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Author Topic: Manager is not very smart  (Read 658 times)

brucemo

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Manager is not very smart
« on: September 03, 2010, 07:22:35 pm »

As of now the manager is a great thing if I am pipelining things that all eligible workers can make.  For example, I can tell the manager to smelt 30 galena, 30 copper, and 30 hematite, and it will do it, because all furnace operators can smelt all of these things.

The system breaks down in other obvious cases.  If I have a bone carver and a stonecrafter, and I tell them via manager to make 30 rock mugs and 30 bone bolts, what happens is that both workshops end up back-ordered for mugs until most of the mugs are done, so the stone guy makes mugs in one workshop, the other one is idle, and the bone guy stands around waiting.

This seems to be true even if I assign the specific workers to their workshop via Profile.

Am I missing some obvious way to do this, other than "make rock mugs /r" and "make bone bolts /r"?  I've played for a long time but I've been a forum lurker, and I've never seen this problem addressed.  It's particularly terrible if I have three forges and want to make steel axes, steel shields, and lead barrels simultaneously.
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devek

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Re: Manager is not very smart
« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2010, 07:23:32 pm »

Or collecting sand :(
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brucemo

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Re: Manager is not very smart
« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2010, 07:24:14 pm »

I suppose that I phrased the above as a question rather than a suggestion.  I'd suggest that the manager be changed a bit so that it respects profile and/or tries to pipe jobs through multiple workshops a little smarter.

I know that there are some manager things in the eternal suggestions, but this seems pretty specific and is less earth shaking than calling for a total revamp.
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Namfuak

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Re: Manager is not very smart
« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2010, 08:22:14 pm »

My suggestion would be that instead of actually queueing up the items in a workshop, that the dwarves just do it without it taking up the queue of any specific shop.  Then, if you put some order in a shop, it would be immediately considered top priority without you having to mess up your order queue for the manager.
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Gearheart

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Re: Manager is not very smart
« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2010, 09:08:54 pm »

Alternatively, another idea would be to designate which jobs are permitted at that particular building. Something along the lines of:

Make weapons: Yes
Make Armour: No
Make trap comps: Yes
etc.

Would involve a tad more micromanagement, but would make the whole thing a lot more streamlined.
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brucemo

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Re: Manager is not very smart
« Reply #5 on: September 04, 2010, 01:52:26 am »

It's a little hard to figure out exactly how to smarten this up, but it doesn't seem that it should be impossible, and the current system is terrible.

If all items that can be performed at a specific type of workshop involve the same labor, it doesn't matter what happens.

The problem happens when multiple labors can be assigned to one workshop.  This happens in glassmaker's (glassmaking & sand collection), metal forge (various metal labors), jeweler (cut & set), and craftsdwarf workshops (various craft labors), farmer's workshop (process plants, milk, cheese), and perhaps some others that I'm not as familiar with.

An easy and acceptable solution would be to check labors on dwarfs assigned to the workshops via profile.  If the only dwarf assigned to a particular forge has blacksmith labor set, that forge shouldn't be getting orders for lead buckets.  If the manager would respect labor assignments of dwarfs allowed to work in the workshop, I could make the manager work almost perfectly, for me.
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Jayce

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Re: Manager is not very smart
« Reply #6 on: September 04, 2010, 06:31:18 am »

Managers a bit useless.
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