Forcing a ship to take the physically shortest route

[VulcanTourist]

I'm discovering that the game tries to be helpful with pathing and exploit wormholes and gateways and such, but... sometimes it gets the optimal route wrong, and there doesn't seem to be a hotkey or command to force taking the most direct and least optimal route.

Tonight I wanted to move a fleet to a system one warp lane away, and when I tried to command it the game insisted on routing it the opposite direction just to exploit a gateway one lane behind it and then take the scenic route after! So a one-lane trip becomes a three-lane trip with a bonus gateway thrown in, and I have no way of overriding this behavior?

[Immortalis]

Yeah, that doesn't happen.

The game will always default to the fastest route (which, mind you is not the same as the "shortest") as in the one that takes less in-game days to reach the target.

Now, let's say you want the fleet to move one system away but the starting position is on the other side of the star system and the target position is on yet the other side of the target system; your fleet would have to travel through the initial system, then jump, then go through the second system until it reaches the target position. All of that takes time.

Depending on the position of the gateways relative to the start position and the target, the length of the lanes and even local conditions, it's absolutely plausibile that the longer route is, in fact, the fastest.

And the AI will always, always, choose the fastest route, even if the difference is only a couple of days and even if that route takes the fleet through a guardian system (unless you've selected evasive stance beforehand).

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

And the AI will always, always, choose the fastest route, even if the difference is only a couple of days and even if that route takes the fleet through a guardian system (unless you've selected evasive stance beforehand).

Whether you accept it or not, I'm seeing bug-like pathing behavior. I've seen even more extreme and obviously wrong incidents since the first example I shared. How do I know that it was bug-like behavior? It stopped when I saved and restarted the game. I left the game at an obviously wrong pathing issue, and checked it again upon restarting the game and it was then behaving as expected.


I'll leave you to your comfortable certainty that precludes inconvenient information.

[Sedmeister]

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

Originally posted by Immortalis:

And the AI will always, always, choose the fastest route, even if the difference is only a couple of days and even if that route takes the fleet through a guardian system (unless you've selected evasive stance beforehand).

Whether you accept it or not, I'm seeing bug-like pathing behavior. I've seen even more extreme and obviously wrong incidents since the first example I shared. How do I know that it was bug-like behavior? It stopped when I saved and restarted the game. I left the game at an obviously wrong pathing issue, and checked it again upon restarting the game and it was then behaving as expected.


I'll leave you to your comfortable certainty that precludes inconvenient information.

Were you at war? FTL inhibitors?

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by Sedmeister:

Were you at war? FTL inhibitors?

I was at war, but there were no FTL inhibitors involved and the behavior was exhibited outside the conquered area that I was twiddling my thumbs waiting for enough influence to accrue that I could claim what I'd conquered.

[ScreamCon]

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

I'm discovering that the game tries to be helpful with pathing and exploit wormholes and gateways and such, but... sometimes it gets the optimal route wrong, and there doesn't seem to be a hotkey or command to force taking the most direct and least optimal route.

Tonight I wanted to move a fleet to a system one warp lane away, and when I tried to command it the game insisted on routing it the opposite direction just to exploit a gateway one lane behind it and then take the scenic route after! So a one-lane trip becomes a three-lane trip with a bonus gateway thrown in, and I have no way of overriding this behavior?

Your ships will often prefer to go through the L-gates. Often leading to a confusing pathing route.

You can go into that system, and at the bottom tab click the line, or whatever it is to red out the system. Ships will now no longer use that wormhole or whatever gate is in the way. Altering the route.

Mind you this may still not stop the ships from supposedly 'glitching out' as you put it in your terms. Disable culprit mods. Could be a bug in latest patch but I couldn't care less.

I'll be waiting to see how troll this thread is. Your post is so cookie cut its breaking the immersion of my ability to believe your sincere.

[pipo.p]

I assume that you don't use mods that enlarge star systems, and subsequently the time required to cross them.

I had this "bug" a couple of times, and all I could guess was that at some time, total sublight route was much shorter this way than the one that would cross only one star sytem, because jyperlane egress points were very close to each other. Hence, the pathfinder proposed me to fly through two systems before reaching my target instead of directly flying to the targeted adjacent system.

I gave up gathering evidences for this hypothesis, however, so I can't rule out that it is actually a bug.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

And the AI will always, always, choose the fastest route, even if the difference is only a couple of days and even if that route takes the fleet through a guardian system (unless you've selected evasive stance beforehand).

Just gotta say that military ships cannot use evasive stance.

Also you should lock down any dangerous systems with that restriction button in the local star system interface

[Cerodil]

Even in the vanilla game star systems can have drastically different sizes. sometimes it's faster to go through 3-4 small systems than go through one super large one. Even trade routes will do this. Also some systems have environmental effects that slow down ship sublight speed meaning it would take longer to cross that system and the pathing takes that into consideration as well.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by ScreamCon:

I'll be waiting to see how troll this thread is. Your post is so cookie cut its breaking the immersion of my ability to believe your sincere.

If you're one of the people who leaps to ad hominem when you lack an argument or decide that I don't sufficiently conform to your "game view", then it's you who are the closed-minded "troll" waiting under the bridge to attack people, not me. There is nothing at all "cookie cutter" about any of my posts here, aside from a pattern of asking questions and for help; you've manufactured that uncharitable characterization out of thin air to justify your behavior. What is cookie cutter is you so easily and quickly resorting to attacking a person when you can't discredit what the person has said. Sure, let's discredit and dehumanize the person instead! You're now one of several people who have leapt to doing this. I'm not going to run away because you insult me. I will instead call out your own behavior for what it is.

[felmari]

i do not think it calculates actual distance as you can be right next to the exit. the time it takes to cross between sectors is probably calculated or considered longer where gates are instant. but in sector distance does not seem to be calculated.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by felmari:

i do not think it calculates actual distance as you can be right next to the exit. the time it takes to cross between sectors is probably calculated or considered longer where gates are instant. but in sector distance does not seem to be calculated.

I can see that it's trying to prioritize travel TIME rather than distance, and I acknowledged that right up front. It's a useful abstraction of travel to do that for the player. However, what I'm witnessing seem to be instances where the attempts to do it are going awry and not achieving the intended goal. I'm going to be paying closer attention to the specific layouts of systems when it happens, but there may be other gameplay dynamics affecting it.

I just wish there was an override of the behavior with a modifier key, like [Ctrl+C], to force taking the shortest route as the space crow flies.

[EleventhStar]

the only big issue ive seen with this is that fleets will always take the hyper relay intead of a normal hyperlane even if they are right next to the hyperlane.

for the rest it's usually fine.

as an aside have you tried simply right clicking the arrow at the edge of the solar system and giving the travel to command there? doubt it'll help but who knows.

if you have mad OCD you can simply temporarily restrict all other routes to force the behavior but you know then you are spending a lot of real world time to save a little bit of in game time.

[Dustreaper]

Originally posted by Immortalis:

Yeah, that doesn't happen.

The game will always default to the fastest route (which, mind you is not the same as the "shortest") as in the one that takes less in-game days to reach the target.

Now, let's say you want the fleet to move one system away but the starting position is on the other side of the star system and the target position is on yet the other side of the target system; your fleet would have to travel through the initial system, then jump, then go through the second system until it reaches the target position. All of that takes time.

Depending on the position of the gateways relative to the start position and the target, the length of the lanes and even local conditions, it's absolutely plausibile that the longer route is, in fact, the fastest.

And the AI will always, always, choose the fastest route, even if the difference is only a couple of days and even if that route takes the fleet through a guardian system (unless you've selected evasive stance beforehand).

That is true until hyper relays. They will take those no matter what. You could be sitting on a hyperlane jump point to the system you want and have a hyper relay on the otherside of both systems they will still travel the entire star system take and take the hyper relay to the neighbouring system. IT"S BROKEN. Other then that case yes you are correct.

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

as an aside have you tried simply right clicking the arrow at the edge of the solar system and giving the travel to command there?

Do you mean the arrows within systems that show the location and direction of warp lanes or hyperlanes(?)? Yes, I did try directing ships to one directly, but it didn't work and the fleet ran off in the other direction that the game thought it should go.

I need to take screenshots.

[Dustreaper]

Originally posted by VulcanTourist:

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

as an aside have you tried simply right clicking the arrow at the edge of the solar system and giving the travel to command there?

Do you mean the arrows within systems that show the location and direction of warp lanes or hyperlanes(?)? Yes, I did try directing ships to one directly, but it didn't work and the fleet ran off in the other direction that the game thought it should go.

I need to take screenshots.

It would do that though if it then took a hyper relay to the destination it over prioritizing those.