A story about the Aggrevation that is Kenshi.

[Brimsaw]

Be warned, this is a wall of text, I considered posting this in the bug section, but it seems pointless to me since this game is pretty much just one big bug to begin with. Regardless of how fun it is. So I decided to post in general, mostly just to vent, and who knows, maybe someone out there will be ammused by my masochistic addiction to this game.

(also sorry for all the typos)

First off, my game is quite heavily modded, however I've watched utubers with even more mods and simillar ones at that play the game with seemingly no issues apart from a random crash every now and then.So I've played quite a bit of this game so far, given that im on sick leave within a short amount of time I got hundreds of hours together. However as of this week the game keeps messing with me in increasingly aggrevating ways. At first it was little things like load stutters increasing, guard detection glitching out and giving me bounties when I didn't do anything, so on. However I finally decided to move out of my 4 houses in squin with my group of about 100 peeps to find a good place to settle. This treck was PURE FRIGGING TORTURE. Now I spent about 300 ingame days leveling up my workers and fighters to be able to make the treck with little issues from random factions and wildlife, and they were really no big issue. However I noticed that when such large groups fight it is in insane favor for the enemies, or so it seemed to me at least. The enemies would hit far more often, attack far more frequently and do more damage, even tho my entire crew is equipped with the best of the best stuff. It feels truly demoralizing when you spent such a long time training these jerks up just for them to be mediocre at best in combat, when in actuallity everything was stacked in their favor.

Apart from that the true nervegrinding annoyance came from my pack animals. I ended upr esorting to carry the little gits because if left on their own, they would decide to get stuck on EVERY. SINGLE. BUSH. TREE. OR. STONE. So now I had my groub carry around pack animals. Completely defeats their purpose if they cant even pathfind their way around a single friggin tree. I swear this trip was the most garbage thing I did in this game. Or so I thought. Until I reached my chosen spot for a base. Great spot really, a plateu, mostly flat, all resources, fertility, no big faction to charge crap from me. PRetty much the only downside were those wanna be robot bandits and the crab people, however both soon prooved allergic to my lvl 80 turret guards.

Everything worked out fine, base walls built nicely, until I started the game up the next day. Sudenly about a 5th of my wall was no longer dismantable. In addition, suddenly my idiot workers no longer got their resources from the storage. I had full building materials full iron plates and they JUST REFUSE TO BUILD. they lie in my face repeatifly claiming there are no resources and force me to a ridicoulus level of micro managment. This game, as fun as it may seem at the start for me, just keeps glitching out and messing up in new ways, and each more aggrevating than the last. Im not sure if I will just punish my way through this or if Ill stop playing this game, wich would be a shame, since I payed good money for this Semi-working, half-finished and poorly optimized game.

[Mеченый]

I feel you on the animals getting stuck on stuff. I'm not sure how many times I have said to myself "aww **** it he's dead, I'll buy another" or " OH **** JUST PICK HIM UP AND LET'S GO". I also have a name for when I get mad and have to pick up the bull I call it a "Rage grab".

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Brimsaw:

Be warned, this is a wall of text, I considered posting this in the bug section, but it seems pointless to me since this game is pretty much just one big bug to begin with. Regardless of how fun it is. So I decided to post in general, mostly just to vent, and who knows, maybe someone out there will be ammused by my masochistic addiction to this game.

(also sorry for all the typos)

First off, my game is quite heavily modded....

Pretty much means a full-stop for reading any further... I did read the rest of your post, though.

The game was intended to run with a full compliment of 30 Characters. You realize that, right? For every action those individual characters perform, the game is figuring out stuffs... That means that it's figuring out how to move 100 characters, in your game, compared to figuring out how to move 30 in my game. There's going to be differences...

Big things get stuck moving through areas that have small tolerances... That's a no-brainer. But, I moved my team of 30 through The Swamp, not knowing the easiest way to the town, and had minimal issues getting my Pack Bulls disentangled from the flora.

But, when on my daily jaunt to the the Waystation that is South of Squin, I have to take some extra precautions to maneuver around rocks and shrubs in the Sten Desert because that's what the Sten Desert requires me to pay attention to. If I had a mass-blob of a hundred individual characters, I imagine that would make fine-tuning my path a bit more difficult.

It's not the game's problem if you exceed its design limits by having a modlist that looks like a someone's peer-to-peer download of the latest pr0n titles... If your modlist has to be scrolled, you're probably running too many mods to be realistically optimizable by suggestions from third-parties.

The glitch with Building Materials gives feedback that, IMO, is just a canned response to tell the player that there's a problem. The problems is likely that they can't figure out how to reach the materials. In your case, it may be due to too many characters trying to reach the materials. Characters have collision and pathway blocking behavior. IF too many characters are trying to go along the same path, they can and will block pathfinding calculations.

(Note: Characters with tasks that can only be done by one character at a time also come into conflict, shutting down certain behaviors. ie: Two characters can't sit on the same chair at the same time. That could extend to other things, forcing a character into a perpetual wait state where it may just regurgitate the same tired warning message that has absolutely nothing to do with why it's actually not working as it's supposed to. :) "It's Empty" sometimes means it's friggin full... "I have no materials" sometimes means "That isn't my friggin' job" or "I'm an idiot and cant see the Storage Box." )

Assign One character to Engineering. Just one. Then, diagnose the problem from there.

Note: Also, try just tossing some Building Materials/whatever on the ground. Characters appear to automatically rank items on the ground at higher priority for pickup. That might give you some clues as to why something isn't working right.

PS - I know it's just a "rant" post. That's cool. But, your "rant" also has things in that other people get far too flustered by and they often take their frustration too far. There comes a point where the only constructive thing to suggest is "Calm down, take a breath, work the problem through a new, much calmer, much happier, perspective..." :)

[Brimsaw]

Yeah it seems all animals in this game are Dendrophilliacs. No I have a mod, tamable beasties or something like that, that allows you to tame almost every creature, as the name gives away. And by far the beasties that get stuck the most, Are Beak things. And I find that incredibly unfair, because anytime I see an enormus herd appear out of thin air when loading in, they never have problems with trees, even when chasing or running away from stuff. So the only explanation I have for this odd behaviour, is that whenever one takes a beasty on, no matter what kind, it gets lobotomized so it follow your orders. Which causes them to run into trees, stones, walls, lamp posts, little rocks, big rocks, ravines, mountains, anything really.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Brimsaw:

...So the only explanation I have for this odd behaviour, is that whenever one takes a beasty on, no matter what kind, it gets lobotomized so it follow your orders. Which causes them to run into trees, stones, walls, lamp posts, little rocks, big rocks, ravines, mountains, anything really.

You are probably not far from being right. :)

There is a definite difference between "Player stuff" and "NPC/GameExclusive" stuff. For instance, wild Beak Things might not have certain pathing/collision considerations. After all, they're made to kill player characters, not actually be them. :) Beak Things have an annoying ability to NOT get stuck on crap that I might get stuck on... especially when I'm running away from them.

I noticed that last night while ignorantly running through the border area of Vain and Sten Desert on a return from my "shopping trip" for some extra Lanterns. The character with a runspeed of 29 was "pretty safe" for that trip, IMO. After all, as long as I didn't get hit by a Beak Thing, I could dodge aside, make them go through their attack animation, and then scoot off to safety long enough to eventually make them give up chasing me.

Unless there were ten of them... Well, nine, really, with some other group on the horizon. That's what happens when you're running from one pack and run right over a Beak Thing Nest and pick up the rest of them.

I escaped, though, because while they don't give a crap about tiny rocks and shrubs, they do care about very big rocks. I was able to navigate/dodge/sight-block until they gave up the chase. And, I didn't get hit once, thanks to dodge and combat-speed mechanics. That was what really saved my life, though, I think.

So, I think you're right - There's a difference there and I think the game, which takes some liberties with NPCs/Fauna, doesn't give you the same advantages when someone mods in "Tamed Animals." The mod creator might know more or maybe not. :)

[Brimsaw]

@ Morkonan:
You ninja poster! Posted just as I sent off my reply to the other person! Ill definitly try your advice with only one builder, maybe I'll find the cause of the issue. And yeah given that I have a modlist that is somewhat long I expect bugs to happen. I tend to be able to fix most bugs caused by mods, and those that I cant, I either live with or remove the mod, however the main aggrevation issue is not one that comes from modding. Granted my issue with large group combat does, but not the torture that is pathing and building, those issues happen in unmodded vanilla games as well, theres enough forum posts in the bug section about that.

Regarding the whole beast pathing I also noticed that Beak things dont big rocks, the ai ones at least, very usefull, tho one time I ended up doing a little ring around the rosie with the ebak thing cause it was the only big rock nearby. The beak thing won after about 5 ingame hours of franticly clicking around that rock.

[flu007]

I killed a Beak Thing or two that got stuck, but yeah, it's very rare. :)

Even in vanilla, pets don't do well with certain terrains, though.
Especially the garru once they're elder. They're quite large and they move like a tanker. If they have the space to run in a straight line, they're very fast, but as soon as they need to make a sharp turn they nearly come to a stop. And some of the biomes have lots of small obstacles close together, like rocks or those weirdly shaped cactussy looking things. And then they start their 1 mph zigzaggy maneuver and regularly get stuck.

My non-ideal way to deal with that with minor frustrations:

Almost always if they get stuck like that, they can't move in most directions, but they can still move in the direction they came from. Right clicking on the ground a few feet behind them usually makes them move there.
So I have my pets following/bodyguarding one of my human characters as a perma-job.
Which means, whenever I see one get stuck, I can quickly select it, make it move a few feet back to get it unstuck, and then the auto follow job kicks in again and it automatically catches up with the group again. Once in a blue moon one will get proper stuck and require a pick-up, but that's rare.

It's certainly not ideal, but it's just one of those minor things I learned to live with.

[Brimsaw]

Originally posted by flu007:

My non-ideal way to deal with that with minor frustrations:

Almost always if they get stuck like that, they can't move in most directions, but they can still move in the direction they came from. Right clicking on the ground a few feet behind them usually makes them move there.
So I have my pets following/bodyguarding one of my human characters as a perma-job.
Which means, whenever I see one get stuck, I can quickly select it, make it move a few feet back to get it unstuck, and then the auto follow job kicks in again and it automatically catches up with the group again. Once in a blue moon one will get proper stuck and require a pick-up, but that's rare.

Yeah I figured out pretty quick how to unstuck them, and I tend to have them all follow one guy as well just like you recommend, but still they get stuck so often. Even bonedogs seem to do it, tho by far not as often as garru or Bulls, or the beak things if modded. It almost felt like some childrens comedy show, I tell em to move back, they get unstuck, I look away, AND BOOM stuck again

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Brimsaw:

@ Morkonan:
You ninja poster!

YAY I WIN TEH NINJAPOSTNIG! :)

Posted just as I sent off my reply to the other person! Ill definitly try your advice with only one builder, maybe I'll find the cause of the issue.

That's the best way. I read someone else's post giving that advice and it's a darn smart way to figure out specific Engineering issues.

The "drop it on the floor" is mine, though, after reading some posts about people dropping things for building and then trying some experiments - The characters obviously prefer to pick things up off the ground FIRST, before considering going to Storage. So, you can use both methods to isolate where the problem is. If they'll pick it up and use it to construct the wall, then you move toward diagnosing issues with Storage.

Note: A character who needs a "raw" ore material will also run a fair distance to get the material out of a node. Any node where such material is present, even if it's not in the PC's base area but is outside a Town that is currently loaded. They'll only do that if the Storage Box for that material is empty, though. So, basically, the small inventory of the node counts as a tagged Copper/Iron Ore Storage Box that the character can recognize. (They still don't have a clue what's actually IN it, though. Only that it's the "getting place" for what they need.)

Note: This may also explain why some characters will "automatically steal" items from NPC shops. Somewhere, they still have an attribute that says they're part of the faction that item belongs to, like an "Ex-Slave" who joins the player. That character might consider Building Materials as being legitimate targets while those materials are showing up as "Red" items to the player. Dunno, just got my first "Ex-Slave" joiner last night, so I'm going to experiment on him. I mean, "with him." :)

those issues happen in unmodded vanilla games as well, theres enough forum posts in the bug section about that.

The absolutely do. Though, it's a situation where in one circumstance, it's a man in a bathtub complaining about an ice-cube in the water and, in the other, it's a ship full of people hitting an iceberg... :) Kenshi loves "emergent behavior" to death, including exponentially increasing problems when exponentially added energy is put into the game's mechanics.

Regarding the whole beast pathing I also noticed that Beak things dont big rocks, the ai ones at least, very usefull, tho one time I ended up doing a little ring around the rosie with the ebak thing cause it was the only big rock nearby. The beak thing won after about 5 ingame hours of franticly clicking around that rock.

Very true. I managed to escape my first packs encountered by forcing the long "attack animation" and then juking around some large rocks, repeatedly. Then, in Sten, I ran down a gully, breaking line-of-sight, and then juked around a very large rock formation and it was like "hitting the kill switch" on the Beak Thing's chase mechanic.

Originally posted by flu007:

I killed a Beak Thing or two that got stuck, but yeah, it's very rare. :)...

Beak Thing necks mean that they can and will sometimes "glitch" into certain buildings, like Hiver buildings... They shouldn't be able to get in there AFAIK.

I was in a pitched battle between at least four to five Beak Things. I was happy, though, because my two characters were being aided by Hivers (getting killed, but they're Hivers, so who cares?) and I could duck into the Hiver Shop right beside where I was fighting so I could heal up. My characters alternated healing up in the building during the battle.

But, a new pair of Beak Things joined, which brought the active total to four or five, and I moved to engage/block them so the other character could run in and heal up a bit. They ended up pressed against the building and... disappeared. That's when I "heard the screams" from inside the shop, so jumped in there to see two Beak Things laying waste inside... They were stuck between the wall and some shelves/equipment, but could still attack occasionally. I think they were hampered by collisions, though, and they were easy kills. For me, at least. For the hapless worker drones and beat up warriors that had gone in there to sleep on the pallets on the floor... not so much. So many dead Hivers. Luckily, the shopkeeper noble survived. :)


That's something I love about these sorts of open-world-sandbox games. You're the "story teller" and Kenshi does do a good job of providing you some good situations from which to tell "stories." :)

[flu007]

Yup, I had one glitch into a Hive hut on a few occasions as well. Pretty much the same way you described.

This was fairly early game. Took them down with my only ranged character then, a newly recruited Hive drone who I'd given a shoddy toothpick so he wouldn't have to get his 75 hp too close to sharp objects. That was a sort of "Beep is the strongest warrior" moment before I had heard of Beep. :)

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by flu007:

Yup, I had one glitch into a Hive hut on a few occasions as well. Pretty much the same way you described.

This was fairly early game. Took them down with my only ranged character then, a newly recruited Hive drone who I'd given a shoddy toothpick so he wouldn't have to get his 75 hp too close to sharp objects.

Same here, early game for me too. I was trying to use the situation to get some Toughness points. Doing badly at it, too... :)

That was a sort of "Beep is the strongest warrior" moment before I had heard of Beep. :)

Absolutely! My main character and Ruku were the ones involved. So, they had an "adventure" and the bonding experience of very intense personal combat. I remember "feeling" something about that after they recovered and ran back to The Hub. ie: I roleplayed the moment where as they were headed home to relative safety, having emerged from that experience.

So, yeah - "Beep is the strongest warrior." Always. Because, if he wasn't... it wouldn't be the same game. :)

[Brimsaw]

So quick update to the whole Builders not building issue. I followed Morkonan's advice and went with only 1 builder, but at first it didn't seem to do anything. So I resigned and started picking up various building materials lying around my base. I then noticed a few pieces lying around outside the base, and since my gate was locked and closed I couldn't have them pick it up right away. Howebver the piece was really close to my wall, so bystanding on it I was able to pick it up, and after that, violá, my single worker started running around on his own. I reloaded to test this again, and I have indeed found the cultprit:

In case anyone else has an issue with builers claiming resources are out when they are not, it seems that they have an invisible pick up order when given jobs, and if a piece they want to pick up is unreachable for them, their entire hauling and buiding routine comes to a halt. Hence why sometimes an import fixes this too, since objects on the ground that are not scripted to be there dissapear. Hope this helps anyone who has this issue as well.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Brimsaw:

So quick update to the whole Builders not building issue. I followed Morkonan's advice and went with only 1 builder, but at first it didn't seem to do anything. So I resigned and started picking up various building materials lying around my base. I then noticed a few pieces lying around outside the base, and since my gate was locked and closed I couldn't have them pick it up right away. Howebver the piece was really close to my wall, so bystanding on it I was able to pick it up, and after that, violá, my single worker started running around on his own. I reloaded to test this again, and I have indeed found the cultprit:

In case anyone else has an issue with builers claiming resources are out when they are not, it seems that they have an invisible pick up order when given jobs, and if a piece they want to pick up is unreachable for them, their entire hauling and buiding routine comes to a halt. Hence why sometimes an import fixes this too, since objects on the ground that are not scripted to be there dissapear. Hope this helps anyone who has this issue as well.

Quoted for outstanding find!

NICELY DONE!

Yeah, Characters get "fixated" on "that one thing." It's annoying. They do not have a timer that will force them to shuffle on down the line of Jobs if they can't do one because of xx. They will singlemindedly stare at a wall all darn day if there's a glitch in the process. They also have a very, very, limited selection of bug-reporting dialogue. "I can't get there. "It's empty." "I don't have any building materials." etc... None of those error reports have to mean what they actually say. :)

Great discovery! Good job debugging that problem. And, thanks for reporting back with it!

[SnugSnug]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Brimsaw:

Find corpse and corpse disposal is a killer for this one. Especially if one uses gates (closed) or regularly kills npc in an area bordering inaccessible terrain, or they clipped through it.

Its even harder to trouble shoot as when one clicks near to the corpse they switch task, and then on their next cycle return to finding corpse. And if one has more than one picker-upper then the next person immediately grabs the task . Meaning one has to juggle all the characters in the vicinity of the difficult corpse until the one with the order is close enough to pick-up without moving.

Or one has to re-load the chunk and evaporate everything.

[Brimsaw]

Originally posted by SnugSnug:

Find corpse and corpse disposal is a killer for this one. Especially if one uses gates (closed) or regularly kills npc in an area bordering inaccessible terrain, or they clipped through it.

Its even harder to trouble shoot as when one clicks near to the corpse they switch task, and then on their next cycle return to finding corpse. And if one has more than one picker-upper then the next person immediately grabs the task . Meaning one has to juggle all the characters in the vicinity of the difficult corpse until the one with the order is close enough to pick-up without moving.

Or one has to re-load the chunk and evaporate everything.

So I've got my base somewhat up and running, still need to get some things sorted out but defenses are working, wich means I also am using corpse furnaces, and so far, about a week in, Ive done it this way:
I have the gate locked since the area Im in doesnt seem to have caravans come by at all just crab raiders for a crab tournament, wich I welcome since my people have grown quite accostemed to eating lobsters.
The gate remains closed and reinforced by having skilled engineers repair it during an attack, and a skilled troop of fighters in case they dont hhold until my assortment of harpoon and crossbow turrets clean up those pesky crabophiles.

After a while theyll be all unconcious so I move my troops away so they keep getting up to be shot down till they all are dead. Then my cleaner troop gets ready. first I loot the crabs for the meat and perhaps check the gear of the defeated for anything useful before I activate their jobs Temporarly to clean up the corpses outside the gate.

I do turn them off again once they seem to be going for corpses somewhere out in the baijou, so there is a bit of micromanagment, but so far I've not had many issues with it. Will keep this updated if I run into similar issues as you and find a solution!

[SnugSnug]

Originally posted by Brimsaw:

snip

Most of the time it's not an issue and i have my cooks/iron plate workers (meat or metal loot) on forage corpse and my "in need of strength" characters on corpse find/disposal. Every so often one will notice them randomly running to a spot doing a jig and then going aimless... usually a corpse that got killed and fell through the slope in that particular location of my base.
I don't run closed gates, it can cause issues. But i have them for aesthetics.
Turning your settlement and buildings to public (2 different settings) can generate traffic, in my current case tech hunter/cannibal hunter and lone wanderers. When private these patrols bypass my settlement on their generic 'patrol' route.

Side note: Having each animal assigned to it's own character can help pathing, having several follow the same character can cause conflict as they seem to count the path occupied by another as blocked. I don't use guard, but i have 'attacking enemies' as a higher priority than 'follow X' which seems to work nicely.