At the moment every Hearthling is always actively pathing, figuring out what to do next, and basically taking up AI resources. As towns grow this can cause both lag, and weird situations.
My cook or potter might be working at night and sleeping during the day. People may even wind up sleeping on the ground when they get “tired” away from the beds . . . I think this is all right as a default (when a few hearthlings are camping out) but really isn’t how an established town should run.
What I’d like to do is provide people with the ability to organize their workers days a bit more rationally:
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Set time periods when they are doing their job versus having free time.
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Set areas/districts to remain in, perhaps with pre-set pathing for specific tasks such as walking to the stockpile and back to a work station, or patrol patterns for guards.This would limit how often dynamic pathing has to be invoked to times when the set path is blocked by a placed object or by a randomly moving Hearthling.
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Work Groups who path and work as a unit unless somehow disrupted by terrain or entities. This could be a group of patrolling guards or a bunch of workers set to go out to the “quarry” every day and mine out stone and clay. Again by treating them as a single unit rather than X individuals we potentially save CPU resources.
Obviously the idea isn’t perfect and would take a lot of work. But if implemented it might allow for larger and more orderly towns. It also would set the groundwork for “off duty” time periods and activities. Also for hearthlings who play different roles in the community at different times.