Work shifts/schedule management

96 votes

It would be nice to be able to have multiple work shifts. Rather than all your bevers working for 16 hrs and then trying to do all their personal stuff in the remaining 8, it would be nice to have some working while others are off duty. Maybe have a late game building that lets you do administrative stuff, like set work shifts, and pause/unpause buildings individually or grouped by type, for specific shifts or for all of them. I find that I have an issue with water production when I turnd down working hours, despite having loads of pumps. It would be nice to have three 8 hour shifts, so that I can have a few beavers that work the night shift to keep pumping water, and then during the day some of the beavers would take time off. This would obviously require more beavers, as every building would require workers for every shift it was active on, but in a dense colony like mine you can have nearly 50% unemployment anyway, and you could support an even higher population with more efficiency

Under consideration Suggestion Suggested by: David C Bollinger (27 Sep, '21) • Upvoted: 14 Apr • Comments: 30

Comments: 30

27 Sep, '21
ExceededMerlin Merged
For example:
Gearmaking from hour 1-8
Lumbermill in district 1 from hour 8-16
Lumbermill in district 2 from hour 1-16

Maybe it could be an advanced management building that unlocks this option, if you don't feel like it fits well in the interface by default.
28 Sep, '21
Thaina Yu
https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/215661/night-shift
https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/215179/working-hours
https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/215954/independent-district-work-hours
https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/218261/job-rotation-with-unemployed-beaver
https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/215198/beaver-automatorsif-this-then-thatraise-and-lower-dams-automatically-with-a-beav
28 Sep, '21
Gin Fuyou Admin
"Workshifts in buildings" (suggested by ExceededMerlin on 2021-09-27), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
07 Oct, '21
jupitel Merged
Even after the drought, it takes a long time for the water to recover. The pump runs for a short time during the day and runs out of water. I want the pump to work even at night.
08 Oct, '21
Gin Fuyou Admin
"Pump uptime is short" (suggested by jupitel on 2021-10-07), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
02 Jan, '22
Roman Merged
Add the ability to create night and day shifts, by type. Water pumps work in the morning, and deliverers at night!
02 Jan, '22
Gin Fuyou Admin
"#Suggestion Working shift" (suggested by Roman on 2022-01-02), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
07 Jan, '22
Kelly
I think this would be a great idea, especially with the "fun" activities. The only way for me to create some of the fun features such as carousels or mud baths has been with the manually operated power options. This creates a bit of a problem when the beavers generating the power get off shift at the same time as the workers I want to enjoy the features. Only children ever get to interact with these fun buildings. I understand it not being an option in the very beginning, but something like shift planning as an unlock would really make a lot of sense to me, especially with things like water pumps, power wheels, engines, etc.
30 Jan, '22
Fluddy
It would also be nice to in addition to this be able to have different work schedules/workday lenght in every district. In the begining only having one shift you can determen the lenght of but later with an administration building, like one already suggested, be able to do more shifts in different lenghts. In the beginning it's unnecessary to have different schedules or different workday lenght, but in later game that would come in handy.
Click to enlarge

02 Feb, '22
BarneyKB Merged
While a 'night shift' has been mentioned (https://timberborn.featureupvote.com/suggestions/215661/night-shift), I believe a night priority level would be useful. Mostly it is not necessary to keep all the bevers up at night, but sometimes (e.g.: reconfiguring power distribution while minimising downtime, emergency goods transport, emergency food harvesting, finishing a dam before a drought, etc) it would be nice to have a few bevers stay up and finish some things off before the morning.

This could be implemented as a priority level like in the attached image.
04 Feb, '22
Neaves
If nothing else, an adjustable start to the day would supplement the end-of-day! This would add minimal UI elements, and allow more flexibility for beavers to fill their happiness bars.
09 Feb, '22
anton Merged
In some games there is such thing as "emergency task" it means your units will try to finish the job at all costs. Usually it's a red "!" character or black "!" on yellow background.
24 Feb, '22
M Merged
Allow us to have multiple workers in the same slot at a job, based on hours worked. So instead of me having one beaver working 16hrs at the mill and another doing nothing, I can have each beaver work 8 hours at the mill. There is the option of having two mills and set daily hours down to 8, but that gets ridiculous quick once you get into heavier industry.

How does this add to the game? It lets you do the time management more in depth, and adds a bit of realism to the way you design your settlement. Now you can have workers split up their work with another beaver, or maybe even have one beaver have multiple jobs (as in a beaver that plants the fields, then goes to be a lumberjack while the plants grow) by doing the reverse, sharing one beaver over multiple jobs rather than sharing one job over multiple beavers.
24 Feb, '22
Gin Fuyou Admin
"PART TIME WORK - A solution to the unemployment problem" (suggested by M on 2022-02-24), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
13 Jul, '22
Jcheung
+1, a system like this would allow, during late game, more of the population to have leisure time and provide gainful emloyment for all those idle beavers
30 Aug, '22
Stwf
Personally I don’t like golems for the folktales beavers. I’d prefer a night shift option, but it might be complicated to set up.

So how about job sharing? Folktales could split any job between 2 beavers, so each would only work 12 hours a day, for that they would get occasional night shifts, but more leisure time. So folktales could compete with 24 hour working golems, but it would be harder, since you’d need more food and water to support them. It would also be good so the beavers who weren’t working could use the well being things during the day!
18 Sep, '22
Gottchar
Similar but different:

Add the ability to have a specific building worked in two shift, So I can click on my pump, check "shift work" and now it is worked by two beavers half the normal work hours each.

Currently if I want to reduce work hours I have to increase my amount of work buildings. So in order to make my little beaver paradies where work hours are set to 6, I need to plaster the place with pumps and have a field that would usually need 2 farm instead house 4. Now it looks like some commercial zone, in order for my beavers to only work 6 hours. My shift thing would basically just mean you get as much done as before (not working during nights like some otheres here want) but with less buildings, as buildings are double-used.

I started a steam discussion here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/discussions/1/5179725348512792275/
22 Dec, '22
Ihadtoaddaname
I support the suggestion of Workshifts. But i think there could be benefits/penalties for buildings to run at day/night time. For example the Observatory could be more productive at night but less during day. Lumberjacks and Farms could be slower at night obviously because it's dark. Industrial buildings like the Lumber Mill could have increased chances of injuries at night. Or some buildings like the Water Pumps could require a minor amount of Power to operate at night by having to light up the house (Electric Light). Haulers and Builders also could be slower at night. I do not really like that the whole colony stops working alltogether once the workshift is over and they all start swarming the Freetime buildings. It would allow to spread the colony more evenly across the buildings.
07 Feb, '23
TomKeks
I like the idea of having multiple shifts. We could assign each beaver to one of three shifts (or to all, if you like tired beavers) and have a setting in each building at which shift it should be worked in.

Example:
Beaver "Tim" is set to shift A; Beaver "Tina" is set to shift B.
Water pump is set to shift A + shift B but not shift C.
-> Tim would work in the water pump for shift A, Tina for shift B, nobody for shift C.

You could also assign bots to the night shifts.
15 Feb, '23
Bob Merged
As I build up my machine army and wanting my beavers to live a happy life of decadence, I'm stuck with them having jobs that need to get done while wanting to reduce their working hours so they finally figure out where the books are stored >.< Especially as my number of idle beavers increases because of more robots coming online.

As such, I'm proposing an option to allow for buildings to support multiple "shifts". So instead of one beaver working a gather flag, two could be assigned and they simply split the working day in half. Giving my idle beavers the satisfaction of a job while done and the more industrious ones a much needed break during the day.

I figure this could be gated by research or possibly the need to build a clocktower somewhere in range so beavers know when to change shifts. Not super picky since this is really just to allow my "efficiency requires everyone be doing something" and "I must get all the happiness points" to find a compromise =D
11 Mar, '23
Gin Fuyou Admin
"Optional late game "Shift" work schedule" (suggested by Bob on 2023-02-15), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
29 Oct, '23
Lawrence Merged
Night and afternoon shift, the beaver eat and drink more, days is same as now?
02 Nov, '23
tesla Merged
when the bot came out, get full score on well-being become very easy. i push all works to bots. all beavers just playing and eating. it make they well-being buff not fully functional in game. when i let beaver back to work and reduced the working time to keep the max well-being score. they cant get the same productivity like the bot working all the day.it make me thinking about how i can use the buff and how to make it worth to do. so i think it must have some mechanism can let beaver working all the day. it need three shift and two shift in game. everyone just working 8h or 12h in one day, less than now. and more beavers at same job. will make the buff more useful.
02 Nov, '23
Gin Fuyou Admin
"8 hour Shift Work - Day, Afternoon and night shift" (suggested by Lawrence on 2023-10-29), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
04 Nov, '23
Gin Fuyou Admin
"three shift and two shift" (suggested by tesla on 2023-11-02), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
04 Nov, '23
Gin Fuyou Admin
"Night / 24h priority level" (suggested by BarneyKB on 2022-02-02), including upvotes (6) and comments (1), was merged into this suggestion.
14 Dec, '23
redrockjedy Merged
I think adding a system where you can set working times for specific buildings would be a good idea. At times before the dry season or badtide I've turned up the working time to 24 hours but I only need it for the water pumps. Then my whole colony had to stay up even though I only wanted the water pumpers to work.
15 Dec, '23
Jcheung Admin
"24 Hour Working" (suggested by redrockjedy on 2023-12-14), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
17 Jan
Craig Merged
Creating a panel that allows for certain work/job do be paused . For example when the water dries up click the panel and choose another mode which will pause all the pumping stations and unpause other works/jobs
18 Jan
Jcheung Admin
"Schedule Work" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2024-01-17), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.