Visiting Caravans keep starving to death.

[Snowcraft]

I'm running a very modded game of RimWorld (430 active mods according to RimPy), and have run into a very odd issue with traders that are arriving at my colony. They bring with them food and yet consistently end up starving themselves to death while loitering around my colony.

Worst of all, the game does not actually throw any errors at me regarding this issue. At all. Nothing in the error log tells me about failed job giver stuff.

Even more confounding is the issue that I've seen pawns from the same faction, of the same xenotype, in the same caravan, with the same food, except one is eating, (after starving themselves for a while), while the other is not eating at all...

Has anyone experienced an issue like this before and may be able to help me figure out what's going on?

[Steelfleece]

I've personally seen similar issues on large maps with few entrances. Like a modded mountain map where there's only one or two ways on and off the map and you're at the far end from there. Seems like NPC pathing can have issues when the distances get a bit long, since if I remember they use a simpler pathing than player and raider pawns.

[Astasia]

Running out of food and starving to death because they are stuck on the map for various reasons is a fairly common issue. Starving to death with food in their inventory they refuse to eat is a new one to me and I'm not sure what might cause that. My first guess would be modded genes restricting diets, but if the same type of pawns with the same meals are behaving differently, that kind of rules that out. If it's only happening with specific factions I would start with looking into those mods, if it's happening with all factions I don't know. IIRC Rocketman lobotomizes visitor AI, heavily delaying their decision making, if some start eating after a while it could be related to that delayed "thinking."

In either case, caravans should be leaving the map before starving to death even if they don't have food or don't eat it, since it takes about a day for their initial hunger bar to empty and then two more days to starve to death. So this circles back to what Steelfleece was saying, if you have a large mountainous map you might be able to work around the issue by making straighter/faster paths off the map for the visitors which might allow them to leave earlier before they have to worry about starving from not eating their food. There's also mods that allow you to control when visitors leave you might be able to try.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2078518511

[Snowcraft]

I'm using Rocketman, so that might be related. I've also noticed using Trading Spot that having the traders park right next to a table -might- solve the problem? I've not seen any more corpses so far at least that weren't related to a fight breaking out between various factions sitting around at the same time at least.

I'm at a loss either way, but I now at least suspect Rocketman is possibly throttling their AI.

[_♣Caligula♣_]

Had something similar.
A mod option was checked to keep visitors on the map when having health problems.
Smarter visitors is the name of the mod I think.
Unchecked it and caravans were leaving again when being told so via dismiss trader mod.

[Snowcraft]

Wait... Smarter visitors is causing them to loiter around when malnourished?!

[Steelfleece]

Originally posted by Snowcraft:

Wait... Smarter visitors is causing them to loiter around when malnourished?!

I guess there are times when being all stupid is better than being half stupid.

[Joe]

Is it possible that you have a mod that prevents certain visitors from visiting your colony rooms like locked doors or something?

I noticed Traders don't eat as much unless they have access to a table to eat their meal.

[_♣Caligula♣_]

Originally posted by Steelfleece:

Originally posted by Snowcraft:

Wait... Smarter visitors is causing them to loiter around when malnourished?!

I guess there are times when being all stupid is better than being half stupid.

How do you mean that?
Yes, if checked visitors are not leaving when having health problems( when I discovered the option one caravan visitor at least had a stomach disorder I think)
Also, they will not leave until darkness when option vor photosensitive are checked.
Even when told so via dismiss trader mod.

[puschit]

Originally posted by Snowcraft:

I'm running a very modded game of RimWorld (430 active mods according to RimPy

So, how is anybody of us supposed to find out what happened?

[Snowcraft]

The whole point of me posting was to ask if anyone else had by chance encountered the same issue and knew a solution.

I've noticed when traders are close enough to tables they're willing to eat, so it might be an AI-related issue on them not wanting to, but unfortunately I'm still no closer to figuring out the specific mod causing the problem.

[Ninefinger]

Sounds like a performance mod caching / refreshing issue. Or if you use rimthreaded or rocketman

[Joe]

Finally found a possible solution to your problem. Check if you have a pen around. If you do, check if the visiting caravan has their caravan animals stuck inside your pen. If you do find them, release them.

Encountered the problem recently and found out for some reason, their pack animals wandered into my pen and couldn't get out.

[Snowcraft]

Can confirm it's not that, it's happened several times without animal pens. Though I have noticed a few times it's occurred that the trader's pack animals are away from their group in the wild for... some reason.

[_♣Caligula♣_]

Did you check if you are using smarter visitors mod?
My error(same as yours from the sound of it) went away after unchecking the option.
Another option might be borked path finding.
Can you take a look via dev mod if possible map exists are blocked?
The part that one caravan member is eating while the rest is starving is odd though.

[Comrade Minsc]

I have run into this issue as well, By any chance are you using Giddy-Up2?
Every time this has happened it was because a pack animal (or one that they are selling) was loitering near the map edge where they spawned. About 70% of the time it was because of giddy-up bugging out and not letting someone ride it. No idea what the other 30% is.

Either way, I usually fix it by using character editor or debug mode to down the animal then get it back up. and that usually resets its AI enough to work.
If you are using giddy-up try changing the settings so that caravans dont ride animals on map