[A16] Better Pathfinding (v1.5.2 update 2/22)

[zyklame]

With these heavy bug in the vanilla path finding of A17 a revival of these mod would be very much appreciated.

[Mosart]

Just want to say Thank you for this mod. It's really nice that it is included in a17 now

[faltonico]

There's no need; it's already included in A17.

But only a partial implementation?:

"Colonist taking much slower paths for no known reason."

[rambo]

is there an a17 version?

[rightomate]

The pathfinding in A17 is still terrible, my pawns still choose to walk the long way through a marsh even though i have built a flagstone path right next to it on a more direct route. dunno how hard it is to work out the pathfinding but why would the pawns choose 36% walk rate over a longer distance rather than 100% over a shorter distance. doesnt make sense.

[rightomate]

Here is an example of how good it is..

Bit hard to see as i had to minimize the screenshot a bit to attach but you get the idea

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

[Anvil_Pants]

A17 pathing is broken on long paths, basically always. It is known.

[cedec0]

The most frustrating part of Rimworld is that pathing ISN'T broken.  Send a drafted colonist somewhere and he will take the fastest route.  so the game IS capable of finding the best path.

It is UNDRAFTED pathfinding that is completely broken.  (on average, about 2 times slower than drafted pathing, for me at least). 

IS THERE A WAY TO FORCE THE USE OF DRAFTED PATHING FOR EVERYTHING?  Performance isn't an issue for me (extremely powerful computer, 5 colonist, playing mainly on the slowest speed setting).

[Anvil_Pants]

The most frustrating part of Rimworld is that pathing ISN'T broken.  Send a drafted colonist somewhere and he will take the fastest route.  so the game IS capable of finding the best path.

From my memory (a few weeks old), drafted path finding will happily send the pawn across costly terrain. "Costly" in the sense of how pathing is calculated, with each tile being precalculated for the sum of its movement cost and the path being made across the least costly tiles. E.g., drafted pawns will move linearly across a field of stone chunks, while undrafted pawns will walk around it.

Taking that as true, it says nothing for how broken or not broken either method is. They're different solutions to different needs. Drafted pawn movement is coded to respond immediately to player input. Undrafted pawn movement is responding to AI input. Drafted pawn behavior presumes player micromanagement. AI pawn behavior does not.

We say that long paths are more broken than short paths because it's been apparently shown that the current code begins failing at correctly observing tile movement cost when the destination is far away. I haven't seen code to prove that, though.

Making AI pathing behave like drafted pathing would be simple. Just ignore tile movement cost. Doing that, however, would significantly change (and probably harm) all gameplay mechanics that are contingent to movement costs. Kill boxes would become even more powerful, and non-combat micromanagement would become more necessary.

[lude]

It's also drafted behavior, it's just not as evident, just go start an ice sea sheet map 400x400 and try to hunt something on the edge, it'll be a frustrating experience, even if drafted and sent manually the path calculated will not be diagonal but taking a turn every 8 blocks or so and then straight, i've also noticed a few other pathfinding issues dealing with stockpile zones, construction, awareness of reachable items in certain situations and i noticed that in busy games with long paths it occasionally happens that pawns will just stand still and try to get a new path very often without actually trying to follow through. A pity I need to raze the whole jungle just so I can walk better.
tl;dr
start ice sea 400x400 sent from a to b drafted will do the same pathing as non drafted over 50+ or even less

A pity the pathfinding can kill you on harder difficulties, lots of odd wtf moments. Good that there's debug eh cheating tools.

[Nightinggale]

We all know A17 has severely broken pathfinding (optimization gone wrong) and that A18 has better pathfinding. Since A18 is out as unstable already, reviving this thread is a bit pointless.

[RemingtonRyder]

Actually, the pathfinding in A18 is still a bit wonky at long distance.

[droidfreak36]

The pathfinding seems completely unchanged for long paths. Within a few minutes of jumping into a game, I caught a pawn doing one of those awkward zig-zags they always used to do, and willfully walk over sandbags while doing it. Still very much broken. I'd appreciate an update of this mod because bad pathing makes my brain hurt. I could try to fake it with PathAvoid, but it just wouldn't be the same.

[Alenerel]

What happened to zhentar? Is he ded?

[ProfZelonka]

Need this in B18!