Here are a few things, that are really annoying:
1.) Every time when my colonists walk a long way to mine steel, after a while they remember "Oh, I'm hungry/I want to sleep" and they move back to base - whithout hauling one stack of mined steel to my storage (that is near their sleeping rooms and on their way back home), even if mining and hauling have the same priorities. That's waste of time!
2.) When my colonists wake up and they are not very hungry at this moment, they walk over the whole map to mine one (!) square of steel, then they move back to eat - only to move back to the steel mine after they had eaten something :o
3.) When my colonists are tired and want to sleep, but there are enemies on the map and I want to build an auto turret quick before they are coming, I tell them "prioritize build auto turret". But now they do only one thing: They pick up some steel, deliver it to the blue print - and go to sleep. "Oh, there are raiders? Meh, I'm tired, I go to sleep!"
The same when they've to build a wall and they are tired: They build only one part of it, even if they could build the whole wall in a few seconds.
4.) Stupid walking: "I need to go a straight line to chase an enemy? Okay, I zigzag into every bay of this mountain"
5.) The colonists only recognize enemies if they are drafted. If raiders start a siege and I haven't drafted my colonists (because otherwise they would starve) they walk into the raider's gunfire and don't try to avoid them.
It would be very nice if one of the following updates could contain a improved colonist AI ;)
I hope my grammar is not too bad. English is not my mother tongue ;)
Well this is from Dev's changlelog for next update : Jan 4
AI optimization on hauling: a system that caches a list of items that need to be hauled (not forbidden, undesignated, or already in optimal storage).
Jan 3
AI optimization. Lots of AI optimization.
Hopefully this end's our AI problems =s
About number 4, the "Stupid Walking", if you want to be able to run at enemies in a straight line you will probably have to remove every single bit of dirt and plants over a certain area. Dirt is slower to walk on than rough stone, which is why colonists will try to use it to get around when they can. Furthermore, trees, bushes, rocks and the like will slow down any pawns trying to move over them, which is why they tend to move around it all if possible.
Yeah, it really bugs me pawns aren't smart enough to haul things while heading home. "I'll head across the entire map for this thing, but I won't bring any of many others scattered around I could easily carry with me as well…"
Also, pawns need to get a better sense of self-preservation so they'll stop running into the line of fire all the time…
Say, a system that if they are not drafted, they avoid enemies, and try to run away to hide.
You have some really great points there Jan2607 :)
#3 especially annoys the hell out of me.
Basically contructing something has 2 parts.. 1. Gather resources. 2. Actually build it.
Prioritizing will only complete the first part. Easily fixed I would hope.
#4 though, that's working as intended.. They walk that way because it's the 'fastest' route.
If they walked in a straight line across all the dirt and stuff, it would actually take longer.
Quote from: Gottzar on January 25, 2015, 01:06:31 PM
Hopefully this end's our AI problems
The problem with AI is that there is never and end to problems with AI. :)
Of course, the smarter you make the AI, the more computing resources each colonist will require to run it, so you being to have to spawn off extra threads for AI that can run on other CPU cores (at least we have that now, when I studied AI we only had single core CPUs running all threads, if we had thread-enabled code at all).