A new "Worker Overview" panel was added (default hotkey: K, but also accessible from the Misc menu in bottom left) that allows you to view a big list of all your workers and their status. It shows their level, house, job, current task, % of their time that is spent idle (if building can't produce a recipe, for instance). It also shows overall happiness, and happiness for each individual need.
You can click on any of these header icons to sort by that stat. Click again to reverse the sort order.
This should make it much easier to find individual workers who could be better reassigned to a new job, or to find that one last worker who isn't 100% happy.
You may also notice there is a new icon when a worker is 100% happy (overall, or per-stat). This is useful for those of you aiming for the "Utopia" achievement of 100% happiness!
Previously, workers were VERY aggressive about buying items. So much that they were wasting a lot of time just going back and forth to markets. The new logic aims to make their shopping decisions much more reasonable, while also allowing them to achieve 100% happiness as long as the items they need are within reach and in stock. Here's the summary of the new logic:
Workers will only consider purchasing from buildings that are within a certain circular radius (about 90 grid units) of either their home, their job, or their current position.
Workers will assign a high priority, and travel the furthest distance, for an item they do not currently own (or have one copy, but is nearly depleted) AND that will help fill a need that is at less then 100% fulfillment
If workers already own an item, they will not actively attempt to purchase it.
For other cases (item unowned, but needs are met) they will consider the value of the item and compare it to the distance they have to travel. A lower-value item will need to be much closer to trigger a shopping action.
Once a villager has reached a building to purchase an item, they purchase it, and then immediately consider if they could potentially buy other items at the building. The cost for travel is zero, so they will 'stock up' on lots of items they may already own. They will not buy items 'reserved' by other workers, so they don't arrive at the market and find it empty.
Some bugs were found & fixed in the logic that reserved items, which should reduce some problems where workers didn't actually buy an item once they reached the target.
It is hard for me to predict all use cases, but I tried my best to make sure this doesn't cause any kind of economic collapse in existing towns. You may need to move your markets closer to your villagers' home or jobs, but I think the general effect will be positive because villagers will spend much less time walking to buy useless items. If you encounter a situation where you think the logic feels unbalanced, drop a note on the forums or Discord and I will see if there's an adjustment I can make!
Fixed bug: sometimes boats would not sail into ocean areas that potentially held a future island
Fixed bug: summoned islands would sometimes strand a boat in the middle of the island
Ocean pathfinding is recalculated when a new island is summoned
Fixed bug: boat pathfinding was giving up too easily, resulting in avoidable path errors
Boats that are stuck on load will get teleported to valid ocean nodes
Workers attempting very long routes, that previously would give up, will instead navigate to the best node they found, and then once they reach that node, will start a new search from that closer node.
Added new option to Data Overlay panel: Sellable. It shows icons over buildings representing all of the items it potentially has available (ignoring current capacity) for workers to purchase
Desalinators and Water Pumps no longer allow workers to refill their stats from those buildings
Production buildings’ output inventory slots will be shown as individual rows, as long as there are 4 or fewer output types
Increased default pasture barn storage size from 20 to 40
When a worker can’t contribute by ‘Crafting’ anything because the building recipe can’t run (starved of inputs), instead of going home, it will wait at the building and show the “Idle” label
Decreased sunlight reflection on water during daytime
Reduced grass saturation at nighttime
Removed obsolete timer on Auto-Transfer causing it to run very slowly in many cases
Fixed bug: workers at a building would potentially try supplying low-priority items instead of crafting inside a building
Fixed bug: upgrading the storage at a production building would not trigger ‘Output Full’ recipes to begin production again
Fixed bug: when Manual Labor modifier was on, buildings with zero workers, but with production speed upgrades, were getting recipe production when they should have zero. (Rotational Power is still able to cause production even when workers are at zero, as it is additive with worker production, not multiplicative).
Fixed bug: rotational power was being consumed even if the building was not producing anything
Fixed bug: auto-transfers to volcano were not incrementing its quest counter