Governing who works where

[LeftyRighty]

I've been watching some of the twitch streamers playing the preview build in the last couple of days and I've noticed that they struggle to ensure the right types of colonists end up in working in the right building.

By the looks of it you can govern if a building is a priority and whether a shift slot is open or not, but repeatedly the geologists ended up working anywhere but the extractors, the botanists working anywhere but the farms etc. It seemed really random.

Since not doing the job the colonist favours seems to adversely affect the colonist's sanity/comfort/happiness it would seem to be a very important thing to ensure they are getting to do what they like doing.

How much control does the player have? is there something they're missing beyond the building priority and work slot open/closed control? is it just random who gets assigned to a work shift slot?

 

[FunkyBigodon]

Hello! As far as I know, colonists will work in the building best suited to them, given there are spots available. It would be also possible to manually assign colonists to work in specific buildings, if you wish to do so. If my memory serves me right, when you click a colonist, there is a button on the top right corner that says "assign work place", or something along those lines.

Cheers!

 

[LeftyRighty]

Hello! As far as I know, colonists will work in the building best suited to them, given there are spots available. It would be also possible to manually assign colonists to work in specific buildings, if you wish to do so. If my memory serves me right, when you click a colonist, there is a button on the top right corner that says "assign work place", or something along those lines.

Cheers!

That's the logic I would have expected, but I've watched several hours of colonists not seeming to follow that logic, and manually assigning them doesn't appear to "stick". i.e. when the streamers return to that dome a little later they're back in the wrong places. Early on with very limited numbers of colonists which match up to the jobs that have been created in a dome (i.e. 3 botanists, 2 geologists, 2 medics to work in 1 hydro bay, 1 extractor, 1 med centre or whatever) it would seem to be exceedingly simple for that logic to handle that situation... but it wasn't

not to mention early on you're not going to have the buildings to handle annoyed colonists, so the priority is not letting them get annoyed in the first place, then later on managing 100's if not 1000's of colonists in such a manual way is not practical.

 

[Lt Loco]

Well, I think I saw a method of manually assigning workplaces. I'm not sure how "sticky" a manual assignment is however.

 

[FunkyBigodon]

I've watched several hours of colonists not seeming to follow that logic, and manually assigning them doesn't appear to "stick". i.e. when the streamers return to that dome a little later they're back in the wrong places.

I suppose they might not have been the final version of the game, and the assign workplace tool was buggy, maybe?

 

[Beric]

I was watching Skye's video this morning and he seemed to be having a ton of trouble with this. Some sort of overall job manger would really be helpful.

 

[Promethian]

Seems to be something with service jobs. They must be considered positive employment for everybody and the person he was trying to shift over kept going into the service then deciding they were happy and sitting tight.

 

[LeftyRighty]

going to just bump this today and see if we catch a dev response

 

[Blizzard_Haemimont]

Success! You have summoned a developer response.

Here is a rough description of the current worker assignment logic:

0. The player can manually assign individual workers, ignoring all rules below. Ideally we hope that there will be no reason to do so, unless the player particularly likes to micromanage. Clarification: Manual assignment is not permanent, so after a long period the colonist may decide to switch jobs.
1. Buildings with the highest priority are fully staffed if possible
2. If there is not enough workforce higher priority buildings will be fully staffed while lower priority buildings will be partially staffed, but the game will try to keep them operational if possible (e.g. all buildings at high priority staffed at 100%, all buildings at the medium priority staffed at roughly 50%, all buildings at low priority staffed at 0%)
3. Specialists prefer to work according to their specialization, as long as this doesn't mess up the above rules.
4. Keep in mind that since everything depends on the individual simulation, you may have to wait for 1-2 sols until all workers find their desired workspots, so in any current moment there may be a situation where e.g. a Botanist is working in a Bar and a colonist without a specialization is working at a Farm. This is temporary and should be resolved automatically after a while.

That being said, bugs will be bugs, so it is possible that something does not work as intended.

Hope this sheds some light on things.

 

[CHOAM]

Is there much chance of getting a more Tropico-style system for worker management and population info? It's partly there already, but there's a lot of stuff I miss from playing those games that would be super useful for making sure I can make things work optimally. The current tools are rather... inexact.

 

[Blizzard_Haemimont]

Is there much chance of getting a more Tropico-style system for worker management and population info? It's partly there already, but there's a lot of stuff I miss from playing those games that would be super useful for making sure I can make things work optimally. The current tools are rather... inexact.

We tried a different approach this time because the Tropico tools do not really translate well in Surviving Mars (e.g. you can have two completely separate expands in Surviving Mars and much information is needed for individual domes, instead of the entire colony). That being said, I am sure that we will continuously work to improve the management/information tools and would be grateful for any feedback and suggestions.

 

[LeftyRighty]

Thanks for the clarification

 

[Whitecold]

Can we block off job slots on certain buildings? So if you want one, and at most one colonist staffing a building?

 

[Blizzard_Haemimont]

Can we block off job slots on certain buildings? So if you want one, and at most one colonist staffing a building?

Yes, you can - it is done by right-clicking on the job slot - this blocks this slot and all slots to the right.

 

[FunkyBigodon]

Yes, you can - it is done by right-clicking on the job slot - this blocks this slot and all slots to the right.

Hello! I have a question I hope is not too difficult to understand:

Imagine there are three colonists working in the research lab, and they are displayed in the specific order: Scientist, Botanist, Scientist.
If I want to block off one job slot by right clicking the last slot, would that fire the scientist because he is in that specific slot, or would that fire the botanist, because he doesn't have the right specialization for that building?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Blizzard_Haemimont]

Hello! I have a question I hope is not too difficult to understand:

Imagine there are three colonists working in the research lab, and they are displayed in the specific order: Scientist, Botanist, Scientist.
If I want to block off one job slot by right clicking the last slot, would that fire the scientist because he is in that specific slot, or would that fire the botanist, because he doesn't have the right specialization for that building?

Thanks in advance!

You will fire the scientist. However after a while he will "kick" out the botanist and take his place (with the disabled work slot remaining disabled).

 

[Illanair]

On a similar note, will colonists look in other domes for a more suited employment (if they are single), or are they basically locked off in their initial dome, unless you step in?

Bit worried that we're basically expected to micromanage colonists in domes that have a lot of births, to keep them from hitting their housing limits, while other domes will have plenty of room for young marsians.

 

[NADster]

A question and a suggestion:

Will a scenario like a medic working at a fully staffed farm and a botanist working at a fully staffed clinic (so all slots occupied) solve itself?

You have open and closed slots, why not add a "only specialists" option. Could be graphically a green background and you switch through the three options by clicking. So you can assure that there is always an open slot for your scientists to work (unless all slots covered by other scientists).

 

[Blizzard_Haemimont]

A question and a suggestion:

Will a scenario like a medic working at a fully staffed farm and a botanist working at a fully staffed clinic (so all slots occupied) solve itself?

You have open and closed slots, why not add a "only specialists" option. Could be graphically a green background and you switch through the three options by clicking. So you can assure that there is always an open slot for your scientists to work (unless all slots covered by other scientists).

Good suggestion, although maybe per-slot management might be too fiddly. Adding it to the list of things to discuss with the design team.

 

[NADster]

Good suggestion, although maybe per-slot management might be too fiddly. Adding it to the list of things to discuss with the design team.

I don't think it would be too micro-intensive. If you just plop the building, you have the same as right now (open slots), so no change if you dont won't to manage this. And IF you want to manage the building (by opening and closing slots) it is not much added work to have a third option.
But this gives us efficency nerds a way to imho easily adjust the important facilities (like science labs) and a lot of freedom for all workplaces. For example 2 ffa slots, 2 specialist slots, 4 closed in a 8 slot factory.