Gofers have too many things to do

[tulkaz]

Whenever I check a dupe who's doing a task not related with his job, the related station's status is always "awaiting material delivery". i.e whenever I saw a researcher doing something else which is not research, Research station and Super computer are in "awaiting material delivery" status and waiting for gofer to deliver. Problem is when there are amount of priority 4 construction queue, gofers are too busy to deliver to research station and it causes the researcher to do something else. I can simply put research stations priority to 5 but then there's no meaning of "job preferred priority". It only means setting priorities by delivery, not "job preferred". Hope job assinged dupes automatically assign to deliver task to their related station whenever they finish their job related task or the station ran out of its necessary material.

I just want my researcher doing his job even with the amount of construction queue.

 

Sorry for my short English hope you understand what I'm saying.

[Cpt. KatKit]

Cooks and farmers are offenders of this as well. Farmers only care about their station and harvesting. Cooks won't bother taking food right next to them and putting it in the frying pan!

[ScottFree]

I agree. Supplying and operating using materials or machines for a job should be included in the tasks for that job. Like supplying food for chefs, supply fertilizer for farmers, or operating a generator connected to a circuit of the jobs task.

[Papersneaker]

25 minutes ago, Cpt. KatKit said:

Cooks and farmers are offenders of this as well. Farmers only care about their station and harvesting. Cooks won't bother taking food right next to them and putting it in the frying pan!

This explains why my colonies die now.

[Ichikai]

I feel like, if they really do not want to stray in any way from current system with some leveling of skills;

• Gofer and up jobs should be buffed to +5/10/15 main job
• Other more mobile jobs (builder/digger/...) should get +3/6/9 main job and +2/4/6 athletics
• Buff stationary jobs (researcher/cook/art/mabe farmer?) to 5/10/15 main job

AND/OR
suggest job priorities as they are now, and allow me to set job priorities how i want, lets say i want an artist to not only paint and sculpt, but mop too.
Or my builder has the obvious default job priority of build, and I can add supply to the list.
Lower on list = Lower priority

 

PS: Why are job slots limited at all? Seriously, why?

[Papersneaker]

13 minutes ago, Ichikai said:

I feel like, if they really do not want to stray in any way from current system with some leveling of skills;

• Gofer and up jobs should be buffed to +5/10/15 main job
• Other more mobile jobs (builder/digger/...) should get +3/6/9 main job and +2/4/6 athletics
• Buff stationary jobs (researcher/cook/art/mabe farmer?) to 5/10/15 main job

AND/OR
suggest job priorities as they are now, and allow me to set job priorities how i want, lets say i want an artist to not only paint and sculpt, but mop too.
Or my builder has the obvious default job priority of build, and I can add supply to the list.
Lower on list = Lower priority

 

PS: Why are job slots limited at all? Seriously, why?

I think Job slots are limited to give players some idea of how to build their colony.

[Kasuha]

Support tasks (deliver material/dig space for build) should be definitely part of the job. Gofers are fine but their workload jumps around like crazy, one moment you need 20 of them, the next moment they're all out of work. They should have occupation-unrelated deliveries as their main priority (such as algae for deoxydizer) and only need to go helping other occupations when they're done with that.

Regarding Gofers, unsolicited sweeping should also be their lowest priority, done when they really have nothing else to do.

Also if a duplicant is doing some long term task out of their job (such as running hamster wheel or doing science) and task of their job becomes available (e.g. supercomputer got finally its load of water), they should interrupt that task and go doing what's their job. And/or leave the task for a more qualified duplicant when one is available. One time I caught my scientist running hamster wheel, farmer doing science, and engineer harvesting the farm because neither of them had their job's task available when they were looking for it but then they chose their task and got stuck to it.

[NanoD]

I was like time to do some research. Ok Dont need to change priority because my researcher will do the job. Then he stops, and starts to dig. I am wtf.. Ok no one had deliver anything to they research station. Ok let put it on higher priority. My researcher takes a break. some one else take the research job and the researcher go and dig. I am like ARGGGG.. Ok So in the end I put it on strikt priority lvl 4 and removed every one else from the research job. Hmm.. So basically what I did when it was priority 1-9.....

[Ichikai]

3 minutes ago, Papersneaker said:

I think Job slots are limited to give players some idea of how to build their colony.

Isn't that something that naturally becomes apparent? Oh, my X has too much work to do and nothing is getting done, maybe I should add another X?

 

... I don't know.

[Saturnus]

One solution is to prevent your gofers from accessing certain areas limiting them to servicing specific jobs. But it's another band aid solution.

[Papersneaker]

18 minutes ago, Ichikai said:

Isn't that something that naturally becomes apparent? Oh, my X has too much work to do and nothing is getting done, maybe I should add another X?

 

... I don't know.

Very strong point.  I would also like to add It could also force base development.  I need a better courier so I better get better base set up for them.  As an aside my Farmers work wasn't getting done so I added more farmers and that didn't help.  So we can't depend on adding more of a job to solve a problem with a job just yet.

[Ichikai]

Well that brings us to the other glaring issue.

90% of all jobs not getting done are a direct result of lack of logisitcs.

Any non-gofer/courier dupe without at least some starting stats in athletics. Waddles veeery slowly and can only carry 200 kg max. So no help

Giofers have a ****load of work to do.
Supplying buildings, supplying building plans, supplying consumers, sweeping. This need only grows the further you develop your base. Delivering used to be like 50% of dupe workload in reports.

[chemie]

5 hours ago, tulkaz said:

Whenever I check a dupe who's doing a task not related with his job, the related station's status is always "awaiting material delivery". i.e whenever I saw a researcher doing something else which is not research, Research station and Super computer are in "awaiting material delivery" status and waiting for gofer to deliver. Problem is when there are amount of priority 4 construction queue, gofers are too busy to deliver to research station and it causes the researcher to do something else. I can simply put research stations priority to 5 but then there's no meaning of "job preferred priority". It only means setting priorities by delivery, not "job preferred". Hope job assinged dupes automatically assign to deliver task to their related station whenever they finish their job related task or the station ran out of its necessary material.

I just want my researcher doing his job even with the amount of construction queue.

 

Sorry for my short English hope you understand what I'm saying.

I think you need to use strict priority and a ton of micro for activities that require multiple jobs.

For research, 

1. Assign researcher.  Use old job table to only allow him to research

2. Assign strict >2

This should force gofers or non job dups to deliver.

Same for cooking.

This is a weird way to solve a broken mechanic and not something new players would do but might solve the very real issue you describe

[Saturnus]

Another solution to the overburdened gofers (shameless plug)

 

[Hechicera]

On the plus side, hydrofan now seems useful! So the groundskeeper can do that instead of help deliver, of course! But at least it is useful.

(This run had some hot biomes border w/o border tiles, was able to do intially cooling w/hydrofan so far, keeping berry bushes a go (under shinebugs).

[vonVile]

One major problem I noticed is that Build is now separate from Deliver. Dupes assigned to only Build use to take materials to where they were going to build, but now if you turn off Deliver they won't build until somebody else gets around to delivering materials. Then if I turn Deliver on the Dupe assigned to build would rather deliver than build. My base easily fell apart before 100 Cycles because Dupes aren't as flexible in their assignments as they once were.

I think this has also to do with changing the priorities to 1-5. You could set up the numbers 2 apart in priority and the Dupes understood task importance with 1-9 better, but with it now so tight the Dupes will don't do tasks set to 5 or 5*. I don't know what they're busy doing, but they ignore stuff like feeding Oxidizers and running on Hamster Wheels. Maybe I'm not use to the 1-5 Priority system yet, but its annoying seeing Dupes ignore a high assigned task for cycles.

I would like to see it go back to 1-9. There was no problem with it.

[Mayveena]

I would like to see Diggers be able to build tiles and ladders. I also would love for them to go back to 1-9, apparently they think because streamers/youtubers weren't using all the numbers no one was and that certainly isn't true. I use at least 3-9.

[Saturnus]

45 minutes ago, Mayveena said:

I would like to see Diggers be able to build tiles and ladders. I also would love for them to go back to 1-9, apparently they think because streamers/youtubers weren't using all the numbers no one was and that certainly isn't true. I use at least 3-9.

Same here. I used P1 for planning stuff and then had a few build orders at P2. When they got done I knew the dupes had very little to do so I could release the next project for them.

We actually needed a P0 more. A real planning priority that would never get built but would reserve the materials for it.

[Atlas888]

11 hours ago, chemie said:

I think you need to use strict priority and a ton of micro for activities that require multiple jobs.

For research, 

1. Assign researcher.  Use old job table to only allow him to research

2. Assign strict >2

This should force gofers or non job dups to deliver.

Same for cooking.

This is a weird way to solve a broken mechanic and not something new players would do but might solve the very real issue you describe

You're right, and most of us here--using the Klei forums (not Steam, not Reddit)--probably know how to do that. But imagining a new player trying this out and after a few cycles they can't figure out why nothing is getting done...and then they are either dead or bored out of their minds. The new Jobs system is unintuitive and would only work with current mechanics if players are given more ability to fully-automate Logistical tasks by setting up belts/arms/conveyors (think Factorio-style) but those tools can't be gated behind hundreds of cycles, because everyone will be too bored/frustrated by then!

[Ricordis]

I like how the high level engineer loses some basic tasks like "Why should I run in a generator? I am the boss!"

While the lower tier jobs might have an entry for delivery tasks for their job-related buildings this may get lost in the higher jobs.
So a senior farmer really only does harvesting und using the station, while farmhands also take on farm-related delivery tasks and flip the compost.
The same for other jobs except miner.

This way you can ease gofers and also have to plan ahead who to promote. And you gain more control over duties related to a specific workfield: If your food-related transport is too slow you may get another cook instead of a gofer. They are slower and carry less but at least they will have set priorities.

[BlueLance]

17 hours ago, Papersneaker said:

I think Job slots are limited to give players some idea of how to build their colony.

Not really, a player builds there colony based on needs and wants, lets say someone wants to build some massive new contraption, well they are limited to 3 of each class so that kinda limits the whole creativity in a way. Now I cannot mine out large areas because KLEI want to give me and idea on how to build MY base.

[PaulV]

I think this is in the game now. If you look at the updated jobs screen it mentions build and delivery tasks that are specific to the profession.

[Zarquan]

I hope they remove the hard cap on the jobs.  I understand that they don't want everyone to be of the same job, but this limits the size of the colony in a completely arbitrary way.  I hope they choose to make the number of dupes per job capped based on the size of your colony.