Pathing AI still broken months after it's reported

[loubert]

Are you ever going to fix this? No? Okay then.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1704118060

[Alan Phipps]

You mean the issue that L and XL ships that can't use highways still plot their AI course as if they had to?

[Mileron]

Or maybe he's complaining that, when starting from Black Hole Sun IV the ship plots the long southern way around to Grand Exchange I?

It's because he didn't discover Black Hole Sun V and Grand Exchange III.

[Buzz2005]

yea thats not a problem for AI ships, in one of my new starts they go any route even if its not discovered

[loubert]

Or maybe he's complaining that, when starting from Black Hole Sun IV the ship plots the long southern way around to Grand Exchange I?

It's because he didn't discover Black Hole Sun V and Grand Exchange III.

This, except it's not because I didn't discover those sectors. It's because the AI has serious issues plotting routes between Grand Exchange I and Black Hole Sun IV. It doesn't matter if the intermediary sectors are discovered or not; when I first posted about this a long time ago (viewtopic.php?f=180&t=404172&p=4782536#p4782536), I had them all discovered. If you attempt to plot a route between those two sectors in a S or M ship (not sure about the behavior of L and XL, haven't tested that), it will go the long way around, discovered or not.

Do this: Go to Grand Exchange I, somewhere in the middle of the sector. Plot a route to the EQ Dock in Black Hole Sun IV. The route it will plot will look like the one I posted. Then manually fly your ship through the superhighway that takes you to Grand Exchange III (i.e. manually take the shorter route). Right before you actually enter that superhighway, you should notice the route snap from pointing behind you towards the long broken route, to in front of you, the correct way. This is when the route-plotting algorithm changes its mind and decides that the physically shorter route is the better route.

If you're in Grand Exchange III and you plot a route to the EQ Dock in BHS IV, it works fine. Something in the calculation between GE I and BHS IV is borked. And I don't care what size the ship is or how many highways there are, going the physically longer router also takes longer time-wise. Yes, you have to manually travel across GE III and BHS V, but a) they're not that long, and b) travel drive. And the dock is RIGHT THERE once you enter BHS IV from V.

I can see that the travel drive distances are comparable. It seems to me, though, that it's either not considering highway time in its calculations at all, or it's over- or under-estimating travel times in other modes/places, because... well ya know what. I don't have time right now, but later tonight, I'll actually time it out, both ways, both traveling myself and allowing the AI to do it. I'll post back with the results. If I'm wrong, then nevermind. If not, then I stand by this post, as well as my previous one.

You mean the issue that L and XL ships that can't use highways still plot their AI course as if they had to?

And honestly, it just struck me how screwed up that is. Didn't even realize it was a thing. Why is that a thing? Yeargh.

[Mileron]

TL;DR The path from Grand Exchange I through Pious/highway/et al to Second Contact II Flashpoint to get to Black Hole Sun IV is the shortest "traveled" distance compared to otherwise... if you start at a certain position in GE1.


To demonstrate:
I tried this out.

1 - I was sitting on a station of my own in Antigone Memorial. I remotely directed a Peregrine Sentinel hovering over top of the Player HQ to dock at the EQ station in BHS-IV. From that point, it wanted to go through Nop to the Highway.

https://i.imgur.com/XxhI5f0.jpg

2 - I teleported to the same ship, took control, and attempted to Start Guidance, and it did the same thing. So as a test, I flew to what was visually the equidistant point between the SuperHighway to GE3, the jumpgate to Nop II, and the gate to GE4. The same thing occurred.

https://i.imgur.com/w5ElFHY.jpg

I did notice at this point in the sector that opening the map at any time would randomly force the map to open in black space, far out of the sector visibility. Closing/reopening the game did not resolve this.

3 - I attempted to more closely position myself equidistantly between those three gates in GE1. That point is approximately 157km away from the three locations. The same course plot occurred. I teleported out, and the same long course was plotted.

4 - If I flew 20km closer to the GE3->GE1 gate and the course plotted as it should, through GE3 to BHS superhighway.



5 - I teleported out (to my station in Antigone), saved/closed the game, reopened, and the course plotted correctly through BHS.

So I went farther, and parked my tuchus in a Pegasus and plotted distances.

From GE1's gate in GE3 to BHSV, it's 317km (measured parked on the "shoulder" of the gate).
BHSV-> BHS4 283km
BHS4-> Arg EQ 34km
(634km)

Nop6 -> Pious 2 18km
Pious 2 -> Highway 145km
SCIIFP -> BHS4 124km
BHS4 -> Arg EQ 290km
(577km)

Which means there's a 57km radius (Yellow) from the Nop6 gate (in GE1) in which a ship will always go through Nop->Highway to get to BHS4.

https://i.imgur.com/1ZOIF6C.jpg

The travel AI seems to be taking the shorter -physically traveled distance- route, but not the shorter -time- route.


So the closer a ship is to that circle, the higher chance it will use the highway route. Which means that, if a ship were in the remaining area outside that sphere and calculated its course plot, it would have to be farther away from that sphere and closer to the GE1->3 gate before it'll pick the GE3-BHS5 route.

(edit: realized I had my Exchange sector numbers backwards for most of this post.)

{Images posted directly to the forums should not be greater than 640x480 or 100kb, oversize image now linked - Terre}

[Mileron]

So the closer a ship is to that circle, the higher chance it will use the highway route. Which means that, if a ship were in the remaining area outside that sphere and calculated its course plot, it would have to be farther away from that sphere and closer to the GE1->3 gate before it'll pick the GE3-BHS5 route.

It is 285km from Nop6 gate to GE1->GE3 gate.

The ship needs to be greater than 161km away (57km absolute radius, 114km half remaining distance) from the Nop6 gate before the plot will be through GE3's gate.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Let me put two cents into what I have not quite understood what infuriates me more by telling a short story that happened last night.

My frigate is torn down due to lousy ai pilot with me onboard and the 10 drones I carry seemingly doing nothing to the single S class ship as they zip around like they have no clue!
and terrible logic behind AI pathing as my Ai pilot simply behaves like an oaf for no reason, as I give a direct order to fly somewhere (obviously to avoid battle)
Pilot proceeds to Fly THROUGH The ENEMY SWARM outnumbered and outgunned because it is a direct line to the set coordinates leaving me thinking ' jackass' then I smash face on my desk like 'WHYYY YOU STUPID @@@@', I ordered commands to be halted and set manual path around a long way, clearly because we are going to get recked and he fly RIGHT THROUGH the enemy because one attacks him so he completely does not give a rats ass about the fact there is a huge swarm on his radar and proceeds to 1v1 until they ultimately come about and explode him. Like any REAL player would do something so illogical, you would think that the AI would understand the odds and pick a safer path and their battles wiser.


Sometimes I wonder, I mean I expected bugs but sometimes I cry -
I should have known he was a dud Ai the moment he glitched his way through the docking bay walls while taking off for the first time only too come starboard and re-enter the bay again to exit the "scripted way"
sometimes I wonder why we even want to increase the war efforts or make our game harder with war mods like a lot of us are doing to have more ships built when the AI cannot even get simple pathing done without bumbling around like a bunch of baboons.

So that is my story and ultimately I would prefer that EgoSoft took a harder look into this before focusing efforts on content.