Can dupes moving horizontially move faster if there is a square between the firepole and the ladder?

[m4bwav]

What's the optimal design for a high horizontal traffic firepole area?

Should one put the firepole and ladder right next to each other, or should there be a tile or something else?

Question on Arqade

[martosss]

So you're too lazy to test it yourself and you post a question so we test it for you?

Alright, since it's a  fun question, let's test it:

• All dupes are with athletics 0, so no cheating!
• Doors before the toggle set permissions so dupes don't toggle others' doors - no calling friends for help!
• Let's give them an equal start:
  • Ready!
  • Set!
  • GO!

Here is the situation after a few moves, notice I added some doors with restrictions, because some dupes DECIDED TO CLIMB UP/DOWN(I was watching the navigation for each of them)

At this point cut ladders and cut poles STILL decided to climb down, so I paused it to analyze the situation. The distance so far should be enough to draw conclusions. As you can see

1. Tiles are the fastest(obviously). Substituting with metal tiles will give you even faster run speed.
2. cut ladders/poles are as fast as tiles(excluding the 25% run speed bonus)(~80% tile speed)*
3. distant ladders/poles - same speed regardless if distant cut/uncut(so better use uncut)(~60% tile speed)
   • a bit slower than cut ladders/poles
   • a lot faster than ladders/poles**
4. ladders/poles are the slowest!(33.3% tile speed)***

Remarks:

1. *Cut ladders/poles will slow down vertical movement(especially poles), so they're not a perfect solution
2. **Distant ladders/poles might be a bit faster, however, they waste 2 vertical tiles of space. What that means is:
   • You need x3 more space for this setup.
   • You travel x3 more x50% faster(compared to (4)), or x3 more ~25% slower(compared to (2))
3. ***Compare how many "useful tiles" are passed - cut/uncut ladders/poles passed 9 useful tiles, whereas distant cut/uncut passed only 3. That means you could have used those 6 extra tiles(the "free" tiles that are around the distant poles/ladders) for something useful(e.g. toilets/showers) and you would have still traveled the same distance, even more in the case of uncut ladders.

As a conclusion, the best ladder/pole combo seems to be something like uncut poles + cut ladders right next to them. You need only 1 cut, so that there is a ladder next to the tile and no ladder above it. That way dupes that walk horizontally walk ON the ladder without mounting it. Here's a picture:

Note that decor considerations aren't included in those calculations. If you consider decor while climbing up/down, then it makes sense to separate ladders and poles and have decor stuff around them.

Here's an alternative with a distant pole that might be better for decor. Here you can even add a tile between the pole and ladder and put statues. The idea is that the ladder decor doesn't influence the pole flight and the pole decor  doesn't influence the ladder climbing - isolation helps!

And in case you're wondering about vertical movement, here's cut vs uncut ladders. It's basically 50% climb speed for 50% ladders, so each missing ladder reduces climb speed:

Here's pole mechanics - bottom doesn't matter(so make it 1 tile high - less material, normal horizontal traveling), top should be 1 tile above floor for better results

 

TL;DR;

 

Since people don't like reading the whole thread, I'm gonna copy-paste the best result that I came up with from a post below - it gives ~100% vertical (-1 ladder) and ~100% horizontal (- going around for bottom right - top right side) movement + space for decor/algae deoxydyzers/valves:

On the right is what I'm currently trying out as a consequence, seems to be working pretty well, considering there's ~250 decor along the ladders.

[Scorpio King]

@martosss At his science again. Thanks, that was interesting.

[Oozinator]

36 minutes ago, martosss said:

So you're too lazy

 

Nice job!

[martosss]

1 minute ago, Scorpio King said:

@martosss At his science again. Thanks, that was interesting.

Look at the setup I'm using - dupes locked behind a door, the door suddenly opens and dupes start running. It's not science, it's dupe(horse) racing! Place your bets everybody! We even have obstacles on our course(doors).

[m4bwav]

Thanks for the testing and screenshots!

I was motivated enough to type the question, but its hard to stop playing once you get a good colony!

[martosss]

Here's a sample of what the decor idea could look like. The idea is to have relatively nice decor around the ladders, since that takes a long time to climb up, so dupes should feel good while climbing it. Notice the massage tables? That's right, they're missing! I have only 1 scientist dupe at 12 morale, who has actually 7, but he's still OK(70% stress - not that bad). All others are at 0. And I haven't even done proper decor yet - the paintings/statues are blank. Now I can add another statue and possibly a flower on the right side of the fire pole and it's complete.

I'd say for an early game that should be ok - this is around Cycle 15.

[Miravlix]

You always need a ladder close to a pole to avoid dupes trying to climb up poles.

 

The last picture use tiles right against the pole, but didn't you say the speed is equal if you leave space, so it should always be be tile-space-pole?

 

What about tile stairs? I hate that a base get designed so critters can't travel around them, so I added in critter stairs, but even with ladders on both sides of the two tile wide critter stair area, the will use the critter stair.

 

Example of a tile stair:

 

TIle-Space

Space-Space

Space-Tile

 

Repeat sequence to get the wanted height.

 

You can use this type of stair when digging the world, instead of ladders.

[martosss]

1 hour ago, Miravlix said:

The last picture use tiles right against the pole, but didn't you say the speed is equal if you leave space, so it should always be be tile-space-pole?

You're right, I'm guilty!

Spoiler

Here is another setup that partially works. On the left - you're using the space around the poles and dupes are jumping horizontally. However, you NEED to cut the poles in the way I've shown. In the case of uncut pole(look right), dupes throw a lazy look at those tiles below and think of themselves "Hey, I'm not a race horse, why do I have to be efficient? I'll just go down like a moron and take the long and relaxing way through the tiles".

If you put ladders instead of tiles, that solves the issue partially, but you can't build on ladders, so that doesn't work

The result - you can see the pathing lines. See the "W" pathing shape? Yea, that's also what happened in my original experiment with the uncut poles - my dupe wanted to climp UP. Watch:

Talk about efficiency... Banhi ... why don't you at least climb down, it's faster!... That's why I added that door after the first ladder in the experiment - to forbid Banhi from going to the upper/lower corridors. That seemed to solve the issue for the whole corridor for some reason.

Anyways, my point is that I want to use the space around the pole somehow. For now leaving it empty or having valves/useless stuff there seems to be the only way. However, I want to have some statues, since that will boost decor quite a lot(and valves will hurt it!). Unfortunately, current pathing does not allow that without cutting the pole. And that cut means that downwards traveling dupes will stop at each floor to "climb down", which effectively slows them down .... A LOT

See Rowan flying down on the left there? "+75% run speed", sounds nice, but it's not valid in the ends! The jumping off is slowing them with 10 tiles. The right picture shows a clear example with just 1 missing fire pole tile(0 athletics on both dupes on the right!). The conclusion - cutting firepoles leads to MUCH slower decent and seasoned mountaineers. Now imagine a -5 athletics atmo suit dupe going down the left most fire pole - heart attack!

Anyways, after some playing around, here's the only way that I found that should be working ... AND IT STILL DOESN'T:

Do you see the "square" in the pathing - yea, that's exactly what happens, our cute Ellie goes up the ladder(mounts it), then jumps right, then again jumps right. Removing the top ladder forces her to jump straight right, but then she can't climb up, so that's a no-go!

So, @Miravlix, I'm sorry to say, but I didn't test it enough - after further dupe-racing, the results are obvious - that setup also doesn't work, even without the tiles. The pathing is just one more reason why I'd prefer the close ladder-pole. However, here's a compromise that you might consider:

OK, after some more dupe racing, here's the solution to our ladder climbing issue - add ONLY 1 TILE in the middle on the side of the ladder!

The dupe jumps horizontally both ways, but there's 1 tile next to the ladder, so the dupe can't climb and jump! Then you can build a tile on the right, place statues/other_stuff and then deconstruct it to fully utilize the space.

That also achieves ~OK results when a dupe tries going diagonally to the upper/lower floors - it still uses the tile in the bottom right diagonal direction(instead of jumping to the pole), but I seriously don't know how to solve that. Top right diagonal direction is OK - it uses ladder => pole=> jump. Another problem might be if the dupe needs to go from the bottom right to the top right - then it has to travel back to the ladder first, but there isn't an easier way, is there?

So there you have it - ladder-pole 2.0.

1 hour ago, Miravlix said:

What about tile stairs? I hate that a base get designed so critters can't travel around them, so I added in critter stairs, but even with ladders on both sides of the two tile wide critter stair area, the will use the critter stair.

TIle-Space

Space-Space

Space-Tile

As I've shown above, climbing slows dupes down 50%, so that setup will work, but it's x2 slower than using a non-cut ladder going up-down