I just watched a laborer transporting 125 meat from way out in the boonies into town and as they came into town, I paused and went to reactivate my arborist orchards because the time for them to start picking was very near. Then I went back to that laborer I was watching but he wasn’t a laborer anymore. He turned into the arborist and was no longer carrying the meat. Is this a bug?
I understand the labor pool is where people are picked from to fill new jobs when you open a building back up but shouldn’t they take their inventory to a storage building before heading in to work? These goods should not simply vanish. Never mind the fact that I could have waited to activate the arborist buildings until after he made his drop off, there could be countless other laborers doing similar tasks and they automatically convert to builders when needed for maintenance so the problem would still exist regardless of my actions.
Edit 1: Okay, so after looking around carefully, I found a tiny little box on the road not too far from where I was tracking that laborer (but closer to my barn), and it had 115 meat in it. I watched it and eventually, a herder came up and grabbed 10 meat from it and left. That 10 was listed in his ‘food’ inventory. So if that is the very stack of missing meat, then maybe all is not lost, but this inventory would certainly perish more rapidly if not stored and I still think anyone changing jobs should store the items they carry that they no longer need, especially weapons or arrows, if they are being converted to another job.
Edit 2: Another case of lost goods, this time really lost. While upgrading a tower, the archers inside had weapons and arrows. Just as the upgrade completed, they turned into laborers, and two other laborers were assigned as guards, tasked with getting weapons and arrows. The two new laborers have none of these in their possession, and cycling F5 near the newly upgraded tower, these items do not appear. They are simply lost with this laborer conversion.
Whenever you de-assign a soldier, their equipment gets automatically teleported to your stash. Try firing all your soldiers (or hunters) and watch as your resource tab fills with their weapons/ arrows/ bows/ armour instantly.
If this issue really was the way you describe it, towns would run out of tools and baskets at an alarming rate. I agree though that it would be nice to have a better indication of what happens to these “lost” items, but for now the best you can do is hold ` to at least make sure your meat’s on the ground and not in the shadow realm
That teleportation trick would be cool if it were true. I’ve tried watching my inventory and didn’t see these items return back, at least not right away. The F5 key which highlights items on the ground did not show the bows and arrows left behind at the guard shack and reassigning the job to new people halfway across the map when the tower was already manned and ready for battle doesn’t make any sense. No change of the guard ever happens IRL with the new guard being assigned but not on station geared up. They always show up on station first, geared up ready to work, before the old guard is relieved.
Tools seem to always be running out faster than I can ever make them. I hardly get a dozen on hand before they start being used up again. I think baskets last longer than tools if this is simply due to wear mechanics, but I almost feel like making/buying tools is a waste of time and resources in most cases.
It would be cool if when you click on an item in the inventory screen, that additional data window included what professions might use an item. It already includes what buildings might use them. I would also like to see what buildings can store them though as I am often conflicted between weather I need a full storehouse or if a storage depot will do for what I need at a certain location. The description on the depot says it is used to store all items, but that is not really the case. It has a smaller subset of items it can store.