Head to the manufacturing pod at bedtime

[sorafis]

Duplicants head to the manufacturing pod during their break because they're "taking a breather." The trouble is, they keep heading there even when it's time to go to bed. Once they reach the side of the manufacturing pod, they make their way to the bed.

The manufacturing pod and the bed are far apart, so by the time the Duplicants reach the bed, it's morning.

Don't you think it's unnatural that taking a breather is prioritized during bedtime as a game setting?

I think there are various countermeasures, but i am not looking for ideas for them.

[blakemw]

Dupes go to the pod if there is no recreation to distract them during downtime. This is their behavior, their priorities during downtime is:

poop > eat > recreation > hang out at pod > work

They will do the first one of those which they are eligible for.

If you don't like it you can:

1. Provide recreation at location near the beds or
2. Put the beds close to the pod or
3. Disable the pod or restrict access to the pod so dupes will go back to work during downtime (may not be what you want)

[sorafis]

Thank you for your reply.

It doesn't matter what Duplicants do during their downtime.

I think the problem is that "Duplicants don't stop going to their pods even after their downtime is over and it's time to go to bed."

Sometimes Duplicants are using the toilet or eating at bedtime. In other words, I think that if Duplicants starts an action before the end of the downtime, it will not sleep until it is completed.

Therefore, no matter how far the distance between the bed and the pod is, it will try to complete the action of "touching the pod".

When it's bedtime, it's natural for Duplicants to stop doing anything other than eating and going to the toilet and go to sleep, which I think is better.

[blakemw]

10 hours ago, sorafis said:

When it's bedtime, it's natural for Duplicants to stop doing anything other than eating and going to the toilet and go to sleep, which I think is better.

It'd really suck if recreation errands got cancelled by bedtime starting, in general it's much preferable if errands that get started get completed. I can see the argument that hanging out at the pod errand is pointless so should be more easily interrupted, but internally code-wise the recreation errands are pretty generic so it probably wouldn't be trivial to apply exceptions, I don't think the code has the notion of errands that should or shouldn't be interrupted (going the other direction, I'd love it if wrangling errands were super hard to interrupt but as I said I don't think the framework is there in the code - there are only errands that will interrupt any errand, like Catching Breath).

And dupes hanging out at the pod is a niche case because it's expected dupes will get some rec buildings, and the pod being far from beds is a niche cache (though it's not that strange in Spaced Out with beds in a landed rocket), because it's highly niche I wouldn't expect any dev attention, and would instead look to work with the existing game mechanics: either have a rec building near the beds, even just a watercooler, or disable the pod if it's not being really useful (easily the case in Spaced Out if it's just there to meet the 5 pods requirement).

[sorafis]

Thank you for your reply.

I am surprised.

I never expected that my idea, which seemed so simple and natural to me, that ``Duplicants should sleep at the bedtime set by the player's schedule,'' would be rejected so much.

Duplicants stop working and take a break the moment it's time for a break.
Duplicants head to bed the moment it's bedtime.
Same behavior.
I don't think anything will be difficult.

It doesn't matter if it's rare or niche.

[blakemw]

21 minutes ago, sorafis said:

Duplicants stop working and take a break the moment it's time for a break.
Duplicants head to bed the moment it's bedtime.
Same behavior.
I don't think anything will be difficult.

It's not as consistent as you think.

Downtime errands interrupts all errands, including the "sleep" errand. (this means when downtime starts, if a dupe can do a downtime errand it'll interrupt their current errand)

Bathtime errands interrupt all errands, with pooping errand interrupting the showering errand.

Worktime errands interrupt no errands, not even the "sleep" errand. (dupes continue to sleep during worktime to 100% stamina)

The sleeping errand interrupts no errands (except the special case of "exhaustion" which is unrelated to schedules).

 

So there are two classes of schedule errands which are hard interrupts: those related to bathtime and downtime. And there are two classes of errands which never interrupt other errands, worktime and bedtime errands. So while you think it's the trend that schedule changes interrupt errands, it's actually exactly half that interrupt and half do not interrupt.

 

Again I'll reiterate, the game has the notion of an errand type that is an "interrupt", it'll interrupt any other errand except those which are equally or more "interrupting" (Example: showering is an interrupt, but pooping is an even harder interrupt and will interrupt showering). But it doesn't have the notion of an errand which is okay to interrupt, any errand is okay to interrupt by a harder interrupt (for example the most interrupting errands are dying, incapacitation and manual more order). It has no notion at all of an errand that should easily be interrupted: should it? Maybe. But the code for errands and priorities is already a big complicated state machine.

Anyway, there's a clear and obvious reason why bathtime has to interrupt worktime errands: because there are a number of worktime errands that are of limitless duration (for example running on the manual generator) that would literally never end if not hard interrupted. But downtime and sleep errands are all of finite duration so don't have to be interrupted, they'll just finish in due course.

[sorafis]

Thank you for your reply.

Sorry, but this topic is not about the "system status" perspective.

"Don't you think it's unnatural that taking a breather is prioritized during bedtime as a game setting?"

is the gist.

In this topic, ``unnatural'' does not refer to ``as a logic used to understand a phenomenon,'' but ``as the feeling you get when you see that phenomenon.''

Feeling, not logic. I apologize for missing this important explanation.

"Duplicants don't go to bed when it's bedtime and run all night."

I may be the only player who sees this phenomenon. Perhaps the developers did not envision a colony where pods and beds are far apart. However, I think that developers and many players will initially have the same impressions as me if they see the same phenomenon.

*I appreciate your reply, but if you do reply in the future, please keep it to the gist.

[blakemw]

Well you can prefer that more errands can be interrupted but most players would not. Most players prefer dupes to finish errands that they start rather than cancelling them halfway through. And because dupes can sleep in during work time it's not critical that they run off to bed the moment bedtime starts.

[Knurek]

On 10/14/2023 at 6:48 AM, sorafis said:

but i am not looking for ideas for them.

This game is about coming up with ideas of how to deal with problems, one of them being undesired dupe behavior. What you want is trivial to achieve with a couple of doors and some cycle sensors and I see no reason why going to the printing pod should be interrupted by schedule for all players of which some may not want that. I myself actually prefer that my dupes don't get interrupted while going to grab a balloon.

[sorafis]

Thank you for your reply.

I don't know what "grab a balloon" is.

What is clear is that ONI does have a schedule that players can set.

It might be possible to satisfy more players if the schedule could be set to be ``strictly adhered to'' or ``to be somewhat loose.''