Contracting delivery labor

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christopher1006
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Contracting delivery labor

Postby christopher1006 » Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:09 am

(Original topic accidentally posted in general forum, this is just moving it to the relevant section.)
So something that I run in to a periodically in the early game expansion is that my workers are being stressed by having to get metal from the trucks to deliveries to workshop then go get food to deliveries to kitchen and guards have to open the doors for those workers and get the next shipment of prisoners.

If we have the extra money I'd like the ability to pay a small fee for how many workers or guards per truck you rent in order to have speedy delivery with less stress on your own staff. You could use decimals and whole numbers (1/1 one worker per truck, .5/1 one worker per two trucks, with some limit so as to have no abuse). Their pay would be about half of what it is to hire them for yourself, they'll unload the trucks until there are no more on the map but if you try to keep them you pay 1.5 times the normal wages to keep them because of their extra labor. Feel free to criticize but try to explain why you don't like it.
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paktsardines
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby paktsardines » Fri Oct 11, 2013 1:26 am

I'm afraid I'm not a fan. I find the game works fine as it is, and it sounds to me like you need to hire more workers anyway. That said, worker shortages at crucial moments are part of the gameplay and I like the challenge of having to stagger my construction and expansions to suit. To be able to cheaply and temporarily hire more to get around shortages kind of defeats the purpose I think.

Just my two cents.
Last edited by paktsardines on Fri Oct 11, 2013 3:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
Legadian
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby Legadian » Fri Oct 11, 2013 1:39 am

I agree with paktsardines. Although, maybe as a compromise, it would be nice to be able to set a policy that turns off work on new construction during sheet metal/food delivery hours and then resumes after hours. Or maybe a manual button that toggles new construction on and off.
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paktsardines
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby paktsardines » Fri Oct 11, 2013 3:11 am

I think the solution, as many have mentioned already, is to have the ability to prioritise jobs so that metal delivery can take precendence over construction, or whatever.
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Ric666
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby Ric666 » Fri Oct 11, 2013 10:25 am

Sounds a bit complicated.

I feel the delivery trucks should just come with their own guys that offload all metal/ingredients(+ anything else) to the delivery area themselves. This would at least save the workers having to offload everything themselves & then getting a new job to take the stuff to wherever required.

It's a very small step but I've always felt this can be a large bottleneck even in a well designed layout as you don't have much control over deliveries(apart from knowing they come hourly).
Would also save the AI some thought ;)
Steve42
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby Steve42 » Sun Oct 13, 2013 6:28 am

I wrote about this before, but it was in the bug report, so I will say it again here.

I think that all deliveries for the day need to come in the middle of the night like in real life.

Officials should be able to order what food and metal is needed for the following day and have that delivered at around 0200 in the AM.

This would allow workers to move in and out of the facility without having to deal with crowds and makes more logistical sense to me.

Having worked in the logistics biz for over 15 years, I can not remember one prison that was delivered to during daylight hours, unless it was an emergency, such as when a prison had lost power to the deep freeze and had to have that food replaced asap.

Doing this would also give reason to have workers on at night. As it sits now, if you are not building, your workers sit around with their thumbs up their bums and then as soon as the sun comes out, the prison attempts to do the work of 20 men with only 10 workers.

This would also allow the cooks to do the job we hire them for, to cook. Some of my prisoners do not get to eat because the cooks are busy getting supplies, that they don't need at the moment, and by the time they do get the food to the canteen, the eating period is over. And all of my eating periods last 2 hours so everyone can have a fighting chance to get something to eat. I could knock that back to 1 hour if the cooks didn't go running off chasing *rainbows and *unicorns while prisoners were going hungry.

* No rainbows or unicorns were injured in the making of this post.
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_alphaBeta_
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby _alphaBeta_ » Mon Oct 14, 2013 3:54 am

paktsardines wrote:I think the solution, as many have mentioned already, is to have the ability to prioritise jobs so that metal delivery can take precendence over construction, or whatever.

Agree every time this is brought up. The jobs screens should have the functionality to specify the priority somehow and be able to change it on the fly. All tasks can be "medium" by default and the player can change that as necessary. Besides single tasks, there should be a mechanism to change all jobs of the same name. Numbers could also be used in a similar fashion to provide more granularity. Would also be nice if the default could be changed, which was also mentioned. Set policy that activity X is always low, medium or high.

Steve42 wrote:I wrote about this before, but it was in the bug report, so I will say it again here.

I think that all deliveries for the day need to come in the middle of the night like in real life.

Officials should be able to order what food and metal is needed for the following day and have that delivered at around 0200 in the AM.

This would allow workers to move in and out of the facility without having to deal with crowds and makes more logistical sense to me.
(snip)
Doing this would also give reason to have workers on at night. As it sits now, if you are not building, your workers sit around with their thumbs up their bums and then as soon as the sun comes out, the prison attempts to do the work of 20 men with only 10 workers.

This would also allow the cooks to do the job we hire them for, to cook. Some of my prisoners do not get to eat because the cooks are busy getting supplies, that they don't need at the moment, and by the time they do get the food to the canteen, the eating period is over. And all of my eating periods last 2 hours so everyone can have a fighting chance to get something to eat. I could knock that back to 1 hour if the cooks didn't go running off chasing *rainbows and *unicorns while prisoners were going hungry.
(snip)

I've held the same opinion across the board. I'd take it a step further and have a storage room type for each parent room that consumes resources (such as the canteen, workshop, and laundry; move the freezers out of the kitchen and into the storage room, or perhaps the whole room is a freezer that requires unit(s) to maintain temperature.) The player should be able to place bulk orders of consumables and store in these rooms.
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111none
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby 111none » Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:16 am

I know that this has been suggested before, but I can't seem to find where........
But maybe some type of quota would be nice, like the amount of construction per a day that is allowed.
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Meeeps
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby Meeeps » Fri Oct 18, 2013 8:37 pm

the workmens are no real issue, as you can manage that somehow by simply not using them too much at delivery time. (planning) The big issues is with cooks, so at least the food delivery should be at night or around 6h before eat at your regime
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby TheLiege » Sat Oct 19, 2013 7:27 am

Am I the only one who read the topic title and thought it was about childbirth?

Would it make sense to just have the delivery driver appear and help unload the truck?
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Meeeps
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Re: Contracting delivery labor

Postby Meeeps » Sat Oct 19, 2013 9:58 am

that is actuallly a very nice idea, driver could be like a prisoner, a bit slower as the workmens and not able to open doors, there should also be a little delay, so the driver only does help, if there are no free workmen .

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