Stockpile Code

I suppose this might be wrapped up in your second point, but I tend to make distant mines to take advantage of mineral nodes, complete with their own stockpiles. Regularly, ores produced at those mines are delivered into town instead, and occasionally, goods produced in town are delivered to the distant stockpiles (where someone is going to have to retrieve them for use back in town).

• ideally, goods should be stockpiled at the closest compatible stockpile

 

In a lot of cases, colonists seem to start storing goods in a specific corner tile and then start to fill the stockpile in a sequential tile order, even if it means they walk across the entire stockpile and ignore dozens of free tiles much closer to them to get to the next tile in the sequence.

If the second tile in the order had something on and so the stockpile then continues to fill following tiles, once the second tile becomes available colonists will initially lock on to that second tile as the destination tile for any other hauling.

Feels extremely unnatural to see colonists haul items to stockpile in a linear iteration loop manner.

 

That seems like pretty good optimizations.

Are there any plans to make more categories of stockpile filters? For example, being able to separate cooked food vs. raw food?

 

This. 1000x this!

 

OMG just show all items and have an X or check mark next to each so that stockpiles can be used as the player sees fit.

 

If there are more that add items, this could get difficult to manage...

 

It could be. Perhaps just that option hidden by default unless you check a "show advanced filters" checkbox or something.

 

Good idea, also perhaps display items as part of their production chain or source structure. Then allow the ability to toggle stockpile filters per item or per building type.

So check the metalworks and all commodities associated with metalwork recipes both raw resources and production goods are enabled for the stockpile.

Or alternatively allow the player to enable one item and at the same time all parent items in its production chain. So for example enabling pistols plus all parent items for a stockpile will add:

* Iron Ingots.
* Iron Ore
* Coal
* Planks
* Logs

That way you can more easily set up focused stockpiles for workshops focusing on a specific aspect of production and better ensure it has the available production goods stored nearby and nothing else.

 

Might be nice to have a particular stockpile associated with a workshop. Basically just a default drop-off point that everything from this workshop goes to. Maybe a default Drop-off button that allows selection of a stockpile and remembers the location. This would also allow "Zoom to" of course.

 

This bears similarity to how many dwarven run fortresses' stockpiles emerge. And I LOVE it!

 

Some things noted in 42B with a fresh colony start (as usual with a new build):


1) Colonists still sometimes drop goods in the stockpile by themselves even if there's a container they could put it in. Noticed two different situations that cause this.

First being colonists carrying workshop produced goods don't seem to be checking for stacks, they will just dump their freshly made goods at the nearest tile then go back to the workshop leaving another colonist to then reorganise the stockpile.

Second being if another colonist is already claiming to be using the container even if they're some distance away. So a colonist in the middle of the wild hauling raw meat back to the stockpile and has claimed interaction with a container holding raw meat will cause all other colonists to be unable to interact with the target container (at least for stacking purposes), and instead they will dump their goods at the next available tile. Once the colonists that claimed interaction with the container is finally done, all goods will be consolidated into a single container again.

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2) Sometimes after a colonist has added goods to a existing container that container vanishes. It's still reported in the commodities list and colonists seem to still be able to grab goods from the container so seems to be purely visual. The container often reappears after another colonists adds something to it. But otherwise it will remain invisible.

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3) Infrequently, after adding goods to a container a colonist will hover over the area stuck in a return goods state for brief period of time. (This may be related to the multiple '[Job Cancellations] Job Return Goods (To Container) cancelled! [Destination impossible to reach]' instances in the console log)

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Saves, console, replay of a 42B session where I noticed these three things attached.

 

I saw examples of Issue 2 last night.

 

I know this thread was for R42, but noticed something with R43 to do with two different containers being stored on the same stockpile slab, didn't initially notice until I saw some graphical glitches when highlighting over the container and then discovered that if I put the cursor in just the right place I could highlight another container that was clipping through.





P.S. The inability for colonists to stack things immediately as they produce them in a workshop is getting rather frustrating. Repeatedly with starting a new colony with just a Carpentry, Kitchen and one farm built, what few workcrews I have left to haul are stuck almost in a infinite loop of taking kitchen produced food that is just dumped on a empty tile and then adding it to an existing container.

I've got a shit load of wood and stone that is never being hauled back to the stockpile as a result, instead workshop colonists are marching all the way out to get each individual unit as they need it.

 

Nicholas, what if it worked like the stockpiles in Banished, where people would put an item in the stockpile itself, and it would automatically be placed wherever it fit. Would that be more simple than having each person placing the item in the exact coordinate where it should be?


Or, say a gun rack for guns and a larder for food (like in Stronghold). That would pretty much eliminate the problems with colonists trying to stack stuff themselves.

 

I see. I wouldn't think you guys are copying Banished or anything like that. I figured that I would reference that game since it would be easier to understand than trying to explain what I meant from scratch. I mean, a solution is a solution is a solution, and if it resembles how it works in a similar game then so be it.

I admire your dedication to realism in the simulation and your desire to get it to work the way you want it to. I was just wondering if it was more trouble than it was worth, and if it might be detracting from the gameplay aspect.