In Beyond These Stars, a housed Peep only chooses a workplace within 16 tiles of that home. A worker may walk farther while fetching or delivering resources, but that hauling freedom does not expand the workplace radius. When a building has no worker, the usual fix is therefore housing placement, job-slot balance, or priority—not a longer road.
Read the radius as a housing rule
Homes are part of the labor network. A beautiful residential district on one edge of the settlement may leave an industrial district on the other edge permanently outside every worker’s eligible range. Build accommodation near the jobs that must run, and keep an open road between them so the eligible Peep can actually reach the entrance.
Use overlapping neighborhoods rather than one endless strip. A central group of homes can cover food, water, storage, and light production, while another group supports smelting, power, cleanup, or shipping. Overlap gives workers alternatives when one building pauses without forcing every service into the same cramped center.
Do not confuse a resource trip with job eligibility. Seeing a Peep carry goods across town proves the route is traversable; it does not prove that the distant factory can employ that Peep. Select the factory, inspect its staffing state, then inspect nearby homes.
Balance workers against available jobs
All Peeps share the broad shift-and-break cycle. If the settlement offers more jobs than housed workers, lower-priority workplaces may remain empty for an entire shift. Adding another production building can reduce output when it pulls a worker away from the food, water, storage, or power process that keeps everything else running.
Housed population
Only Peeps with home slots enter the normal workforce. A population number does not help if accommodation is missing or badly placed.
Eligible jobs
A workplace needs at least one home within 16 tiles before its job can be chosen.
Priority
Higher-priority work claims limited labor first; optional lines should yield to survival and recovery chains.
Break access
Workers return home to eat, drink, and relax, so supplies must reach the same neighborhood between shifts.
When debugging, pause nonessential producers and watch the next complete shift. If the empty essential building becomes staffed, the settlement has a labor shortage. If it stays empty, look for range, housing, road, or building-state problems.
Set priorities by consequence
Prioritize the work whose absence immediately harms the settlement: drinking water, baseline food, critical hauling/storage, a required construction input, or pollution control during an active hazard. Keep a dependable source of power staffed when powered chains are essential, but remember that a full by-product output can stop a staffed generator anyway.
Medium priority belongs to steady construction materials and services that improve recovery. Low priority is appropriate for a speculative surplus, an idle export chain, or a building waiting for another prerequisite. Priorities should change with conditions; they are not permanent rankings of building types.
Avoid setting everything to the top. Equal maximum priority simply moves the decision elsewhere and hides which process you intended to protect. A small number of clear tiers is easier to audit during a shortage.
Design a reliable work neighborhood
Place accommodation where several essential entrances fall within range, then reserve road-facing tiles for services and storage. Keep heavy pollution away from homes when possible; a short commute is not worth undermining Peep recovery. Use additional homes near remote industry rather than stretching the original neighborhood beyond the rule.
A stable district usually has:
- Enough home slots for the workers it expects to employ.
- Food and drink deliveries that arrive before the shared break.
- A reachable road network with no blocked entrances.
- Fewer active job slots than the district can actually fill.
- Storage near bulky inputs and outputs, so work time is not swallowed by hauling.
Expansion should follow labor, not precede it. Before placing a new factory, identify which nearby home will supply its workers and which current workplace can release them. If neither answer exists, build accommodation and stabilize its food-and-drink supply first.
Troubleshoot an unstaffed building
Check the building is complete, enabled, reachable, and not waiting on an unlock. Confirm a home is within 16 tiles and has an occupant. Compare all open jobs with the housed population, then temporarily raise this building or pause competing work. Wait through the shift boundary because assignment changes are clearer when a new work period begins.
If a worker arrives but output remains zero, the problem has moved from staffing to production: inspect inputs, power, output storage, and by-products. The production chains guide covers that second diagnosis. For recovery between shifts, use Happiness and Energy.
References checked for this route
- Official Peeps page for housing, the 16-tile workplace rule, synchronized shifts, priorities, and break behavior.
- Official Buildings page for road access, construction flow, services, and operating constraints.
- Official Steam store for the released settlement-management scope.