[A17] Should predators move 300+ tiles to kill prey?

[NinjaDiscoJew]

I watched a couger walk around the perimeter of my base, it went and killed a rabbit on the complete opposite side of my base (which is at least 300 tiles), even though there was much closer prey.

[Calahan]

Thank you for the bug report, although this could be WAD depending on how close that rabbit was compared to the other prey, when distance is measured "as the crow flies". For example:

W - Wall
X&Y - Potential Prey
P - Predator
           
                 X
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
    Y           P

Here the predator will (AFAIK) choose X over Y, even though it has to run around a wall to get there, because X is closer as the crow flies, which is how the game measures distance for most things (unless there have been some huge changes in A17 I don't know about). Same applies for Pawns and meals as well (where this issue is often reported as a bug).

Yes, the AI could be improved to account for the obvious scenarios where "as the crow flies" is an inadequate means of determining distance. But that would result in a trade-off with performance, so any changes that affect the balance between improvement vs performance need to be weighed accordingly. And if the resulting gain is insignificant compared to the performance hit (which would likely be high in this case), then the chances of it being worth implementing are slim.

So based on your OP text alone it is difficult to determine if what you observed was a bug or WAD. If you do think this was a bug then we are going to need more information so that this behaviour can be reproduced, or even better a save game where it can be observed. (FYI - this thread will likely be closed soon, either by a mod or a dev, if no further info is provided).

[Tynan]

The AI is allowed to be a bit dumb! Not strictly a bug.