pathing?

[EvilNecroid]

sometimes i just dont understand the pathing in this game. i built a stone path 2 blocks wide in a straight line through a thick forest. ___ but instead of following it my pawns go off zig zagging through the forest and then back onto the path V^_ ?? why?
the path is 100% walking speed.
so i tried building fences along the sides of the path and they still climb over the fence and wander off into the forest and then come back over the fence and back onto the path

[VitaKaninen]

There are mods that are supposed to fix pathing, but I have not had very good luck with them.

Here are some of my pathing issues while using the default settings in the Clean Pathfinding 2 mod listed below:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160729395
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160729345
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3160732161

Maybe you will have better luck with them than me. I have tried both and they definitely change the way pathing works, but it is not always for the best.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2341486509
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2603765747

[Astasia]

Originally posted by EvilNecroid:

sometimes i just dont understand the pathing in this game. i built a stone path 2 blocks wide in a straight line through a thick forest. ___ but instead of following it my pawns go off zig zagging through the forest and then back onto the path V^_ ?? why?
the path is 100% walking speed.
so i tried building fences along the sides of the path and they still climb over the fence and wander off into the forest and then come back over the fence and back onto the path

Vanilla pathing ignores terrain movement penalties (other than water) when the path is above like 30 tiles or so, so they totally ignore floors and fences and such and just don't factor that into the path. They make the V and W type movements because their pathing is trying to move toward the X or Y axis of their destination and stick to it, but then go around anything that gets in their way. It's pretty inefficient, but low performance impact.

I use the Perfect Pathfinding mod linked above. you can force them along paths using walls though instead of fences, walls outside your base are usually pretty safe as long as there are paths around them.

[Similar]

Is it me or does the pathfinding sometimes get worse during a game? With the last crashlander my colonist rescued, she took some extremely inefficient detours on the way to the base. I got worried the rescuee would bleed out or maybe die of old age.
I'm pretty used to their zigzagging by now, so it has to be bad before I notice.

Nothing had changed that I could see. No new walls or other things. There was a pretty big caravan milling around on the trading spot, but that happens frequently and I don't know why that particular caravan would change things (unless, maybe, for some reason, it ate up more resources than usual and made the game use an even simpler form of pathfinding? I don't know if the game even has that option).
I'm not using mods that should affect pathfinding.

[Astasia]

Not that I'm aware of. It can be really bad in some very specific situations, and pathing to a bed in your base might produce a very differing path than pathing to like a stockpile or dining table depending on where in your base these things are.

Here's a really old screenshot I took of a specific edgecase in pathfinding that was particularly bad. I don't know if it would take the same path today, but ya depending on those X/Y access coordinates and their wall hugging tendencies they can really do some silly things.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2222256400

[Similar]

heh. ouch. Mine wasn't quite that bad, it was more like she moved until she hit something, which could be rather far off the direct route, and then changed directions, which not always got her all that much closer to her goal.
It seemed like it would actually have helped if there'd been more obstacles because they would have broken up the very long zigs and zags she made.

But if the pathing can be different when they have to make it to a specific bed that was probably the reason, since she was aiming for a hospital bed. Maybe coupled with a particularly empty stretch of terrain.
Bit unfortunate if it gets worse in that situation, though. Some of the crashlanders are naked and I have had some die of hypothermia before they reached the hospital (but then, others bleed out before I can even reach them).

Edit: But then, I, as usual, forgot to reserve space for a hospital near the entrance when I started digging out my base, so it's in the back of my base, through a lot of doors and stuff, so that probably didn't help at all.

[EvilNecroid]

so it started heavy snowing and suddenly my pawns for the 1st time ever started sticking to the paths i built because they were under cover

[MadArtillery]

Pathing is definitely a bit awkward at times. Usually I build paths based on where my pawns walk rather then where I want them to walk because of this.