Orders

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Deconstruct

Mine

Haul things

Cut plants

Harvest

Chop wood

Hunt

Slaughter

Tame

Uninstall

Claim

Strip

Open

Plan

Remove plans

Orders are used to designate actions upon objects, which are carried out by colonists.

Manual ordering

While orders will be executed per the colonist's usual Work priorities and Schedule, a manual order will be followed immediately, usually cancelling whatever current task they are occupied with.

To give a colonist a manual order, select the colonist (via left-click or from one of several in-game menus), and right-click the desired target item. A menu will pop up listing all possible orders in that context. Note that a pawn must be permitted to perform that task in the Work tab, and must be capable of that particular type of work.

If a desired or expected order is not listed, then there is something preventing the pawn from performing that task at that time.

For multiple, successive orders, hold ⇧ Shift while right-clicking and selecting an order.^{[Console? Steam Deck?]}

Queued orders will be carried out in the sequence they were input. This is handy to add tasks after their current activity, including sleeping, eating or recreating; the new task will be begun once that (one) current activity is fulfilled.

Note that Colonists will not follow their normal Schedule while following manual orders. Eating, Recreation, even Sleeping will be ignored until all listed orders are completed, or they fall asleep from exhaustion, or have a mental break from a low mood due to being deprived of their basic needs. Keep this in mind when giving orders, especially when issuing long lists and/or when near a pawn's usual rest/relaxation time.

Deconstruct

Main article: Deconstruct

Deconstruct orders your colonists to take apart the highlighted object. Only objects with the building tag can be deconstructed; this includes structures, floors, furniture, temperature items, decorative items, and more. This includes minified buildings. You cannot deconstruct most other items such as apparel or weapons, however you can melt down some metal items via a smelter.

The construction skill has a significant effect on the speed of deconstructing an object.^{[specific stat?]} Deconstruction will provide a small amount of experience to the Construction skill.

In most cases, deconstructing a building will give a refund of 50% of the build cost of the item; for odd-numbered values, there is a 50/50 chance to round up or down. (e.g., a wall section, which costs 5 wood or stone blocks to build, will return either 2 or 3 of that building material.) All resulting material is left on the square where the object had been.

Deconstruction can be useful when resources are desperately needed or when structures are no longer required, or when it's simply time to remodel. Existing ruins found on maps can be deconstructed for free building materials.

Constructing an item that can be minified (i.e., uninstalled, moved and then placed again), loading it onto a caravan, and then later deconstructing it again can sometimes be a good way to reduce the "shipping weight" of the final total resources. Compare the weight of the item to the final weight of the items returned. (Urns are a good example of this.)

While it is under the construction work type, deconstruction is given a lower priority within the work task, and therefore usually takes place after all Construction has been completed. Give a pawn specific orders (by right-clicking the target item) for urgent deconstructions.

Mine

Main article: Mine

The mine order designates areas of stone, ore, or compacted machinery to be mined out. Colonists or slaves assigned to Mining will mine then mine the designated area, or can manually instructed to mine specific tiles. Mining these resources will yield an amount of resources or stone chunk at a rate dependent on what is mined and the Mining Yield stat of the colonist. The Mining Speed of the colonist and HP of what is being mined determined the speed at which the tile is cleared.

Note that only those things listed above, or areas that are covered by fog-of-war can "hold" a mining designation. In the event that an open area is uncovered when mining or an ancient shrine in encountered, the designation placed on the affected area will be lost. If planning a base via the Mine order, overlaying with plans may prevent the design being lost if an open area is discovered.

Colonists can only mine tiles directly adjacent to their current tile and in four cardinal directions. They cannot mine diagonally.

Smooth

The Smooth order designates natural stone surfaces to be smoothed out, be they natural stone walls, rough stone, or rough-hewn stone. Smoothing is done by pawns assigned to Construction.

The beauty of an area will be affected negatively by unsmoothed walls, which in turn affects colonist mood while in the area. If you are building an underground area that colonists will often visit or spend long periods of time in, smoothing the walls out will keep their mood from going down.

Haul things

Main article: Haul things

The "haul things" order marks chunks and other items to be hauled to stockpile zone. Most other items are automatically "haulable" so long as they are not forbidden. For any item, you may have to allow the item or set a valid stockpile zone for it to be hauled.

This order is carried out by colonists assigned to haul in the work menu.

Cut plants

Main article: Cut plants

Orders your colonists to take cut and remove plants. This will harvest any resources possible from the plant before destroying it. It is possible to click and drag this tool to order your colonists to remove plants from a large area. This tool can also be used to remove trees that are not fully grown and therefore are not able to be selected with the "chop wood" order. Trees that are not fully mature and are cut down using this tool will not yield the full amount of logs.

Only colonists assigned to plant cutting will cut plants. The speed of cutting plants depends on the colonist's plants skill.

Harvest

Main article: Harvest

Harvest marks plants to be harvested by colonists assigned to Plant cut. Characters assigned to Grow also harvest but with the intention of clearing the area to plant new crops. Harvesting of plants provides edibles such as agave, berries, rice, potatoes, corn, haygrass, and processable herbs like smokeleaf, psychoid leaves, hops, healroot and devilstrand. Plants that haven't borne produce will be destroyed in the process.

This should not be confused with the term "Harvest" that is also a term used in medical operations, meaning to remove a body organ from a donor, usually with intent to transplant the organ to another patient or sell for profit. Harvestable organs in-game include: heart, lungs, kidney and livers.

Unskilled or injured characters can fail at harvesting, destroying the harvest.

Chop wood

Main article: Chop wood

Chop wood is used to mark trees or Saguaro cacti to be cut down, dropping wood in their place. It will only mark trees that have achieved at least 40% growth.

There are two variations:

• Click Chop Wood then click one or more trees individually.
• Click Chop Wood then click and drag to select multiple trees.

Trees marked in this way are marked with yellow shears.

Trees, even if they have not achieved 40% growth, can be harvested by using Cut Plant instead of Chop Wood. Trees marked in this way are marked with a yellow machete.

Trees bear an amount of wood based on their growth.

Only colonists assigned the plant cutting job will chop down trees. A colonist may be directly ordered to chop down a marked tree. Select a colonist assigned to plant cutting, right-click a marked tree, click Prioritize cutting. The time it takes a colonist to chop down a tree it determined by their Plant Work Speed.

Hunt

Main article: Hunt

Hunt is an order used to mark wild animals to be automatically hunted and killed by hunters. Once a hunter's target is downed, they will finish it off at point-blank range by cutting its throat. Hunters will only hunt animals inside their allowed areas. If a properly configured stockpile zone is present and has room, the hunter will then haul the corpse back before resuming hunting. These corpses can then be butchered by cooks to yield meat and leather, with type and quantity of both depending on the animal hunted.

Animals can be marked for hunting in the Wildlife menu. Multiple animals can be selected clicking and dragging the mouse down the "Mark animals for Hunting" column. This tab also shows the revenge chance for each animal and has a special icon for predators. All wild animals on the current map are shown there. If an animal is injured or downed, it will be highlighted as such. Such animals may be 'finished off' for easy meat.

Hunters only hunt when equipped with a ranged weapon, when their Hunting task is active in the Work menu, and when all other jobs of a higher priority are finished.

Some animals have a chance to "revenge" when harmed, that is turn manhunter and attack any nearby humans. Each time an animal is injured, a check whether the animal will turn manhunter is performed. When an animal turns manhunter there is a chance that any nearby animal of the same species will also turn manhunter. When marking an animal for hunting with a chance to turn manhunter, a warning will be displayed.

Hunters are coded to shoot marked animals from a maximum distance to minimize the risk of injury should the target turn manhunter. However, animals will flee from nearby gunshots and may inadvertently move closer to the hunter. Weapons with a long range and high damage per shot are the safest for hunting weapons, such as the greatbow and bolt-action rifle, while short-range weapons, low damage weapons and weapons that predominantly get their DPS from low-damage but high rates of fire, such as the machine pistol are poor choices. ^{[Fact check]} The hunting stealth of the hunter directly scales the chance of manhunting.

Slaughter

Main article: Animal husbandry#Slaughtering

Marks a tamed animal to be slaughtered; done by handlers in the field where the animal stands. Properly slaughtered animal corpses will give 50% more meat and leather compared to hunting or killing them with direct attacks.

Tame

Main article: Animal husbandry#Taming

Marks a wild animal for an animal handler to try taming it.

Uninstall

Marks a movable object to uninstalled and boxed, usually so that it can be reinstalled in a new location. Boxed objects can be sold to traders.

Claim

Main article: Claim

Used to claim neutral structures for the colony, including ancient shrines, existing ruins, abandoned siege camps or destroyed faction bases. Claiming structures other than ones built by the player will automatically add them to your home area. Colonists will repair, maintain and extinguish fires in a claimed area or structure. This can be removed from the architect menu.

Strip

Strip the apparel, including utility items, from corpses and downed pawns. Click Strip from the Orders menu and click any number of pawns to designate stripping. Strip orders are executed by haulers. A pawn must have a manipulation greater than 0% to strip someone.

Stripping can be done by reverse designation. Select one or more pawns and click the strip icon to mark them for stripping.

Stripping can also be done by prioritizing a colonist. Select a colonist, right-click the target pawn, and click Strip.^{[Haul Work Enabled?]}

Note that apparel stripped from corpses will be tainted. See that page for details.

Open

Marks a non-empty container to be opened by a hauler. Works on graves, sarcophagi, and cryptosleep caskets.

Plan

Main article: Plan

Place planning designations. These don't do anything except help you plan future expansions.

Plans can only be placed inside the buildable area of the map, shown by a white border. An error (Too close to map edge.) will appear while attempting to place plans outside.

Plans can't be selected like walls and doors.

A planning designation will automatically be removed once something (like a wall) is built on top of it.

Remove plans

Main article: Plan

Does the opposite of the plan order, in that it removes plans you've laid out.

Version history

• Beta 19 - Rearm trap order removed, as traps are now destroyed when used and replaced by a blueprint. Previously it involved rearming a sprung trap, so it could be triggered again. Traps were rearmed by haulers.
• 1.4.3682 - Fix: Pawns incapable of manipulation are able to strip targets via float menu option.

• 

  Rearm trap icon

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  Old Mine icon

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  Old Cut Plants icon

• 

  Old Haul icon

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Architect

Orders

Deconstruct • Mine • Haul things • Cut plants • Harvest • Chop Wood • Hunt • Slaughter • Tame • Uninstall • Claim • Strip • Rearm Trap • Open • Plan (Remove Plans)