Dupes busy doing nothing - Current Errand is "test text"

It's 2025 and I am facing the same problem several times in the latest version.

test text.sav

Same problem and more. Sometimes they get stuck while doing some chore (seems to happen most with tinkering). Also, sometimes when they are frozen like this and I click on them to see what their errand is, it displays some other duplicant's errand entirely.

So far the only connecting factor that I've noticed (despite being entirely frozen) is that "Supplying power materials" is flickering very fast (under Status).

 

 

 

 

The Third ARK.sav

Edited August 27, 2025 by Birman
4K pictures got compressed to non-readability

Issue is likely somewhere you somehow have a partial microchip as a pickupable, the dupes brains are unable to handle the magnitude of such a situation (known bug, for those who are interested in the behind the scenes what is going on here is the dupe decides to do the supply microchip to steam turbine errand, checks they can do it, the check passes, starts the errand, the errand issues an error because it can't be done with a partial chip, so the dupe picks a new errand. oh hey, a steam turbine needs a microchip ....)

11 hours ago, HarryMcCleave said:

Issue is likely somewhere you somehow have a partial microchip as a pickupable, the dupes brains are unable to handle the magnitude of such a situation (known bug, for those who are interested in the behind the scenes what is going on here is the dupe decides to do the supply microchip to steam turbine errand, checks they can do it, the check passes, starts the errand, the errand issues an error because it can't be done with a partial chip, so the dupe picks a new errand. oh hey, a steam turbine needs a microchip ....)

Could you provide link to that issue?
Yesterday I had the same situation. "Supplying power materials is flickering very fast" and the dupe is frozen.

 

Changed Status to Dupe

On 8/28/2025 at 3:03 AM, HarryMcCleave said:

Issue is likely somewhere you somehow have a partial microchip as a pickupable, the dupes brains are unable to handle the magnitude of such a situation (known bug, for those who are interested in the behind the scenes what is going on here is the dupe decides to do the supply microchip to steam turbine errand, checks they can do it, the check passes, starts the errand, the errand issues an error because it can't be done with a partial chip, so the dupe picks a new errand. oh hey, a steam turbine needs a microchip ....)

Thanks for the explanation!

I had suspected this initially, so I got rid of all the chips until the resource tracker reported "0 units". I thought that 0 means literally none. Little did I know... I actually had 0.2 unit, 0.9 unit and actually 1 whole chip on the asteroid despite resource tracker reporting 0 units. Now that I'm collecting all the chips into one single location, it seems the problem has decreased a little.

Mod with a potential fix: Steam Workshop::Microchip Bugfix (Test text bug).

To the developers: it's hard for me to consider purchasing the new DLC because a very irritating bug still hasn't been fixed. Could you let me know when its resolution can be expected?

@DanielB @Dev-a-Klei @EricKlei