Allow idle builders to haul resources

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+ 487 voters

A
+ 143 anonymous

636

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A	Anonymous

Especially with the option for more item capacity for buildings, allowing idle workers to haul resources from building inventories to storage could be helpful. They can haul goods and those goods can continue being made without pause.

25-10-2022 -

Activity Newest / Oldest

This is especially relevant for farmers, who have a lot of idle time at the end of the seasons if you have utilized the fertile land 100% (which is important in many settlements). This case also leads to the harvest/planting speed cornerstones becoming effectively useless because you gain nothing except idle time from your farmers. You also have to select two different cornerstones in combination to have any non-extremely-tedious benefit from them (planting speed+harvest speed). Having cornerstones which are completely useless unless tediously micromanaged is not very good game design.

Aron Pietron

Merged with: Builders to collect items.

Why don't inactive creatures (builders) collect items from buildings? Many times I stop production from somewhere (let's say Makeshift post/workstation) and later It turns out that I still have completed items that are not delivered. The free creatures can deliver items to and from buildings to help with the production.

Does the upgrade to assign haulers to warehouse help with this?

Jannik Larsen

I don't know if you're at that point yet, but you can assign Haulers at Warehouses with an upgrade later on.

Misiok89

Maybe there could be some option to set "assign free builder" to work in buildings/work on events, etc. Maybe even split work of all unasigned workers between some activities (buildings, slots in work spaces). "Be a freelancer" - if needed go and build, but if there is no building then go to your workplace.

Aron Pietron

Merged with: Idling Workers as Builders? or maybe Haulers?

Nora Clark

Assigning and unassigning workers as materials come in is something of a tedious pain. Disabling a building helps, but it would be very nice if idling workers could still contribute to production.

Currently, I find myself manually unassigning idle workers to convert them to builders or haulers for only a few moments before I place them back to their original workplace once I have a supply of materials again.

I'm thinking either a cornerstone or some other kind of upgrade as I do see this to be something of a possible balancing issue.

Andrey Voloshenko

This would make builder behaviour very unclear.

Imagine you assign farmer to the farm 2 secs before storm ends. And in those 2 secs he desides to go to another side of the map to deliver 2 planks, missing 1-2 planting spots. That is because how the mechanics works. "Picking" such action as delivery, worker wouldn't stop untill he is finished.

So as a default mechanics, any additional 'self-decided' action by workers would increase micronamagement, not reduce it.

Runner job at Warehouse = Good
Builders allowed to transport = Bad
Idle allowed to buld / transport = Bad

Vincent Oostelbos

Well, the example you give is of an idle farmer rather than an idle builder, right? I think for builders this is less likely to become an issue the way you describe.

kalamarez7

Yeah, this should an additional effect of Level 3 Hearth or even Level 4 Hearth instead of a cornerstone

Mario Jothy

I feel like the cornerstone isn't the right way to solve this, nor is the initial suggestion. In higher Prestige, it is very common to manually do this : Unman some building when the villagers are idle, and make them build & haul, and then put them back to their first assignment a bit before they'll be needed.

The balance is more in the quality of life that a feature like this would give : You don't have to pause every so often to check every building for idle, but they might lose a few seconds of their assignment because you didn't manually put them back a bit before.

This is very easy to see with farmers : At mid storm on high prestige, you remove them from farms, and 10-15seconds before drizzle, you put them back. This nets you 2mn of "free" builder time, at the cost of micromanagement.

My suggestion :
Every idle villagers in production building could behave like an unoccupied villager (or have the option to be, maybe building per building, as explained below), and do building & hauling to building tasks (but no other hauling).

Why the option : Depending on the implementation of such switch, it could be detrimental to the production building (if the idle state is reached often in quick succession, the villager might back and forth a lot and waste time)

The balance : This is already something that can be done given enough micro and pausing. But the added QOL could be offset slightly by the fact that the switching algorithm will not account for prediction of non idleness ie : The farmers will detect work at start of drizzle, and start moving then, losing ~10seconds of drizzle time. With the option to enable or disable, a player could chose to micro and have slightly better uptime in the initial building.

Alex

When at difficulty Prestige 18+ you need every hand you have. And farmers are done fertilising their farms when it is half of storm season remaining. Then they are just idling. Would be great if they are automatically do builders-haulers tasks without removing them farm-main job every time.

Aron Pietron

Merged with: Make idle farmers (or any professions in general) to build-haul things

P. Mjölnir

in addition, make the farm storage unlimited(or at least bigger) and let the farmers focus the hauling in the non harvesting/sowing season or when idle.
farms lose so much productivitiy in the harvest season because of running back and forth.

Schnork Mork

Its really useful if you have glade events that require loads of resources. The main problem with those is that you need to really start them at once after you open them, because it takes an eternity to have 2 guys carry 150 goods into the event. So I am totally up for that idea.

Aron Pietron

Merged with: Builders should be allowed to transport goods

A simple suggestion really. They've got nothing better to do– why not let them take finished goods and store them in the warehouse so that the people working there can do so longer?

Igor Sarman

Definitely a great idea. Maybe this can be added as a cornerstone or a city perk

Aron Pietron

Merged with: Idle workers can transport goods

Javier Darkona

Besides building, idle workers could do transporting work by moving goods from camps to storage and from storage to other buildings, relieving the camp workers and helping late-stage settlements with lots of people to get that final push in productivity to finish a mission.

Russell Stephens

The people who suggested having this as a cornerstone or having a dedicated "runner" job at warehouses are onto a winner.

I'm not sure I understand the disagreements here. This doesn't increase the amount of time you spend managing logistics. In fact the status quo forces you to think carefully about building and warehouse placement (which most people would say is part of logistics).

Having said that, it would increase overall production which will have balance implications around things like the automated mine cart and the need to place more warehouses. Still don't think keeping the inefficient status quo because more efficient villager usage would break balance is a good argument for not doing this though.

Draconianwrath_

I don't like this as part of the core game but it would be great as a cornerstone ability.

Christoffer Friedl

I'm really against this. One of the huge selling points of this game compared to other city builders is that logistics is not where you should be spending most of your time. You place down warehouses where you have lots of production and make sure entrances face where people will be coming from and then you can spend time on the big production decisions.

Alexander Osipov

This would require a rebalancing of a lot of things, too bad there is not down vote function.. but this could work if correct time.put into understand implications of this change on timing and pace of entire game

Filip Kudroń

This would be a huge buff to production in general, so my suggestion counterbalance this is - give storage buildings 2-3 assignable work places, workers assigned to the storage buildings collect stuff from production buildings.

Edit: To add some depth, make storage buildings upgradeable. Upgrade storage building to unlock works places for Couriers. Couriers prioritize collecting produced goods from buildings, but if iddle, they can deliver materials to buildings.

+ 6 others

Евгений Суслов

Доставлять материалы в здания не надо только сбор и перенос на склад готовой продукции.

Crow_MW

Yes, it would be good to have some use for idle pawns. However, a dedicated hauling system would require some more thought, a straightforward implementation could be quite annoying, hard to plan around and micro-intensive.

sir_alexshiro

I feel too much production time is wasted on taking stuff to the storage. If Builders would take care of picking up and dropping off, or if workers could be assigned to storage to do that, that'd be cool imo

Aron Pietron

Merged with: Make Builders double as Runners

Have unassigned workers work as delivery people (maybe with less prio as a builder). Have them deliver from and to camps and crafting buildings. Maybe even have an option where we can adjust if they deliver materials to, deliver crafted goods/gathered goods from, or both.

Aron Pietron

Merged with: Idle/Unassigned workers as Delivery people

Trystana marika

je valide ^^

Michael Collins

There's another suggestion thread very similar to this: feedback.eremitegames.com/b/suggestions-feature-requests/improve-flow-of-resources-waiting-in-building-output/

Perhaps you could also be able to toggle which buildings to prioritize/allow hauling, aswell

Perhaps a cornerstone could allow this, maybe sacrificing some builder’s resolve in return