The priority curse

[zOldBulldog]

I need help on a complex problem.  I apologize for the length of the post, please be patient.

Almost every tutorial recommends:

- Do not rush to getting too many dupes too fast, only accept them when they have a very good set of skills.

- Split dupes into schedules to improve bathroom usage.

- Specialize dupes into specific skills, then train them in those skills, give them max priorities on those, raised on a few others and lowered on others.

- Largely rely on dupe priorities, leaving most buildings at priority 5 and normally not using raised priorities except temporarily on whichever job you want done "right now" and even that sparingly.

I always did that - through multiple games - and although I felt that some things were not being done fast enough, mostly things worked.

... until my most recent run, where I started with a scientist, a dig/builder and a courier (priority to life support, tidy, supply and store) and then I got the most seriously evil series of printing pod rolls that made me realize that I don't understand who does what jobs:

- First I noticed that my dupes were ignoring toilet maintenance. I kept raising the toilets and compost priorities until they were set to 9 and they were still being ignored and not emptied.  Clearly I did not have even one dupe with max priority on the role that cleans toilets.   I tried raising various roles to max and I still do not know what role focuses on toilets so that I can set it to max for one of my dupes.

- Then I noticed that seeds and food were not being picked up ahead of other debris even though my courier was set to do life support, tidy, supply and store ahead of everything else and I had those two storage units set to priority 6.

- Then I noticed that nobody was fertilizing my crops until I got a farmer.

- Then I got hit by oxygen diffusers not being supplied even though I had my courier set to max life support.

- I had always noticed that in large maps my deodorizer always got handled late unless I set them to priority 6.  Annoying.

- Finally, to add insult to injury I noticed that even supplying coal generators was falling behind.   And yes, my courier is set to max supply priority!

 

All of that made it very obvious to me that in previous games I just got lucky with my printing press rolls and that I don't really understand what priority roles handle which tasks.

 

So... Questions:

- What dupe priority role cleans up toilets?

- What priority role handles picking up food and seeds?

- What priority role supplies oxygen diffusers?  I thought it was life support, but maybe not, or priority temporary tasks like sweep orders are interfering with it?

- What priority role handles deodorizer?

- If it is not "supply", what priority role handle feeding generators and chests?

And on a larger scale, what is the smallest balanced set of dupes, with what skills and set to what priorities that will ensure that all jobs get done fast and without neglecting anything important?

 

[Gurgel]

Toilet is "tidy". I always set toilets to "9" and at least one dupe has "tidy" to max and all others one step lower. Same for farming, although I usually set plants just to 8. 

I really do not see why you should not use building priorities. I use them all the time and with good effect.

[Promethien]

You got some bad advice. Do not raise dupes priority on a specific job category unless you want that dupe to prioritize that job over everything else. Including when something else critically needs to be done now. I do use it, but only when I know there are plenty of other dupes who can do other jobs. Also feel free to disable dupes from doing jobs that are never critical or that you have dupes who hard specialize and you don't want to waste labor time. For a couple examples, only my scientists can do research. I don't forbid (the X) non-farmers from farming but they do get down arrows on it. 

Use number alterations all the time. If you want a dig/build job done first set it to 6 and voila. They prioritize it. Note that the numbers are not varying levels of severity. They are just order of precedence. So if everything is at 5 (default) when you set something to 6, it is no different from setting it to 9. Priority 9 is something I save for things that must be done above all else. Like my slime container gets 9. Varying levels of priority is a good way to set up if/then situations. I use it a lot with ranching. My main ranches have their drops set to 7. My tree farms that I keep a single pip in so it harvests acorns gets 6. My kill room gets 5. This way every egg that hatches gets automatically sorted to where its needed or killed if its not. 

Also don't be absolutely picky about dupe skills. You'll get enough morale boosts eventually they will be able to learn every skill you would need them to plus a bit more. Feel free to veto certain flaws though. The primary measure of if you should take a dupe or not is if you have the infrastructure to support another dupe. Do you make enough food? Can you deal with the increased water/O2 consumption? Do you have a bed and enough toilets? The simple fact is as long as you can swing the resource cost more dupes, even completely unskilled dupes, make everything go faster.

[camelot]

You can always hover on the Priorities name and read the description to understand what errands belong to which Priority type. For example, maintain deodorizers belongs to life support priority. You can check the errand tab on that building to see it requires which type of errand. For example, Oxygen Diffuser needs Life support or Supplying errands. Also, that dupes check their priorities first and check building priorites later. So if you want a dupe to store, supply, life support and farming, you should make sure all these priorities are at the same level and using raising building priority to make them do it first

And about how to pick dupes and specialize them, I tend to have 2 types of dupes. First is the digger/miner type. They could go very far from base to build something, so all the base-related errands like farming, tidy, storage, supply, life support should be low to very low or they'll build 1 tile and go back to base to supply Diffusers. The only except would be supplying, which I set to neutral because you want them to deliver the materials and build themselves instead of waiting for couriers. Dig/build priorities should be high, of course. High dig/build/strength/athletics/learning attributes will be helpful

The second type should stay near the base, so all priorities except dig/build/combat should be high. Farmers have very high farming priority, operators have very high operating priority, you get the idea. I always build doors and restrict them to go to remote areas, except for couriers. If you have a very big construction site far away and the required materials are not nearby, have some storage bins with higher priority than the build/dig errands would save a lot of time

[chemie]

always have at least one third if dups with default priorities and definitely use priorities on buildings and tasks.

[Xaekai]

The problem is dupe priority arrow ticks are 10 points each. So a dupe with just one ^ on a task type will do nothing else but that task until every single last one of them is done.

There really needs to be an option to make the priority arrows 5 (or customizable) points. And it damn well should be put in the core game, not require a mod.

[StarSquid]

I usually set life support to be high or very high for every dupe at first, and only lower it once I have more dupes and/or more algae terrariums. I also will always print off one additional dupe pretty early on. I find that four is not that much harder to support than three, but gives you a fair bit more leeway. 

 

I’d also note that selecting dupes based on skills instead of preferences is a recipe for disaster in the long run. Morale is too often the difference between the dupes staying sane long enough to solve the problem at hand and the dupes freaking out when you’re right on the brink of solving it. Skills, on the other hand, level up fairly quickly in my experience. The only one I’d really watch out for is athletics with exosuits. I’ve had a few cases where the least athletic dupes insisted on using the exosuits, and the overall effect of this was that the exosuits and the dupes were tied up for a good portion of two cycles since they spent most of a cycle trying to get to whatever task they deemed important, realized it was downtime before they made it, and then spent most of a cycle going back. 

[KAJ3D]

42 minutes ago, StarSquid said:

The only one I’d really watch out for is athletics with exosuits. I’ve had a few cases where the least athletic dupes insisted on using the exosuits, and the overall effect of this was that the exosuits and the dupes were tied up for a good portion of two cycles since they spent most of a cycle trying to get to whatever task they deemed important, realized it was downtime before they made it, and then spent most of a cycle going back. 

Put doors right after your atmosuit dock. Set it that by default no one can go through it. Then manually allow only the dupes who have the Exosuit Training skill. That way new dupes will not be able to use your atmosuits. To quickly train those new dupes, you can put a manual generator attached to a light bulb in a separate room. Set the generator to priority 9 and have the door to the room default to everyone has access. When the dupe(s) has leveled up enough on the 'treadmill' to get exosuit training, you can disallow them access to the training room.

[zOldBulldog]

I should probably mention that the this weird scenario happened even before exploring the outside of the base.  It is not just a matter of keeping key dupes in the base.

I adjusted my priorities based on what was suggested here and things are a little better.  Not perfect since I am still missing some dupes with specific skills, but better.

 

The one that is still driving me nuts and that I never had an issue with before this map and the last couple of days is emptying outhouses.  By hovering over the roles I found that "tidying" is the role that empties them (thanks for that hover clue!), so I gave it a double up-tick to Tidying for one dupe (he also has double on Life Support and Toggling, but at this stage those are rarely done) and all other non-dig/build dupes got a single up tick to Tidying.  And still, the outhouses get ignored unless I give it a yellow alert.  Worse, I saw the dupe with the tidying double up-tick doing a digging errand... and he has double down-tick to build/dig!!!  What in the world is going on?  I am starting to think this last patch introduced a bug to outhouse handling. 

And yes, I know the problem will disappear for me the moment I replace the outhouses with plumbed toilets, but I hate the idea of running away from the issue without fully understanding it first.

 

EDIT:  I observed more misbehavior of the same dupe... there are priority 5 items to be swept remaining from low-priority commands I gave hours ago, and he has a single up-tick to Supply and Store, he is doing priority 5 digging (which he has double down-ticks for) and completely ignoring the sweep orders that should be much higher priority for him.

 

[chemie]

12 minutes ago, zOldBulldog said:

I should probably mention that the this weird scenario happened even before exploring the outside of the base.  It is not just a matter of keeping key dupes in the base.

I adjusted my priorities based on what was suggested here and things are a little better.  Not perfect since I am still missing some dupes with specific skills, but better.

 

The one that is still driving me nuts and that I never had an issue with before this map and the last couple of days is emptying outhouses.  By hovering over the roles I found that "tidying" is the role that empties them (thanks for that hover clue!), so I gave it a double up-tick to Tidying for one dupe (he also has double on Life Support and Toggling, but at this stage those are rarely done) and all other non-dig/build dupes got a single up tick to Tidying.  And still, the outhouses get ignored unless I give it a yellow alert.  Worse, I saw the dupe with the tidying double up-tick doing a digging errand... and he has double down-tick to build/dig!!!  What in the world is going on?  I am starting to think this last patch introduced a bug to outhouse handling. 

And yes, I know the problem will disappear for me the moment I replace the outhouses with plumbed toilets, but I hate the idea of running away from the issue without fully understanding it first.

 

EDIT:  I observed more misbehavior of the same dupe... there are priority 5 items to be swept remaining from low-priority commands I gave hours ago, and he has a single up-tick to Supply and Store, he is doing priority 5 digging (which he has double down-ticks for) and completely ignoring the sweep orders that should be much higher priority for him.

start by removing all priorities from all dups....does outhouse get done then?

[BLACKBERREST3]

@zOldBulldog, 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.

[bashkov]

 

[zOldBulldog]

Thanks, I had just rewatched that one and have been carefully watching the task assignments trying to figure out what is happening.

 I think I figured it out.  What I am observing is that the AI isn't following the old rules and is likely being much more aggressive about proximity jobs and especially... clearing the old queue.  Probably a consequence of the performance optimizations.

What seems to be happening is that post-patch if you have the habit of queueing a bunch of jobs in advance and create a new job, instead of just of a dupe finishing "the current job" and then choosing what to do, it keeps focused on nearby lower priority jobs even if the rules give max priority to the new job and that dupe is the only one with priorities set to focus on that job first.

 

So... it is no longer a good idea to queue a bunch of jobs in advance, bumping jobs you realize should be more urgent... Or dupes will end up ignoring critical things like latrines, spills, or pulling a dupe out of an emergency.   Instead, schedule only a little work in advance and watch them go at those tasks like madmen.

Also, it is no longer a good idea to assign dupes to their final priorities early on.  Wait until you have 8-12 dupes to do so, with the exception being the skills/priorities where only one dupe should be doing the job (start that specialization as soon as you get a dupe for it)... while keeping dupes mostly generic before that.

In the end it is probably more efficient, but it requires changing some habits.

[BLACKBERREST3]

1 hour ago, zOldBulldog said:

Instead, schedule only a little work in advance and watch them go at those tasks like madmen.

I refuse to sacrifice queued up jobs for micromanaging my colony. That's just me though. If it's a real emergency, I'll use yellow alert. That seems to reset the closest dupe's tasks. Haven't done too much testing with that. I don't have a problem with dupe efficiency and scheduling, so I'm not sure how much help I can give if you have a different setup. I try to automate as many daily tasks as possible so my dupes can do new tasks instead.

[zOldBulldog]

5 hours ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I refuse to sacrifice queued up jobs for micromanaging my colony. That's just me though. If it's a real emergency, I'll use yellow alert. That seems to reset the closest dupe's tasks. Haven't done too much testing with that. I don't have a problem with dupe efficiency and scheduling, so I'm not sure how much help I can give if you have a different setup. I try to automate as many daily tasks as possible so my dupes can do new tasks instead.

Agreed.  I now try to queue up some but not too many to avoid the curse.

But even if we manage to work around the issue and whatever explanation people can come up with, it is definitely either poorly planned or buggy and I hope that klei is looking into ways to make the whole system more intuitive and easier to make dupes do what you really want them to do.

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

Just now, zOldBulldog said:

Agreed.  I now try to queue up some but not too many to avoid the curse.

But even if we manage to work around the issue and whatever explanation people can come up with, it is definitely either poorly planned or buggy and I hope that klei is looking into ways to make the whole system more intuitive and easier to make dupes do what you really want them to do.

Here Here

btw have you looked at the bug count yet. I thought it had maxed out when it hit 9999, Turns out I was the 10000th 

Now compare that to the other games

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/klei-bug-tracker/

[zOldBulldog]

Practical example of the problem. 

• The coal generator is set to emergency.
• Each skill column has at least one dupe set to max priority on it.  The only exception is research, but that is not applicable to supplying a coal generator.
• There is clearly a path to the generator (actually 2), used by the rancher between the first two screenshots and the 3rd.
• And yet... if you look at the 3rd screenshot, there are NO ERRANDS to supply the generator.

Can anyone explain this to me?  If not, can you please confirm that it is a bug?

If this is a bug (which I suspect) it presents itself at random, exiting and reloading the game does not fix it, and in a scenario like this one - where you can't feed the generator - it makes the game unplayable, as in this example... it is almost guaranteed to make the match fail, even though everything was working perfectly up to this point.

 

[Nitroturtle]

1 hour ago, zOldBulldog said:

Practical example of the problem. 

• The coal generator is set to emergency.
• Each skill column has at least one dupe set to max priority on it.  The only exception is research, but that is not applicable to supplying a coal generator.
• There is clearly a path to the generator (actually 2), used by the rancher between the first two screenshots and the 3rd.
• And yet... if you look at the 3rd screenshot, there are NO ERRANDS to supply the generator.

Can anyone explain this to me?  If not, can you please confirm that it is a bug?

If this is a bug (which I suspect) it presents itself at random, exiting and reloading the game does not fix it, and in a scenario like this one - where you can't feed the generator - it makes the game unplayable, as in this example... it is almost guaranteed to make the match fail, even though everything was working perfectly up to this point.

Dupes won't deliver to coal generators if they are disabled by automation.  I know, it's pretty stupid, but that's the way it works.

[BLACKBERREST3]

Just now, Nitroturtle said:

Dupes won't deliver to coal generators if they are disabled by automation.

I usually set mine to 100% on higher priority for this reason (when I'm not going for super sustainable). It is also beneficial to put a sweeper there so dupes don't constantly fill it at 99% capacity.

[Crimsontide]

Dupe AI is terrible...  I've watched them send the slowest guy from across the map to fulfill a 'yellow alert' when dozens of dupes are running by or even idle.  Getting them to do even simple stuff like flip a switch (I have toggle a high priority for everyone) is aggravating.

I still can't figure out how to get them to properly sweep anything.  Currently I have a large room ready to flood with magma that I need to clear (cause anything left behind I'm not getting), its all priority 6 sweep.  My dupes can carry huge amounts (2 tons+ easily), yet I'm watching them run across the entire map to pick up 10kg of dirt...  At this rate it'll take nearly 1000 cycles to clear the room.  I'm seriously stumped.

[Guinaro]

@Crimsontide
The best way to sweep is by placing, depending on the need, one or more Storage Compactors near the place you need swept.
Put them on sweep only and if possible tick only the items you need swept from the room. Put it also at a higher priority, if you have other containers to store the same stuff in your base.

Now to prevent the running all over your base, it is best to micromanage the Duplicants a bit.
Just give a move to order to the Duplicant with proper sweep/Storage settings to near the newly placed storage compactors.
If all goes well, the Duplicant(s) should stay in the area to pick up all the debris and place it in the sweep only compactors.

Sweep/Storage errands are generated by the Storage Compactors, not by the Duplicants, that is why managing their priorities is important.
I usually work with 1, 2 and 3 and reserve 4 and above for tasks that need doing quickly. Or like Slime and Bleachstone which you want to store as quickly as possible.

[zOldBulldog]

11 hours ago, Nitroturtle said:

Dupes won't deliver to coal generators if they are disabled by automation.  I know, it's pretty stupid, but that's the way it works.

Thank you very much, that is exactly what it was.

[zOldBulldog]

I wonder if I will ever get to understand what dupes do.

Please look at Cook Tidy Liam.  He is at the top right bedroom.  Idle.  And yet his priorities say he could be tyding, supplying, storing... and there is a sweek command right around where he is.  Why in the world is he not doing it?!!!

EDIT:  One more data point, even after exiting the game and reloading he is still ignoring the task and staying idle.

EDIT 2:  Have a laugh at my expense.  It is the exosuit checkpoint I added but not ready yet to use... problem solved after deactivating it.

[Gamers Handbook]

On 10/8/2019 at 9:58 PM, BLACKBERREST3 said:

I usually set mine to 100% on higher priority for this reason (when I'm not going for super sustainable). It is also beneficial to put a sweeper there so dupes don't constantly fill it at 99% capacity.

That's not how coal generators work.  They'll only ask to be refilled if all 3 are true: the hopper gets low, the attached battery is below the slider's value, and it is receiving a green (or none at all) automation signal.  Proof:

Spoiler

 

 

@Crimsontide When dupes are idle and you assign a task the idle dupe will always take it regardless of his distance.  I assume this is the same for yellow alert; the first available dupe is taking the task regardless of how far away they are.

@zOldBulldog I've noticed in the past certain tasks seem to be dual linked to two categories.  It didn't give me fits at the time, iirc, as long as one of the categories wasn't X-ed.  Are you doing X's?

 

Also, I run low dupe count bases.  (Typically ~7)  The priorities table is a trap for someone with low dupe counts.  I just use it to X out things I don't want normal dupes doing like cook, research, and art.  Past that I find it much easier for things to be governed by the numbers.  Sometimes I want my researcher to only research and I'll bump him up on the table, but for other things I find the effect to be the opposite of what I want done.  For example, I never want all my low priority digs done before everything else, but that's what will happen if I bump up someone's table priority for digging.  Personally I'd rather the option to have the table and number weightings flip flopped, so the numbers are worth 10x as much instead.  I'd like this as an option, because there are players that the current system seems to work well for.  But for now, I'll stick to X-ing a couple things and letting everyone else at the neutral minus symbol so the numbers govern what they do instead of the table.

My reference for how priority weighting works:

Spoiler

 

 

[BLACKBERREST3]

12 minutes ago, Gamers Handbook said:

so dupes don't constantly fill it at 99% capacity.

This must have been a bug for me then, cause I noticed this in a playthrough a long time ago and never questioned it. Nice to know the request is sent out at 100kg, thanks.