Allowed area

An allowed area restricts where colonists can perform work and joy activities. It does not restrict them from pathing outside an allowed area in order to get to their destination. A hunter will not hunt animals that are outside of his or her allowed area. Firefighters will not extinguish fire that is not both in the home area and inside their allowed area.

Creating an Area

Go to Architect > Zones and click the 'Expand Allowed Area' button. Choose 'Manage Allowed Areas' and click the 'New Area' button. Give the area a meaningful name like 'Barn' or 'Range'. Click again on the 'Expand Allowed Area' button and choose the name for the Area you just created. Use the mouse to draw out a rectangle for the area.

The "Invert" button swaps the area you've selected, making that area not allowed and everything else allowed. This can be very helpful when creating an area, for example, to keep grazing animals out of the colonists' living areas, or to keep hauling animals out of the prison.

Managing Areas

Clicking 'Manage allowed areas' allows the player to create or delete areas, rename areas, or invert an area. Inverting an area allows a player to effectively paint the entire map except for the area as drawn by the player. Colonists may still travel through the unpainted void of an inverted area. They just won't perform any activities there.

As many as eight areas may be created.

The Home area does not count towards this total. By default, Home area is automatically added around any player-created structure, stockpile zone or growing zone. It can be manually expanded or removed from the architect menu.

Restricting To Areas

In a colonist's inspect pane they may be assigned to a single allowed area. By default it is 'unrestricted'.

Tamed animals can also be assigned to an allowed area. This can be useful for keeping animals from eating high-value crops, accidentally triggering spike traps, or wandering into the path of raiders who will attack them.

Recommendations

It is advisable to pause and do a "zone check" whenever a threat arrives. This will help avoid having colonists or animals wander into danger.

These are examples of some allowed areas you may wish to create.

• Indoors - A good place to restrict nuzzling animals, colonists with a disease or infection that requires timely tending, or pacifists during a raid.
• Grazers - An everyday zone for herbivorous animals that includes the barn, but does not include the Indoors area, crop fields or the prison.
• Barn - A place to restrict animals during a raid, or during winter when grazing is impossible and predators are hungry.
• Roofed - Good to set up in advance for use during Toxic Fallout. Pawns under a roof will gradually lose toxic buildup, even if the roofed area is outdoors.

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Architect

Zone/Area

Stockpile zone • Dumping stockpile zone • Growing zone • Allowed area • Home area • Build roof area • Remove roof area • Snow clear area