[Suggestion] Workers work Smart not Hard

[blacksythe]

I feel that the workers on this game need an ai upgrade they spend too much time running to the next job as apposed to actually doing something.

1. Garbage disposal this is not important and thus should be allocated to 1 worker only as apposed to 20 breaking off what there doing and running to put garbage in the truck.
2. Cell constructions is checked against the prisoners to cells ratio. if cell numbers are much greater than prisoners objects allocated in a cell space take a lower priority with the reverse being true if the prisoners to cell ratio is low or even negative (more prisoners than cells)
3. If there are no priorities then the worker completes the closest job too him with the nearest tools for the job i.e. if he has electrical cable sitting next to him with a job to install electrical cable near him. He will do that as apposed to running back to storage to get more electrical cable.
4. (this is more of an optional one but would be nice.) During large constructions a number of workers spend time bringing all the materials to the site while the remainder that are working on the constructions continue working. Once material transport is complete they either run off and move garbage or continue with the construction.
5. To prevent mishaps with trees when building foundations any tree that is designated for dismantling when overlay-ed with a foundation takes the higher priority than the building of the foundation.


Perimeter repairs e.g. if the perimeter gate is damaged this gets the highest priority as a weak spot as we know warrants more prisoners thinking FREEDOM!!!

Finally to add in realism lets say each job gets a 5% chance of having the wrong priority (e.g. all the workers lay the grass in the yard instead of repairing the perimeter

[UberFuber]

1. Perhaps instead of arbitrarily hard-code it as "1 worker in garbage" perhaps have a sort deployment style assignment for workers. So you can, say, designate to have at most 2 workers working on garbage disposal and 16 workers for construction, that way you can avoid suddenly having not enough workers to unload trucks, for example.

2. It might be slightly more difficult to "check" whether a construction is for cell related. It is easy to check if a job is in a Cell designation, but it might be difficult to check for various construction to support said cell (for example, exterior door for a cell-block utility line, etc). Going back to 1, it may be a better idea to allow player to designate the max number of worker.

3. Might be a bit difficult in terms of AI programming. For 3, it would require the worker AI to:
A. Ability to "steal" jobs from other workers, since the electric cord right next to him might be reserved by another worker already. It also means that with each job "stolen", the game will have to do quite a few recalculation of path: Compute the new job generated by the worker, recompute the previous job invalidate by the new job due to resource, recompute the previous worker assigned to the invalidated job to take up new job. Said previous worker might also take up a new job that invalidates another job. Essentially, you run the risk that every time a worker changes a job, the game will have to recalculate all other jobs.

4. Technically the current system works well. The workers are going to need to bring the material to job site regardless of when or how they do it: whether in bursts (as current, worker bring materials to worksite, keep working until they ran out of materials, go back to bring more material) or continuously.

5. In Alpha 16, that's seems to be the worker behavior (remove tree takes precedent over building foundation).

[111none]

So my interpretation of 1 is that out of X amount of workers, 1/10 th of X is assigned to the area around the garbage zone jobs?

[Mithrawndo]

1. Garbage disposal this is not important and thus should be allocated to 1 worker only as apposed to 20 breaking off what there doing and running to put garbage in the truck.

Why am I paying construction workers to haul garbage when I have perfectly good inmates standing idle? Janitorial duties is, I believe, on the to-do list. Still, a working area (much like the guards patrol area) would be very useful for your construction workers.

2. Cell constructions is checked against the prisoners to cells ratio. if cell numbers are much greater than prisoners objects allocated in a cell space take a lower priority with the reverse being true if the prisoners to cell ratio is low or even negative (more prisoners than cells)

A simpler option would be to add a "high priority" toggle to a pending job, either via the main interface or on the report->queue screen. Given that Theme Park had this feature (at least, I seem to remember it did!) I'm sure it's on the radar.

4. (this is more of an optional one but would be nice.) During large constructions a number of workers spend time bringing all the materials to the site while the remainder that are working on the constructions continue working. Once material transport is complete they either run off and move garbage or continue with the construction.

Settlers 4 had a very nice way of dealing with this particular issue: You only had one non-military unit type, and his function was designated via a menu. When you assigned the worker as a builder, he'd pick up a hammer and if there was something needing hammered, he'd do it. The same went for mining, tree felling, crop harvesting and so on. If the unit was not assigned a specific role, he was simply a carrier and would ferry materials needed from the storage site to the job.

I'd love to see this implemented into the game, or at least the ability to subdivide my workers into builder and transporter. It would make me feel much more efficient, even it it probably wouldn't actually help at all!