You need to be more decisive, comrade. Motivate your tovarisch by chosing volunteers from particular house and giving them explicit order to work in the heating plant.

Luckily this is just a game and you won't be "accidentally" falling out a window in the 10th floor because your poor planning wasted the People's Republic's precious resources. And also killed 2000 people five times.

There are ways to design your systems so that certain buildings get a priority of workers. The routes, the destinations from the bus stops. It's possible.

Comrade Tiaro, the NKVD would like to discuss with you your bus schedules to the city heating plant in the black car parked outside. Don't worry you won't be needing your coat anymore.

You can create a free bus stop exclusively for the plant near a high loyalty & happy flat, and set that flat to first go to the bus stop, and if there's a bus get in

Also note a common mistake is to overload the pipes, each big heating plant produces about 300m3, so you can connect either a single big pump with 1 300m3 input, and 3 small 100m3 outputs that would go to small exchangers, or you could put 1 to 1 with 1 single big exchanger (not recommended from my experience)

Some people connects 3, 300m outputs for a single 300m input, and that would just fail to heat up everything as soon as the temp goes below -10ºC, even if the heating plant is fully populated.

Other unsolicited hint is: ... it's better to go big than... sorry, when it's about heating, I place 1 big heating plant every 2500 citizens... probably overkill... but... to be sure... I actually only use small plants to ensure helicopter firewarrios from small mid map survive XD

Pro tip, you can deliver people directly to places (by using the tool line like the factory/whatever is a station). This is good if you want permanently manned places. You can even do a power plant->station kind of line, so it's staffed first, then leftover people go to station.
Having a microbus for the power plant/heating plant might be a good idea.

Another pro tip I learned from Bbaljo, if you put 100% to X place, 0% everything else for a transport station worker priorities (bus stop or whatever), that doesn't mean everyone is going to the first place and if it's full they don't go anywhere. They'll fill that place at 100% (as best they can), then go elsewhere if it's full. This is awesome to make sure important places are filled first (usually stuff like fire station, power and heating in industrial area).
It works with other % like 50% power plant, 50% heating plant, 0% everywhere else. Just make sure you have enough people in this case tho.

Originally posted by Erei:

Another pro tip I learned from Bbaljo, if you put 100% to X place, 0% everything else for a transport station worker priorities (bus stop or whatever), that doesn't mean everyone is going to the first place and if it's full they don't go anywhere. They'll fill that place at 100% (as best they can), then go elsewhere if it's full.

Oh, it is new for me, I tought they will be jobless.

Originally posted by gwahazar:

Originally posted by Erei:

Another pro tip I learned from Bbaljo, if you put 100% to X place, 0% everything else for a transport station worker priorities (bus stop or whatever), that doesn't mean everyone is going to the first place and if it's full they don't go anywhere. They'll fill that place at 100% (as best they can), then go elsewhere if it's full.

Oh, it is new for me, I tought they will be jobless.

So did I. But they aren't.

I don't think it works if you don't have a "everything else" tho. Say if you have "50% power plant, 40% heating 10% fire station" and nothing else, then I assume that once those 3 places are filled, people will be jobless, even if there are others jobs nearby. Although, after 1h (I think ?) they'll reevaluate their priorities and might move to something else nearby.

Originally posted by gwahazar:

Oh, it is new for me, I tought they will be jobless.

I do this often. It´s very handy. I also use this at drop of stations.
I have a few busses and trains comming to one station with heating- and power plant in range.
Heating plant and power plant need to get workers constantly.
All other working places are optional.
So I did:

Power plant - 50%
Heating plant - 50%
Other buildings 0%.

Works like a charm. I can bring 100s of people. And they all find work.

Yes, it's incredibly useful. Always get your fire station staffed and potentially other "need people at all time" that way.
Also helps if you want to have, say, your coal mine to work in priority over (for example) a steel factory. As you might value coal a lot more than steel (power plant, heating....) that isn't produced anyway because you don't have coal.

I speak about this place:
Heating- and power plant, and a coal processing plant.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3400648322

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3399696071

Works flawless.

A real pro tip would be instead to have the line like this:
city station load workers -> heating plant station unload -> heating plant station unload force transfer
Set the heating plant as 100% and other workplaces as 0%. If there are other priority workplaces, then set the worker distribution accordingly based on required amount of workers.

For example, I have a construction industry area with gravel processing, asphalt & concrete plants, a small RDO for demolitions, a repair garage (20 workers) and a fire station (~30 workers I think).
The line is set up exactly like I wrote above and the station sends 40% workers to garage, 60% to fire station and 0% to all other buildings. Walking access in & out of the area is then restricted by road signs.

Thanks for the tips, yes, it seems like if you tell them: go work there or at the gulag, they get the idea. After the 6th winter I didn't have to ship another small Cuban town here to freeze.

However, you may still have periods where it doesn't have workers. If you take good care of their happyness those short periods won't end in a desaster.

Originally posted by Tiaro:

Thanks for the tips, yes, it seems like if you tell them: go work there or at the gulag, they get the idea. After the 6th winter I didn't have to ship another small Cuban town here to freeze.

It's best if you consider people as a ressource (ingame, don't take that one out of context lol). The name of the game is an indication, they are a raw material that you need to produce, maintain and deliver to most factories.