At this point I’m forced to think this is really a bug.
Since 0.9.7 (which I also playtested), I see loads of job inefficiencies like it was during the 0.7.x age of this game. Crop fields left to rot, villagers who change their mind continuously, dropping their task to do something else and in fact ending up doing nothing. Countless time I’ve seen builders grabbing materials for building, then dropping off things to do other tasks, then someone else taking their tasks, grabbing materials and then dropping them off, and again and again, leaving a build site incomplete for almost a game year.
Rat catcher idling happily when a root cellar placed very very close to the cabin has a serious infestation which is causing severe food loss. And not to mention that since a while rat catcher’s job has been worsened a lot in efficiency, taking months to just clean up a building. Are we serious?
I’ve also tried to cycle through villagers by disabling and re-enabling the rat catcher cabin, but they seem to simply ignore the infestation. This is not fun at all. Such issues should (must?) be addressed way before 1.0 comes out as it’s simply not tolerable I guess.
Hi Ro84 - I totally agree with you. I raised similar concerns about villagers dropping items half way through the task and was told by the devs that this was intentionally designed this way - I really hope they would reconsider as I’m sure they game would run so much more smoothly if the villager simply finished first what they started. I was told that they have done it to avoid villager dying while doing a far away task but I have to say honestly that I cant follow this logic. Because currently if the task requires far journey they often go that far, just to drop the item after short distance so now another villager has to make the same journey. It just doesnt make sense
The point is that the jobs I’m mentioning are not far away but just in the same town, which has 900 villagers, and no remote outposts at all. And this was not like this in 0.9.6.
A villager browsing is “relaxing”, yes. Which is why they’re doing that instead of rushing right to the root cellar. These types of behaviors are new with v0.9.7.
With respect Zantai, but I really don’t get this answer (actually, it sounds a bit… hm, disrespectful?). If there is a severe rat infestation with great loss of food, in a structure which is very close to the rat catcher cabin, do you really think that its employee relaxing and idling instead of getting to the infested structure is fine? Seriously? I don’t think so, I cannot think you’re fine with this, really.
The game should send the employee right to the place, instead of doing nothing. This is the point I’m focusing, and the point which needs an answer. Thanks.
I have to agree with Ro84, and I hope this is taken in the spirit of constructive feedback. Sometimes the responses can feel a bit sharp, which may just be due to the volume of reports and the pressure of development.
I just want to emphasize that we’re not reporting issues because we think the game is bad or that you’re doing a poor job — if that were the case, we wouldn’t be spending our time giving feedback. Bugs are expected in early access, and our input comes from a genuine desire to help improve something we already enjoy. We think the game is great, and the work you and the team are doing is genuinely appreciated.
Here are a couple of examples that, from a player’s perspective, just don’t seem to make sense:
Rat Catcher – In my current game, I placed one rat catcher for every market or a granary
right next to it. He stands right on the market, but infestations still occur. At this point, it almost feels more efficient to accept food loss than to pay monthly for a rat catcher who isn’t making a difference.
Villagers Dropping Items – I’ve seen gatherers collect something near their hut (farther from town), then halfway through decide to return to town due to hunger or other need. They drop the item where they are and walk back empty-handed. A laborer is dispatched to pick it up, but may stop halfway, change their mind, or also drop it later. This creates a loop of inefficiency that really adds up. I understand villagers can be reassigned instantly, but if they could just finish carrying the item they already had, that would go a long way toward improving things.
I still really enjoy the game and hope you take this feedback in the kind spirit it’s intended. I think we all share the same goal: to make this game as awesome as it can be.
I’ve played 3 towns with the new versions and rat infestation hardly last more than a month or two. Perhaps. I do tend to over lap rat catchers. I’ve movie if you have too many buildings in 1 radius it is not able to keep up
Depends if you think: (A) that your entire village should be ran like a hive mind, with every villager entirely focussed on efficiency, or (B) if villagers should act like people, and carry on enjoying their leisure time even if there is something productive they could be doing.
The issue is the incomplete tasks and the sudden dropping of almost-completed endeavors, particularly at village-wide intervals, particularly seeking shelter all at once.
It feels like the AI script for Villagers has two clocks: Clock A is task-completion and Clock B is time until next break. Right now, those clocks run independently but when Clock B hits certain points, it interrupts Clock A and resets it.
What I think the OP meant was to have a queue of commands for each Villagers, each task compares Clock A to Clock B. If Clock A > Clock B (with some margin), rest/relax/idle to reset Clock B. If Clock A < Clock B (again, margin matters), then Next Task.
Otherwise, certain tasks are taking longer than Clock B allows and so are not completing. I am having extreme difficulty with Salvage and Excavating tasks that are halfway between center and the edge on a Large Map, because Villagers are walking halfway there, then turning around to Seek Shelter, Stock Shelter, etc.
lol - I wouldn’t mind at all if villagers acted like real people - but if people acted like the current game logic we would have situations like this: Let me bring home some groceries I just bought - Oh, hang on - I got hungry, let me drop the shopping on the street so I can get home, grab something to eat and I will then go back for my shopping
yeah, and it will like a hell when you provide enough beer, your villager will spend a lot of time to “intoxicated in the road” (all villager have 100% happiness) and relax. It’s really decrease a lots your tower efficiency.
It‘s great that they get free time - all good with that. It‘s just not well set up at the moment.
Why would almost all farmers go idle at the same time and during the harvest? I have a crazy amount of farmers and the issue is that they walk straight away during the harvest task and all together. As consequence, most if not all of the harvest is lost.
Well… try to idle and do your own business at work when your enterprise has a critical task to complete (and save food from rats is amongst the most critical tasks, way more than mining ores or making planks - not a case that rat catchers get paid in gold ingame, while miners and plank makers don’t). I guess you get fired just right now in the best scenario.
Speaking again of rat catching. I have often 2 rat catcher cabins per each market + root cellar. When market gets infested, rat catcher takes almost one year to resolve the infestation, while the catcher of the second cabin spends all his life just idling, wandering, gardening, visiting, etc, even if in the meantime the infestation spreads out to the root cellar in range. So I have 2 infested buildings, 2 rat catchers in range, but only 1 doing the job and the other doing nothing. Result is that each year almost half of the food gets eaten by rodents.
I’m to the point to have to literally cheat that to resolve infestations - that means, moving the market elsewhere far away and then placing it back. This seems to reset the infestation… at least for a while, but obviously this is not fun nor it’s enjoyable. Especially now that the building job is also messed up by its own for the inefficiency reasons above.
Things like this never happened before 0.9.7, and even in the earlier playtest I don’t remember such a serious issue with rodents. Of course things got a bit more difficult since 0.9.6, but it was still relatively fine for me. Now things are just messed up severely.
Note that by coincidence now there is only one infestation (because I had just moved and moved again all the infested buildings), in the market close to the town center. It has been there since almost a year, causing a total loss of about 500 beans, 300 preserves, 200 cheeses and 100 eggs (in that market only).
This guy went to the stockyard, took 1 plank, walked to the build site, but when it was really really veeeeeery close to complete his task… nah, he changed his mind and decided that he needs to seek shelther, dropping the plank just in front of the build site. And note that weather is cold but not extremely cold.
Now this will require other 2 persons: one who goes to the stockyard to bring another plank, and one who takes this plank dropped on the road and stores it to the stockyard. Because of course no one is clever enough to take this dropped plank and add directly to the build site.
Before 0.9.7, this happened way more rarely (but was common during the 0.7.x age of this game, back in 2022). Now it’s a very common sight.
