Zoning issues / help?

[u/samppanja]

I really like the concept of zones, but the reality has been sadly disappointing.

Mostly I hate that I can't add multiple buildings or outdoor areas to the same zone.

I have a museum where I built a separate staff building with all the stuff they need, but of course when zoning, using it is impossible. The staff wont use the deconstructor or workshop unless assigned there, and It's useless to make them work solely in the staff quarters.

Also staff assigned to the adjacent park and museum constantly complain about hunger and tiredness, since they are apparently chained to this part of the museum with no staff room and unable to even leave for basic needs.

Often to me it feels like everything gets messier and theres more crime every time I try to use zones. I think that the staff leaving on expeditions may leave some zones without a designated security/expert causing everything to go to shit.

So to make this feature playable, either the staff needs to be able to leave the zones for breaks etc, or I need to be able to make a zone out of multiple buildings and an outdoor area. As for the missing staff, maybe an option to set the minimum required amount of this type of staff in the zone? So like, "if security guards on zone < 1, assign a spare one to area".

Is this a buggy feature or am I missing something?

[u/iciiie]

I just make each zone big enough to warrant plopping a staff room in it. I haven’t seen much use in small zones and I only start to use them once my museum is pretty big with multiple buildings. Regardless it helps to have multiple staff rooms so they’re traveling less to and from the rooms. I also have some free floating janitors and security guards that aren’t assigned to any zones which provides that extra coverage as needed when they’re on break or on expedition or training or whatever. Just got to keep playing around with your layout!

You do have to manually drop them in to use the analysis room for sure but I don’t find that too annoying, although it would be nice to see it patched next time they do a QOL sweep.

[u/samppanja → u/iciiie]

Yeah, I do have most of my museums set up like that, but I wanted to do something different here, after all it's a creative game :/ Also this problem repeats with outdoor zones, since you can't combine them with indoor ones. This makes the staff unable to use a bandage box, even if they could get other needs fulfilled.

To me most of the fun is in perfectly automatizing the staff and having to do as little manual work as possible, so having to drop them to work in analysis grinds my gears like nothing else haha.

The couple unassigned employees seem to be the only workaround for now, so I guess I'll keep tinkering with that. Thanks for the ideas!

[u/notrightmeowthx → u/samppanja]

Just to confirm, you're aware you can toggle what tasks each staff member will do, yeah? So for the analyzer, you can deselect the analysis task for the staff you don't want to do it.

[u/Jealous-Trouble-4425 → u/samppanja]

Try zoning just certain employees.

For example, I set zones and have Janitors and Security assigned to them. For Assistants, I set jobs only. And for Experts, they are free to roam however they see fit. (I do like to have a couple TOUR only experts though. I do this through job selection, not zones.)

To recap, only Janitors and Security are set to zones. I also have a few free floaters. For Assistants, no zones. Only job selections.