Help a newbie out?

[MorikTheMad]

I'm having a variety of problems getting started. I tried searching around a bit but didn't find what I was looking for.

So, here are my issues:
1) Can't take screenshots: hitting printscreen & then going to MS Paint to paste it (my normal method) pastes a big black box. (Hitting printscreen outside of the game (as a test) worked fine with pasting to paint).
2) My workers won't build a lot of stuff.
a) I designated several foundations next to each other; the workers built them but there were walls in weird places. To give access, I tried putting a door on the south side of the foundation area; they never built it. (And I did try moving the door such that there were no intersecting walls, just the wall the door was on)
Ascii art picture since I can't screenshot:
_ = wall
| = wall
.. = where I tried to put door (the interior walls went away when they finally built the door (see below), but the color of the floor tiles stayed different, even after I put flooring in.)

Code: Select all

     --------------
     |    ||      |
     |    ||      |
     |____||___.._|


^ door placed in correct rotational axis, aligned with this wall, over top of the wall square. They never build it. (The '..' in my ascii art picture is where I put the door. Normal wooden door.)

When I moved the door to the north side of the building, they built it. Whats up with that?

Code: Select all

     ----------..--
     |    ||      |
     |    ||      |
     |____||______|


b) I have a power station north of this building. I ran a line down through the building, and they won't build the last peice of it on the south wall.
P = power station
W = water pump
- & | are power lines, except for the rectangle part which is the building.

Code: Select all

     P---|
         |
     ----|-------
     |   |      |
     |   |      |
     |___|______|
         |
    W----|


They built all the way to the south edge of the foundation, but won't build the cable that goes underneath the exterior wall of the building on the south side. They did it on the north side no problem (and through the building no problem).
What am I doing wrong?



Thanks for any help, very frustrated here trying to figure this out .

[Master-Guy]

The fact that you cannot make screenshots is true. This is because of the way that the game uses the video engine. You will probably encounter this for a lot of First Person and Third Person games as well.
To get screenshots, download a program like FRAPS which is designed to record pictures and video of games.

It almost sounds as if you are building on the very south of your map.
If you are, then the workers can probably not find a path to the location where they need to build it.

When at this point, do you see red crosses at the squares where they don't build?
If you hover over those red crosses, what does it say?
What are the workers doing? Are they standing still completely? Try manually moving them a couple squares.

[xander]

Or just hit [P]. The game is capable of taking its own screenshots.

xander

[Globoid]

Or if you have Steam version just hit f12.

[knoest26]

Or just hit [P]. The game is capable of taking its own screenshots.

xander

Really? Iearn something new everyday, a bit I have to learn it after 260 hours of PA....

[blackgaurd]

I am having similar issues, I will create a series of jobs, and then the workers will carryout some of them and then mill around for no reason. They can access the areas (first thing i learned was to put the cell doors in last) they just wont do anything.

[MiriW]

If you hover your mouse over the object, you can sometimes see why they refuse to do it by reading the tool tip. It can be because it's too dangerous in the area(or in an area they have to walk through to get to the destination) or because they can't reach the area for one reason or another(This part occasionally bugs out, but rarely).