A couple of issues with multiple floors

[DarkBlueAgent]

1) Colonists can get up to the second floor, go directly above the storage room from the first floor, and magically pick up items from the storage shelves below through the floor.

2) If the pathfinding decides that it is more efficient for them to spawn a ladder from their pocket to get on the second floor instead of going around and using either the main staircase or the ladder I placed they will do so. Breaking immersion. They will also do the same when they need to "go for a walk". They will get to the roof (if it's flat) using their magic ladder and stay up there for a while - admiring the view. Even if I don't have a way for them to get up there.

[Buwaro Elexion]

I think the ladder should be made a basic tool, and allow them if desperate or drafted to jump off if no other way down(at risk of injury)

[MurxusMaximus]

Originally posted by Buwaro Elexion:

I think the ladder should be made a basic tool, and allow them if desperate or drafted to jump off if no other way down(at risk of injury)

Colonists shouldn't have ladders. Period.

The only chance of a colonist getting stranded on a second floor is the player deleting the stairs or ladder. There is no reason why colonists should be able to get on top.

Just remove it alltogether instead of lazy pathfinding by adding 'magic ladders'. Might as well have magic horses to cross mountains.

[Daynen Drakeson]

What bugs me is when pathfinding decides to use ladders to cover ridiculously short distances when even a cursory glance can confirm that just walking would have been faster. I have a two story building now and even when they're just grabbing sticks to put in a furnace from like eight tiles away or some other trivially close thing, they don't just walk; they place a ladder, climb TWO FLOORS UP, walk over the roof and climb TWO FLOORS DOWN. They're obsessed with using ladders at every opportunity. They waste time for nothing and it's maddening.

I have to agree with murxus: make ladders a construction and take them away from these stupid survivors so this nonsense STOPS.

[Flin Fredstone]

I think that pathing issue is due to ceilings. I think it does not happen when actual roof tiles are on top.
Something to look in to for the devs.

[Zep Tepi]

Originally posted by Flin Fredstone:

I think that pathing issue is due to ceilings. I think it does not happen when actual roof tiles are on top.
Something to look in to for the devs.

Yes I've noticed that ceilings aren't as solid as they should be. I've seen hummingflies shoot through them. I've seen colonists ladder through them. I've seen colonists access storage below them as stated above. I've seen colonists spear through them to get at close hummingflies.

I put a roof over my hummingfly hideout because of this. The ceiling wasn't always enough to block them.

[Jaggid Edje]

If you ring your ceilings with a railing, they can't path find randomly up to it because fences block movement.

[Flin Fredstone]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

If you ring your ceilings with a railing, they can't path find randomly up to it because fences block movement.

Perhaps, but that is only a temporary solution. I hope the devs check this and fix the pathing

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Flin Fredstone:

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

If you ring your ceilings with a railing, they can't path find randomly up to it because fences block movement.

Perhaps, but that is only a temporary solution. I hope the devs check this and fix the pathing

Yah, me too. I find it particularly annoying when someone is doing the "go for a walk" relaxation and randomly go up and down from the 'roof' multiple times throughout their walk.

[Stimpacker]

It doesn't solve the OP's problem - survivors going upstairs to grab stuff from storage that's actually downstairs.

It's really annoying. I have food storage next to kitchen stoves. Get the food, walk 2 steps and cook. But NO, they will go upstairs, get food from right above the downstairs food storage, walk back downstairs and then cook.

The first few games, I can micro-manage but this is fast getting old. Losing replayability value thanks to stupid survivor behavior. We have heard long and often the complaint about survivors on 50% hunger going far out to start a task for just 2 seconds then run back. Here's another: they will be repairing/building a fence. Just one last segment to finish. Then some idiot in the house reserves the task. So the fella already onsite and was about to finish stops and goes home while a new fella walks all the way over to build 1 fence tile. Totally annoying.

It's probably too much work for devs to re-do the pathfinding and task assignment scripts to fix crap like this, especially for a released game. So this may be it for me. Thank you to many forum contributors, learned a lot (good and bad) about the game.

[Faitheal]

damn, was excited to buy this and came to read about it. Pathing is really this bad and they already have dlc ? That can't be good. I will pass on this title for now.

[Stimpacker]

Here's proof, funny, it also includes the "magical ladder" talked about here.

Samantha wants to craft a smokeleaf pipe. I have them stored a few steps away from the workbench. Base is 2-story building. Work/Leisure downstairs, bedrooms upstairs. So what does Samantha do? She walks outside, throws up a magical ladder, this time goes up to 3rd floor (2nd floor ceiling) and grabs leaves magically through 2 levels! Then she climbs the ladder back down, goes back inside base 1st floor where the workbenches are.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3104299900

Here's the 1st floor - storage close to workbenches. The cooks frequently go up to the 2nd floor bedrooms to get cooking ingredients when they are really placed next to the stoves. So irritating.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3104300630

[Daynen Drakeson]

Originally posted by Faitheal:

damn, was excited to buy this and came to read about it. Pathing is really this bad and they already have dlc ? That can't be good. I will pass on this title for now.

Well that's the funny thing: the pathing WASN'T this bad BEFORE the DLC. The addition of multiple floors has REALLY thrown things out of whack somehow. I expect a patch should be inbound before too long.

[Stimpacker]

It's not just pathing. Devs also need to put a condition to task queue assignment. If the current task is almost finished, say less than 10% more to go, then finish it. I know the apologists will say that's what priorities in Manage > Activities is for but it's not that easy.

Example: you'd want at least 2 people to repair fences. Need to get defenses ready. Make it so that the 1 person already on the fences don't stop when it's just 1 or 2 tile fences left to repair. It's really irritating when they run off to play darts.

The script change would be <if it's time for next task, check if current task is nearly finished. If yes, finish it first>. I doubt devs can fix this easily. It is easy if the current task is say scavenging but if it's multiple tile repairs of fence, then it needs to define the current task as "repairs within say 10 tiles of survivor position". Currently, it seems to be defined on a per tile basis. That's why they run off when there's 1 last task in a nearby tile and not realize it.

[Olleus]

Originally posted by Stimpacker:

It's not just pathing. Devs also need to put a condition to task queue assignment. If the current task is almost finished, say less than 10% more to go, then finish it. I know the apologists will say that's what priorities in Manage > Activities is for but it's not that easy.

Example: you'd want at least 2 people to repair fences. Need to get defenses ready. Make it so that the 1 person already on the fences don't stop when it's just 1 or 2 tile fences left to repair. It's really irritating when they run off to play darts.

The script change would be <if it's time for next task, check if current task is nearly finished. If yes, finish it first>. I doubt devs can fix this easily. It is easy if the current task is say scavenging but if it's multiple tile repairs of fence, then it needs to define the current task as "repairs within say 10 tiles of survivor position". Currently, it seems to be defined on a per tile basis. That's why they run off when there's 1 last task in a nearby tile and not realize it.

Definitely agree with this.

There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a survivor walk 2h across a map to mine 10 outcrops I've marked, mine one, and then decide to walk all the way back to base to repair a light bulb, walk back to the mining area, only to immediately turn back for lunch. Or when they're building a fence, but rather doing adjacent segments, they walk around randomly doing them in no sensible order at all. It can be solved by giving direct orders (thank god, don't know why so many games don't do this), but that gets tedious fast.

Rather than doing the highest priority task (or oldest, which is partly how its done now I think), it should rank them by something like priority * (time_to_walk_there + time_to_complete_it) and the lowest number gets down first. So it does the highest priority tasks, that are closest by and quickest to finish. Now I'm sure it's not that simple to make it actually work well and not create new, bigger problems (such as some tasks never getting done because they're too long); but at least it's a start.


To get back on topic, path finding on multiple floors is weird. Not just the magic ladders, but also accessing storage from the wrong floor. Or tiles above a staircase being unreachable for rebuilding. Even general path finding is weird, it's obvious with drones leaving their trail: they fail to get somewhere in a straight line even though they can fly over obstacles! I know finding exact quickest paths using an algorithm like A* is slow, but there are very good approximate ones that have been developed over decades in gaming. There are only a few human controlled "units" in the game, I'm sure the code could handle a more accurate path-finding algorithm without undue slowdown..

[Daynen Drakeson]

I wouldn't even mind if survivors used smarter pathing and build priorities as a result of higher skill levels. A high construction skill leading to smarter, more efficient routes when placing floors, walls, etc. makes sense to me and would definitely give more incentive to have a specialist.