Recently been trying a slightly different first week start up routine where I focus a workcrew and my only worker purely on construction and hauling to try and get multiple constructions up ASAP now that happiness matters and so food and sleeping quarters are significant day 1 or 2 things to consider yet all things also feed off the carpentry.. so that's 3 buildings and a functional workshop to get going in a day or so. However I'm noticed some unusual behaviour with my construction crews that I usually don't pick up on in a larger colony when there's so much going on that it goes without notice, and it's that whilst a worker is constructing a building, the overseer (and I assume other workers) seem unable to handle other construction orders and instead will revert to just hauling jobs until the worker is done. For example: I haven't poked it enough yet to see if this is specific to constructing buildings, or just some weird behaviour which has caused my overseer to go blind, but my initial guess would be that it may actually be something much further reaching along the lines of a workcrew can only do construction jobs for one specific building at a time. Which means if a kitchen is being constructed, because there are no other valid construction jobs to do with the kitchen the rest of the workcrew is locked out from doing any more construction work elsewhere. And similarly if a overseer picks a job for building modules in a carpentry, the rest of the crew will only tackle other construction jobs within the carpentry as well. If this is actually the case and is indeed part of some "One building only" focus restriction to construction workcrews, this actually poses quite a significant productivity roadblock. So I'm curious, has anyone else noticed this restriction in play with construction focused workcrews? Or has anyone noticed clear signs that a single workcrew can indeed work on construction jobs spread across multiple buildings meaning this case may actually be a bug? Edit: In that screenshot I have a carpentry waiting for 2 workbenches to be built plus windows, and just shy of 50 wood available to do the jobs immediately, but once my worker started building that kitchen my overseer just took up hauling.
Yes, for a while now I've noticed that, if you check the jobs list, things like "construct module" and "construct building" are assigning to entire workgroups at once. So yes, if there's 5 people they can all help "Gather Building Materials" but when someone is hammering the building down, everyone else is left doing the only job that doesn't need workgroup assignment. Hauling. I've noticed when making things like the big bunkhouses. Also, you'll notice that two or 5 workgroups cannot help build a single building either. Early on though, it isn't much of a matter in my planning as I have to chop or mine all the stone. Same reason I didn't notice the starting supplies owning my colonists as I had none. Similarly for foraging, mining etc, if you have 5 people in a group and make a foraging order for 2 bushes, and another for 2 more bushes nearby, only 2 people will forage (that's on job order) and the rest will haul.
I completely forgot about the job list as I generally ignore it except to step in to remove existing problem orders. Would be nice to see construction jobs changed to not be children tasks of a building so it's not a case of construction crew overseers just picking a building devote themselves toward then. As the very reason for easy colony resource harvesting so you can support building 2-3 buildings in the first couple of days, alongside having enough wood for the carpentry to produce the modules to populate those new buildings is the very reason more flexible construction crews are important, there's a finite amount of free manpower to go around the first few days until the carpentry is buzzing and drawing new overseers, yet colonists very much need those meals and beds before you hit day 4 ideally.
I noticed the same issue Tiki, when I tried almost exactly the same thing in my last playthrough, I wasn't too salty tho, as the hammering part usually doesn't last long, and frankly I could use some extra hands hauling all my crap back to the stockpile.
Huzzah! As mentioned in the steam discussion post, it's not "OMG this breaks the game!" issue. Just more of a quirk of the current system that can sneak up on you and slow down your early efforts if you aren't aware of it and try to have one focused construction crew whilst everyone else works on the rest of the early colony prep.
What are you planning on having the otherwise idle constructors do? Are they all going to be able to pile on to an existing "build building" task to make it faster?
Deep down I'm hoping it's some change to how construction jobs exist so they're treated more as open jobs like hauling, burial etc. But we'll see what happens after the more important stuff is kicked in the nads.
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