Basic pathfinding failure 101

from GalCiv3 Forums

I had a few suspicions on how optimum were the paths taken by my ships when close to a hypergate, but was too lazy to confirm by using an older save and doing the move by hand, turn after turn.

 

But then, I had a small ship follow a path parallel to an hypergate for a full turn (while maintaining a distance of 2 hexes from the lane) without taking it!!

And see what is the planned move for the next turns. How can pathfinding calculation be so bad here? We are talking about having a move cost of 1/2 (hyperlane) compared to 1 (any other hex). Someone should get back to courses on A* and dijkstra pathfinding really.

 

And this message, as others, is a bottle in the ocean. 

84,367 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Do you have a save game for us to look at?

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Pathfinding has been broken since Crusade. It used to work fine before that.

There was a time when you could pick a destination, and the path the ship would follow would actually be the path that was indicated. Now, you don't have a clue-- it seems to be recalculated after every tile moved. And it might be several tiles away from the indicated path.

You can no longer depend on a ship following the path and this can be a major problem when trying to avoid known locations of pirates and/or space monsters, or other enemies, too.

I wish SD would fix what used to work well before it got broken. I would much rather have a game that works properly than to have a bunch of new "features" that work in a half-assed manner.

Sorry for the rant, but these numerous oversights are getting to me.

 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting pshaw, reply 1

Do you have a save game for us to look at?
End of pshaw's quote

 

Really? It is widespread and is easily reproducible with any game. Create an hypergate, and have a ship some hexs away try to take it. You will soon see they like to follow a parallel course. 

 

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Save game is helpful because it's not obvious what is happening in the hidden tiles.  

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Just my 2 cents here... the initial path shown is not necessarily the path the ship takes.  It is recalculated every tile-movement.  Even if the path is shown as such, which I have seen, the ship will often, on actual movement, use the hyperlane correctly.  But only sometimes, not always.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Nobody cares anyway

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I have been working on this, but I have to be careful to not increase turn times, so it's taking some time.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

If you could upload a save game to a cloud drive like Google Drive or Dropbox and post it for me along with screenshots of where you are seeing issues, it would help me to test my experimental code.

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Shipyards sometimes I have to be careful because on auto moves where there are asteroids around the shipyard sometimes will not move, but s itch back, and forth.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting admiralWillyWilber, reply 10

Shipyards sometimes I have to be careful because on auto moves where there are asteroids around the shipyard sometimes will not move, but s itch back, and forth.
End of admiralWillyWilber's quote

Do you mean when moving the actual shipyard, or ships ejecting from the shipyard?

If you have a save game that can show this, please upload the save to dropbox or Google Drive or some other cloud drive and post a link. 

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Ive trying to manually move the shipyard for so long to avoid this I don't have a saved game. This requires a lot of asteroids to be just right to pull this off. This is a rare occurrence. Sorry no saved games.