Anyone have suggestions to work around the storage proximity bug?

[Boxman_90]

Basically when a dupe starts an errand, it will choose the storage location for the entire duration of that errand based on the Dupe's location at the time it accepts the errand, instead of based on the errand's location. This gives some weird errors that waste giant amounts of time, as I also detailed here. For instance:

- Say I have an Errand in the far East of my base, like farming, which has dedicated storage built next to it with seeds and dirt. If the Dupe is in the center of the map when it decides to do the farming Errand, and I have no farming storage in the center but do have some in the far West that is slightly closer than the Eastern farm, the Dupe will run all the way to the East to get the supplies before running all the way to the West for the Errand. During the entire time, perfectly fine and full storage is sitting right next to the Errand. Prioritizing storage compactors does nothing.

- Say I am working in a far corner of my base, and need to move a storage compactor. I build a new one 3 tiles next to it, and drop the contents of the one to be destroyed. Dupes that get called to this Errand in the center of the map, to sweep the resources, will immediately choose a storage as close to them as possible (so in the center of the map), run to the resources and run back to the center of the map to store it there - instead of just putting it in the container right next  to it.

So the problem is that the storage location is based on the Dupe's initial location when assigned the Errand, and not on where the actual Errand takes place. Anybody know of a clever workaround for this?

Another problem with this is that for some Errands, I want specific resources to be used, for instance temperature wise. When I'm farming Sleet Wheat, farm needs to be cold so I build cold storage right next to it. But then the Dupe brings hot dirt from the center of the base which not only wastes time, but hurts growth as the plants overheat.

[Yunru]

Trap them in the room such that they have to cancel and restart their errand. Since they're the only one that can do it, they should re-prioritise the nearest storage?

[DMFan79]

2 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Trap them in the room such that they have to cancel and restart their errand. Since they're the only one that can do it, they should re-prioritise the nearest storage?

Pretty much this. At the moment there are no other solutions that I know of other than putting storage lockers evenly distributed around the map to minimize trips.

[PhailRaptor]

As far as I know the only way to make this work is to create isolated cells where each Dupe lives on their own or in a very small group, with access to only areas specific to their purpose.  Until Klei alters Dupe pathfinding and task handling AI there's just no other options to work with.

[Daxterr]

Use auto sweepers lol. That's my only solution.

Klei should make it so that greenhouse rooms need a storage compactor containing whatever the plant needs in order to function.

[Boxman_90]

Seems like auto sweepers are indeed the only 'solution' right now apart from careful micromanaging of Dupe locations for every task - though I don't really want the power usage and expensive power lines to it.. It bugs me a little that I can't organize storage without it, it should be intuitively correct imo.

[Derringer]

A lot of this derp dupe behaviour is very much the same as you might find in Dorf Dwarf Fortress, except that DF gives you slightly better tools to deal with it.

13 hours ago, Boxman_90 said:

for some Errands, I want specific resources to be used, for instance temperature wise.

Dwarf Fortress goes so far as to let you specify exactly which items are to be used for building if you're so inclined, and defaults to the nearest suitable material to the errand site.

That said, Narcoleptic dupes are some of the worst offenders in this regard: they bring material from the nether reaches of the map, then Urist McSnoozer cancels Build Important Gadget: Too sleepy and drops both the material and their claim on the errand. A different idle dupe, now also deep in the nether reaches, claims the pending errand and grabs new material. This leaves the original dupe idle, and an extra storage errand to put away the dropped material is generated.

Errand batching seems like it was intended to be a step in the right direction. A single dupe will claim a bunch of errands of the same type in a 4 by 4 tile area, up to the limit of their carrying capacity. This still often results in construction supply and construction build errands going to different dupes.

1 hour ago, PhailRaptor said:

As far as I know the only way to make this work is to create isolated cells where each Dupe lives on their own or in a very small group, with access to only areas specific to their purpose.

DF calls such things 'burrows', and allows them to be designated over map tiles without relying on door settings. Fun may ensue if someone's burrow doesn't include something important like food or a place to sleep.

58 minutes ago, Daxterr said:

Use auto sweepers lol. That's my only solution.

Nice try. An idle dupe on the far side of the map can steal storage/supply tasks from an auto-sweeper. You'd have to completely lock any dupe that can do Supply, Storage and/or Life Support errands from the area to ensure it doesn't get stolen. Also, once an item has been claimed for an errand, nobody else can do anything with it. In DF, (and I've seen this also happen in ONI) this leads to starvation situations due to slow-to-resolve storage errands. That's right, one colonist is in danger of starving to death because they're waiting for someone else to move the food!

[Boxman_90]

I see a lot of things about mods in this forum - would it be possible for someone to write a mod that simply only changes the proximity decision from "based on dupe location" to "based on errand location"? Intuitively I'd think that would only mean changing one parameter.

[PhailRaptor]

35 minutes ago, Boxman_90 said:

I see a lot of things about mods in this forum - would it be possible for someone to write a mod that simply only changes the proximity decision from "based on dupe location" to "based on errand location"? Intuitively I'd think that would only mean changing one parameter.

I don't have that deep of an understanding of coding, but my impression is that it depends on how the code is written, and even then only if it's in a part of the code that is accessible via mods.