I've been fighting this bug for a while, and I think I have a clue. Much of the problem appears related to tight hallways, clumping, and pathing. What I'm seeing is workstations, villagers, and/or beds generate "angry particles" when the villagers get clumped up and are unable to move to their desired location. Once villagers get angry and stuck, they seem to get stuck as unemployed and/or not linked to a bed, and they are very stubborn about relinking.
My setup is a Bedrock realms (1.16), and I try to have 60 villagers placed into 3 houses. Each house holds 20 beds, 20 workstations, and the hallways are two blocks wide. I'm finding I get variations of unemployed villagers that won't accept workstations, several more villagers than beds, or more villagers of a given profession than I have workstations of that type.
I tried to simplify the problem, I killed off extra villagers to get down to 60 and removed all beds. Then I placed 60 beds and let them sleep. I observed about a dozen unemployed villagers. I then added far more than 60 workstations, but the unemployed villagers wouldn't claim. Then when I destroyed all workstations, and set 60 workstations back out, then all 60 villagers claimed them. I thought I had the bug solved.
But over time, the unemployed villagers started coming back. I also got several more villagers than beds. When I repeated the process of at night destroying all workstations and placing them back out, then the villagers started to re-employ. Once they got bunched back up, I saw numerous workstations get angry particles or beds get angry particles.
I'm also seeing that once I trade with some and "lock" in the villager into that profession, then I'm able to get more villagers of that type than I have workstations. For example, I have 11 farmer workstations but 12 farmers now.
I haven't been able to spot exactly when they decide to up their cap beyond the number of beds. But I think my next approach is to redo my entire design, make sure all the workstations have wide hallways to access, and everything "centralized" so everything is as close as possible. If that approach doesn't generate problems, it's more evidence that tight spaces cause the issues.
Brad Peterson
I've been fighting this bug for a while, and I think I have a clue. Much of the problem appears related to tight hallways, clumping, and pathing. What I'm seeing is workstations, villagers, and/or beds generate "angry particles" when the villagers get clumped up and are unable to move to their desired location. Once villagers get angry and stuck, they seem to get stuck as unemployed and/or not linked to a bed, and they are very stubborn about relinking.
My setup is a Bedrock realms (1.16), and I try to have 60 villagers placed into 3 houses. Each house holds 20 beds, 20 workstations, and the hallways are two blocks wide. I'm finding I get variations of unemployed villagers that won't accept workstations, several more villagers than beds, or more villagers of a given profession than I have workstations of that type.
I tried to simplify the problem, I killed off extra villagers to get down to 60 and removed all beds. Then I placed 60 beds and let them sleep. I observed about a dozen unemployed villagers. I then added far more than 60 workstations, but the unemployed villagers wouldn't claim. Then when I destroyed all workstations, and set 60 workstations back out, then all 60 villagers claimed them. I thought I had the bug solved.
But over time, the unemployed villagers started coming back. I also got several more villagers than beds. When I repeated the process of at night destroying all workstations and placing them back out, then the villagers started to re-employ. Once they got bunched back up, I saw numerous workstations get angry particles or beds get angry particles.
I'm also seeing that once I trade with some and "lock" in the villager into that profession, then I'm able to get more villagers of that type than I have workstations. For example, I have 11 farmer workstations but 12 farmers now.
I haven't been able to spot exactly when they decide to up their cap beyond the number of beds. But I think my next approach is to redo my entire design, make sure all the workstations have wide hallways to access, and everything "centralized" so everything is as close as possible. If that approach doesn't generate problems, it's more evidence that tight spaces cause the issues.