Citizens idle when they shouldn't

Title: Builders idle with wood available outside stockpile

Summary: Most of my citizens were building two houses, when at some point they just stopped and started idling on the worksite (Fig. 1). You can see that there is no wood in my stockpile(s), but wood is lying about outside it (Fig. 2). Not sure if relevant, but I also had the citizens collect berries from all over the map, most of which were still lying around in baskets where they had been picked from the bushes.

Steps to reproduce: If I am correct that this is due to no wood in stockpiles (even though wood is available elsewhere), it would be something like:

  1. Chop down several trees and create wood stockpile(s)
  2. Before workers have a chance to move the wood into stockpile(s), have one or more houses being built
  3. Observe and see if workers retrieve the wood outside the stockpile(s) when they run out, or instead start idling on the worksite as in my case

Expected results: Upon running out of wood, if none was available in stockpiles, the citizens would retrieve wood from elsewhere on the map. If not that, then at least they would go perform other duties (such as retrieving the berries I still had lying around).

Attachments:


Fig. 1: Builders idling on the worksite.


Fig. 2: Stockpiles (near worksite) are empty of wood, but wood is available where I had several trees cut down (bottom right).

Versions and mods: No mods, latest release version in Steam at the time of writing, version 0.1.0 (release 99) according to the title screen.

System information:
- OS: Windows 8 Pro 64 bits (6.2, build 9200)

  • Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-3450 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.5GHz
  • Memory: 8192MB RAM
  • DirectX-version: DirectX 11
  • Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
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Upon reloading, I saw the remnants of the building as slightly transparent as in build mode; the bits that were already built earlier as fully opaque (this returns to normal after selecting build mode and exiting it). Most citizens stopped idling and went to retrieve berries from across the map, but some still remained idle (Fig. 3). Even after retrieving berries (and not even all of them), they went back to idling, and only occasionally someone got a single wood block to build a little bit.


Fig. 3: Buildings and idlers upon reloading.

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excellent report @Phagocytosis! I can confirm a similar behavior as well (at least, the partially visible buildings in your follow-up post)…

as @sdee suggested, I think we’ll spend some time today or tomorrow collecting this massive influx of bugs, and creating a poll for us to vote on those issues that are the most pressing…

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It may not be related to building or wood outside stockpiles. I started a new game just now and again had my workers gather berries from all over the map at first, which they did, and then after they had gathered some (maybe all that I had designated; but before they had brought the baskets back to the stockpile), most all of them started idling again, around the bushes this time. True, I had wood outside stockpiles as well, again, but they didn’t even get to that. I think this must be an issue with bringing things to stockpiles, perhaps especially as they are far away (perhaps to do with pathing?).

Bug: Villager stands around and when someone puts something in the stockpile, they run over, pick it up, and move to another part of the same stockpile.

Steps; 1. make a large stockpile
2. harvest a heap of wood
3. watch the ocd tendencies come through.

In my current game her name is merrianne dorril, I haven’t seen her do any work yet except, reorder the stock pile.

“NO! not there, HERE!”

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Thanks for the report, this has definitely been reported somewhere before, just need to find where though …

i believe its this one…

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Don’t think it’s quite this one @SteveAdamo it sounds like one of those where the pathfinder/ AI goes all screwy and decides to just pick stuff up and move it around or place it back down again. Over, and over, and over.

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ahh, right! sorry i was focusing too much on those from the poll thread… but yes, we’ve definitely seen this behavior reported elsewhere… the hunt resumes!

edit: is it perhaps this one?

That’s the one :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the report! This is a pathfinding issue. See the bar in the lower right corner of your screenshot? It’s all yellow because all the time is going to the pathfinder. (You can click on the bar to see a detailed breakdown.)

When dudes are standing around when they SHOULD be doing something and the bar is yellow, it’s cause they’re trying to figure out how to get where they want to go.

We obviously need to optimize this more. :stuck_out_tongue: :slight_smile:

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That’s very interesting, good to know :slight_smile: but… what’s going on with the first screenshot in my original post, then? That’s just seconds before the second one…

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It might just be the same problem; the UI might not track the usage immediately.

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I have not noticed this bug again since the new release came out. I think it was probably resolved, although confirmation of this would be welcome. I’m very happy about this, as it was the one that annoyed me/kept me from playing the most!

Hmm… well, not sure if it’s this again, but I have seen another instance of idling with a building to be built and wood available in the stockpiles during my first play of release 114. I point out the unfinished house, the idling workers, and the wood in the stockpiles, at 25:24 in the below video. I got an error message shortly beforehand, which may or may not be related (25:00).

Mind you, it’s not only the house that’s not being built. There’s some items lying around that have yet to be brought back to the stockpile (e.g., baskets of berries atop the ladder, 25:51). Pathing again an option, I suppose.

Pathing should, for the most part, be fixed; the bug you encountered before the workers started idling is likely the culprit. Excellent work capturing this video–I love the Schumann, too :smile:

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Ah, the error message? It’s possible, which would mean I guess I noticed the problem sooner than I thought I would. When you see something like this, you tend to feel like it’s been going on for a little while. Anyway, that’s good, that may make it easier to fix… right?

Thanks! I actually didn’t have a lot of choice with a video of that length, but I rather like it, myself.

As a follow-up to this earlier post in this topic, I can confirm that it is still happening in R122. I point this out in this recent video at 32:30.

Also in this video at 16:00. Some are idling, some aren’t; none should, I think, in this situation.

This is happening in R134 as well except it seems to be a whole lot worse. If there are supplies on a different terrain level, they won’t be collected. Also specialized workers such as carpenters, farmers, and weavers, are even more laggy than ever before. They won’t even build their crafting stations sometimes.

You can see above that there is a carpenter going for the wood in this stockpile, but as soon as those two pieces where used up, everyone stopped working and the wood on the plateau above wasn’t used or moved to a stockpile. Also the weaver there has been told to build her station, but she never did it.

Still in R166. I don’t think the elevation levels are related, as earlier in my play my citizens were retrieving items from higher levels, and when they started idling, they didn’t retrieve items from the same elevation level either. Perhaps load/save is related? I noticed very shortly after loading and saving.

Save at 14:12 followed by immediate load done at 14:30. Idling visible immediately after that (although noticed (while playing) and pointed out explicitly (with mouse and camera movements) at 15:02.

EDIT: idling was over again upon a reload. See start of this video: