Feature Request: Focus Queue

[Ramdat]

Describe the Feature

Add an automatic system which re-assigns Kitten jobs to focus the queue in the least amount of time by comparing the job production to the current stockpile and building cost. Add options to exclude certain jobs from reassignment. Perhaps integration with the Bonfire section to focus a specific building until it caps without using the queue.

For example:
The first item in queue is a Log House.
The Log House costs 4549 wood and 5686 minerals.
The stockpile currently has 727 wood and 4574 minerals.
Therefore, it needs needs 3822 wood and 1112 minerals to build the Log House.
The script has 47 jobs available to it. It assigns 40 Woodcutters producing 63.7/s and 7 Miners producing 18.2, so that both materials reach the build cost at the same time (3882 / 63.7 = 61 seconds. 1112 / 18.2 = 61 seconds)

Your Savegame

No response

[oliversalzburg]

Using the build queue to drive decisions in the script is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure if it fits well into the concept of KS as it stands today.

Having too complex decision-making components in the system makes the behavior very hard to predict. This has often lead to confusion in earlier iterations of the script, and behavior has been made far more predictable since then.

However, there is a continued interest in having more "intelligence" in KS. There is a long-term effort to enable an entirely new extension that adds onto KS, but this isn't likely to see the daylight any time soon. This extension should be able to cover the use case you describe, and I think it could be an excellent showcase of the concept.

So, we'll see 😊

[Ramdat]

My apologies, I'm not sure how to describe it well.

The intent was for the player to make the decisions while playing (semi)actively, and the script to only reduce the micromanagement of enacting the goal by shuffling the workers for you to achieve this specific goal. I don't mean to automate the entire Bonfire feature more intelligently, but that would be a good long-term goal.

For example, at certain times you want to focus on maxing houses or workshops. The most effective method to do this manually is to shuffle the workers around until the materials reach the build cost at the same time, as described in my previous post. I only want this micromanage automated, not the decision-making itself.

From my understanding, the way to do this in KS would be to disable everything from the Bonfire feature except the houses and workshops. However, it is inefficient because it either wastes resources by being capped while waiting for each resource to be ready, or it wastes resources by converting overflow into crafted materials until they eventually sync up, if they ever do. This can be partially remedied by building excessive storage to give it the opportunity to reach all build costs before either of these conditions are met. But, that is itself an inefficiency. Also, it’s problematic for certain situations like at the end of a run where you want to max housing but can’t raise storage.

Integrating it into the Bonfire feature would probably be better than using the queue. Ideally it would be like priority override, where I can click a second checkbox for the building in the Bonfire section of the script to enable it. Once enabled, it treats everything else as disabled without needing to reconfigure the Bonfire, automates the job redistribution to efficiently complete it, and then disables the override when the building is capped so it doesn’t stunlock itself. The main purpose is to reduce the micromanagement of manually reassigning workers and reconfiguring the Bonfire script as priorities change. However, I understand if this is still beyond the current scope.

[oliversalzburg]

Due to an upcoming beta release, I've formalized some of the ideas behind the future development. Maybe this is helpful: https://kitten-science.com/engineers/