Serious pathing problems

[Ekaton]

I’ve tried two scenarios so far, Tutorial 1 and 2. Pathing was already broken in 1, with units having trouble crossing the bridge next to Rietheim and started spreading all around, most crossing the river where there’s no bridge rather than wait. Tutorial 2, however, is much worse. I ordered my tanks exactly how the tutorial tells me to, and one tank unit ended up in Villingen and the other south of the river, further from the destination that it was when it started moving.

I tried setting up many waypoints along the way, didn’t help. Units won’t follow them and will, occasionally, happily start moving a dozen or more hexes away from them in a direction that makes zero logical sense, such as going all the way to Villingen, crossing plains and a river with no roads leading there, when you have to move a few hexes to the west.

Also note that each units received individual move orders.

Is there a way to fix that? Unless the problems are known to persist on this map, it’s literally unplayable at the moment.

[Ekaton]

My computer’s internet connection is broken, but here’s an impromptu screenshot from my phone:

[Ekaton]

I went back to the save file, it looks like it did plot a bizarre route from the start:


And it immediately became normal once I closed the unit’s dashboard and clicked that unit again:

[Ekaton]

Now, units appear to be moving mostly correctly, but even though I tried to set order delays for them to avoid traffic jams, they still jammed around the bridge and start doing odd moves, like crossing the river in the middle instead of waiting their turn at the bridge. Some tanks have barely moved. Also, SPAAG should have moved SOUTH immediately after crossing the river, but started moving east where there are no bridges.




In the end, units were mostly “okay” at executing their move orders, if they did so in a very chaotic and time-wasting way, but some tanks still don’t want to follow roads and just crossed the river to the south and decided to stay there, even though their orders are the complete opposite of what they’ve done:

[CapnDarwin]

Noted, and sent to William to review. Pathing is complex code with the combination of orders, terrain, SOPs, and the number of units involved, even if they are group moved.

[WildCatNL]

I tried setting up many waypoints along the way, didn’t help. Units won’t follow them and will, occasionally, happily start moving a dozen or more hexes away from them in a direction that makes zero logical sense, such as going all the way to Villingen, crossing plains and a river with no roads leading there, when you have to move a few hexes to the west.

Thanks for providing screen shots. The first one provides a clear clue. The SOP for the Move Hasty order includes 'Prefer Concealment'. Which means that the tank platoon will plan its path trying to remain concealed from the perspective of the destination. Going east across the plain and the Marbach bridge won't do that, hence the detour via Villingen, a piece of forest and the Brigach river valley.
The tutorial talks you through applying 'Prefer Concealment' SOP to the final order (Hold/Screen), not the preceding movement orders.

detour_because_ordered_to_use_concealed_route.jpg (215.86 KiB) Viewed 313 times

When you remove the 'Prefer Concealment' from the movement order's SOP, I expect the tank platoon to take a fairly direct route to Marbach and the hill southeast of Marbach.
To prevent amphibious units from crossing rivers next to bridges, add 'Prefer Roads' setting to the SOP.

With SOP settings for movement, the game offers you quite some control over the routes chosen.

Please let me know if SOP changes resolve your problems. Happy to look into more detail to any potential pathing problem; screenshots including the SOP for the path are really helpful in that case.

William

[Ekaton]

I changed the tanks' SOP to roads, and they still behaved in a very odd manner, going west to Pfaffenweiler and back, instead of east. Also, note that recon units are converging around the river (they didn't have a road preference set, though).



By the end of the turn, they were mostly on their way to where they are supposed to deploy, but they did go back and forth a bit along the K5734.




Overall, thank you for pointing the problem with SOPs to me. At least they don't move too far from their targets now!

[Tcao]

Yes, Path finding issue has nothing to do with movement preference. I have found this issue a while ago and send a message in Discord channel.

I plot move hasty through K5734. I don't understand why couple units took a wrong route then return back to the correct route?

issue order to each unit individually
and happened again , leading tank unit turn north and now turn back to south
lol, he is going to turn north again......

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For human player the solution is to set order delay accordingly, this path finding issue won't happen with the column marching with space.


save file attached

FCRS Pic.zip

(370.04 KiB) Downloaded 1 time

[WildCatNL]

Tcao, thanks for the "beautiful" save file.

This indeed is a bug, and it's the AI giving too much weight to over-stacking on the shared roads, and excessively trying to avoid that.

A fix is on the way.

William