Pathfinding woe's

[Sassbarman]

Just curious if anyone else is experiencing this path finding issue in Hatikvah's Choice. My trade and mining ships seem to be unable to exit the highway next to the gate gate leading to Morning Star and thus back to Heretics End (Boron play-through). Instead they insist on exiting the highway right before entering the gate leading to Silent Witness and slow boating back. That would be annoying enough if weren't for the fact that the Zenon have a massive force there including a fully functional defence station. Boom go all my ships. I have a blacklist for Silent Witness and Hatikvah's choice 3 so that's a thing and I have tried clearing and validating game cache as well as saving and reloading all to no avail. If I let the situation play out and don't nursemaid my ships they literally all get destroyed...very upsetting. Any suggestions?

[Alan Phipps]

I have noticed some odd behaviours there from my trade ships, faction trade ships, and even Xenon supply ships.

They started off leaving the Hatikvah highway as close to the Morning Star gate as possible but then sometimes came under attack from pirates or enemies of theirs.

Next they pretty much all tried leaving the highway much later and having to turn about and travel back towards the gate, but they still came under the odd attack on the longer off-highway portion.

Next they tried leaving the highway much earlier which meant less turning but still had some travel to the gate. Again they sometimes came under attack.

Now, they seem to do a mix of all three methods. I don't know if it is an AI attempt to avoid confrontations, or if it is just an RNG thing. My pet theory is that it might be influenced by pilot skill in some way.

[Sassbarman]

Interesting. I have tried adjusting response behaviour in global orders to ignore enemies (not ideal) but the behaviour still exists. Not sure about pilot experience, which I did consider, given many of the ships doing this have at least 3 star pilots. It's strange because everything works fine for a period of time and then something changes and I start getting ship destroyed notifications. I thought it might be Zenon S ships travelling en mass down that highway to their various station build attempts, In response I placed two fleets around the highway further up towards Tharka's Cascade gate to block them and it largely succeeded, but the behaviour still exists. It's been very frustrating and is kinda ruining this play through. Still thanks for your input!