Making Jobs & Controls more convenient

[heu3becteh]

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While it is good you could set a jobs and not manage everything yourself (which would be hardly possible), there are still many things that get tedious and could be improved in sense of control and automatization.

1. First of all, it would be very useful to have a better job control.
a. Clear job queue (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14298). That will not change much though, functionality included in the next point 2.
b. Saving and loading job patterns (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14423). That would be useful in many senses, and can make some new game mechanics possible too, bringing job management to a new level, where you can set a number of farmers, armorers, engineers in your town, for example.
c. Job settings/conditions could help to make character do the things you will desire from him at the moment. For example make more characters obtain iron ore when less than 10 ore in your outpost left. Or, more important, stop ore production when the storage is more than 80% full, to prevent characters from being unable to drop the ore off somewhere.
So the character will have a miner job when you need more ore and farmer when you need more crops.
Condition for the number of characters doing job is useful too. Many conditions could be useful, but I think resource quantity/storage and characters doing the job are the most important.
d. Checkbox-based enable/disable specific task of a job (may help with unreasonable turret occupation, for example).

2. While it is good the game allows to set a specific machine to use, it would be useful (for both player and for character to work efficiently) being able to order some general tasks like “do farming”, “make steel” for character to find the closest and the most convenient place to work.

3. In addition some new tasks would be useful:
a. Use turret that can shoot enemy.
b. Patrol the town (like NPCs do, existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=15186).
c. Sleep until healed (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14803).
d. Close the gate (maybe auto, existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=15129).
e. Drop items of selected categories from inventory to storage.

4. Engineer should take the materials for building considering the task (how much needed) and other engineers working on it (how much will they bring).
That can prevent the inventories from being trashed and material overproduction.

5. It would be useful to have configurable hotkeys for almost everything. Useful examples:
a. Dismantle hotkey (Del by default), now you have to click and position your mouse way too much. Maybe even making some dismantle mode could be useful, but hotkey should be convenient enough.
b. Select the next character hotkey (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=13704). For now I just use squads for 10 characters and Tab between them, but most of the time I just press buttons from 1 to 10 to position everyone, that could be done with one key and for more than 10 characters.
c. Show/hide character names (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14275), maybe other settings.

6. It could be useful to set specific outpost locations in build menu: place to drop unconscious enemies, area to check for them, area for traders. So that you character will not run all around your walls to drop some bandit and back to cremate him. So that “friendly” characters will not break your gates.

7. It could be useful to have some better squad formation control. To be able to form a line from your squad by Shift+RMB, for example. Squad should try to run close together in go-together movement speed mode, now it can be divided by little pathfinding differences. There could even be some “keep formation” checkbox that makes characters remember their position relative to other squad members. There could be “do not shoot when friendly is on the line of fire” checkbox.

Summary
1. Better controls over jobs including job save/load, conditions to switch tasks.
2. Some general tasks not targeting specific machines, character can pick the closest and the most convenient machine by self.
3. Some new tasks like patrol town, sleep until healed, close the gate, drop all the items to storage.
4. Engineer should consider what the building is and how much of materials other engineers doing the task are bringing there.
5. Hotkeys for everything. For example, dismantle and select next character hotkeys.
6. Setting outpost locations, location to drop unconscious enemies, for example.
7. Squad formation controls.

Best regards.

[swillo]

1. First of all, it would be very useful to have a better job control.
a. Clear job queue (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14298). That will not change much though, functionality included in the next point 2.
b. Saving and loading job patterns (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14423). That would be useful in many senses, and can make some new game mechanics possible too, bringing job management to a new level, where you can set a number of farmers, armorers, engineers in your town, for example.
c. Job settings/conditions could help to make character do the things you will desire from him at the moment. For example make more characters obtain iron ore when less than 10 ore in your outpost left. Or, more important, stop ore production when the storage is more than 80% full, to prevent characters from being unable to drop the ore off somewhere.
So the character will have a miner job when you need more ore and farmer when you need more crops.
Condition for the number of characters doing job is useful too. Many conditions could be useful, but I think resource quantity/storage and characters doing the job are the most important.
d. Checkbox-based enable/disable specific task of a job (may help with unreasonable turret occupation, for example).

Not sure about the save/load jobs. But it would be nice if there were check boxes to temporarily turn on specific jobs on and off.
And it would be nice if the "haul to" job could be non specific so anyone standing around doing nothing would help clean up the place.

2. While it is good the game allows to set a specific machine to use, it would be useful (for both player and for character to work efficiently) being able to order some general tasks like “do farming”, “make steel” for character to find the closest and the most convenient place to work.

3. In addition some new tasks would be useful:
a. Use turret that can shoot enemy.
b. Patrol the town (like NPCs do, existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=15186).
c. Sleep until healed (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14803).
d. Close the gate (maybe auto, existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=15129).
e. Drop items of selected categories from inventory to storage.

Interesting, I like the idea of accessing some of these from a RMB menu for the base or a building. So you could assign them to a specific spot.

Characters will already sleep until healed. You just have to stop them working first.

4. Engineer should take the materials for building considering the task (how much needed) and other engineers working on it (how much will they bring).
That can prevent the inventories from being trashed and material overproduction.

I would be happy is they just split the engineering tasks into two. one to bring materials and one to build. Then someone could run around predelivering materials (a hauling task) while others with building skills would build.

5. It would be useful to have configurable hotkeys for almost everything. Useful examples:
a. Dismantle hotkey (Del by default), now you have to click and position your mouse way too much. Maybe even making some dismantle mode could be useful, but hotkey should be convenient enough.
b. Select the next character hotkey (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=13704). For now I just use squads for 10 characters and Tab between them, but most of the time I just press buttons from 1 to 10 to position everyone, that could be done with one key and for more than 10 characters.
c. Show/hide character names (existing topic https://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewto ... 16&t=14275), maybe other settings.

One for the character names and dismantle would be useful. More useful would be to be able to press the Y or N key on verification windows.

You can already use the comma and period keys to move to the next and previous. combined with the tab and 1 keys, you can scan the whole of your troops fairly easily.

6. It could be useful to set specific outpost locations in build menu: place to drop unconscious enemies, area to check for them, area for traders. So that you character will not run all around your walls to drop some bandit and back to cremate him. So that “friendly” characters will not break your gates.

actually would like to see a jailor job. Where they would put them in cages, heal and feed them. It works for the NPCs. It also used to heal and feed them automatically. but for some reason it no longer does.

7. It could be useful to have some better squad formation control. To be able to form a line from your squad by Shift+RMB, for example. Squad should try to run close together in go-together movement speed mode, now it can be divided by little pathfinding differences. There could even be some “keep formation” checkbox that makes characters remember their position relative to other squad members. There could be “do not shoot when friendly is on the line of fire” checkbox.

Having a button that allows you to change formations would be great. Especially for setting a firing line. press it and every selected character moves to the formation.
And the AI really needs to change the line of fire concept. Currently it shoots and if your skill is higher you miss your friends. It should be if the skill is high enough to miss your friends, fire, else hold and don't shoot till you have a clear shot.
I lose more characters/limbs to friendly fire then anything else in Kenshi.

[heu3becteh]

Characters will already sleep until healed. You just have to stop them working first.

It would be more convenient to have that as a job (:
That way you will not have to give the command (to stop working and start again).

You can already use the comma and period keys to move to the next and previous. combined with the tab and 1 keys, you can scan the whole of your troops fairly easily.

That was helpful!

Having a button that allows you to change formations would be great. Especially for setting a firing line. press it and every selected character moves to the formation.
And the AI really needs to change the line of fire concept. Currently it shoots and if your skill is higher you miss your friends. It should be if the skill is high enough to miss your friends, fire, else hold and don't shoot till you have a clear shot.
I lose more characters/limbs to friendly fire then anything else in Kenshi.

Yeah, the firing line is the formation I use the most... And around half of my squad lost limbs are torn away by friendly shots (: