Dupe's wasted talents

[Jonathan Hoffman]

So when I'm looking at dupes these days, I almost ignore what a dupe is good at.  I pay most of my attention to their negative attributes, because those are what really hurt me when the crap hits the fan.

The thing is you can't (that I'm aware of) tell a particular dupe to do any particular thing.  So say I have an anemic, level 10 rock star digger.  He's just as likely to waste his whole day on the treadmill or cooking as he is digging.  Dupes don't seem to (that I can tell) focus on the tasks that they do best.  So it's really a crap shoot when you put a painting on the wall, if it'll be painted by your creative genius or barfed on by a level 0 rube.

It might be nice to go into a dupe's settings and tell him to prioritize certain tasks.  Like setting a level 9 priority within the dupe for digging, if he's basically a mole-man with level 15 digging talent.  Whenever something needs to be dug, he stops what he's doing and goes to do it.  Your star chef spends more time cooking, etc etc.

Otherwise, a dupes talents are wasted 95% of the time. 

[mr_anderson]

JOBS button top-right corner.

[Jonathan Hoffman]

Awesome!  How effective is it?

[mr_anderson]

18 minutes ago, Jonathan Hoffman said:

Awesome!  How effective is it?

i havent played around with it too much but if you can balance it right, so no dupe is idle, i think it could work. I mostly use it for research(learning) and art(creativity)

[ShamPeiN]

1 hour ago, Jonathan Hoffman said:

Awesome!  How effective is it?

very much so. jobs actually have priorities on their own, like critical deliveries before digging on same priority. delivering algae into empty machine is priority 10. they choose from their jobs, closest high priority. for example they starve and your best cook hauls algae, everything becomes a mess. so you can have one cook who wont share xp on job, maybe can do art, and this guaranties food when needed.

their skills at lvl 12+ are better exponentially so 1-2 strong/fast sweeper/deliverer can only do that. i tried dig only but cant go upward without building, also can be bugged so dig/build/harvest better.  runners with high tinkering develop athletics fast, they dont need art/cook/research. once they fill batteries they can sweep/deliver faster. learning makes research faster, also skill gain faster, once all research done they can be good miners. miners do more digging if they dont need to do other things. they dont need speedy walk so much and ugly environment causes stress. 1 job only like harvest not enough, delivery is too much. art is situational, cooking same (better eat raw plants) . there are combos with traits and ratios so nobody idle.

[DemainaNyx]

It would be nice to be able to focus someone on a job though.  Sometimes I have my mole hand digger as a Dig and Harvester, and he gets distracted harvesting the zillions of plants I have instead of digging to save the dupe that trapped himself.  That or prioritize who does that job.  If I have a 10 digger and a 5 digger, I should be able to say "dig this" and the 10 digger runs to it before the 5 digger does.

[Saturnus]

14 hours ago, ShamPeiN said:

i tried dig only but cant go upward without building,..

Yes, you can and should. I always do two wide dig tunnels straight up, and the set interchangeably 3 empty and one not on each side. That way they can dig/explore without having to wait for materials or even building anything. If you need real ladders. Put them in later.

The ladder that don't need building.

X=dug out square, O=left square

OXXO
OOXO
OXXO
OXOO
OXXO
OOXO

Another tip is to have some low priority digging job they can do, like strip mining for algae or digging out a very large area you intend for later use, that they can work on when you don't have an active job for them to do. They get insanely fast at digging in the end, especially if they also have high learning. I have a miner with 38 digging skill in one of my builds.

[ShamPeiN]

i mean digging creates vacuum and bad decor, building some kind of containment room needed, i had dimensionally inapt dupe who stuck on ladder and suffocated, deconstructing is also building and falling sand/clay ruins your plans if you dont check on them. also they dig resources so first to access it, reducing walk time, just focusing one side of map is better . 

[Saturnus]

I can assure you. It's much more productive to just have one or two guys that just dig and do little else. They become exceptionally good in the end. One dupe can dig out an entire biome in a matter of a few cycles once you get the digging skill to 25+.

[ShamPeiN]

building/digging is fine, anyways i keep an eye on them and the amount of building can be controlled.  not like tiles and ladders take much time, also 2 researchers can be made to be diggers so learns faster. still at least 2 fulltime deliverers do the heavy part.