Struggling with my Hearthlings for a few days has given me the idea of a task queue system. Basically, if you have several things going on at the same time, such as mining, building, etc, you can open up an individual Hearthling’s queue and prioritize certain things, and they will move onto the next task when there’s no more work for them in the first task. If there is work for them to do in one of the tasks, they will not move onto the next until you re-prioritize their tasks.
So, the queue could look something like this:
- Mining
- Building
- Organizing Stockpiles (including bringing items into stockpiles)
- Crafting
Another suggestion I have is the ability to set patrolling routes for certain Hearthlings (as long as they’re footmen or other fighters).
Ah. I didn’t see that in my search. Thank you. xD
The problem is how the game is currently designed. Basically, when you want to do something (mine X, harvest Y, place Z), the game tells the manager (town service) to do that. The town itself will create a task (~an AI action) and throw it into one of the task schedulers. As far as I’ve seen, schedulers are somewhat difficult to understand; they track their available workers and try to assign them the tasks. This is done with categories and priorities. In theory, it’s possible to modify this priority per hearthling, I suppose…
The action itself has a priority again, which is usually above the average (1) so it’s primarly executed. I don’t know right now how the task scheduler knows when a hearthling is idle (maybe checks for the idle action, or waits until the last task is finished), so that could be an issue.
Nevertheless, the system is based on priorities. So it is possible to a very fine tuning of those things… While theoretically possible to assign different priorities to different hearthlings, I haven’t looked into the whole task business closely yet. Depending on how the task schedulers interact with each other (if at all), it might not be possible to prioritise certain tasks over others. No idea. It’s a pretty big chunk of code to understand at once and my last attempt to mess around with it was rather fruitless, so I just gave up and ninja’d an existing task pool.
I understand completely. It’s just frustrating to see Hearthlings abandon their tasks over and over again. One of my first actions in this new game was to build a shared sleeping quarters. I have the required materials, but I guess the Hearthlings thought the building would look nicer without a front wall. There are times that they’re not maintaining their stockpile, despite having the required resources.
Also, an unrelated bug, the trapper’s knife, weaver’s spindle, and carpenter’s saw aren’t listed as tools, instead falling under the “uncategorized” category. The wooden shield is also there. Is there a category for equipment?
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i am in a similar situation:
i have 10 hearthlings (enough to get things done you would think)
but when i say… want to mine… then my Workers will mine obviously… then i try to build a ladder to help the miners get out… note i say Try
what happens is… the farmers farm… the harvesters harvest… the footmen… footer??
but NO ONE builds then a ladder for about a day, maybe more meaning one or 2 will always died
We NEED a task schedular we can use ourselves!
I’m in the exact same boat right now. I just dug a pit and two workers are trapped down there. Nobody’s building them the ladder I requested. They’re content to just… gather resources and put them in the stockpile.
The only way I’ve found around having to wait for someone else to build a ladder is to designate a small stockpile where you plan to dig. They’ll bring the log to the stockpile and then you can remove the stockpile so you can designate the digging area and the log will be useable for building a ladder. I only make small log stockpiles so my Hearthlings don’t constantly create hauling jobs when they could be doing something else useful.
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