Schedule Strategies

[Zarquan]

My thinking is it is best when your schedule has bath time, then break time, then sleep.  I usually go with 8 shifts, each of which shift 3 hours (squares) for all standard dupes, or 12 shifts, with 2 hours shifting.  I make sure the early birds and night owls sleep in the middle of the day.  I then evenly distribute the dupes between the shifts.

I also use schedules to make sure loud sleepers are always away from everyone else in their shift, making their negative trait meaningless.

However, I also think it is appropriate for narcoleptic dupes to have less sleep time since they sleep on the job and need less anyway.

I also use 3 hours break time for the small morale boost.

Any thoughts?

[Mike072428]

I normally have shifts composed of four blocks of downtime followed by one block of sleep. I also keep teams of people with similar jobs with a schedule offset such that there is always at least one team awake and productive (see schedule 2 and 4.), those shifts belong to 2 gofers and 2 miners in each team.

The reason I don't give them bathtime and give them just one block of sleep is that they use the restroom when their downtime starts and that once they go to bed they keep on sleeping past the sleep block until their stamina reaches 100%.

[Zarquan]

10 hours ago, Mike072428 said:

I normally have shifts composed of four blocks of downtime followed by one block of sleep. I also keep teams of people with similar jobs with a schedule offset such that there is always at least one team awake and productive (see schedule 2 and 4.), those shifts belong to 2 gofers and 2 miners in each team.

The reason I don't give them bathtime and give them just one block of sleep is that they use the restroom when their downtime starts and that once they go to bed they keep on sleeping past the sleep block until their stamina reaches 100%.

Good point, bath time is irrelevant.  I will remove it from my schedules for the +1 morale.

I tried 1 hour sleeping, but they kept getting exhausted and falling asleep on the job.  But I have also seen them over sleep, so I wasn't sure what was happening.  I gave them more sleep time and that fixed it.  This was an early game, they were easily reaching their beds.

[Saturnus]

Generally it's best to have at least two dupes share a shift so you're pretty much guaranteed they'll get some kind of socialization or other bonus. Also, if you only have two dupes on each separate shift there's no need for massive bathrooms since only two can go to the bathroom at the same time saving a ton of base real estate.

[Sasza22]

56 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

bath time is irrelevant

Bathtime is only relevant if you want to optimize work time for low expectation dupes. If you can satisfy their needs with other means you can just leave one downtime block for food and one for bath so he will continue working during bathtime if he has no need to pee.

[Zarquan]

1 minute ago, Sasza22 said:

Bathtime is only relevant if you want to optimize work time for low expectation dupes. If you can satisfy their needs with other means you can just leave one downtime block for food and one for bath so he will continue working during bathtime if he has no need to pee.

I find myself needing the morale because I want to have a tenured scientist to analyze my geysers.  I play on fatalistic and high morale stress, so my dupes have no tolerance for low morale. 

[Sasza22]

19 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I find myself needing the morale because I want to have a tenured scientist to analyze my geysers.

I end putting my scientist on a different schedule so he gets to use the espresso machine whiule everybody elase is still working as well as giving him different food permissions. Last base i had 3 tiers of dupes with 8, 12 and 20 expectation respectively. The lowes one was still eating meal lice while the top was only getting stuffed berries and BBQ (the top was 1 dupe for a long tme).

[zergologist]

You know, dupes will auto eat when starving, and that doesn't happen for four cycles, so you could even have dupes with no bath time or downtime because they will eat when starving (<1000kcals) and go use the lavatrines when their bladder is full

[Zarquan]

1 hour ago, zergologist said:

You know, dupes will auto eat when starving, and that doesn't happen for four cycles, so you could even have dupes with no bath time or downtime because they will eat when starving (<1000kcals) and go use the lavatrines when their bladder is full

Yes, but then we are basically back to where we were before EU, which had a lot less control over the dupe's schedules and they keep dropping things everywhere.  Plus, I need the morale.

[The Plum Gate]

I usually limit the number of dupes per shift on a ratio according to available restrooms ( toilets ).

The default schedule is problematic in the latter regard - about half the dupes on the schedule would end up eating halfway into the night.. so I basically moved bath time in front down time. 

I have yet to get a shower set up but I have two shifts for my dupes where the only alteration is the bathtime.

In another base, I have night owls on a sleeping at noon schedule and this has worked wonders for latrines that usually get left germy or out of order after the main workforce has eaten and gone to sleep.

I'll have to play around with my schedules a little more - but I like what they've done here - even if isn't absolute control, it still seems like strong suggestions as to what the dupes should be doing and when.

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I'd almost like to see an anything goes schedule - just ticking break time or bathroom time... and let the blocks be unpainted or unallocated (grey area time ) where the dupes are either in autonomous mode or retired..or whatever. Sort of like vacation mode or sick leave.... if each schedule block had a secondary shift, then such things as "weekends" could be implemented as a specified interval.

Such a thing could boost healing rates, improve morale, etc. I suppose, in the mean time, I could just paint an entire schedule with break time, wash time, and sleep.