AI path finding is completely broken

[BOT Rip]

I'm so sick of cars keep turning right from the left most lane right before the exit. There's nothing I can do about this even if I upgrade the highway into 5 lanes. Cars from the 5th lane on the left suddenly merge all the way to the right and completely derail the entire highway traffic. When are they going to fix this?

[Ozoft]

I agree, the traffic is really bad. I have made multiple highway entries to my city, but for some reason they all just pick one, seems like some sort of herd mentality, they think that going through the whole city to get to point B is faster than taking one of the highways that goes around the city and takes them right to point B

[zaltocleotl[Banned@Paradox]]

Every agent that moves sees each and every node as the same. They don't see a 'turn' at all, they only see another node. They don't know if that node is 'straight ahead on the same road' or is an 'on ramp' or 'off ramp' or a turn onto another street. They don't and can't see that.
They calculate from one node to another, as a throughpath. No turns, no bends, no curves, no overpasses, no underpasses, they can't even tell the difference between a tunnel and a bridge. They can tell lanes apart, but that's it. They use lanes to go from node to node. They don't know a turn from a straightaway.
They see nodes they have to go through to get to the goal and how many lanes they can use between every node. That's all. Oh, and it's elevation, so they know how high/low to appear.
For some reason, no moving agent looks ahead. They do, but only one node. They know what nodes to use after it, but they don't take that into account at all. The path is traced and memorized and even reworked as they move, but they move from node to node not caring about the next node until it is the next node. They don't look ahead as they move. They don't see that they have to get "THAT" node after the next one and get in a lane to go that direction. Not until the very next node is next. And even then they don't 'know' it is another road or a ramp or anything at all, they just know it is a node they have to go through to get to the node after it, and they calculate how high and what direction to move to get to that next node while looking like they are moving over a solid surface that doesn't even exist to them, without knowing or caring where the next node after the very next node is. They go from one node to another node on a predetermined path that is re-determined every so often.
They don't know a turn from a rise from a straight path.
They know "at node#4572389021 move at this speed at this height in this direction at this angel to node#54358444. They know nothing else until they reach node#54358444 and need to get to the next node in their list.
Turn? They don't know what a turn is. They only know they have to change their angle of movement and their travel to move toward the next node. It's all the same to them.

Maybe someday they will write a code for agents that looks ahead and can tell what kind of situation it is, a curve in the road, or a turn onto another street, or an exit ramp they need to be in the right lane for and they have to move over before the last node on the highway. But right now they don't distinguish between a dirt road and a five-lane highway. They don't know the difference except lanes and speed.
They BARELY know the difference between a dirt road and a five-lane highway when they calculate their path to begin with. How many times have you seen agents get off a highway only to do a u-turn or crossover and get right back on the highway going the exact same direction? Stupidity.

[john.glossop]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUGg1QQiZLU This is what you need.

[martinolund]

Your road nodes are too close. The cars make a decisions to change lanes at the road node before the turn is suppose to happen. The work around is the make sure to have that road node as far back as possible which gives the cars plenty of time to change lanes without clogging everything up.

[mikelleh63]

Originally posted by martinolund:

Your road nodes are too close. The cars make a decisions to change lanes at the road node before the turn is suppose to happen. The work around is the make sure to have that road node as far back as possible which gives the cars plenty of time to change lanes without clogging everything up.

Yes, it is because there is likely a short segment before the intersection. The traffic AI makes its lane change at the node closest to the intersection. If that node is too close, you get the described behavior. Open bulldozer and hover over road at issue. I bet you a buck it is a very short segment. Pause game, delete the last 2 segments and rebuild as one. Now traffic will make their lane change way back there.

[Iron Man]

Yeah. I am really happy with Eco 2.0 update and I have played the game for a while until traffic comes. Tried so hard to fix it. Tried using the Traffic Mod but the mod is still primitive. Hoping that they fix this next.

[🐺Blue Wolf]

Originally posted by BOT Rip:

When are they going to fix this?

Seeing as Economy 2.0 broke the game, and the amount of things they need to fix with that (especially the office bug), don't count on seeing any traffic fixes this year at all.

They are on vacation now for at least a month.

[Doc_Hotpants]

Originally posted by BOT Rip:

I'm so sick of cars keep turning right from the left most lane right before the exit. There's nothing I can do about this even if I upgrade the highway into 5 lanes. Cars from the 5th lane on the left suddenly merge all the way to the right and completely derail the entire highway traffic. When are they going to fix this?

Almost like real life, actually...

[BOT Rip]

gonna try the suggestion now

[Lord Sauron]

They don't need to fix this, since traffic is one of the better aspects of CS2. It is quite manageable already. Perhaps you can include some print screens so that we can give you some tips?

[🐺Blue Wolf]

Originally posted by Lord Sauron:

They don't need to fix this, since traffic is one of the better aspects of CS2. It is quite manageable already. Perhaps you can include some print screens so that we can give you some tips?

OP's issue is something that annoyed people in the first game, and it wasn't fixed for this one. Having some cars do what he describes can be passed off as "realism" as there are countless terrible drivers, but vehicles doing this constantly IS an issue (mostly related to nodes).

Also traffic doesn't seem like an issue because we don't have TM:PE to disable despawning vehicles. If/when that arrives, traffic will become an issue. Traffic in the first game was fine if you played with despawn on.

[BOT Rip]

Here's my screenshot, the exit is pretty long and it's on the left most lane. The main traffic lanes are the middle 2 lanes.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197966889345/screenshot/2495639017719251966/

[guyerg]

I agree with the OP traffic AI is garbage. I constantly have drivers that come off a freeway ramp and have two very long segments of road to get in the correct lane still make a left hand turn across all lanes of traffic from the right most lane. The only way to fix it was to make it a one way road so that the could not turn left at that intersection. And this is not just one car doing this every once in awhile there will be 5 to 10 cars in a row that want to do that same thing I like I said there are no short strips just before the intersection i made sure. I also see cars switch lanes at nods then immediately switch back to the lane they were just in causing traffic issues and they do this for no reason at all since the lanes are equally spaced with other vehicle traffic.

[guyerg]

I really think that parking is causing issues with bad path finding too because I find that I don't have as many of these issues in districts where there is ample parking and I think that if you don't have ample parking then the path finder is constantly looking for a parking space and it might find one that is then gone the next node and it has to figure out another path just an observation but not one I can confirm.

[BOT Rip]

Originally posted by guyerg:

I really think that parking is causing issues with bad path finding too because I find that I don't have as many of these issues in districts where there is ample parking and I think that if you don't have ample parking then the path finder is constantly looking for a parking space and it might find one that is then gone the next node and it has to figure out another path just an observation but not one I can confirm.

u know what, I think the same thing so I'm gonna add some parking space