Dupes neglecting critters

[StarSquid]

I’m ranching molten slicksters primarily to clear out CO2, and I’ve noticed that they spend a lot of their time glum due to lack of grooming. The duplicants just won’t tend to them unless I set the grooming stations as max priority. Is this a result of my priorities list, of the location of the stable, or something else entirely?

[Steve8]

Maybe a time issue? Ranching can be very labor intensive if you have lots of critters and large stables (where critters take a long time to travel to the groom station when called). And I assume your slicksters are in the oil biome which may be far away.

[StarSquid]

Hmm, maybe if I build a tube system they’ll be more likely to head down there?

[Lutzkhie]

I dedicate 4 dupes as solely as rancher and farmer, and 2 of them have highest priority on ranch while the other 2 have highest priority on Farming so therefor, if theres a plant need to farm theyll all do it but If a critters requires grooming the 2 dupes will leave farming and do ranch

[Samson.ONI]

I think StarSquid might have the right idea. I dabbled a little in slickster ranching, but I was doing it near the bottom of the map where the temperatures were naturally ideal. Problem was, it was so far away from everything else that dupes rarely got down there to get anything done, always sidetracked along the way. If that's the case, you could either build a tube system like StarSquid said, or move the ranch closer to your base so the dupes don't have as far to travel. You can build a vacuum-shell around the ranch so it's perfectly thermally isolated.

Apart from that I haven't had issues getting dupes to use grooming stations, but I have had issues getting them to release hatched critters from incubators even though they have no problem hugging incubators and singing to eggs. Not sure what that's about.

[storm6436]

14 minutes ago, Samson.ONI said:

I think StarSquid might have the right idea. I dabbled a little in slickster ranching, but I was doing it near the bottom of the map where the temperatures were naturally ideal. Problem was, it was so far away from everything else that dupes rarely got down there to get anything done, always sidetracked along the way. If that's the case, you could either build a tube system like StarSquid said, or move the ranch closer to your base so the dupes don't have as far to travel. You can build a vacuum-shell around the ranch so it's perfectly thermally isolated.

Apart from that I haven't had issues getting dupes to use grooming stations, but I have had issues getting them to release hatched critters from incubators even though they have no problem hugging incubators and singing to eggs. Not sure what that's about.

One of the other things I noticed is it seems any time you have tasks on the far side of a exo-suit airlock, it seems like some additional cost is assigned to everything behind it, effectively bumping them down in priority.  I'd never looked into it to verify if that was actually happening and if so, by how much, though.  YMMV.

[Steve8]

A tube sounds like a good in general for when people have to work there for other reasons. In my current game they can go down, but not back up yet because the power infrastructure down there is a bit shabby at the moment. I do have plans though.

I also have a CO2 vent down there  I was thinking about open the thing eventually and maybe build some kind of chimney so it can push itself to the top. Not sure yet. But it seems like the natural place for a slickster ranch

[BLACKBERREST3]

5 minutes ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I always set my proximity on at the start. This is so they do not go running across the map after they finish a task when another task is two blocks away from them. For early game, this playlist is a pretty good guide. I only mess with general-priorities in the beginning. I usually don't mess with dupe-priorities until I have around 8 dupes so no task is left behind, but you can do it sooner if you want. It's good to start thinking in sets of groups for priorities, i.e priorities between operating, between storing, between building etc. This will help you to put together a roadmap for how much time allotted and what tasks your dupes are set on. There are advanced things you can do like limiting the path dupes take or locking them in to a certain area to maximize production and minimize time traveled.

 

 

[Corpserule]

When i got to the end-game the first time i kinda had to restart because one thing i messed up was duplicant management. Whilst there are a lot of things you can control with priorities, there is a lot of behaviour that needs to be hard-restricted.

Duplicants view certain tasks with very high sub-priority, most notably, restocking coal generators, oxidisers, things like that. these tasks are a nightmare as they can fall under multiple headers. "Operate and supply" for coal and "Life support and supply" for oxidisors. There are other tasks, but these are the main two.

The question you need to ask isn't "why are they not doing X task", and instead look for "What task are they doing instead". I don't think spending a couple of cycles watching a duplicant's behaviour is a big waste of time to figure out the root of the problem. (it may just be not enough ranchers too, ranching is the most time-intensive job per tile i think)

[ChickenMadness]

Agreed with the tube system. I've had similar problems and tube systems tend to solve it.

Grooming takes a long time so if you have multiple ranches and not enough ranchers they just won't have time to walk over there.