Mech and Vet Research....(scream in) 5....4....3...

[Cantina]

2
1

(Screams with a colorful array of swear words )

Has anyone...ANYONE at all over at Frontier looked into how poor the A.I. research works in this game?

No? Well, let me tell you, if freaking sucks!

Hire 3 Vets and 2 Mechs.

2 Vets get assigned their own Research Center and a Staff Room with Increase Research. Go into their personals and de-click all but research.

Go to my 1 Mech, assign a Workshop and the same Staff Room as the Vets. De-clik all but research.

OK. All set.

Ten minutes go by and no pop-up of anything completed with research. Weird.

Well, come to find out my Vets are not researching, just wandering around the park and checking habitats that have already been checked.

My Mech anytime something breaks, he immediately stops researching and runs over to fix it.

(Rubs forehead)

IF I assigned a person to do something that staff member should do it. And don't give me that, "Well train them." Oh no. This goes beyond training. Training should just make the staff more effective at the job not to actually do the job that was assigned to him or her.

Furthermore, why is there no option in the Vet's list of duties to turn off, "Check on habitats"?

Frontier, can you please, fix the poor research A.I. in this game? Its driving me to make up new and colorful swear words.

 

[FoxyDee]

Hmm I did not notice this problem, seems like a serious bug. Have you made a ticket for it in the issue tracker?

 

[Cool Cats and Kittens]

I had it the other way around with mechanics. Having only one mechanic in my so always leads to breaking down fences because all he does is research

 

[TFG21]

This may be a dumb question, but did you go into the research tab and assign the vets to research a species, or the mechanics to research themes/etc? That is, not just setting the duties to research only, but for example, setting vet A to research pandas? It isn't obvious from your post, sorry if you did this already

 

[NL_Mutso]

This may be a dumb question, but did you go into the research tab and assign the vets to research a species, or the mechanics to research themes/etc? That is, not just setting the duties to research only, but for example, setting vet A to research pandas? It isn't obvious from your post, sorry if you did this already

That's were I was leaning towards as well. You can change their priorities/tasks.
Uncheck all the other tasks except research and assign that mech/vet to a research.

I only had the same "problem" as Cool Cats and Kittens. Trying to work with minimal staff and sometimes they neglect doing their other tasks while doing research.

 

[Cantina]

This may be a dumb question, but did you go into the research tab and assign the vets to research a species, or the mechanics to research themes/etc? That is, not just setting the duties to research only, but for example, setting vet A to research pandas? It isn't obvious from your post, sorry if you did this already

Sorry, I did not mention it. I had assumed assigning a Vet and/or Mech to research a specific category or animal was an obvious thing to do. And no that was a plain response to your question not snarky.

Well, after wandering around the zoo after quite sometime the mechs and vets assigned to research ARE finally doing their jobs--sort of. But its only temporary. They still stop to run off to fix something or to check in on habitats even though they are assigned not to. (Sighs)

 

[TFG21]

Sorry, I did not mention it. I had assumed assigning a Vet and/or Mech to research a specific category or animal was an obvious thing to do. And no that was a plain response to your question not snarky.

I figured you probably did, was kind of hoping you didn't because then it would be an easy fix! Lol

Another question, do you have other non-research vets/mechanics running around? I wonder if that affects if the AI chooses to follow the set duties (ie, a research vet would primarily do research but would also need to be responsible for all vet duties if no other vet is available). I could see them implementing this in the code to make sure players don't accidentally pull all their vets/mechanics off key duties for running the zoo.

 

[Carnotaur]

I am not Cantina, but I have the same issue even if I have a full on army of vets/mechanics doing the actual work. Yes, also have enough staff rooms and workzones. Research simply is broken for me in the game

 

[marcnesiumHH]

I have not dealt with game mechanics in detail recently, but several months ago what Cantina tried to do, was definitely possible. Having vets/ mechs only researching when they are only assigned to research via workzones + tasks. However, if you do not have enough staff for the usual tasks like checking habitat barrier status and animal health, the research assigned staff takes over these tasks. I think, that's intentional behaviour because many players were complaining about breaking stuff etc. in the past.
Thus, if you have an overall statisfying number of mechs + vets the setup should work.
Note: Part of vets' research is to walk to the animals' habitat being researched and 'taking data' there. Just visit their staff tab to check what they're currently doing.

 

[Xrystal]

It might be something similar to the zoo keepers.. Even if you assign an area for them to work in, if a habitat or exhibit hasn't been looked at in a sufficient time frame they will run across the zoo to look into it as a priority before falling back to their every day situation.

Of course it doesn't mean it isn't a bug. Just could explain why they do it. Maybe emergency situations overule task priority.

One way to test this is to see how badly damaged the item is that they are repairing. If it is really low, the other mechanics were too busy or too far to take the task on.

So, its possible their work situation is like this..
Research Mechanic: Rest > Urgent Repairs > Research
Other Mechanics : Rest > Urgent Repairs > Zone Repairs

I noticed it a long while back myself and gave up prioritising tasks for each worker and instead just concentrated on zoning them and just adding new workers to the zone as the need arises. Apart from new DLC items I no longer need mechanics doing research so its a moot point now at least for me. And I allocate one vet per animal for permanent research purposes and additional vets to monitor their zones animals and man the vet/quarantine buildings.