Any way to stop your NPCs from stealing?

[moomin]

'ello

I'm playing a game where I've set-up base very close to Western Hive huts and there seems to be a bug in the game where if your automated workers run out of resources they will run to the nearest shop and steal said resource. Most people probably have bases further away from any NPC shops and so most people won't notice it the bug. Because I'm almost literally 5 frrt away from their shops, it's pretty much ruining my game.

Just wondering if anyone has figured out a way to stop this? Or maybe someone's modded a fix, or something?

...

anything....

please?

[Ocram]

Dunno how to stop them but mines don't even pickup mats on the ground for engineer (and i guess for everthing else).
98.13 fresh installation with integrity check and no mods.

[moomin]

yeah, it's weird. i have storage boxes full of stones, and if a Stone Processing Machine runs out of stone, they'll totally ignore the storage boxes and prioritize theft from the NPC's shop. running latest Experimental and the latest patch notes mentioned a fix for something which sounded similar. doesn't seem to have fixed this though

[swillo]

First how did you build so close to a town? There are reasons you are not supposed to be able to do that. This would be one.
I have the same issue with building in a house bought in a town, but I just close and lock the door and they stay inside. Since I can't build outside in someone else's territory it works.

[moomin]

hey Swill. I'm not sure why I was able to build so close to the village. i i'm new to the game and just decided to build as close to the Hive store as possible (for convenient trade logistic reasons), using the blue/red/green building indicators when placing my buildings. i don't know for sure, but i thought small villages (like the Western Hive) allow you to build closer to them than large cities/towns do. dunno tho, maybe i shouldn't have been allowed to build so close and that may be the problem/bug.

You're right. If I close my gates, my workers do behave as expected. They even begin to use stored items in storage boxes....sometimes sometimes they don't tho. The code is really temperamental and inconsistent for some things..

PS: not using any mods, btw

[moomin]

guys, i have taken a screen shot of my base which shows my proximity to the Western Hive village. Thought it may be of interest to any dev-lurkers, just incase there's a prob with how close players are able to build. My base's northern gate is right on the edge of the legal building boundary. like I said, I built as close as I possibly could......

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Asu0hyIdlUnYhAx06p2m80lVNclU

[dreydon]

wow you are literally in their base. i did this also though when i first started the game. I had the opposite problem where the hive people would come and use things in my base. i didn't mind the slave labor to much though lol. if you want to be near them but not this close to help with this issue there is a small lake a lil to the west of that spot i usually build at you just have to clear out a few beak things nest and then its pretty safe there or you can do what i did was build a walled path from my base almost completely to theirs with a gate on both ends to keep things out of it. have fun with the game.

[swillo]

Wow that is even closer then I imagined. Yeah that would be the issue. Not sure who you got so close. I actually had two bases closer to the shek town and another hive town, but that's because I built them in versions when those towns didn't exist, and when they were added they landed right on top of me. Had to up and move. the urban sprawl was too much.

[Hatsune_Neko]

That close isnt supposed to happen.

[Taschren]

I had this issue too when I moved to a new base closer to the swamp from my old one, which was out in the arid nowhere and I was sick of hauling copper to towns to trade for food.

For range, I found a nice place -just- outside the blue zone that had the starter resources I needed to get everything up and humming, so it wasn't too close.. but evidently just close enough;

I started growing my food, but all my npcs got into a bad habit of 'going to bed' and running off to the waystation to pay 200 cats to rest when they were perfectly fine but just bored. They would also run there to steal building materials, and one day when I had given in and said to them "fine, go to the bar and sleep while the rest of us build, you idiots" - all of a sudden there was a brawl and my guys got the shit kicked out of them, carried out and dumped on the steps by the ninja bouncers.

I can't imagine what could have happened, perhaps one was caught nabbing materials or someone got between a crossbow and a hungry bandit.. needless to say I got working on those new beds in my base in a hurry, so my lazy npcs don't wander off and start trouble in the waystation bars


(It was only about 3-4 of them who'd sneak off and do this regularly when I was at 3x speed, I'd have to keep checking the map. They were bored and really had no jobs to do around the base, and one or two would quickly run away when I wasn't looking and I'd see 'paid 200c for bed' .. they got SOUNDLY beat up too, and it was sketchy getting my other guys to run in and carry them out without drawing attention. I didn't get any faction penalty and can still go and trade there, so it must have been theft and punishment. The others who were also sleeping there automatically stepped in to defend their comrade so a brawl ensued.)

[Lehanius]

I've had the same problem at the same place and it was very annoying. And I didn't want to build walls cause I needed my guys to be exposed to the harshness of that place and get stronger. I kinda solved it by permanently sending them to work on stealth mode so eventualy they got good at it and would steal stuff fast enough not to get noticed. Before that, I manualy stole most things I knew they could try to (I was playing the sword thief campaign anyway, it was not like he wouldn't do it).

I can see that many issues may arise from town proximity, but this particular one could be solved by excluding red-named items from avaiable items for the workers. We already have to press ALT to do such criminal acts to avoid missclicking, but the AI just does that freely?