Occupational Upgrade has something wrong!

[Maleus M]

Right now, I'm at cicle 9 of my sixth base after occupational upgrade. And I'm sure about the problem is happening and a possible solution to it. 

The principal problem I've noticed, and most players too I believe is that the Duplis aren't doing the primal work of their jobs. I have archtect research on research station, the scientist delivering things and etc. Meanwhile it, I have research to do, things to build, and no one is doing what they should do. It's kinda broken!

All right, after watching them work, I have noticed too that the principal problem is that they need each other to complete every task. Example: the archtect needs the material delivered on build to start building. The miner wont dig if a build is empty of material (I remember to have readed something about this in some update log), the chef wont cook if theres no material on cooking station and etc. 

It's important to say that everyone is able to do all kinds of tasks in my tests, being limited (theorically) by their jobs. And I didn't have priorized any task except the bathrooms (you know, duplis love to pee).

So they are not obeying their jobs primary tasks, and it may be happening because they need other duplis to deliver the fist steo of a task to do so. If a Gofer is working on take material to the Storage Compactor, the Archtect won't be able to work on any construction even he being able to grab the needed material and do his job for once and all! 

To solve this problem, I believe that a dupli should complete all tasks of his occupation first, I mean, If he's an archtect, he should have as pryor task the construction, secondary task the material deliver to the place where he will construct. The chef should have as primary task the cook work, secondary task to keep the cook stations filled with material to cook. The Farmer, have priority to do all tasks that envolve farm, as farming, deliver fertilizant, water, seeds, etc. And then the Gofer should have as priority to supply the base only. Not supply cook stations, construction sites, etc while the base is lacking material, like coal or algae. 

However, it wouldn't stop the duplis to do other tasks. It would kin their priorities. Because the priority of an archtect is not only construction itself. It needs more attention, more tasks, and if the archtect waits the Gofer to deliver the material, things will get out of control. The base will suffer if a Gofer start to dig a tunnel at the other side of the base while the miner is researching for the scientist  that is running at manual generator... wow, crazy! 

I know you guys could say "oh but all you need to do is flag the tasks you don't want your dupe work on". And I tell: It shouldn't be doing without a good reason, ever! If I have a farmer that did all his job already, he could start helping other duplis on their tasks. And except in a very specific job like cook or art, where is "safer" no allowing any dupli to work with it, only those with enough level, I don't see reason for unflag a task, but I see reason to work on priorities for every occupation, where the focus is not on task, but on target, where every worker will to a bunch of tasks to fulfill his occupation target. 

 

Well, I'm sorry for my bad English. I hope you guys can understand what I mean, and helped with some idea. I'm just a player, and i'm almost sure that there's no new idea here that the developers haven't thought before. All I want is to see the game flowing as nice as it can be. 

Thanks for taking time on reading and good luck. 

[realdead_man]

I am seeing similar results

[Kasuha]

8 hours ago, Maleus M said:

The principal problem I've noticed, and most players too I believe is that the Duplis aren't doing the primal work of their jobs.

No, they are not. And that's fine. Your architect has no problems gaining his building mastery digging a tunnel or cleaning an outhouse. In general, just let your duplicants pick whatever job is closest to them (which is what they do by default) instead of trying to restrict them to their jobs which will make them just spend more time running around after tasks that just became more sparse.

There are some exceptions. It's a good idea to tie your scientist to the research table, or the farmer to the farm. But if you don't, it's fine too. But if you do, you get adverse results if you try to do it through the jobs menu. Door access rights are better for the purpose.

Occupations system is a major mechanic in the game and as such it needs more than one release worth of time to get polished. Devs left us with a working system, however unintuitive it looks like. And hopefully it will get better from there.

[Master Miner]

There are some tasks that only certain profession can do ("awaiting specialist"), but for other task, what counts is the tasks priority and proximity.

When a dupe is free, they will get a task out of the set with currently highest priority. The chance that they will get a task that matches their profession is low.

The results could be better if the task scheduler would look into the future a bit: "which dupe can finish this task first taking into account the task they are doing now, their need for a break (sleep, hunger, lavatory, shower), travel time and their profession".

[Ricordis]

Would be great if Dupes had different tasks on the same priority they'd prefer to do the task they are hired for.
A miner would prefer mining level 5 tasks over level 5 research. But a 6-research overwrites a 5-mining for a miner. This might work.

[Kasuha]

14 hours ago, Master Miner said:

The results could be better if the task scheduler would look into the future a bit: "which dupe can finish this task first taking into account the task they are doing now, their need for a break (sleep, hunger, lavatory, shower), travel time and their profession".

Yes, such result could be better. But then you'd need to go through the tasks many times and even assigning some close duplicants multiple tasks until you find one that you'll assign to that one initial duplicant.

And then there's a situation that can break it. A deodorizer needs refill and distant miner won't pick it in favor of close farmer that's harvesting. But before the farmer finishes the harvest another harvest pops up. And the farmer picks that new harvest over deodorizer refill.

So while it would probably provide on average better results than the current system, it would be definitely much more performance hungry and it may produce some hard to understand behavior in certain situations.

[Master Miner]

9 hours ago, Kasuha said:

And then there's a situation that can break it. [...] So while it would probably provide on average better results than the current system, it would be definitely much more performance hungry and it may produce some hard to understand behavior in certain situations.

There's always a situation that can break it unless the scheduler would be optimal, which probably isn't possible for any task of significant size due to performance restrictions.

9 hours ago, Kasuha said:

But before the farmer finishes the harvest another harvest pops up.

That's a separate problem - how to handle changes in the task list (a new task appears, a task changes priority, a task dissapears). This can be optimized as well to gain performance - the algorithm can use the old solution as a starting point to find a new one.

[Tiggy]

Quote

Would be great if Dupes had different tasks on the same priority they'd prefer to do the task they are hired for.
A miner would prefer mining level 5 tasks over level 5 research. But a 6-research overwrites a 5-mining for a miner. This might work.

That would be a huge help I think! This may be the root of the problem, or a big part of it.

[Kasuha]

6 minutes ago, Tiggy said:

That would be a huge help I think! This may be the root of the problem, or a big part of it.

It was implemented that way for a short while then devs rolled that back too. Putting special cases aside, for example an architect that prefers level 5 builds over level 5 digs will spend time running to the other end of the colony for a level 5 build instead of doing a dig that's right beside him while he's only marginally more efficient doing that build than doing that dig. The same up to various levels applies to most jobs. Time spent running to the task is HUGE part of duplicant spent time and that needs to be reduced in the first place.

[AileTheAlien]

Just steal the skills system from Rimworld! UI, skill-loss - problem solved!

[Tiggy]

Huh. So why did they do that? Do you know?

[vovik]

Well, what ive got to say - to understand how JOB system should be answer 1 simple question - how many X required to do Y.

Jobs and task are on one page in game currently but they are quite different, but connected - task is a part of job, but in ONI task is who knows what and job is another who knows what..

How many duplicants required to build some stuff? = 2-3(gopher, miner architect)
How many duplicants required to farm a plant? = 2(farmer, gopher) 

Before Job upgrade building, farming.. etc required 1 duplicant and access restrictions, after jobs upgrade i need 2-3 people per job, no to mention different bugs about jobs, so i would say that jobs update is crap.
Untill duplicants required for a job will be more than 1 - whole job upgrade is worthless.

My suggestion is refining task-job assignments attached to buildings and task-building assignments attached to jobs. Sounds complex? It is complex but simple - building gets get several tasks for job - for example farms gets "deliver, plant, dig, harvest" for farmer. Prioritizing exactly some taks without connection to buildings and calling it "job" doesnt cut it.

ONI dev team is screwing up more and more with each upgrade and just don`t want to admit it - they will have to, eventually. Currently from feedbacks of other people it is clear that ONI is getting worse and worse. Without proper refinement game goes ?dead?, no, not dead, but worse. Currently ONI needs refinement of existing systems, not more content.

[Master Miner]

1 hour ago, vovik said:

 just don`t want to admit it

Their manager made them sign "I won't never admit nothing"

Things are usually not what they seem at the first glance.

Seriously, let's give them some time and encourage them not to be forced to change something because one part of the forum members (or, worse, some youtubers) call for specific changes, but to think about all of the suggestions and chose a logical development path and solutions which they can stand behind and defend with good arguments.

There are very good suggestions to find in the forum, especially regarding dupe's professions and task scheduling.

One advice I have for devs / staff is - when you make some changes, especially if they are controversial, then write few sentences to explain why you have decided as you did. This will not only help to avoid misunderstandings, but will also show that you care about the players and the community that supports you.

Simple example: you find time to "nerf" the steam turbine, but you don't fix the "drip cooling" bug - write one sentence to explain why.

On the other side, I'd suggest to the community here on the forum to ask developers / mods / staff that "why" questions - perhaps to have a moderated Q/A forum section.

[vovik]

I did not take my suggestions from youtube, i see stuf that is wrong in different places in game and enforcing strict boundaries on players, even very strict, i personally didnt like the idea of getting dupes slow as heck and maximum bonus being low as heck.. and training working like dupes dont remember or get rid of muscles or cardio or forget how to operate in one go... thankfully it was fixed. Only thing i want is refining base systems so they dont enforce so strict boundaries, this is not how non-hardcore and simulation games work.