Colonist Shift inconsistency

[Joel Halpern]

Caveat: I am probably missing something obvious. Apologies if that turns out to be the case.

Assumptions:
Colonist do one thing for each of 3 shifts per day.
Assuming there are enough jobs, colonists work one shift per day
Colonists rest at home for one shift per day
Colonist need to visit a food-providing building one shift per day
- Yeah, they can go 36 hours, but that is difficult. From a colony design perspective, I seem to need to plan for 24. The 36 will cope with collisions and other random variations.)
- Yes, if they can not get to such a building, they will eat unprepared food. The goal of the exercise is to not need to do that.

The problem. If a Colonist works a shift, sleeps a shift, and eats a shift, then they never have time to do anything else? Or conversely, if they do anything else, they starve?

I thought I understand how many of each service I needed to provide, until I realized that somehow, the colonists are managing to eat and satisfy other needs not met by the diner or grocer (no megamalls).

I am missing something.
I tried watching a test run every hour of the day. Other than some oddities where people appeared to be in two places at once briefly (working and visiting the same shop) everyone seems to do one thing per shift.

Thank you,
Joel Halpern

 

[DARK_MASTER]

I think this will help a little.
Read here.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1748501548

 

[Joel Halpern]

I think this will help a little.
Read here.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1748501548

Thank you for that pointer. I had found that (and found it really helpful.) It shows the thing that confuses me.
The first example shows a person who visits (or tries to visit) two things to satisfy interests during a given Sol. Given that the colonist is working, and given the later text that says that a person must rest every day, and given that there are three shifts, when did the person have time to visit TWO interests?
I actually thought at one point that a person could visit two places during one shift. That would have solved this problem, and introduced other problems. But when I ran the tests, the game claimed that the person did not change locations mid-shift, and that they were in a specific location.

Yours,
Joel

 

[DARK_MASTER]

Yes that link had some things that even I didn't know.
I'm more focused on the moral and renegades generation. Since I play with the Rebel Yell rule active.
For now I figured that with that rule in a dome with 30 ppl which has no seniors or children. And all of them have 95-100 Moral you will still have 2 or 3 Renegades. If the Moral is lower the number of renegades is higher.
If you move the renegades to the dome with the seniors and children. The dome with the working ppl will just generate 2,3 new renegades after 5 Sol or so. Since my dome with the non-working colonists is about 15 ppl renegades don't generate there.
I may be wrong. And the renegades become more when I grow the population more. For now I'm hovering around 40-45 colonist in total. But if the Rebel Yell rule is as that links says aka a certain % of the population in 1 dome per dome.
With my current setup I can have 80+ ppl and just 4, 5 renegades in 2 domes. I can tolerate 3,4 renegades in each dome if they stay that many with a population of few 100s.
I am sure that keeping 2 renegades in my dome with working ppl that are ~ 30 stops the generation of Renegades permanently. Even when the Rebel Yell is on. Of course Moral of 80+ is required.

This rule is my biggest problem to find a way around. Because it's mainly RNG based. Even if I have all of my colonists at max moral. The few that are at 96 something Moral still become renegades if I have 0 Renegades.

 

[ChoGGi_2]

This help you any dark?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1802131001

 

[DARK_MASTER]

This help you any dark?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1802131001

It actually does.
Being able to see what's going on with the brewing of renegades more precisely is quite helpful.

 

[Joel Halpern]

Let me try rephrasing more briefly. Maybe my confusion will become clearer.
I understand that folks need to eat every day. From that, I can figure out how many grocer / diners I need. And I know I need to allow some slack in the number, because random numbers are like that.
From an excellent article I saw (pointed to by a respondent upthread, https://gameplay.tips/guides/4239-surviving-mars.html) I understand how much medical care I need to provide.

But how much do I need to provide for other interests? Obviously, this depends upon how often each colonist will want to satisfy other interests. That was when I noticed that as far as I can tell, colonists have no time to satisfy other interests. Heck, by the apparent / naive analysis, they don't even have time to go to the doctor.
Clearly, my analysis is wrong about their time.

So what is the right analysis about how often colonists can satisfy interests other than food?

Thank you

 

[ChoGGi_2]

Colonist do one thing for each of 3 shifts per day.

Nope. Shifts are 8 hours each, but not all service buildings are.
The default for a service building (park, shopping, etc) is 5 hours (diners, medical, grocer, stores), some aren't (gym:3, mall:6).

 

[Joel Halpern]

CHoGGi_2, that is a big help. I presume that going home (resting) is an 8 hour activity?
If so, one can manage a diner and a gym or medical and a gym, but not a diner and a medical nor diner and another store? Do colonists end up wanting do something in the 2 or 3 our gap, but simply not having enough time for what they want?
Thank you.

 

[ChoGGi_2]

Homes aren't a service.

Here, I did a func to follow a colonist around for a few (sped up) days (number is the hour, name is the command they were set to)
Rest 6
Work 14
WorkCycle 15
VisitService 22
Idle 6
Work 13
WorkCycle 15
Rest 22
Idle 6
VisitService 13
Work 13
WorkCycle 14
Rest 22
Idle 6
VisitService 12
Idle 12
Work 14
WorkCycle 15
Rest 22

 

[Joel Halpern]

ChoGGi_2: I am guessing I am misreading that chart. It seems to confirm that a person visits a single service once per day. That while there does end up some idle time, that does not result in the person visiting additional services.

Now, I do understand that people visit services other than food services. But when, if they can only visit one service per day.? There still seems to be something about the mechanics I am not getting. Sorry. (If service visits were 4 hours, instead of 5, then I could see how a person could visit two services a day. But that does not match either the duration you posted for services or the time chart if I am reading that right.)

Thank you.

 

[ChoGGi_2]

This prints a msg when the cmd changes or when they enter/leave a holder

 

[Joel Halpern]

Thank you ChoGGi_2. I can see why the documentation does not attempt to explain this in full. I will need to stare at it quite a bit to better understand it. It looks like Resting can also be shorter than 8 hours. I will need to combine this with your earlier comments about how long things take.
It looks like there is even some slack in how often people need to rest.

 

[ChoGGi_2]

I did speed up the time, so that could be interfering with it.

 

[Joel Halpern]

Is that output generator a mod that I could get and apply as a test (say in creative mode)?

 

[ChoGGi_2]

have at it

CreateRealTimeThread(function()
    local print = print
    local UICity = UICity
    local Sleep = Sleep
    local RetName = ChoGGi.ComFuncs.RetName
    local IsValid = IsValid

    local obj = SelectedObj

    local command = obj.command
    local inside = RetName(IsValid(obj.holder) and obj.holder or IsValid(obj.goto_target) and obj.goto_target)
    print(command, inside, UICity.hour)
    while true do

        if obj.command ~= command then
            command = obj.command
            print(command, UICity.hour)
        end

        local new_inside = RetName(IsValid(obj.holder) and obj.holder or IsValid(obj.goto_target) and obj.goto_target)
        if inside ~= new_inside then
            inside = new_inside
            print(command, inside, UICity.hour)
        end

        Sleep(1)
    end
end)

I just paste it into the console in ecm

 

[Joel Halpern]

"ecm" in the above is your Expanded Cheat Menu mod? (Sorry if that sounds like a pedantic question. Just making sure.)
Assuming that, I presume that the way it works is that I select a colonist, then enter that code, then continue the game? Where does the output go? (I am an old programmer, but not a game programmer.)

 

[ChoGGi_2]

yeah that's ecm, once it's enabled press ~ or enter to bring up the console then turn on settings>console log and it'll print it onscreen (as well as the log file).

 

[Joel Halpern]

Thank you. That worked to produce the output similar to what you showed. Watching, there appears to be one aspect of time in buildings that is important to make it all effective. If a colonist is doing something other than working, and it is time to go to work, he stops what he is doing and goes off to work. It is hard to tell, but it looks like he gets full credit for the visit that was cut short. While that makes the analysis hard, when combined with the fact that various visits are shorter than 8 hours, explains how it comes together.