I've built every last possible workshop and house in New Antipodia, and they all more or less work. I've ordered troops hither and yon, hunting violent fishpeople and less-violent wildlife, and it more or less works. What doesn't work, and what continues to not work, is farming. Now I might be real bad at the game, but if I have two fields, and a work crew with explicit orders to only take farming/foraging jobs, and there are no workshops aside from a carpenter's workshop (already claimed by someone else), one would think my crops wouldn't spoil before they even begin to mature. Successful farmers of the empire, what can I do to ensure my people only starve to death when fishpeople wipe out my crops and shoot my agriculture squads to death?
Generally speaking, if farming's not getting done, it's because there's nobody available to take the Tend Crops assignment when it appears on the Job Queue. I see you've taken steps to ensure a Crew isn't doing that; if I can ask, what are they doing, when you follow them around? Admiring machinery, perhaps? Or sitting in chairs? (Or, perhaps, running in terror?)
The utility for some of the farm jobs in jobs.xml is set too low. The base utility for foraging, mining etc. is 1000. The utility for Farming (Till Soil) is also 1000, but IIRC, that's an addition to the farming sequence that was made later. The base utility for the other farming jobs (Tending Crops and Harvesting) is only 300, which is possibly an older value that wasn't updated. I noticed this a couple days ago and bumped them up to 1000. Since then farming is a lot more viable.
Well, historically speaking, a society that wasn't able to keep itself fed wouldn't be able to support specialization (i.e. no bureaucracy or art and crafts without a full belly). Subsistence farming was literally the first stop on the early civilization road to sedentary city-life, so it makes sense it would be the highest priority thing a Colony can do.
I can always count on this community to do some clever sleuthing. I would like to ask the devs if this odd balance was intentional. Are we, as players, supposed to rely on hunting and foraging going forward (as this priority list dictates), or should the utility value of tending crops increase? That said, some cynical part of me thinks the devs want long pork on the menu.
I don't think it was - I think somebody put these in without thinking about it. I'll check with David in the morning, though.
Awesome, thanks! When we have a definite answer, I'll be off to New Sogwood to fight the jungle with my bare hands!
Ohhh... nom nom nom.... Berries, long pork and now they can finally have opium? My colonists will rejoice... that is, if they remember anything come morning. Btw when I tweak the numbers in the files will they revert when new version gets out or will I have to do a verify files on steam to make sure I have the latest set of files?
Newer files from the game will overwrite old ones, yes. You'll want to keep a copy of any edits you do in a separate file (as well as keeping an unmodified copy around in case your edits break your game, which can happen).
Hmmm... right. That's a good idea. I used to do that when I fiddles with game files earlier, but it's been years so it seems I need to relearn common sense first before doing anything major
Excellent. I'm off to New Sogwood to fight the jungle with my bare damn hands in the traditional Australian manner! Thanks for the prompt response!
