert on specific items, should pause the job nearby dupes are doing. For example. I wanna build a "!!" tile, and there is a dupe cooking nearby, then the dupe should drop the cooking (same way dupes drop their tasks just to breath some O2) and pick up this "!!" job. The first step will be delivery material. Once material is delivered, "!!" constructing will search nearby dupes, closest one will be the one just delivered. "!!" constructing will search for like 3 dupes at most in close range and assign the next task according to their job priority, something like that. But their current jobs need to be interrupted! Otherwise, what's the point of having emergency when everybody just passes by and carries on doing their current jobs.

problem scenario 1

I assigned an “open the door” task and set the door to “!!”. While all the dupes nearby were busy with their own sh*t, Stinky who was working and soaking in crude oil half a map away got selected by game. 1/4 a cycle later, after numerous dupes who could have done this simple job a million years earlier had passed by, Stinky finally arrived and open the door, when dinner time had also passed, so everyone got extra stress debuff duration.

problem senario 2

Heat was leaking, world was at stake. I needed to build one last insulation tile to save the world. So I set it to “!!”. Camille who was currently ranching got selected for delivering the materials. She didn’t come over right away, because she needed to finish ranching at hand first. So it took her quite a bit of love to finish her job, then she delivered the material. Time for construction! Who would be selected for this job? Max who was working in space had high construction priority, you are the one. So he came inside atmosphere, changed suit, traveled thru various biome and arrived at construction site. At the same time, multiple suffocation were reported. It took him 5 sec (at x3 speed) to do the actually constructing. But more than half a cycle had passed, and in the past half a day, everyone gets free half a cycle dose of stress.

Some thoughts

I dislike current state of “!!” priority a lot. I think it should break nearby dupes current errands and make them do “!!” task right away. If everyone can just go on with their life as usual, I feel “!!” level emergency has been ignored, and I look like some useless president of my game.

Edit Added

As you might have noticed, the selection of job performer is done based on his priority before this job performer has finished his previous job.

[Xenologist]

Did you have proximity enabled? That may explain why the game (or dupes) chose to do that and it happened to luck out on a high priority constructor all the way on the surface, or that one meep who was too busy digging in the oil.

[goboking]

I've never used it.  I will never use it.  I can't imagine the mess a player will have made of their priority settings to need it.

[Lilalaunekuh]

8 minutes ago, goboking said:

I can't imagine the mess a player will have made of their priority settings to need it.

It´s the opposite.

Without all priorities / sub-priorities (numbers) a duplicant will order the list of his task by the kind of task.

(Based on the priority table left to right.So store is always the lowest priority task)

Without any priorities my duplicants will use an order that I didn´t choose.

=> Always use the proximity option of you know what your doing.

(Without any priorities your duplicant might go for store tasks if they´re the closer ones. But with the right priorities it´s no problem. So with this option you can make a greater mess than without.)

[Gurgel]

6 minutes ago, goboking said:

I've never used it.  I will never use it.  I can't imagine the mess a player will have made of their priority settings to need it.

I see one legitimate use: Some dupe needs urgent rescuing. You could do that with red alert before and never doing anything above prio 8, but this is more convenient.

[goatt]

10 minutes ago, zergologist said:

Did you have proximity enabled?

yes, always

[Sasza22]

Actually now that i think about it. The "!!" priority should only enable red alert mode for the dupe doing the job, not all of them. You don`t need urgent critter grooming or that kind of stuff when only one thing is exttra important.

[blash365]

46 minutes ago, goatt said:

then she delivered the material. Time for construction! Who would be selected for this job? Max who was working in space had high construction priority, you are the one.

That is a separate problem. Many times the dupe who delivers material to a construction site, will simply leave and another dupe will be dispatched for the job. I consider this highly unintuitive myself, but i did not yet take a closer look at the stats of the dupes. Maybe the delivering dupe actually has very low construction skill and would have taken longer to finish the construction than the commute of the other dupe.

[goatt]

1 minute ago, Sasza22 said:

The "!!" priority should only enable red alert mode for the dupe doing the job, not all of them.

That's so true!! Enabling it for everybody is so wrong.

[blash365]

2 minutes ago, goatt said:

That's so true!! Enabling it for everybody is so wrong.

But you do not set "!!" for a dupe, you set it for a task. You dont know which dupe performs the task, until the dupe is selected. At which point there is no need for red alert anymore (apart from overriding breaks), because the dupe already has the task.

 

It's like saying, we should only buy stocks, which will rise in value. Which is obvious, yet impossible.;)

[goatt]

1 minute ago, blash365 said:

You dont know which dupe performs the task, until the dupe is selected.

So the person who got selected should be alerted, simple as that. So it will be like a sequence of red alerts on different dupes performing relative tasks.

 

2 minutes ago, blash365 said:

At which point there is no need for red alert anymore (apart from overriding breaks), because the dupe already has the task.

One difference is that the dupe has to work until death, no break, no necessary need to breath.

 

5 minutes ago, blash365 said:

That is a separate problem. Many times the dupe who delivers material to a construction site, will simply leave and another dupe will be dispatched for the job.

Yes, that's what normally happens. And it happens in an abnormal / emergency situation too. That's not so nice. I assume emergency indicates urgency. It has to be done no matter what you are doing. When you gotta pee, you gotta pee, otherwise you will pee anyway. I wish alerts will pause the dupes' job and focus on doing "!!" jobs.

 

9 minutes ago, blash365 said:

Maybe the delivering dupe actually has very low construction skill and would have taken longer to finish the construction than the commute of the other dupe.

That's exactly what frustrates me. That just feel stupid, doesn't it.

16 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

I see one legitimate use: Some dupe needs urgent rescuing. You could do that with red alert before and never doing anything above prio 8, but this is more convenient.

I agree. I believe any available dupe will get picked up for rescuing job. But then there is times when dupes' head stuck in tiles, and "!!" deconstructing is alerted. Then not next available dupe will be selected, but dupe with highest construction priority, and this selection is determined before this person has done his job, so you have wait for him to finish previous jobs. As I observe in errands panel.

[blash365]

11 minutes ago, goatt said:

this selection is determined before this person has done his job, so you have wait for him to finish previous jobs. As I observe in errands panel.

So the solution would be as simple as: !! cancels the current assignment and instead places itself to the front of the errands queue.

[Xenologist]

I think the simple answer is make the "!!" priority add like 20 to the task, having it to be prioritized unless the priority is less or lower, otherwise, it will be on par or even more than the priority scaling

[blash365]

6 minutes ago, zergologist said:

I think the simple answer is make the "!!" priority add like 20 to the task, having it to be prioritized unless the priority is less or lower, otherwise, it will be on par or even more than the priority scaling

So instead of chosing an arbitrary number, you propose to chose another arbitrary number.

[Xenologist]

Just now, blash365 said:

So instead of chosing an arbitrary number, you propose to chose another arbitrary number.

That, or maybe manual prioritizing (Manually control a dupes' priority by changing the place the task it has on a dupes' task board and keep it at that)

[Lilalaunekuh]

1 minute ago, blash365 said:

7 minutes ago, zergologist said:

I think the simple answer is make the "!!" priority add like 20 to the task, having it to be prioritized unless the priority is less or lower, otherwise, it will be on par or even more than the priority scaling

So instead of chosing an arbitrary number, you propose to chose another arbitrary number.

The cureent system with the "!!" option should work fine if the selection would be changed.

!! => a priority higher than everything you could set otherwise (think 300 atm)

So the only other factor would be proximity.

=> If the task would be assigned to the duplicant with the highest priority it will always be the closest one.

(The 2. task assignment could result in a suboptimal choice because the optimal duplicant would have scheduled the previous task. If the task is some kind of supply it will not result in a perfect duplicant selection.)

[avc15]

I think it's really absolutely fine the way it is. Minor tweaks to functionality for this specific feature can and will cause a pretty significant performance impact.

[Camaro69327]

Only time i have used "!!" is when i trapped 2 dupes, and needed a ladder built, as the position they were in they had no building materials to use. I run my base at priority 5 or lower for the most part , bathrooms are at 6 along with food @ 7. so if i need something done "now"  I still have #8 , and if i really need it NOW i still have #9, in the above scenario it was break/bed time so i used the "!!".

@JohnFrancis did a video on priorities that really helped me. >>Here

Hope it is ok to link this vid here.

[goatt]

28 minutes ago, zergologist said:

That, or maybe manual prioritizing (Manually control a dupes' priority by changing the place the task it has on a dupes' task board and keep it at that)

I've tried set priority of this job high for one dupe, and all other priority to "x". but this dupe was just idle because another dupe with same high priority for this job had already been assigned, then i had to distract that dupe. Look, this is just too much job. This is not like super complicated automation that the game will want you to come up with. This is just tedious and dumb.

[goatt]

2 hours ago, blash365 said:

So the solution would be as simple as: !! cancels the current assignment and instead places itself to the front of the errands queue.

Thank you.

[chemie]

3 hours ago, blash365 said:

So the solution would be as simple as: !! cancels the current assignment and instead places itself to the front of the errands queue.

when they announced it, I thought it was this.  Cancels all priorities and sub priorities and just make the closest dup this one job with all other jobs cancelled.  But sadly, not that.

[goatt]

17 minutes ago, chemie said:

when they announced it, I thought it was this.  Cancels all priorities and sub priorities and just make the closest dup this one job with all other jobs cancelled.  But sadly, not that.

Thank you too !

[Gus Smedstad]

I sometimes will use the "go here" order with a Dupe to cancel his current task. While you can't be certain he'll take the emergency task, he usually will.

I usually use "go here" for the case when I've just added a task, but the local dupe has already decided to do something else. For example, I want to empty a pipe and then deconstruct it. I don't want to mark it for deconstruction until it's empty. The dupe finishes emptying it, I add the deconstruction order, and then tell the dupe (who is always already on his way somewhere else) to cancel his current task and consider starting the one I just added.

[DreamApart]

I think "!!" is just a stub so new players won't need to restart the game just because a stupid dup just have himself buried in sand.

 

And the problem with emergency priority is actually a problem of the whole priority system.

The sub-priority (the 1 ~ 9) is very misleading because the priority dialog (from the menu) is too strong and may completely overrides the sub-priorities. What I expected is either just the contrary or for a give errand each level of priority adds 5 or so to the whole priority instead of currently 10.

By the way, there is a much more complete human management in RimWorld.

What's worth mentioning is that each person can have his own priority list, which can be reordered by the player.

And the game has a "do it now" command to order a human to do a particular errand immediately.

 

[goboking]

15 hours ago, Gurgel said:

I see one legitimate use: Some dupe needs urgent rescuing. You could do that with red alert before and never doing anything above prio 8, but this is more convenient.

That's my point.  Unless you've been very impatient or lacked the foresight to reserve priority 9 for emergencies then I don't see why anyone would ever need this feature.  I'm not saying it's inclusion is a bad thing, mind you, just that it's something you should never need to use if you're thinking through your priority settings.