Unemployed non-specialists won't move to University dome

[Lukfi]

Looking through Steam forums, Reddit and the forums here, it seems I may not be the only one with a similar problem, but I have not found any solution to the problem.

I've got a dome with some residences and workplaces. I've built a university dome (also with residences) next to it and connected it with a passage. Important thing to note - I have "Use passages for work" disabled so that colonists must live and work in the same dome to avoid the performance penalty of not working in their home dome. The University dome is set to deny all specialists (so that colonists move elsewhere when they finish their education).

I had non-specialists working in my farms and factories and I wanted them to get an education. But simply setting the priority of universities higher doesn't motivate workers to move if they already have a job. Being high on resources and low on specialists, I set the factories in the production dome to only accept specialists, in an effort to force the non-specialists to go to University (the only place that will accept non-specialists apart from some service buildings which are fully staffed). Now I have 20 unemployed non-specialists in my production dome, more than enough residential space in the university dome, and they just won't move unless manually reassigned. I have installed the Career A.I. mod, but that doesn't seem to have helped. Might even have made things worse.

Side question: do colonists actually use the passages for moving between domes? Or do they have to walk outside and the airlocks have to be in range? I noticed that the airlocks are positioned such that they are out of the other dome's range. But in that case I would expect them to use the shuttles, and they don't.

What should I do?

• Should I wait longer for them to move on their own? Does it take several sols and I'm just not patient enough?
• If I enable the use of passages for work, the colonists find the job immediately, but even though there are free residences, they don't move on their own, and suffer a -10 performance penalty. Not ideal.
• Should I temporarily set "thumb up" for non-specialists in the University dome? This doesn't seem to be a good solution, because then non-specialists will happily leave their service job and flock to that dome even if they end up being homeless.
• I suppose a cheat exists to disable the -10 penalty? That would solve the issue (my colonists get education with no performance penalty while studying) but only for directly connected domes.

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

[Mauer]

Honestly, it sounds like you're trying to micromanage a lot, at which point manually assigning the colonists to homes and jobs may be better.

If you set the thumbs up for non-specialists in the university dome, I think only enough will move to fill the jobs, some should remain on the other domes still as long as you don't ban them from there, I know because I have done the same; but I never deactivate the use domes for work either so I don't know if that can affect things.

 

[Lukfi]

On the contrary I was trying to avoid the need for micro-managing every single colonist.
Anyway, I ended up using the thumbs-up for non-specialists, although only temporarily. Once the initial "batch" of 20 people moved to the university dome, I didn't get a buildup of unemployed colonists since then. However I ran into another interesting problem. In the university dome I also built a Grocer, to provide food for the students but also serve the connected domes. But nobody wanted to work there, since there were enough empty workplaces as the universities, everybody went to university although the Grocer had the same priority level as the universities. Maybe I needed to set it higher for the Grocer...

 

[Lukfi]

I didn't get a buildup of unemployed colonists since then.

Eh, too soon... in the dome right next to the University dome, I have ~10 unemployed people who are non-specialists and since the university counts as a workplace they could go get an education, but they just won't move.

 

[Mauer]

The penalty for working on another dome is really small and it only ends up affecting a few colonists. I'd just let them do their thing tbh.

 

[Lukfi]

Does not help. I filed a bug report to explain it in more detail.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...mployed-not-moving-to-different-dome.1297483/
In the playthrough where I first ran into the issue, the residential (or I guess I should call it a work dome) and university dome are connected by a passage so they should be in walking distance, but I haven't been able to reproduce it. In my "bug reproduction run" the colonists will happily move to a dome which is nearby, but not to a dome which is further away, even if shuttles are available.

 

[Promethian]

The thing about thumbs downing a dome is that it doesn't kick people out. It only prevents them from moving in. Thumbs up on the other hand is an active draw.

The only reason I can think your uni dome isn't working with how you set it up is you don't have open housing in your work domes. Open housing is the key to getting people to move around. Uni dome can't take people because housing is full. Work dome can't take people because housing is full. Thus no trade of workers happens.

I have to ask. Do you have children and senior domes? I bet you have kids and seniors taking up housing in work domes. Senior domes just need housing and parks. Child domes you give nurseries, playgrounds and schools. I connect both types to a dome with lots of generic services, including lots of food service. These pull non-workers out of the precious housing in your work domes.

 

[Lukfi]

The thing about thumbs downing a dome is that it doesn't kick people out. It only prevents them from moving in. Thumbs up on the other hand is an active draw.

Are you absolutely positively certain about this one? I have tried this with a new colony I started just recently where I have just two domes close to each other, I tried thumbing down an age group in one and they totally did move to the other one. Does this work differently with domes outside walking distance?

The only reason I can think your uni dome isn't working with how you set it up is you don't have open housing in your work domes. Open housing is the key to getting people to move around. Uni dome can't take people because housing is full. Work dome can't take people because housing is full. Thus no trade of workers happens.

Housing in the university dome is empty because the dumb colonists will not move there on their own. They will rather stay unemployed in the work dome, where housing may be full at this point but that doesn't really matter, does it?

I have to ask. Do you have children and senior domes? I bet you have kids and seniors taking up housing in work domes. Senior domes just need housing and parks. Child domes you give nurseries, playgrounds and schools. I connect both types to a dome with lots of generic services, including lots of food service. These pull non-workers out of the precious housing in your work domes.

I do use kids domes (and I am using Incubator mod which prevents overcrowding them). I don't have domes outright designed for seniors, but I put them wherever I have the excess residential capacity. This hasn't been a problem for me. The seniors will happily move wherever I give the thumb up, or move out of domes where I give the thumbs down. But I don't want university domes to pull all the non-specialists. I want only those who can't find a non-specialist job to go get an education so they can then work in the specialist jobs.

 

[Promethian]

1. Just because thumbs down doesn't kick them out doesn't mean they won't move. Moving happens and if you cut them off from moving to somewhere then obviously they will eventually all move elsewhere.

2. Your description of the situation here does not reconcile with my observations of reality. You either do not have things set up properly or your game is bugged. Mods cause bugs, disable them all, then check to make sure your domes have their filters set properly. Also please do not make future requests for assistance before confirming if a mod broke your game.

3. I don't understand why you use a mod to prevent overcrowding. This is something that is manageable with the game's mechanics.

 

[Lukfi]

1. Perhaps we just misunderstood each other, but when you say a thumb down "only prevents them from moving in", I would expect that if give a thumb down to Botanist specialization in a dome, new botanists will not move in but the ones already living there will not move out as long as they have a job. However the in-game tooltip specifically says that people with thumbs down "will move out", and this is what I observed - the moment I give the thumbs down, colonists immediately move out as long as there is residential space in another dome.

2. If you don't believe me, feel free to download the savegame I attached to the bug report and see for yourself. It will complain about missing mods, but will load just fine on a vanilla game.

3. How do you manage that with the game's standard mechanics? Sorry for going off topic here, but I found the vanilla game mechanics lacking (and so did the author of the mod, I guess). I am aware of two options:

• You can allow births in selected domes only, this way you can control birth rate, but on a very coarse level
  
• You can constantly check how many children you have so as not to go over the capacity of your schools and playgrounds, and allow/forbid births accordingly

The mod essentially does the latter for me so there is one less thing to worry about. I still have a lot of micromanagement to do anyway - I have to be careful not to grow my population too much, otherwise I won't have enough housing or enough food for them all.

 

[Promethian]

Population mechanics are very predictable. A dome at max population and not overcrowded produces new people at very steady rate. If you only allow one dome to reproduce and keep expanding you will eventually hit a population plateau. This creates a very easy cycle to deal with. Limit your births to however many domes you want. Expand for a while. Check your population graph. If its plateaued and you are ready to build more infrastructure enable births in some more domes.

I care enough to tell you what is likely causing the problem. I do not care enough to download your save to troubleshoot your heavily modded game for you. That is something you should be doing yourself anyways. I gave you step one. Disable your mods.

 

[Lukfi]

Population mechanics are very predictable. A dome at max population and not overcrowded produces new people at very steady rate. If you only allow one dome to reproduce and keep expanding you will eventually hit a population plateau. This creates a very easy cycle to deal with. Limit your births to however many domes you want. Expand for a while. Check your population graph. If its plateaued and you are ready to build more infrastructure enable births in some more domes

I get what you're saying, the birth rate is more or less constant so I could build as many nurseries, schools and playgrounds to accommodate for that. And at some point the population gets so big that people die as fast as new ones are born. But that doesn't really fit my playstyle, I like to expand at a rate I choose and not be forced to do it by population increase. I prefer to keep the population mostly level and when I build a new dome, I can get some new blood from Earth to jump start it.

Hurr durr teh modz brok yur gaem!!1!!!

Good sir, do you have issues with reading comprehension? I have disabled the mods and it did not fix the problem. I cannot think of a more plain language to write this in.