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Forbidding and the home area

Two housekeeping systems control what colonists are allowed to touch and which part of the map they treat as home.

Forbidding

A forbidden item is one colonists will leave strictly alone. They will not haul it, eat it, equip it, or use it for building until you un-forbid it.

Everything that lands with you at the start of a game is forbidden by default. Colonists will wander around looking idle while standing next to a pile of their own supplies, because that pile is off-limits from their point of view.

Press Alt+F on the map to un-forbid everything at once. The mod announces a count, for example "57 items un-forbidden," and colonists can get to work.

To forbid or un-forbid a single item, move the cursor onto it and either press G for its gizmos and toggle the Forbid command, or just press F to toggle it directly. This is useful when you want colonists to ignore one specific thing without changing everything else.

Play Settings

Play Settings is a small set of toggles that change how the colony runs automatically. Open the pause menu with Escape and choose Play Settings to reach them. Two are worth knowing:

  • Auto-rebuild. When on, colonists automatically queue a rebuild for any structure that gets destroyed, so a raider that knocks down a wall does not leave a permanent hole.
  • Auto-expand home area. On by default. The next section explains the tradeoff.

The home area

The home area is the part of the map colonists treat as theirs. Inside it, they repair damage, fight fires, and clean up filth. Outside it, they do none of those things.

By default the game expands the home area as you build, which is usually helpful. The problem appears when you build something far from the main base. That distant structure becomes part of the home area, and colonists will trek all the way across the map to sweep its floor instead of doing useful work nearby.

Many players turn auto-expand home area off in Play Settings and add to it manually only where they want coverage.

To extend the home area yourself: open the Architect menu with Tab, go to the Zone section, and choose "Expand home area" (type "expand" to jump straight to it). Mark the area the same way you place a stockpile zone: set two corners with Space, then Enter. Press = to add a second rectangle if one shape is not enough.

When your cursor is inside a finished building, Ctrl+A selects that room's interior, which is a quick way to mark the inside as home area without painting each tile. It selects the interior floor, not the walls, so add the walls separately with their own lines or a larger selection if you want them covered too.