Managing colonists is a disaster

[Acidmetal]

First of all the game randomly allocates colonists between buildings. Not sure if it considers specializations. I have seen geologist taken from a mine and put to diner by the game automatically after I have assigned colonists manually, which kind of defeats the purpose of having this manual assigning at all.

After disabling some slots on some shifts and trying to manage the colonists manually I see this.
You can see a guy working there on that balcony. It's one of my botanists, if I select the colonist, it says he is employed in Spacebar, but if I select the Spacebar it shows me no one is working there.

The whole colonist managing system is a mess. You have feature to assign colonists manually to workplaces, yet you set the game automatically change colonists from work places. What gives?????

If anyone cares, below is the exact setup I have in my dome.

I have a poly factory, metal mine, diner, spacebar and hydroponics farm. All managed by one dome. Dome has 12 colonists living there.

4 botanists
4 geologists
3 engineers
1 no specialization

I put 3 engineers to poly factory, 4 geologists to mine, 3 botanists to farm. That leaves me 1 no specialization and 1 botanist.

I put no specialization guy to diner and the botanist to spacebar.

After couple of minutes I check my colonists again, the game has changed the positions of my colonists... so i set manually everything again... this time I disabled second slot in a shift for Diner and Spacebar, because it assigned some engineers and geologists from poly factory and mine to diners and spacebars.

My poly factory and mine work at 6 to 14 shift, Diner works 14 to 22 shift and Spacebar works 22 to 6 shift.

 

[Almaravarion]

Completely agree - colonist management system needs major improvement with high preference of specialization preference, but it should be done carefuly, so colonies don't die of starvation when colonists have specialized jobs but none of them are botanists;

 

[Quintus of Mund]

Funny, I haven’t really felt the need to manage colonists yet! They do a good enough job for me.

(I am not playing on insane difficulty)

 

[Ri0Rdian]

I am not sure whether the current lack of fine controls or some other control options that people keep asking is the result of lack of development time, the fact that we are stuck with the same UI/controls as the consoles (!) or both.

Sticking people to a profession should be a given and not randomly messed with by the game. We are more or less playing a colony manager without having enough control of one of the most important parts of the game!

This is easy to solve though, just allow picking which person works where and no interference from the game = done.

 

[Calvax]

I started a new game this morning with the intention of making a fully self sufficient colony without any colonists. They are the most annoying aspect of the game. My plan at the moment is to keep playing in the hope of getting the Extractor AI breakthrough so that I can mine rare metals to sell without any people. Use that to import electronics, polymers and machine parts until (again hopefully) unlocking biorobots just for those things.

Not exactly playing as intended but aside from being an interesting challenge I'm hoping it will take some of the frustration out of the game when it comes to the moronic breed-like-rabbits colonists you have to babysit.

 

[Ri0Rdian]

I started a new game this morning with the intention of making a fully self sufficient colony without any colonists. They are the most annoying aspect of the game. My plan at the moment is to keep playing in the hope of getting the Extractor AI breakthrough so that I can mine rare metals to sell without any people. Use that to import electronics, polymers and machine parts until (again hopefully) unlocking biorobots just for those things.

Not exactly playing as intended but aside from being an interesting challenge I'm hoping it will take some of the frustration out of the game when it comes to the moronic breed-like-rabbits colonists you have to babysit.

I ended up playing my first game quite the same way (I like efficiency and thus would prefer to send in colonist when everything is working and stocked up with plenty of resources). Sol 85, finally managed to scan every tile and research every anomaly present and collected every piece of metal or polymer lying around. Though I started with one of the easiest starts (international mission, astrogeologist and full resource location with highest threat being meteors at 2).

No colonist on planet so far but about 30 drones, 2 rc rovers, 2 transports and explorer. I even have the Mega Dome researched and see almost all the techs available. Good I do not intend to play without colonists since I didn't get the tech that would allow me to do it

But as long as you get the tech it is perfectly doable, although somehow even slower (someone would say boring) game.

 

[CrazyOdd]

I started a new game this morning with the intention of making a fully self sufficient colony without any colonists. They are the most annoying aspect of the game. My plan at the moment is to keep playing in the hope of getting the Extractor AI breakthrough so that I can mine rare metals to sell without any people. Use that to import electronics, polymers and machine parts until (again hopefully) unlocking biorobots just for those things.

That works, except for 1 thing. The Drone Assembler, cant be automated. At least I havent found a breakthrough or research, that will do it.
So you need the first rocket with people, to get the BioRobots going, then take it from there.

 

[Calvax]

That works, except for 1 thing. The Drone Assembler, cant be automated. At least I havent found a breakthrough or research, that will do it.
So you need the first rocket with people, to get the BioRobots going, then take it from there.

Good tip, thanks! So far I seem to be unlucky and haven't got the breakthroughs for automated extractors or BioRobots. If I do I'll just import an all male/female group of founders to run the Drone Assembler and let them pleasantly live out their days until dying off. Shame we can't forcibly exile people back to Earth.

 

[Cymsdale]

I've found not looking where the colonists are working helps a lot.

 

[Benzhexol]

I wish there would be a colonist manager that all people shown on a list with their residence and work place, so you can manage everyone's work in a single place rather than click each person one by one.

 

[Ri0Rdian]

... Shame we can't forcibly exile people back to Earth.

Oh, but you can! Make their life as miserable as it gets and they should leave with the first ship that goes off.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

The game does manage colonists properly, but not immediately. There are a few rules to keep in mind that will make your life a lot easier:

1. When a workplace is first opened, the game simply puts whoever is available for the job in there immediately. It won't calculate who should go where until later, give it some time.
2. The game figures out which slots need to be filled in your buildings before it considers specializations. So if you've got several buildings on equal priority but only enough people to fill half of them, the game will decide that half of each building will be filled regardless of specializations.
3. Then the game fills those work slots with whoever is specialized for it first, with non-specialized and wrong specializations after that. It will never assign extra people to a building based on their specializations if it doesn't think those job slots need to be filled.
4. If you absolutely need to micromanage every slot, you'll need to manually set how many people should work in every building by right-clicking on the employment slots. Otherwise the game will undo all your manual worker placement the next time it recalculates jobs.
5. If certain buildings are critical, like farms and clinics, set those to higher priority. Those work slots will be filled first and will take any botanists or medics available when the game next recalculates jobs.

 

[FrostflyPrime]

The game does manage colonists properly, but not immediately. There are a few rules to keep in mind that will make your life a lot easier:

1. When a workplace is first opened, the game simply puts whoever is available for the job in there immediately. It won't calculate who should go where until later, give it some time.
2. The game figures out which slots need to be filled in your buildings before it considers specializations. So if you've got several buildings on equal priority but only enough people to fill half of them, the game will decide that half of each building will be filled regardless of specializations.
3. Then the game fills those work slots with whoever is specialized for it first, with non-specialized and wrong specializations after that. It will never assign extra people to a building based on their specializations if it doesn't think those job slots need to be filled.
4. If you absolutely need to micromanage every slot, you'll need to manually set how many people should work in every building by right-clicking on the employment slots. Otherwise the game will undo all your manual worker placement the next time it recalculates jobs.
5. If certain buildings are critical, like farms and clinics, set those to higher priority. Those work slots will be filled first and will take any botanists or medics available when the game next recalculates jobs.

so that's why my biologists end up in the mines and my engineers are in the infirmary...right. The game is doing it right. I look, but rarely bother moving people about because it's clunky and annoying to do so.

The game undoing manual placement is one of the most annoying things a game can do.

 

[Spoopyghost]

Why can't the colonists work outside the dome like the drones? The lack of ground vehicles is strange too. Outside of setting up drone printing, what purpose do the colonists serve?

It doesn't seem like an optimistic view of the future when the pioneers are out-of-control idiotic whiny rabbits living in a bubble served by a bunch of robots. Sorta disappointed with this game.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

so that's why my biologists end up in the mines and my engineers are in the infirmary...right. The game is doing it right. I look, but rarely bother moving people about because it's clunky and annoying to do so.

The game undoing manual placement is one of the most annoying things a game can do.

You sure about that? Have you made sure there are enough work slots for that specialty to work there and waited a day for the game to replace them? Note that there is only something wrong if any of the people working in the farm/hydroponics are NOT botanists. Empty spots in the farm while botanists are working elsewhere is functioning as intended. The game has decided that those spots on the farm don't need to be filled, regardless of whether or not there are botanists available to fill them.

 

[Tanas]

I am not sure whether the current lack of fine controls or some other control options that people keep asking is the result of lack of development time, the fact that we are stuck with the same UI/controls as the consoles (!) or both.

Sticking people to a profession should be a given and not randomly messed with by the game. We are more or less playing a colony manager without having enough control of one of the most important parts of the game!

This is easy to solve though, just allow picking which person works where and no interference from the game = done.

I absolutely disagree, it is a impossible to manage 1000 colonist manually even on easy difficulty. And what if some colonist die or some sources are depleted? You again have to reassigne all position manually it is insane.

The automatic process is also a little bit confusing for me, but I never manage people manually. I always set a filter on the dome so I send unspecialized people to the university dome and specialized people to the dome with their specialization and it works quite a good, but domes have to be nearby or have to have a shuttle.

 

[Mauer]

I haven't used small domes, as I started with India, so I have a lot of workplaces and population in my medium domes, I only noticed problems when I had very few colonists and a lot of jobs for them but now at 100 people in the dome they generally get assigned to their specializations.

What I really would like is the option to lock them to a job, so the micromanagement of the early colonists is useful, the game's encyclopedia even tells you to use the founders as efficiently as possible but it an exercise in frustration when they just change jobs on their own after a day or two.

 

[aono]

but it should be done carefuly, so colonies don't die of starvation when colonists have specialized jobs but none of them are botanists;

That's simple to achieve as a developer - just set priority setting before specialization (so if farm is set on high priority, it should be staffed no matter if farmers are botanists; every other building is filled with specialization in mind). Actually, as an improvement it can be even more - let player to prioritize workplaces, not only building.

 

[joelzhl]

Currently, I found the best colonist management is to specialize all domes so they only have 1-2 specializations.

For my first dome, I started with a farm and a research lab and only allow in scientists, biologists, and no specialization people. The second dome is set to only allow engineers and I put all my factories there. The third dome houses the university and nursery. Eventually, I specialize them even further, splitting the science, farming, and university into its own dome.

I got lucky and rolled the Service Bot breakthrough in my current game, so as soon as I get enough electronics, I can completely specialize and get rid of those no specialization mismatches.

 

[Chiruadr]

It sorts itself out after a while. Make sure you plop University in the dome, once the babies start rolling you can't stop them anyway, you will be flooded with colonists and they will eventually find their way. It sucks in the begging but the actual impact on productivity isn't that great anyway

My main problem is that I can't stop the babies. I have apartments full of kids lmao