filtration medium for sieves

[Craigjw]

I have several water sieves, each one has a storage box full of sand right next to it, so why do my dupes travel all the way up to the surface to pick up regolith at 300c to refill the water sieves?  I even have an automation arm covering the seive and box.

The containers have a default priority of 5.

[crypticorb]

I've found this same problem with a number of other structures, coal generators is the first to mind. Auto-sweepers refuse to refill a coal generator, even if coal is readily available in range, and dupes will get coal from wherever is most plentiful, rather than closest.

[Smithe37]

1 minute ago, crypticorb said:

I've found this same problem with a number of other structures, coal generators is the first to mind. Auto-sweepers refuse to refill a coal generator, even if coal is readily available in range, and dupes will get coal from wherever is most plentiful, rather than closest.

My solution is to use a conveyor loader into the coal generator room and then isolate the room. That way dupes can't access it and the sweepers get the job

[crypticorb]

5 minutes ago, Smithe37 said:

My solution is to use a conveyor loader into the coal generator room and then isolate the room. That way dupes can't access it and the sweepers get the job

Nope, doesn't work. Sweepers will not refuel coal generators, at all. I just tested it and they simply will not touch the generator, even with coal sitting in a container, in a shipping receptacle, and sitting on the ground. Priorities made zero difference.

[Oni Noob]

2 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

Nope, doesn't work. Sweepers will not refuel coal generators, at all. I just tested it and they simply will not touch the generator, even with coal sitting in a container, in a shipping receptacle, and sitting on the ground. Priorities made zero difference.

This is weird before you can resupply coal to coal generator using auto-sweeper

[Craigjw]

I placed a sweeper in my coal generator room a while back and am reasonably sure that it refilled the coal generator as soon as it was powered up, however, I just tested it now and the sweeper refuses to do anything.

[Lali-Lop]

Does setting the "refill below __%" bar on the generators to 100% get it to work?

[Craigjw]

2 minutes ago, Lali-Lop said:

Does setting the "refill below __%" bar on the generators to 100% get it to work?

You mean the "Battery Recharge Threshold"?  I tried this and nothing also.  I'm really not sure what this bar does to be fair, as the generator needs an automation input from a battery to switch it on and off.

[Lali-Lop]

Actually, the bar tells your dupes when to refill the generator based on the battery level.  Not when to turn it off.  I don't really see the point of it, though.

I searched in the forums and found other people have gotten it to work recently, although it seems to load the generators sporadically instead of immediately.

 

[crypticorb]

10 minutes ago, Lali-Lop said:

Actually, the bar tells your dupes when to refill the generator based on the battery level.  Not when to turn it off.  I don't really see the point of it, though.

The point of the refill % setting is to change when a dupe will refill it, based on battery percentage, as you said. This seems obvious, but it functions exactly like the manual generator, a dupe will only supply the generator with its power source when that threshold is reached. This allows players to use coal generators (and manual generators) as an emergency backup power, to only kick on when the batteries reach a critical level.

[Lali-Lop]

Just now, crypticorb said:

The point of the refill % setting is to change when a dupe will refill it, based on battery percentage, as you said. This seems obvious, but it functions exactly like the manual generator, a dupe will only supply the generator with its power source when that threshold is reached. This allows players to use coal generators (and manual generators) as an emergency backup power, to only kick on when the batteries reach a critical level.

Ah, I see.  I've never built huge power-hungry systems, so I understand now how it would be useful for that.  Thanks for explaining.

[crypticorb]

1 hour ago, Craigjw said:

I have several water sieves, each one has a storage box full of sand right next to it, so why do my dupes travel all the way up to the surface to pick up regolith at 300c to refill the water sieves?  I even have an automation arm covering the seive and box.

The containers have a default priority of 5.

Not sure why you're having trouble getting the auto-sweeper to function, I just ran a test and with an extremely low priority sieve covered by a sweeper it will fill it just fine. As for why dupes prefer regolith from the surface over local materials, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On other news, I got the coal generators to work with auto-sweeping. Sorta. It's very unpredictable, as the auto-sweeper only filled the generators when the generators were enabled by my automation, and the batteries were below the generator setting threshold. Even then it was sporadic, it didn't fill all 3 within range, only two of them were filled.

[cremisi]

4 hours ago, Craigjw said:

I have several water sieves, each one has a storage box full of sand right next to it, so why do my dupes travel all the way up to the surface to pick up regolith at 300c to refill the water sieves?  I even have an automation arm covering the seive and box.

The containers have a default priority of 5.

Dupes errands will always supersede auto-sweepers. So your dupes might not be doing much that they steal tasks from auto-sweepers.

As @Smithe37 said, it's best to disallow access for the dupes to supply filtration medium to the sieve by isolating the room or you can lower the priority of the water sieve.

 

As for the regolith being delivered, from my experience, dupes will always pick up the nearest material from their position (doesn't matter if there's a wall, as long as it's accessible) and deliver that wherever it's needed (no matter how far).

[Sasza22]

I had to put all metal on the ground or dupes refused to deliver it to construction sites. Then i got an endless loop of dupes picking up gold amlagam from the bottom of a long ladder and dropping it half way when losing breath. Since rocketry dupes don`t like to pick up from compactors and prefer to walk to the edge of the world instead. Sweepers worked fine for refueling coal generators for now. Is it broken on live or in the preview?

[Saturnus]

5 hours ago, crypticorb said:

Not sure why you're having trouble getting the auto-sweeper to function, I just ran a test and with an extremely low priority sieve covered by a sweeper it will fill it just fine. As for why dupes prefer regolith from the surface over local materials, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On other news, I got the coal generators to work with auto-sweeping. Sorta. It's very unpredictable, as the auto-sweeper only filled the generators when the generators were enabled by my automation, and the batteries were below the generator setting threshold. Even then it was sporadic, it didn't fill all 3 within range, only two of them were filled.

Let me take the last thing first. Curiously coal generators seems to be filled one tile left of the actual generator. If you have 3 coal generators and a sweeper dead center, the left most one will not be refilled. Move the sweeper one tile left of center and all 3 will be filled.

As for filling the coal generator and the refilling setting. Coal generator will only be refilled when they are active, so when they are disabled by automation no refilling can take place. The refilling setting tells the sweeper or dupes that the coal generator is only to be refilled if all batteries connected directly to the circuit the generator is on are below this threshold, or there's no batteries on the circuit at all. 100% should be the default when connected to a smart battery.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

6 hours ago, crypticorb said:

Nope, doesn't work. Sweepers will not refuel coal generators, at all. I just tested it and they simply will not touch the generator, even with coal sitting in a container, in a shipping receptacle, and sitting on the ground. Priorities made zero difference.

Either this is a bug, or there is something wrong with your set up. Make sure every part of the conveyer rail is set in ascending order of priority. So the receptable needs to have a lower priority than the coal generator.

Second, there's an important part on the goal generator: the siider for the refill treshold. Meaning the coal generator will not be refilled unless it drops below the set target, which by default is 50%.

I am not sure if a coal generator disabled by automation can get refilled.

Regarding the regolith: I had that happening as well. It's how duplicant pathing works. The game cannot recognize which duplicant is closest to the sieve and cannot calculate the total amount of travel needed for the whole -fetching filtration medium and delivering to the sieve- task. It will calculate travel time for each subtask separately. It will only assign the soonest available duplicant with the correct priority to the task. If that duplicant has pathing that makes it reach regolith quicker than sand, even if the sand is in a container right next to the sieve, it will go for the regolith.

A simple example would be an exosuit engineer close to the surface. However, things get more complicated when duplicants have to go through suit checkpoints. I myself have pathing issues where duplicants need to pass through one checkpoint to fetch a material, have to pass through the checkpoint in the reverse direction and then have to pass a wholy different checkpoint. The game is unable to reserve exosuits on multiple checkpoints if the duplicant has to pass through more than one. Often this ends up with the duplicant fetching the resource, the game tries to path a way to the next subtask, realizes no exosuits are available at the next checkpoint and so the duplicant will drop the material and go do something else.

Pathing in ONI needs to be reworked.

[Saturnus]

17 minutes ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

Meaning the coal generator will not be refilled unless it drops below the set target, which by default is 50%.

I am not sure if a coal generator disabled by automation can get refilled.

It's the battery fill rate that matters. If any battery directly connected to the circuit the coal generator is on is above the slider setting, the generator will not be refilled.

Disabling the generator by automation means it's disabled. Naturally the generator will not be filled when it's disabled.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Just now, Saturnus said:

As noted above. It's the battery fill rate that matters. If any battery connect to the coal generator, directly or indirectly, is above the slider setting, the generator will not be refilled.

As also noted above. Disabling the generator by automation means it's disabled. Naturally the generator will not be filled when it's disabled.

Sorry, I missed out on your post. Interesting, I always thought the slider on the coal generator was a refill treshold if the coal capacity dropped below a certain percentage. I think I got that wrong.