Idle Bug returned?

Hi all,

Been playing for some time, forgot my account details so it looks like a new ID.

Anyway, ive noticed that around day 20 with 30 hearthlings, 15 of them workers they all stop collecting goods!

Just sit there for months! occasionally they will pick something p, to later drop it elsewhere.

as a result, farmers fields are covered in food, and everyone is starving! They also dont like taking food out of their crates, which the cook “used” to cook.

so they all start becoming depressed and starve to death, despite there being 3000 units of cooked food in boxes.

any thoughts?

I’m having mine idle while mining even earlier than that; I’ve gotten them to start working again by toggling on/off the job they’re not doing (mining, hauling, building, job, etc)

New release

That’s great for unstable but what if you’re using A23 stable? My game will do the same thing until it completely freezes & I have to quick save/quick load frequently

Hi there,

Ok, i thought that i would install A24.2. things were going swell. i thought that i would check the bug again.

i added 30 citizens, and all went well for a few turns, then suddenly they just became swamped with tasks, and it all came to a grinding chatting halt!

all they do is hang about chewing the cud.

no jobs are done because there is no hauling.

no hauling = no cooking = starving, = a depressive nightmare of slow moving workers who cant be bothered with life.

what makes things worse, is that which ever cook rings the dinner gong, the workers “drop” all that they are carrying and run off for dinner. this is very annoying as they spend most of the day picking the damn stuff up. just to drop it all when dinner is ready.

what needs to be implemented here is a kind of dinner queue, the cook issues them 3 meals a day, morning, lunch and evening. they should finish the individual job they are doing before running off for food. i.e. hauling some items, making a chair, or even cooking that stew.

they should only eat 3 a day, and eat at a given time, if they miss a meal, they should eat it before going to bed at night.

it almost needs a scheduling tool.

like prison architect for example…

I just wish I had the banner of “Don’t starve yourself to death, rather than doing any kind of job.” I mean, I’m sure it’s some AI spin issue but my Hearthlings in a brand new town are still starving themselves to death and they’ve been doing this for months now. They prefer to starve until their morale is gone, they’d rather heal chickens, or not feed chickens, not pick up any resources or farm (3 farmers, 2 cooks, 0 food production because they’re busy being on a hunger strike like practically every other hearthling.) the only change I see from the previous version is that before they start literally dying, they will go pick berries off a bush and eat them.

It’s probably the most frustrating bug, in all the builds I’ve played since access was extended to all Kickstarter backers. Banner of “quit going on hunger strikes” would be nice. At least in the previous build, it was just my army who went on regular hunger strikes. Now, everyone starves, my farmers would prefer starve to death than work. My cooks would rather starve than cook. Ohhh, they do talk though, they love to chatter back and forth and cry about how hungry they are to each other and lower each other’s morale so that’s kind of adding insult to injury.

I know that Unstable is a minefield, but I really thought that -eating- was supposed to be higher on their priority list. I always play on unstable, and usually I could get some mileage out of the game before an AI just sat failing spins and the same issues popped back up. I used to be able to just cycle them all out of their army jobs (which is just… SO MUCH FUN when you have 20 people in your army) so they would at least start to function properly for a time. I read that the bug was fixed (still present in my old game, so I restarted, which did let me check out the new intro which is cool even if it isn’t all implemented yet.) but this is driving me crazy, it makes the game not at all worth playing. Here’s hoping they fix whatever the hell is causing this loop (hopefully again, or else the last fix never was a fix and just made them prefer picking their own berry to eat slightly more than starving themselves to death).

I’m still on the stable branch. It would also be really helpful if they would finish a task before running off to eat or chat. Like when they’re hauling something, suddenly they decide they MUST go talk to this other Hearthling and drop whatever they were carrying on the ground (why isn’t it going into a backpack or something instead?). Then instead of picking it up when they’re done, they go on to do something else. I’ll find baskets of food littering mining areas as well.

I’ve had some success with not assigning too many tasks at once. I also have some dedicated to building rather than mining. So I can have some mining and some building. But I don’t ask them to harvest wood, for instance, until they’re done mining unless absolutely necessary. I’ve had less of the just standing around doing nothing bit but, after awhile, it all tends to fall apart and they stop hauling. Sometimes they stop building, too.

Hi Devs… any joy on this one? It would be really nice to get this fixed, before having any more nice shiny stuff. Its probably the most annoying bug out of the whole game.

The hearthlings must finish the particular job before running off for food.

im still having a group of 15 hearthlings run to an area, pick up a rock, run off for food, repeat - industry and food production fails, everyone stand around looking at all the hauling to do, prefers starvation and dies.

Playing on untable atm,
I’ve had the same issue. I originally thought it was my laptop having a problem, but once i get over 11 Hearthlings, some or all of them decide to stand around idling. They wont eat, mine, build or haul; they just idle, or chat to each other. I tried toggling the different tasks on and off, and assigning sets of workers to specific task - but no joy.
They make nice scenery I guess, but I’d much prefer it if they actually ate and worked

yes, i upgraded to unstable. but it hasnt fixed the problem;…

hi there,

this is still an issue.

Im on the latest unstable, and after about 1-2 hours of play the game is unplayable, as the hearthlings, all sit around mope about upset that no one is doing anything.

I get about 30 seconds, after a reboot, where they run about full of joy and willing, before they become idle… i noticed that there is a huge memory leak at these times…

i tested it with various no’s of hearthlings, and its the same after 1 hour of play, with any no, of hearthlings.

all other bugs are understood, but this one has to be fixed imo.

thank you in advance!! BTW, great weather effects and all, helps with the immersion into the game.

I don’t normally have anything remotely close to this issue even with 20 Hearthlings. The game starts to bog down after about two hours of play time, but when I reboot, the game is fine again.

Do you keep a lot of stockpiles around your town? Are there items just laying about on the ground? I’ve noticed that not putting items in containers tends to make the matter worse. I’ve gotten into the habit where, as soon as I can start building large containers, I get those stockpiles emptied and fast.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people do an initial ‘locust plague’ run on resources, such as wood and stone. Killing off huge swatches of trees to the point there’s not enough room in the starting stockpiles to handle the flow. If that’s part of your playstyle, I’d recommend just doing a few at a time so you can give the hearthlings a chance to get things sorted first.

I also recommend that you don’t stockpile an excessive amount over what you need. Use it up or sell it off and keep the resources somewhat regulated to help decrease the amount of work the AI’s having to do.

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