Caravans and deadfalls

[TheMeInTeam]

It's not super common that they spring traps, but visiting caravans still path clean into trap mazes and wander back and forth in them.  Inevitably, they spring the trap.  Losing faction for this is "WAD".

Okay, but why is this a thing?  The AI knows the traps are there.  Why is it willingly going into a trap maze, that is not safe, not the shortest path to anything relevant, and not useful to them in any capacity?

This is a bad look:



It "feels" like they do this junk on purpose too.  Prior to building the trap maze, caravans congregated where "Orange" is located.  A single door of any material I can possibly use is still much faster into my base than that maze.

Proposed solutions:

1.  Implement the caravan spot mod to vanilla.  That way if this happens, people deserve the faction hit.
2.  Block friendlies/allies from springing traps.  It's an easy abstraction to make an excuse to implement.  The gameplay implication from traps springing on friendlies is worthless.  There's no strategy or upside there, just a micro sink or reloads to avoid it depending on which you prefer.

I prefer both, that way allies have one fewer way to suicide on your turf and if you gun them down with a bajillion turrets because you told them to go there, then you deserve the hostility.

#1 is the more preferable if just doing one or the other, to make caravans stop barging into tiny bedrooms in the middle of the night.

[Limdood]

I understand having colonists and caravans able to trigger traps...otherwise every player would just make a single hallway into their base lined with traps....at least now if you do that you need alternate doors as well as access doors to reload the traps.  So i really can't agree with colonists/visitors being completely unable to spring traps

That being said, the caravans REALLY need to follow the same logic as the colonists and NEVER step on a trap if there is another route (within reason according to the pathfinding AI)

[Sola]

That being said, the caravans REALLY need to follow the same logic as the colonists and NEVER step on a trap if there is another route

I've lost many pawns to standing on traps as they're rearming them, causing it to instantly spring as it finishes.  It's one of my biggest pet peeves.

[eadras]

I also noticed this behavior on my one A17 extreme attempt.  I don't usually use trap mazes, but I was struggling and pawns were losing body parts, so I put one up.  Every caravan went straight to it and pathed over all the traps, often setting them off.

[TheMeInTeam]

That being said, the caravans REALLY need to follow the same logic as the colonists and NEVER step on a trap if there is another route

I've lost many pawns to standing on traps as they're rearming them, causing it to instantly spring as it finishes.  It's one of my biggest pet peeves.

I can confirm colonists occasionally springing traps in setups like the one pictured above.

I consider it bugged and have no qualms reloading that kind of thing.  Fixing at least their pathing logic would be a nice QoL change, but so long as caravans are behaving like this the caravan spot thing would be huge.  With lots of people in there the AI can push itself.

Maybe a separate suggestion is that allied pawns should never willingly stand on a deadfall trap, armed or not, unless ordered to do so while drafted.

[DariusWolfe]

Have you considered opening your doors when there's not an active threat?

[eadras]

I had 3 exterior doors, and all were open.  The caravans just decided to set up in the middle of my trap maze for hilarity of mayhem.  If they don't set up on top of your traps, they park their hungry muffalos right on top of your 80% grown devilstrand field.

[TheMeInTeam]

Have you considered opening your doors when there's not an active threat?

It doesn't change their gathering spot.  The picture above should already give a pretty good indication of why; they are quite apparently not too fussed by inconvenient pathing and seem to prefer wandering back and forth near a home zone edge anyway.  They're not just "passing through" the trap maze, they're literally walking back and forth inside of it dozens of times.

Shutting maze door and opening other doors doesn't change anything, nor did I expect it to change anything, because my own pawns never enter that large of a maze unless re-arming traps or hauling corpses/items out of it.  Colony pawns simply take the much faster door options nearby.

For whatever reason, the auto-generated AI caravan spot is consistently picking these spots to congregate, even in locations previous caravans didn't gather until the construction of the maze.

[DariusWolfe]

The caravan's spot doesn't always seem to indicate where they actually are. I've had them wander all over the damned place, into and out of my base, playing with my Joy items, etc. It's this practice that I assume is the major culprit (aside from their primary location being directly in front of a turret battery when a threat rolls in) of most of the complaints; They path through dangerous areas to get to peripheral locations they'd like to visit; In the past, ensuring that doors were open lowered the pathing cost so they'd prefer those to the trapped area has worked for me.

[Sola]

Have you considered opening your doors when there's not an active threat?

Irrelevant and unhelpful.  I've had a setup as follows:
090
08x
070
060
05x
040
030
02x
010


Numbers are deadfall traps.  0 is walls.  x is doors.
99% of the time, they'll stand on a door to rearm the three traps connected.
1% of the time, they'll stand in the trap line to reactivate the traps, including reactivating a trap they're presently standing on.

[Limdood]

I use that setup Sola, but i've found it to be closer to 90%/10% :p

[ItsEddy]

This guy explain how caravans look for point to stay.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/55m5ps/how_do_guests_and_caravans_decide_where_to_wait/d8cckfm/

[TheMeInTeam]

This guy explain how caravans look for point to stay.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/55m5ps/how_do_guests_and_caravans_decide_where_to_wait/d8cckfm/

I don't think that algorithm is still the one used at present; as you can see the trap maze in OP (which is alpha 17, but this was an issue in alpha 16 too) is roofed.  Per that thread, the caravan should want to avoid it since it's roofed while the rest of my base exterior is not.  Instead, they move back and forth inside it.

@Dariuswolfe they are *not* pathing through something dangerous to get somewhere else in this example.  They are making a straight beeline for the most dangerous area of my base and then staying there.  The algorithm is selecting the trap maze as the "chill spot" outright.  The trap maze IS what "they'd like to visit".  Whatever is causing this in the algorithm is worth a look; there's no reason the game should prefer that location and at least one good reason it shouldn't.

[DariusWolfe]

That wasn't clear in the initial post or ensuing discussion, then; That definitely seems like an unintended effect.

Maybe this should be a bug report?