Dumb questions about task priorities; proximity is not good (enough)?

[axxel]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering about two peculiarities if a dupe pick up material to deliver. Maybe you can help me with these problems or at least understanding my wrongdoings. I usually like to choose "enable proximity" and let the game automatically set the tasks with "reset" from important to least important, after some tweaks, it would be still something  like this:very high: attack--->very low:store/deliver

First, I noticed that dupes like to gather materials from the nearest accessable place BUT they like to ignore the same materials directly next to them and walk to a next room over or under the place to gather more of it. That's very annoying and proximity priority doesn't fix it! The same can be said if they are tasked to fill a storage but they rather make more small errands without reaching their capacity limit.

 

Second, I want to avoid this: during the bathtime the dupes should remove the germs from their toilet after they had *finished* but they like to pick up the nearest dirt to the next farm - I'd like set bathtime before sleep so they had to pass the wash basin before touching something else and are clean after waking up.  Tidy prio  outhouse/toilet priorities are high and I avoid highlighting the debris for sweep. So, what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

[Shinkarr]

What materials? What errands they are delivering for?

 

Bathtime, unfortunately, doesn't work well before sleep. Bathtime is like work but with bathroom errands having priority over work errands. So typical behavior is: bathtime started -> go to restroom -> start work errand -> sleep time started -> drop errand and go to sleep. Bathtime is designed to happen before work and not after.

[asurendra]

On 10/8/2025 at 10:08 PM, axxel said:

First, I noticed that dupes like to gather materials from the nearest accessable place BUT they like to ignore the same materials directly next to them and walk to a next room over or under the place to gather more of it. That's very annoying and proximity priority doesn't fix it! The same can be said if they are tasked to fill a storage but they rather make more small errands without reaching their capacity limit.

 

When dupe gets delivery task it search for closest pile available and if its not enough it search few tiles around to get more. Thats additional search has limited range to avoid unnecessary CPU usage. So if you have piles of 1 kg in every cell dupe picks up 4-5 of them and starts delivering. Proximity setting doesnt affect that at all. 

To solve that problem you can use low priority bins (so dupes will clean place instead of idling). Or set up sweepy or flydos. Try to place big pile of necessary resource near machine that use it. Like coal generator with coal bin near it, With that setup you can also add autosweeper for automated deliveries later without rebuilding generator room. 

[axxel]

3 hours ago, Shinkarr said:

What materials? What errands they are delivering for?

 

Bathtime, unfortunately, doesn't work well before sleep. Bathtime is like work but with bathroom errands having priority over work errands. So typical behavior is: bathtime started -> go to restroom -> start work errand -> sleep time started -> drop errand and go to sleep. Bathtime is designed to happen before work and not after.

They pick up what they need. It's usually dirt, algae or raw material..

I didn't know it's not effecient to have the bathtime next to them. I went with bathtime because dupes are usually go to pee in downtime first and I thought it's contraproductive if they only take a shower after peeing.

47 minutes ago, asurendra said:

When dupe gets delivery task it search for closest pile available and if its not enough it search few tiles around to get more. Thats additional search has limited range to avoid unnecessary CPU usage. So if you have piles of 1 kg in every cell dupe picks up 4-5 of them and starts delivering. Proximity setting doesnt affect that at all. 

To solve that problem you can use low priority bins (so dupes will clean place instead of idling). Or set up sweepy or flydos. Try to place big pile of necessary resource near machine that use it. Like coal generator with coal bin near it, With that setup you can also add autosweeper for automated deliveries later without rebuilding generator room. 

This is interesting that the proximity option isn't important at all. Well, I was talking about the issue you can ecounter in the early game and I hope I can manage the game on hard mode... some day in the future.  Also, the dupe's choices intrigued me somehow and I want to know how I can tell him to be better even if I can skip these problems with automated picking/delivering!

 

[asurendra]

Proximity is important, but it works differently. Let me explain on example.

You ordered a lot of digging errands around colony. All with similar 5 priority. With proximity disabled your digger will do them in order you made them. From oldest to newest. Thats stable way: all errands will be finished sooner or later. It will take some unnecessary running and time-wasting though

With proximity enabled, digger always picks closest errand, even if its not old. That efficient way, but if you continue making orders, some digging far away may never be done. So you have to either control number of tasks or manually set priorities. Thats harder for player, thats why it disabled by default. 

[Shinkarr]

Does proximity affect FPS?

[cyberwarlord]

Always leave digging chores able to reach 2 digs. Otherwise they run back and forth.

[axxel]

On 10/11/2025 at 6:02 PM, cyberwarlord said:

Always leave digging chores able to reach 2 digs. Otherwise they run back and forth.

You mean this?

XXXXXXX

DDDD

DDDD

XXXXXXX

I usually don't like this as numerous digger rival a spot and the slower one can occupy the spot and the faster one will run to a new work. because they cannot reach a new tile to dig.

[cyberwarlord]

5 hours ago, axxel said:

You mean this?

XXXXXXX

DDDD

DDDD

XXXXXXX

I usually don't like this as numerous digger rival a spot and the slower one can occupy the spot and the faster one will run to a new work. because they cannot reach a new tile to dig.

?

 

Like if you dig 3 up one over to make temporary stairs. The dupe digs the first bit then runs off then back again over an over.

[KittenIsAGeek]

On 10/8/2025 at 10:08 AM, axxel said:

First, I noticed that dupes like to gather materials from the nearest accessable place BUT they like to ignore the same materials directly next to them and walk to a next room over or under the place to gather more of it.

I've noticed that for the purposes of gathering/delivering materials, proximity is considered in a radius from the task or the dupe generating the pick-up/delivery.  This means that if you have a pipe running through the floor, a dupe will deliver to the pipe segment directly in front of him, the one directly above that, the one in the floor directly below, THEN the dupe will run all the way around until they can get to the one directly under that one, since it was the next "closest," then run all the way BACK up to get the one directly above the second pipe materials were delivered to.  

Pathing is only considered after the points of interest have been defined.  As in, "Ok, I need to pick up the three closest stacks: This stack, this other stack, and that stack on the floor under me to deliver to the bin behind me -- now lets figure out how to get to those stacks of debris!"

Edited October 21, 2025 by KittenIsAGeek

[axxel]

On 10/21/2025 at 6:11 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

I've noticed that for the purposes of gathering/delivering materials, proximity is considered in a radius from the task or the dupe generating the pick-up/delivery.  This means that if you have a pipe running through the floor, a dupe will deliver to the pipe segment directly in front of him, the one directly above that, the one in the floor directly below, THEN the dupe will run all the way around until they can get to the one directly under that one, since it was the next "closest," then run all the way BACK up to get the one directly above the second pipe materials were delivered to.  

Pathing is only considered after the points of interest have been defined.  As in, "Ok, I need to pick up the three closest stacks: This stack, this other stack, and that stack on the floor under me to deliver to the bin behind me -- now lets figure out how to get to those stacks of debris!"

Oh dang, thanks for clarifying. I misunderstood "proximity" as "distance/walking time". I guess I'll try limit fewer floor levels in the next early game then and expand horizontally.

[ThatOtherGuy54]

There's another problem. There's a lag between when a chore is finished and when its generated. If you set a chore on high priority for say the search station, after the research errand, instead of resupplying, the dupe might decide to do something else.

[axxel]

12 hours ago, ThatOtherGuy54 said:

There's another problem. There's a lag between when a chore is finished and when its generated. If you set a chore on high priority for say the search station, after the research errand, instead of resupplying, the dupe might decide to do something else.

Please clarify. You mean the the building's priority or the research prio? I actually disable supply priority for commons unless they are hauler dupes.

[KittenIsAGeek]

OK, so, when a task finishes, there's an opportunity for job shuffling.  This prevents dupes from getting stuck ignoring more important issues like remembering to empty the out houses.  So if a dupe is in the middle of a research task and you raise the priority of researching, the dupe currently researching might still switch tasks once his current research task is done, even though according to priorities the dupe should keep right on researching.

Basically the current research task finishes, there's a delay, then the next research task gets added to the queue.  During that delay, other tasks that are currently already in the queue get selected.

[Charletrom]

10 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

OK, so, when a task finishes, there's an opportunity for job shuffling.  This prevents dupes from getting stuck ignoring more important issues like remembering to empty the out houses.  So if a dupe is in the middle of a research task and you raise the priority of researching, the dupe currently researching might still switch tasks once his current research task is done, even though according to priorities the dupe should keep right on researching.

Basically the current research task finishes, there's a delay, then the next research task gets added to the queue.  During that delay, other tasks that are currently already in the queue get selected.

I understand why the game is like this but it makes for some strange behavior. I wonder if a fix could be to add a small delay when a dupe is switching from one taks category to another, for example from researching to storing. That way we wouldn't have delays between successive tasks in the same category (eg digging) but would prevent many instances of dupes running all over the place