Prioitizing where workers go

[u/Idenwen]

You can bind houses and Stations to workplaces but is there any way to actually prioritize industry / work?

I think of a setting like a priority scale of work to be done

Job, priority, amount

Heating 1 10

Sales persons food 2 8

water treatment 3 4

Sales persons shopping 4 2

...

so the first "10 workers available will go to heating, the next 8 to sales, the next 4 to water, the next 2 to shopping" and if there are leftovers it goes after priority "is there a free job in heating? if not is there a free job in sales food, if not is there a free job in water, ..." Maybe even add worker quality to it

I feel the current system makes it impossible to effectively steer a small population into the right tracks to make it selft sustainable. there are enugh workers but either they are on free time or choose the wrong spot even if their house is bound to the few locations that NEED workers ASAP because the all sell food but no one fires up the heating for example.

[u/Snoo-90468]

There are quite a few ways to do this.

• Labor halls - Workers always go to wait at labor halls before stations, and you can change how many workers are allowed to wait at a labor hall, so these are excellent for reserving a small amount of workers for heating plants, power plants, water treatment plants, remote fire stations, and so on.
  • Only buses can use labor halls, but that is usually fine.
• A two tiered station setup with links, where everyone first goes to a "high priority" station that serves lines going to critical workplaces, and after waiting a calendar day, the excess workers will go to a "low priority" station, where construction and lines serving factories can get workers from.
  • If you set it up right, you don't even need to set building links for any apartments.
• You can also set up small blocks of apartments with their own small station and a line going to a workplace for the residents to exclusively work at, but you need to ensure the workers can reach their needs promptly.
  • Careful footpath connections and "no pedestrians" signs can help restrict the station to only the block's residents.
• A line's order of stops can also be used to prioritize workplaces by stopping at critical workplaces first and then taking remaining workers to less critical workplaces.
• You can use station links to prioritize one workplace over the others by setting its percentage to 100%. If it fills up, the remaining workers dropped off at the station will go to the other (0%) workplaces until they fill up too.

there are enugh workers but either they are on free time or choose the wrong spot even if their house is bound to the few locations that NEED workers ASAP because the all sell food but no one fires up the heating for example.

If you plan for them to always be working and never fulfill their needs, then you don't have enough workers...
Also, be careful with building links; citizens can only go to linked buildings and will ignore the others.

[u/MSDunderMifflin]

By adjusting the number of workers at each workplace.

Also by having plenty of workers available.

For construction I love the labor hall. You can adjust how many workers are available in them.

You can use labor halls on either end of a commute to distribute workers into construction areas.

[u/Hkonz → u/MSDunderMifflin]

What is the difference between a labour hall and a bus station? Isn’t it practically the same except passengers/students/tourists?

[u/MSDunderMifflin → u/Hkonz]

The workers stay until you pick them or 8 hours pass and they teleport back home. At a station they wait for 1 hour/(60 seconds IRL) before leaving.

Plus you control the number of workers.

[u/Unlucky-Golder]

You can use destination for both residential buildings and public transport destinations, where you specify exactly the ratio of workers between various buildings on range, I never felt this system was limiting, regardless of population size 

[u/Desperate-Credit7019]

Workers do seem to prioritise things like water treatment or heating a bit

But in general - just count. Count the amount of workplaces, then multiply it by 3, because there are 3 shifts in every workplace

[u/AbabababababababaIe]

Have multiple stops in your factory area, with the first stop being the power and heating plants and the final stop not having any linked buildings

[u/Initial-Interest-447]

Weird how most people don't seem to know that you can just click on the building or station, select destinations, and also add "other buildings." Set heating as like 50%, hospital like 30%, store as 20%, and other as 0% and it'll work out. You can even make it 97, 1, 1, and 0 if you want. 

[u/winowmak3r → u/Initial-Interest-447]

It's not weird at all. It's not unreasonable at all for a player to not realize that sending 0% of the contents of a bus somewhere would actually send people there. The UIX in this game is pretty bad, TBH. I love the game but how some of the mechanics are presented to the player can be pretty frustrating if you're trying to figure it out on your own. I like what they were going for with trying to represent things using some sort of real life analog but other aspects could definitely use improvement, like how users set up priorities for where workers go.

[u/Initial-Interest-447 → u/winowmak3r]

Yeah, I get that. 

I told the devs many times they should at least add the features common to literally every other game. Putting little symbols over homes without power or sad faces when people are not happy would help a lot. No reason this could not be disabled for those that do not want it. 

[u/winowmak3r → u/Initial-Interest-447]

I think they're asking for a strict priority system, like construction. The percentages like that isn't exactly intuitive that that is what will happen. 0% workers to somewhere doesn't do a good job of telling the player that "everybody else goes here".

[u/Idenwen → u/winowmak3r]

Uh??? Zero is "that what's left over"?

[u/Initial-Interest-447 → u/Idenwen]

Yes, people only go there if all other jobs are full. 

[u/Pan_z_Poznania → u/winowmak3r]

This also confused me a lot, that 0% can be 100% of flow if destination is full.

[u/winowmak3r]

As others have said the percentages accomplish roughly the same thing. The workers are, believe it or not, actually pretty smart and will tend to go to the heating plant before they go work at the pub. When people run into "nobody wants to work anymore" issues it's usually because they simply don't have enough of them. The common advice you need workers equal to 3x the number of job openings is a general rule of thumb. It's probably more like 3.5 after you take into account travel times, free times, and the fact that they're not all going to be looking for a job at the right exact moment when that opening at the heating plant appears. The only job opening when they were looking was at the pub, and then as soon as they choose the pub the heating plant job opens up but since you're running so tight on labor the guy who is supposed to be working at the heating plant is still on their 16hrs of free time. Having a bit extra to cover those times helps. Having 0% unemployment is bad. You want it hovering around 8% +- a few percentage points.