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I wrote this guide specifically because people keep repeating the myth that you need to micro your colonists

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/surviving-mars-a-primer.1083069/

Again, micro doesn't work. If colonists are taking on the wrong jobs, it's because your colony does not have the right mix of specialists or workers to begin with. The AI in fact does it job well of assigning colonists to the right jobs, the problem is players not recognizing they don't have the right mix of specialists available.

I agree but you never have the perfect right amount of workers for your services nor it's always perfect to close all slots you don't need, once you start to have children becoming workers you have to remember to open some, it's time consuming.
If you leave one slot open in something like a grocery there is a chance one of your scientifics will go work there even if you would prefer it would pick up one of your geologists instead. The issue is not so much between macro and micro but about the in-between when suddenly a building lacks someone to run it.
You could at least give some button telling per building "i don't want any worker to work here except for these specialisations in this order". Just a specialisation priority setting to fill buildings. I'm sure the game runs something like that but the player has no hand on it. I'm pretty sure it's the feeling of people, they can't really totally macro but they can't really totally micro neither.
 
I agree but you never have the perfect right amount of workers for your services nor it's always perfect to close all slots you don't need, once you start to have children becoming workers you have to remember to open some, it's time consuming.
If you leave one slot open in something like a grocery there is a chance one of your scientifics will go work there even if you would prefer it would pick up one of your geologists instead. The issue is not so much between macro and micro but about the in-between when suddenly a building lacks someone to run it.
You could at least give some button telling per building "i don't want any worker to work here except for these specialisations in this order". Just a specialisation priority setting to fill buildings. I'm sure the game runs something like that but the player has no hand on it. I'm pretty sure it's the feeling of people, they can't really totally macro but they can't really totally micro neither.

Correct - the main challenge of the game is that you have an imperfect supply of labor.

The problem is that people believe that a labor imbalance can be fixed by micromanagement. It cannot. In order to fix the imbalances in supply you must instead add sufficient new labor supply of the right type - by either flying them in or training them.

And one particular thing to realize is that it is often important to fly in unskilled labor to do the service tasks.

In your specific case - of the Scientist/Geologist manning the Grocer - you are failing to define the problem correctly by saying you "solve" the problem by making the Geologist man the Grocer instead of the scientist because you "prefer" it. The problem instead is that you have a labor shortage in the dome, and that ideally a non-skilled person should do the Grocer job. Micro does not solve this problem. Only increasing the labor supply - by flying in new people or having a new person enter the work force - accomplishes that.

Now you may argue that the Dome lacks housing to support a new person - in which case the issue is a lack of housing supply versus the labor needs, and this labor need is in turn based on the job demand.

That is again ultimately a macro issue. It is about the player needing to balance the resources needed to run the colony. Housing and labor are in fact resources that should be balanced just as people try to balance spare part supplies for machines. Moving the people around doesn't solve the problem, just as you can't fix a broken machine if you simply don't have the spare parts supply to do it.
 
Correct - the main challenge of the game is that you have an imperfect supply of labor.

The problem is that people believe that a labor imbalance can be fixed by micromanagement. It cannot. In order to fix the imbalances in supply you must instead add sufficient new labor supply of the right type - by either flying them in or training them.

And one particular thing to realize is that it is often important to fly in unskilled labor to do the service tasks.

In your specific case - of the Scientist/Geologist manning the Grocer - you are failing to define the problem correctly by saying you "solve" the problem by making the Geologist man the Grocer instead of the scientist because you "prefer" it. The problem instead is that you have a labor shortage in the dome, and that ideally a non-skilled person should do the Grocer job. Micro does not solve this problem. Only increasing the labor supply - by flying in new people or having a new person enter the work force - accomplishes that.

Now you may argue that the Dome lacks housing to support a new person - in which case the issue is a lack of housing supply versus the labor needs, and this labor need is in turn based on the job demand.

That is again ultimately a macro issue. It is about the player needing to balance the resources needed to run the colony. Housing and labor are in fact resources that should be balanced just as people try to balance spare part supplies for machines. Moving the people around doesn't solve the problem, just as you can't fix a broken machine if you simply don't have the spare parts supply to do it.

You never have the perfect labor but it's about giving you more decision on the way you want to run your domes. I understand you correctly and i agree it's about macro but the fact is you can do micro per worker on each building in your domes when it's precisely more about macro managment. You can choose your type of workers per dome but not define worker priorities per building just fill slot per slot and like you are always in the middle of a need it would be nice to have this possibility. It's better for me if you give me macro tools building per building to handle better the macro part of a dome. And i'll let gladly the game focusing on the micro part (let things running is what you usually do late game anyway).
 
I would add it makes sense in the way the game does permit some worker types to have no malus working outside their field.
I'm thinking about botanists who can work in groceries, geologists in restaurants with no malus.
I would choose for my restaurant to get unspecialised then geologists, for my groceries unspecialised then botanists, and so on.