What determines your main gate for AI visitors?

[Spectre]

My base currently has 3 gates. I keep my well defended main gate open at all times to attract enemies there and to allow visitors in and out.

However, allies, enemies and traders always congregate at one of my side entrances first, before making their way to the opened main gate. The AI obviously considers the "service entrance" as the main entrance.

Is there a way to change this (without reducing to just one gate)?

Is the first or last constructed gate the main one? Is it randomly decided or is it determined by another factor? Being able to designate a main entrance would be a neat feature.

[Shidan]

It is based on whatever the closest gate is to the raid/caravan/whatever when it originally spawns. There really isn't any way to make them always congregate at one gate and have multiple gates.

Having lots of external gates in various directions will make sure they always stop at the walls instead of going for internal gates and getting stuck. But focusing on one gate and avoiding others regardless of distance is impossible.

[Spectre]

Are you sure?

All 3 gates are external, i don't have airlocks.

- West gate is always open
- East & South gates are always closed

However, all AI squads that are not heading straight for the shop will ALWAYS go to the South gate first (no matter where they spawn) and give their speech there, before heading for the open West gate.

Most of the raids will spawn from the north, east and west, but they will walk all the way around the base, past the other gates to get to the South entrance and speak their lines. I have not had an event trigger on the West or East gate for a very long time, South gate ONLY.

It's the same on my secondary base, which only has 2 gates (East and West). Virtually all AI squads spawn in the west, walk past the west entrance and trigger their event speech at the east gate exclusively.

The AI will happily use all external gates, when they are open, but events only ever trigger at one particular gate in each outpost.

That's why I assumed the game assigns a main entrance for events to each base/town.

[Shidan]

I used to have an issue at my base where my gate was pretty far back relative to the walls, and it was causing odd pathing issues because the events wanted to run up to the gate before starting dialog, which was resulting in them getting into weird places as they attempted to do so.

I resolved it by creating invisible gates with no collision in a mod, and then building those around the outside of my base. After I did that they started stopping at whichever of the invisible gates was closest to their spawn point.

So I'm reasonably sure they just pick the closest one. As so far throughout all the raids on that base they've always stopped at the one closest to their spawn town.

[Spectre]

The invisible event trigger gate sounds like a genius workaround. You wouldn't want to make that mod available to the public, would you? :)

My main entrance is further back as well, so the AI would have to enter my territory before getting to the gate. Maybe that is why they opt for the side entrance, which has straight walls and is on the edge of my town radius. Though that still doesn't explain why the 2nd side entrance is also ignored by events.

Haven't had any pathing issues with NPCs, at times i may have 10 squads of different factions visiting at once and they use all gates to enter and exit, as long as they are open.

[Shidan]

Here it is:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2914641289
Unlocks by default, and has no cost to build. Only downside is you can't remove them after placement besides by removing the mod, but it was the only way to stop them from affecting pathing or getting in the way of building.

[Spectre]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Here it is:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2914641289
Unlocks by default, and has no cost to build. Only downside is you can't remove them after placement besides by removing the mod, but it was the only way to stop them from affecting pathing or getting in the way of building.

You are a legend, Shidan. Cheers!

I will put that outside my main gate and see if i can attract some visitors :)

[Spectre]

I haven't used the fake gate yet, because I am still experimenting to find out what causes the AI obsession with that particular gate.

I deleted and rebuild the West (main) gate further out, no changes.

I rebuild the south wall to make the way to the South gate even longer and make it less attractive pathfinding wise, no changes.

I left the South gate open and something interesting happened. The AI walked right in and would trigger their event speech in the town center (right where the statue is placed in the in-game editor).

I had a partial success, where after a settler contact ran out, they left through the West gate, walked around the base and triggered their event at the East gate, where they asked to get back in... Never had another event there again, AI just walks past.

Next step is to remove the favourite AI gate and see what happens, I hope it won't break the pathfinding. But then I can just place some fake gates and be done with it :)