New Priority system is a mess

[Sebastiangperez]

Im trying to build a Natural Gas power plant , and they refuse to go and build , i have 8 dupes ... pathfinder missing ... is a mess ...

Priority or Urgency dont work with priorities ... anyway , the game is really unbalanced.

[Coolthulhu]

The new priority system takes some extra skill to use properly, but it's generally more efficient than the old one when you configure it properly.

With the old one, you couldn't do things like prioritizing farming jobs for farmers while still allowing them for idlers, having sweepers who also do other things when necessary, allowing everyone to sweep to avoid idling but have noodle armers keep it to minimum.

If you put anything on high priority but kept building on normal, it's your fault that things aren't getting done. Put building on high priority for one or two dupes.

[Cheet4h]

36 minutes ago, Sebastiangperez said:

Im trying to build a Natural Gas power plant , and they refuse to go and build , i have 8 dupes ... pathfinder missing ... is a mess ...

Priority or Urgency dont work with priorities ... anyway , the game is really unbalanced.

Care to upload a screenshot of your priority settings?

If you gave one of your dupes the architect job and didn't change any priority settings manually, they should prioritize building the natural gas power plant, unless the way is blocked, you don't have the materials for the job or the build site is blocked by a tile which you can't mine yet due to not having a good miner.

In the new system dupes will always look for the tasks with their highest priority first, and then take the errand with the highest urgency which is closest to them.

If you do not want your dupes to prioritize the errands which belong to their chosen job and treat all errands with the same priority, uncheck the automatic priority setting in the jobs screen, then set all priorities for all dupes to "normal". This should then behave the same as in the previous versions. Although I heavily recommend trying the new priority system - it takes away a lot of tedium that was inherent to the old system, like manually turning off supply and tidy orders every time you want a construction site built, but not focused by the whole colony, and allows you to better fine-tune which dupes should work which jobs at which time.

[QuQuasar]

It may be a result of having played both Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld, but I found the new system to be glorious. With farmers farming, builders building and diggers digging, my early game has never gone so smoothly. And that's on fatalistic/miserable settings.
         
The one suggestion I would have for the priority system is an "AAARGH!" level urgency, for stuff that has to be done *now* and you're not at all picky who does it. There are times during the early game hat dance when I might not have anyone prioritizing digging but need to dig out an entombed dupe, or when I don't have any architects available but need to plug a hole in the water vat. The few seconds it takes to realise nobody is moving to do the job can be very costly.
         
Perhaps "Red Alert" could serve this purpose? Make everybody ignore personal prioritizations and simply go by urgency and distance?

[BlueLance]

8 hours ago, Sebastiangperez said:

Im trying to build a Natural Gas power plant , and they refuse to go and build , i have 8 dupes ... pathfinder missing ... is a mess ...

Priority or Urgency dont work with priorities ... anyway , the game is really unbalanced.

How the new system works, which you can disable in the Jobs tab on the top right, is that there is the normal priority system going from left to right, which you can set higher priorities per job per dupe (Which is nice) but the Wrench priority beats all others and this is probably where the problems come in. Lets say you have a Gofer, his job is to supply, so as long as there is a job somewhere in the map which needs a supply, he will ignore every single build, dig, construct order even if you set it at priority 9, because that is priority 9 of those jobs. Not Supply which is what the gofer looks at first.

So if you are struggling, turn it off to get the old system back, but like Coolthulu mentioned, this system but stops a lot of time wasting as now the Gofer will supply things which means he is more efficient, the miner will be the first to do digs etc. meaning other dupes waste less time.

[chemie]

4 hours ago, BlueLance said:

How the new system works, which you can disable in the Jobs tab on the top right, is that there is the normal priority system going from left to right, which you can set higher priorities per job per dupe (Which is nice) but the Wrench priority beats all others and this is probably where the problems come in. Lets say you have a Gofer, his job is to supply, so as long as there is a job somewhere in the map which needs a supply, he will ignore every single build, dig, construct order even if you set it at priority 9, because that is priority 9 of those jobs. Not Supply which is what the gofer looks at first.

So if you are struggling, turn it off to get the old system back, but like Coolthulu mentioned, this system but stops a lot of time wasting as now the Gofer will supply things which means he is more efficient, the miner will be the first to do digs etc. meaning other dupes waste less time.

Isnt it more efficient if a single dups delivers, digs, and builds a single tile? (Alk at the same time)

[BlueLance]

4 minutes ago, chemie said:

Isnt it more efficient if a single dups delivers, digs, and builds a single tile? (Alk at the same time)

Indeed, usually a dupe who is bulding tiles will grab resources that are next to him and mine the next tile if it is a tile they can mine. They seem to have improved this quite a bit, but other times I will find my supply dupes filling in the orders for construction jobs and then construction begins. It doesnt seem consistent yet, but heck I am glad dupes dont travel 3 centuries to get a resource each time now.

[Sebastiangperez]

12 hours ago, Cheet4h said:

Care to upload a screenshot of your priority settings?

If you gave one of your dupes the architect job and didn't change any priority settings manually, they should prioritize building the natural gas power plant, unless the way is blocked, you don't have the materials for the job or the build site is blocked by a tile which you can't mine yet due to not having a good miner.

In the new system dupes will always look for the tasks with their highest priority first, and then take the errand with the highest urgency which is closest to them.

If you do not want your dupes to prioritize the errands which belong to their chosen job and treat all errands with the same priority, uncheck the automatic priority setting in the jobs screen, then set all priorities for all dupes to "normal". This should then behave the same as in the previous versions. Although I heavily recommend trying the new priority system - it takes away a lot of tedium that was inherent to the old system, like manually turning off supply and tidy orders every time you want a construction site built, but not focused by the whole colony, and allows you to better fine-tune which dupes should work which jobs at which time.

I put everything on neutral , de Dash ( - ) and only builders build , farmers farm , etc etc with maximum priority. 

have a lot of Resources, and Urgent to 9 ... and still dont work. 

I think that is very important create every version of your save games so you back to late game and change the way that you make some things , also, can be a problem when you loading the game , and this dont work like the first time you play ? 

 

 

[Lifegrow]

14 hours ago, Sebastiangperez said:

Im trying to build a Natural Gas power plant , and they refuse to go and build , i have 8 dupes ... pathfinder missing ... is a mess ...

Priority or Urgency dont work with priorities ... anyway , the game is really unbalanced.

Without a screenshot, i'm going to assume this was either A) your base is a horrible panicky mess, or B) you done goofed and forgot a piece of ladder somewhere  (it's nearly always "B" for me, no matter how much I curse at the game )

Also - if you're ever struggling, always try a quick save/load first. Pre-releases are normally filled with dupe-lockup scenarios, and a reload can often fix it..

[TehPlayer14]

18 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

Without a screenshot, i'm going to assume this was either A) your base is a horrible panicky mess, or B) you done goofed and forgot a piece of ladder somewhere  (it's nearly always "B" for me, no matter how much I curse at the game )

Also - if you're ever struggling, always try a quick save/load first. Pre-releases are normally filled with dupe-lockup scenarios, and a reload can often fix it..

Yeah it's either they have something set on high priority or they can't reach it, I've had the same when I had 4 goofers they weren't going to go to a task of urgency of 9 instead they filled the storage compactors with stuff with urgency of 2 so

[Lifegrow]

5 minutes ago, TehPlayer14 said:

instead they filled the storage compactors with stuff with urgency of 2 so

Just to add to this - compactors own priority setting completely overwrites your "sweep command" priority setting.

A compactor set to priority 9, and a priority 1 sweep command will force a priority 9 sweep - not sure about pre-release, but that's how it's been for a while.

[Giltirn]

Perhaps a dev could weigh in on the possibility of added a menu option to toggle between job>task priority and task priority>job sorting of the job list? I would personally prefer the latter as the former makes it very hard to deal with emergency jobs and essential maintenance tasks. For instance, I consider it absolutely 100% essential that the algae deoxydizer is filled immediately, but I don't want to have a dedicated hauler as I try to keep my colonies small. I just want anyone to do this task when it needs doing with top priority. However it seems that some people prefer the former, and perhaps it would be the more natural choice for larger colonies.

[PhailRaptor]

21 minutes ago, Giltirn said:

Perhaps a dev could weigh in...

Klei has a very strict non-interference policy with regards to all forms of player discussion.  The only place they will communicate with the players is through the preview streams.

[Giltirn]

17 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

Klei has a very strict non-interference policy with regards to all forms of player discussion.  The only place they will communicate with the players is through the preview streams.

Interesting... I'm used to EA games devs being quite closely involved with their communities. Presumably they do read the feedback though?

[JoeW]

38 minutes ago, PhailRaptor said:

Klei has a very strict non-interference policy with regards to all forms of player discussion.  The only place they will communicate with the players is through the preview streams.

Yeah - that's not entirely true: https://forums.kleientertainment.com/discover/68/

But we tend not to jump into discussions because our involvement stops a productive conversation - 

Quote

Developer responses tend to end conversation and shape them in a way that is not constructive to providing feedback. Valid opinions that are against what we believe (or would have posted) are completely shut down by other players who reiterate our posts and the community doesn't get to have that conversation. 

What you will find instead is that we respond to player feedback by addressing it either in official posts we make, or in the game content itself. When we do post directly it's to clarify something we aren't looking for feedback on.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/322330/discussions/0/1482109512302195013/?ctp=2#c1482109512305233314

 

[wachunga]

Personally I think both dupes and tasks should have a priority that is then summed to determine what a dupe does next. Having the dupe priority trump task urgency gives you more control over individual dupes, but takes control away from individual tasks. While having task urgency trump dupe priority is the opposite. Some people really care about having "miners" mine and "farmers" farm and "suppliers" supply. Others don't give a hoot on who does what and instead really care about what things get done. Both camps will never be satisfied with a priority before urgency or vice versa approach. For example, making it so miners get a +0/+1/+2/+3 priority to mining tasks means they will mostly mine but can still be relied on to do other ASAP tasks or "somewhat important" tasks over "unimportant blueprint" mining.

[Giltirn]

58 minutes ago, wachunga said:

Personally I think both dupes and tasks should have a priority that is then summed to determine what a dupe does next. Having the dupe priority trump task urgency gives you more control over individual dupes, but takes control away from individual tasks. While having task urgency trump dupe priority is the opposite. Some people really care about having "miners" mine and "farmers" farm and "suppliers" supply. Others don't give a hoot on who does what and instead really care about what things get done. Both camps will never be satisfied with a priority before urgency or vice versa approach. For example, making it so miners get a +0/+1/+2/+3 priority to mining tasks means they will mostly mine but can still be relied on to do other ASAP tasks or "somewhat important" tasks over "unimportant blueprint" mining.

I don't think that would solve the problem that I and others have with the new system in Rancher: specifically that one would naturally set up dupe priorities to favor the activities associated with their job, or those that get a buff due to traits just like in Rimworld. But the result is that important, everyday tasks don't get done.

My first Rancher game, I set one dupe to prioritize mining and construction, one to farming and cooking and the other to research. Of course there is always research to do, and always mining/construction, and always farming/cooking. I was delighted that lots of things were getting done in parallel and was very happy with the new system. Then I had a minor fiasco as all my dupes starting peeing all over the floor, after which I discovered that nobody had emptied the toilet. To get this to actually happen I had two choices: cancel all my building/farming/cooking/research tasks so it finally reaches the top of the list, or else temporarily raise the priority of tidy (or supply?) to get it done, both of which are fiddly and temporary fixes. After cleaning the toilets things returned to normal for a very short time before another fiasco - nobody had filled the deoxydizer and the oxygen was dropping dangerously low. More micro to get this done. Shortly after I ran out of power because operating the hamster wheels was not being performed and nobody was supplying the coal generator. At this point I tried inverting the system so that supply, tidy and operate were all equally max priority, and the 'optional' tasks like construction, digging and research were then ordered as I would want them. All went fine for a while but then one of my dupes got stuck and suffocated because my builder was busy supplying/tidying/operating and my other dupes were faffing around with their own favorite tasks. At this point I simply turned off the new feature and went back to the old task prioritization where at least I have some semblance of control!

[Stoof]

1 hour ago, Giltirn said:

My first Rancher game, I set one dupe to prioritize mining and construction, one to farming and cooking and the other to research. Of course there is always research to do, and always mining/construction, and always farming/cooking. I was delighted that lots of things were getting done in parallel and was very happy with the new system. Then I had a minor fiasco as all my dupes starting peeing all over the floor, after which I discovered that nobody had emptied the toilet. To get this to actually happen I had two choices: cancel all my building/farming/cooking/research tasks so it finally reaches the top of the list, or else temporarily raise the priority of tidy (or supply?) to get it done, both of which are fiddly and temporary fixes. After cleaning the toilets things returned to normal for a very short time before another fiasco - nobody had filled the deoxydizer and the oxygen was dropping dangerously low. More micro to get this done. Shortly after I ran out of power because operating the hamster wheels was not being performed and nobody was supplying the coal generator. At this point I tried inverting the system so that supply, tidy and operate were all equally max priority, and the 'optional' tasks like construction, digging and research were then ordered as I would want them. All went fine for a while but then one of my dupes got stuck and suffocated because my builder was busy supplying/tidying/operating and my other dupes were faffing around with their own favorite tasks. At this point I simply turned off the new feature and went back to the old task prioritization where at least I have some semblance of control!

I was not the biggest fan of the new system though I have come somewhat round. For early/small colonies you do need a dedicated supplier and a high priority operator. I believe bringing stuff to storage compactors counts as supply so setting them as 4 somewhat helps. What we really need is an emergency drop everything and do this now urgency setting for those times when a dupe gets stuck or when you need to mop up pee but don't want to reprioritize tidy tasks. Also eventually you have to turn off job auto prioritization if for no other reason than you have mastered the dupes primary focus job and wish to start levelling secondary focus jobs.

[Giltirn]

2 minutes ago, Stoof said:

I was not the biggest fan of the new system though I have come somewhat round. For early/small colonies you do need a dedicated supplier and a high priority operator. I believe bringing stuff to storage compactors counts as supply so setting them as 4 somewhat helps. What we really need is an emergency drop everything and do this now urgency setting for those times when a dupe gets stuck or when you need to mop up pee but don't want to reprioritize tidy tasks. Also eventually you have to turn off job auto prioritization if for no other reason than you have mastered the dupes primary focus job and wish to start levelling secondary focus jobs.

I definitely agree that there needs to be an emergency action feature. I harp on about Rimworld a lot but I have over 300 hours in that game - in said game you can select a colonist and force them to perform an action; in the latest update you can queue multiple actions. For me this is invaluable as it gives you direct control when you need it. At the beginning I tend to use it relatively often when there are many many tasks to perform and the priority system doesn't have the granularity to allow me to emphasize one particular task. Later on in the game it becomes used less and less as the colony settles down and I can realistically specialize.

[Mariilyn]

On 15/03/2018 at 10:19 PM, wachunga said:

For example, making it so miners get a +0/+1/+2/+3 priority to mining tasks means they will mostly mine but can still be relied on to do other ASAP tasks or "somewhat important" tasks over "unimportant blueprint" mining.

What comes to my mind with such a system is that it would be difficult, when planning who does what, to keep track of the many +X bonuses applied on top of the standard 9 urgency levels. And we would still have the problem, to a lesser degree, of dupes not prioritizing the errands they are supposed to.

[Cheet4h]

32 minutes ago, Stoof said:

we really need is an emergency drop everything and do this now urgency setting for those times when a dupe gets stuck or when you need to mop up pee but don't want to reprioritize tidy tasks

 

25 minutes ago, Giltirn said:

I harp on about Rimworld a lot but I have over 300 hours in that game - in said game you can select a colonist and force them to perform an action

I often see the the comparison with RimWorld, and I agree that the priority system, which works similar to that of RimWorld, is pretty good. Combined with the urgency system, we have even more control about which tasks get done, unlike RimWorld, where some tasks seem to have some kind of internal priorization (e.g. if there's a cooking and a butchering job available, a pawn with the cooking group prioritized will always go cook instead of butchering). 

That said, the forcing of manual tasks is really missing here in ONI. I can see three possible solutions for this:

1) Add a "Do this now" order to dupes, similar to the "Move here" order

2) Add a "Emergency" urgency, which will always override priorities (possibly even the "disabled" priority? Not sure if this would be good)

3) Change the "Emergency" mode to disable prioritization - during emergency, dupes will only consider urgency for choosing errands.

[wachunga]

4 hours ago, Giltirn said:

I don't think that would solve the problem that I and others have with the new system in Rancher: specifically that one would naturally set up dupe priorities to favor the activities associated with their job, or those that get a buff due to traits just like in Rimworld. But the result is that important, everyday tasks don't get done.

Then I had a minor fiasco as all my dupes starting peeing all over the floor, after which I discovered that nobody had emptied the toilet.

All went fine for a while but then one of my dupes got stuck and suffocated because my builder was busy supplying/tidying/operating and my other dupes were faffing around with their own favorite tasks. 

In my world, give those important tasks a high urgency of 7. Leave your mining tasks at 5 but give you miner a +1 in mining. So when the toilet needs to be emptied, your miner will go do it because 7>5+1. But when those things don't need to get done, the miner will focus on mining because 5+1>5(every other non urgent task).

In the emergency situations, make building that ladder a 9 urgency and everyone will come help because 9>5+1 or 5+3 or 7+1 or whatever.

 

2 hours ago, Mariilyn said:

What comes to my mind with such a system is that it would be difficult, when planning who does what, to keep track of the many +X bonuses applied on top of the standard 9 urgency levels. And we would still have the problem, to a lesser degree, of dupes not prioritizing the errands they are supposed to.

It would only be as complicated as the player chooses to make it. As a default, say having a job gives the dupe a +1 in that job. So as in the above example, a miner will preferentially mine except when there are high urgency tasks to do. If you have a ton of dupes you want to highly specialize, give them +3s and they will rarely do anything else. It provides a smooth gradient between the current "dupes don't care what their job is, aside from equal urgency" and the preview "dupes care about their jobs to an absurd degree". It would give the player the choice where to play in that gradient.

[BlueLance]

An easier option would be have the system as it currently is but at the end on the 1-9 priorities, have a symbol which when toggles forces dupes to do this even if their job has a higher priority, essentially a job override.

This would stop dupes doing their job constantly and help you get something done quickly, but it will also mean you are not having to remember to toggle something on/off later on, assume you forget then your dupes will never focus on their job and other things will go downhill from there.

[goboking]

The new system is fine, in my humble opinion.  It's not my personal preference - I would rather urgency trump priority instead of the inverse - but that doesn't make this a bad system.  I will say this, though, I'm having a really difficult time getting anyone to disable buildings in a timely manner.  Having to reject new dupes every three cycles gets old after a while.

[BlueLance]

44 minutes ago, goboking said:

I will say this, though, I'm having a really difficult time getting anyone to disable buildings in a timely manner.

I literally cannot get dupes to disable a building, they all remain idle so it may be a bug?