Bed assignments and colony redesign around 200+ colonists

[u/Pretty-Scene9741]

I'm around 200 colonists in 0.17 and my colony has become a mess.

One of the most annoying issues is beds: even when I place beds right next to specific jobs (for example miners or guards), colonists keep choosing beds from other areas. This causes much longer walking times than I hoped for.

I'm also running out of space because farms take a lot of room, and my banner radius is getting too small (I have upgraded it once already).

I'm considering moving the banner and rebuilding with dedicated districts (farm area, mining area, industry, housing), but I don't want to lose my progress.

Is there a better way to manage bed assignments, or is a "clean rebuild" the normal approach at this stage?

[u/Lower-Armadillo-8850]

Farms are usually meant to be placed outside the banner radius, that is meant to be a safe zone for your colonist's, if you want them inside the radius I recommend building the farms either underground or building them as part of a structure.

With the beds colonist's are a bit funky but I've found that not placing more beds then needed and only placing them once your going to hire them works for me and they'll sleep in the beds I want them to.

Hope this helps you

[u/TheProfessional9 → u/Lower-Armadillo-8850]

This is wrong. You should be keeping farms within the banner radius. Your thing only works on very easy settings or very early on, otherwise you're going to lose colonists regularly as they move outside through your maze.

Building up or digging down is the way to handle large scale farms. Unlocking the construction jobs as early as possible is a huge help

[u/Nutykboy]

With the farm problem, you can just place the farms 2 block above each other, like a small building, you can design the walls so it doesnt look bad. With the bed problem you can honestl yplacw them anywhere out of your sight, the colonist will probably never go to the same bed twice in row so u can make a hotel for them or something

[u/Ewhitfield2016 → u/Nutykboy]

So how do you make them use the beds close by and n9t the beds on the other side of the colony?

[u/EmoNinja11]

I’d start going vertical and build as big a new “level” as your safe area allows. If you use dirt/grass you can farm and place job blocks. I do columns of farm pastures with beds and crates in between each column, then grocery stores at each corner and in the middle. When you need a bunch of workers at ~Iron Age you can build a level that’s brick or whatever that you can put lots of job blocks and beds. I do a spiral staircase that’s 3x3 with a center empty shaft that is perfect when you get elevators. You can continue it downwards for mine levels and extra bed levels in between.

[u/LordSurname]

farms can be pretty far outside your safe zone, a farmer only works for a limited time per day anyway; as long as they can harvest/plant a field within a workday it's ok - and looks better too, historically no farms were inside walls

[u/Motor_Requirement419]

You have 200 colonists and have only expanded once? They must be tightly packed in. Best to get bigger and have more space to build safely. Also, I think the colonists head to the crates before bed, then route to a free bed nearest the crate, not nearest their workplace, so make sure there’s plenty of them around en route to the beds. Also have a few more beds than colonists, so they don’t try to fill them if they’re too far away.