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Topic: Move expert worker automatically

sashee
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Posted at: 2024-09-28, 10:41

It happens a lot of times that a building is stuck with "Expert missing" while next door there are suitable workers. Especially with Barbarians and the Empire, when I upgrade the mines I end up with non-functioning ones until I realize it and then dismiss some Chief/Master miners from other mines.

I understand that Widelands is about managing an economy, but this is an often frustrating micromanagement. I build the necessary advanced buildings and they don't work and I need to hunt for another building to move one of its worker over.

So, my suggestion is that if an expert is missing from a building:

  • check if a suitable worker is available in another building that can be swapped to a new worker
  • send a new worker to that building
  • then send the (now free) expert to the building that needs that expert
Edited: 2024-09-28, 12:11

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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2024-09-28, 18:29

I can live with the micromanagement myself but what bugs me is that

  1. It happens silently (yeah I know there's a balance with having an alarm everytime some building stops working for whatever reason...)
  2. Sometimes it seems when you kick them out they go RIGHT BACK. Or was that changed recently?

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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2024-09-29, 16:05

Hi sashee and welcome to the forum face-smile.png

for me this is seldom an issue, so i can't say that this is frustrating.

The thing is: Now worker micromanagement is frustrating, the next time an other micromanagement is frustrating (e.g. micromanaging of heroes/rookies in military sites) and then another micromanagement will become frustrating (e.g. setting input queues). If all those frustrating things will be solved by an automatism, the game wouldn't be widelands anymore...

mxb2001 wrote:

I can live with the micromanagement myself but what bugs me is that

  1. It happens silently (yeah I know there's a balance with having an alarm everytime some building stops working for whatever reason...)

I think this could be solved with an add-on.

  1. Sometimes it seems when you kick them out they go RIGHT BACK. Or was that changed recently?

This should be fixed, already in version 1.2 imho. See https://github.com/widelands/widelands/pull/6136 If you have this issue in widelands 1.2 you should write a bug report, or reopen the linked bugreport.


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sashee
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Posted at: 2024-09-29, 20:33

Thanks:) I've put a nontrivial amount of time into Widelands, it's such a great continuation of the Settlers!

Sure, some things should not be automated. Though I see a difference between managing heroes/rookies in military sites and expert workers.

Whether I want heroes or rookies is a decision that I need to make. For example, I might know that a citadel does not need heroes, so I set it to favor rookies. Same with input queues: if I set priorities then I'm making decisions that I want more of something and less of everything else.

But with expert workers, there is no desirable outcome having 2 master brewers in one brewery and none in the other. I'm not making a decision here, I'm fixing a flaw. That feels more like grind that I need to do instead of being something interesting.

Btw, if you raised the heroes/rookies topic: I also find myself setting a lot of buildings from heroes to rookies or the other way around and that requires several clicks. I tried to find a shortcut for that but seems like there is none. So, it would be nice if, let's say ctrl+click on a military building toggles the preference, and maybe ctrl+a+click toggles min/max number of soldiers. Maybe I should open a new topic for that?

kaputtnik wrote:

Hi sashee and welcome to the forum face-smile.png

for me this is seldom an issue, so i can't say that this is frustrating.

The thing is: Now worker micromanagement is frustrating, the next time an other micromanagement is frustrating (e.g. micromanaging of heroes/rookies in military sites) and then another micromanagement will become frustrating (e.g. setting input queues). If all those frustrating things will be solved by an automatism, the game wouldn't be widelands anymore...

mxb2001 wrote:

I can live with the micromanagement myself but what bugs me is that

  1. It happens silently (yeah I know there's a balance with having an alarm everytime some building stops working for whatever reason...)

I think this could be solved with an add-on.

  1. Sometimes it seems when you kick them out they go RIGHT BACK. Or was that changed recently?

This should be fixed, already in version 1.2 imho. See https://github.com/widelands/widelands/pull/6136 If you have this issue in widelands 1.2 you should write a bug report, or reopen the linked bugreport.


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kaputtnik
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Posted at: 2024-09-30, 08:30

sashee wrote:

Whether I want heroes or rookies is a decision that I need to make. For example, I might know that a citadel does not need heroes, so I set it to favor rookies. Same with input queues: if I set priorities then I'm making decisions that I want more of something and less of everything else.

But with expert workers, there is no desirable outcome having 2 master brewers in one brewery and none in the other. I'm not making a decision here, I'm fixing a flaw. That feels more like grind that I need to do instead of being something interesting.

You have point here, but isn't the hero/rookie setting the same? Probably you want heroes only at the front line and not somewhere else in your territory. This applies also to the amount of soldiers in military sites. As a result the player has to go through all military buildings and make the changes. So this can also be called a flaw. Especially later in a game you may forget to to change those settings and some "useless" heroes are sitting in military sites far away from the border. BTW that's the reason why i wrote the Where are my heroes add-on.

Btw, if you raised the heroes/rookies topic: I also find myself setting a lot of buildings from heroes to rookies or the other way around and that requires several clicks. I tried to find a shortcut for that but seems like there is none. So, it would be nice if, let's say ctrl+click on a military building toggles the preference, and maybe ctrl+a+click toggles min/max number of soldiers. Maybe I should open a new topic for that?

CTRL+click works already for setting max/min amount of soldiers. For the proposal to toggle preference open another topic please ( but i would vote for that face-wink.png )

In the meantime you may want to take a look at the Automatic settings for military construction sites add-on. This can be found in the category "Script".


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hessenfarmer
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Posted at: 2024-09-30, 11:16

-1 for automating the worker management, because the Amazons were designed to require this management explicitly. Furthermore this issue mostly only happens if you upgrade the building to early. So upgrading only if the worjers have enough experience could be considered part of a proper economy management


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mxb2001
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Posted at: 2024-09-30, 17:27

kaputtnik wrote:

mxb2001 wrote: 2. Sometimes it seems when you kick them out they go RIGHT BACK. Or was that changed recently? This should be fixed, already in version 1.2 imho. See https://github.com/widelands/widelands/pull/6136 If you have this issue in widelands 1.2 you should write a bug report, or reopen the linked bugreport.

Oh good, I'll try to remember it's fixed. I tend to remember problems long after they stop being a problem. Terrible habit of mine.


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Nordfriese
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Posted at: 2024-09-30, 22:48

Related: https://codeberg.org/wl/widelands/issues/4057


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OIPUN
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Posted at: 2024-09-30, 23:21

mxb2001 wrote:

Oh good, I'll try to remember it's fixed. I tend to remember problems long after they stop being a problem. Terrible habit of mine.

Sometimes it looks like we are living in a world where some people seem to not remember anything at all. So this ability can be seen as positive too. Very impressive, very impressive.


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simplypeachy

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Posted at: 2024-10-01, 18:33

I don't always find that this is a problem when upgrading early. If one has to, or is able to, expand mining quickly it can become a problem. Also if one reaches mountains that are distant from an economy, and we want to go straight to upgraded mines, can be a problem.

This has been a problem for some time and features have been added which have left the underlying problem unaddressed. We now have an "Evict worker" button, but shouldn't need it, to fix this problem, IMO. Just like with soldier training and food production preferences (e.g. Empire Tavern preferring fish, then meat, then bread), management of worker levels ought not to be the job of the player. If we had to switch our taverns to use meat when there was no fish left it wouldn't be fun with 30 taverns, and when we can't see how much fish we have. The fun is in creating a big enough economy to make enough meat and bread.

It's not fun to have to perform the following: Find 20 mines and open each one. For the ten which have an expert in the rookie slot, evict a rookie until there are no picks left in stock. Continue playing until more picks have been made. Evict more rookies. Look to see which of your ten open mine windows have new rookies, and close the windows. Juggle the eight windows around the screen until you find more that can be evicted. Sometimes, experts return. Keep evicting until you get rookies. Continue with this until you might have enough experts, to be sure you have to scroll through all 30 mines to make sure they are all working. As the player I prefer to be left to ensure I can create workers, feed them and smelt their product, all without having to juggle a lot of windows and keep having to watch my mines until maybe I have enough experts.

https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/4329
https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/2612
https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/2279
https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/1856
https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/1514
https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/652
https://github.com/widelands/widelands/issues/618

Suffice it to say the developers, over the years, have put a lot of code and effort into the worker problem, and it's still a problem :-\ I am very glad for the evict worker button!

We used to have no option to prefer rookies/heroes in military sites and had to just keep juggling. Scouts used to walk randomly, so we had to build lots of scouts to get good coverage. Buildings used to produce infinitely, which meant balancing wares was really time-consuming. Now we don't have to worry about these things, and can spend more time enjoying building the economy instead.

Edited: 2024-10-01, 18:33

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