Truncated road system causes AI to take 422km detours

[Pikey]

Hi ED,

 

Since the new map update of the Caucasus is well under way, I wanted to point out two long time bugs with the road system in Georgia that effectively cause a problem with AI travelling on roads. This was a primary blocker as to why I never completed a map scale campaign. It would be great if they could get solved whilst you have the map "open" in development so to speak. I saw some discussion in https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=190159&page=15 for checking, so It would be nice to check.

 

Issue 1 (South of Poti, GG35 KP4) break in road causes 122km loop east to Kutaisi. Routes up and down the coast are very affected by this one, Poti and Batumi being key military points of interest.

(see Roads1 and Roads2 attached)

 

Issue 2 (East of Gori MM45 KP3) Break in road causes 424km loop that heads back to Russia via the Roki tunnel, east, just South of Vladikavkaz, then back south again. It's around a 21hr round trip for a distance of 10m across the gap east. <Humour on> Now we know why Russia stopped just by Kaspi in 2008</Humour off>.

(see Roads3 and Roads4 attached)

 

Both issues seriously overcomplicate making campaigns using dynamically spawned AI that route themselves and cross large distances, since you cannot drive say from Poti to Tbilisi or Batumi to Poti without the AI route finding going beserk or, worse case, adding a lot of CPU to aforementioned route finding. It was enough for me to sack it anyway. We've lived with these for a long time, they shoudl be a fairly easy fix to the road network and now is the time to do it before you update the maps ;)

Cheers.

 

[EDIT - Grimes has added the full list via a mission in post 11 https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3242337&postcount=11, this would be a way more comprehensive list of road gaps]

Edited September 11, 2017 by Pikey
added Grimes full list

[Esac_mirmidon]

Without taking away the importance about fixing this issue why just dont use an Off Road first WP to jump over the cut and then normal On Road ones?

[Pikey]

I had money on someone coming up with use Off road.

 

The answer is in the post.

[Esac_mirmidon]

Sorry. I was trying to help.

 

Get your money then.

[JanTelefon]

I think the key is in "dynamically spawned AI that route themselves and cross large distances". In that case I believe it's hard to designate a waypoint as offroad, and that workaround wouldn't work.

 

Since they're already working on updating the map this is an issue well worth adressing. It's a rather large issue causing quite a bit of headache for the people trying to create substantial and fun content for DCS, which can be quite the uphill battle.

[BIGNEWY]

we are currently testing routes in the new terrain, some routes have been changed and adjusted already. I will take a look at this, but I doubt you will see a fix until we get the new terrain.

[Pikey]

Sorry. I was trying to help.

 

Get your money then.

 

You still can, I had no idea you were offering. I'm looking for a piece of code that can route an AI along the road, dynamically detect when the road stops, go off road, join back at the closest point then continue, with no interaction from anyone. The code needs to adapt for roads that work, also, it has to be reusable.

Constraints:

This is important... The AI cannot cross any City tiles, or they suffer the "Off road" symptoms of a bug I've already described where the do endless cirlces and get stuck. Off road for long distances in Georgia performs very badly and unpredictably, Plus the idea of roads is that you have some reliability about some of the routes AI might take.

Also they need to do this in only a few lines of code, I don't want to babysit AI groups and nurse them across the map. Whilst I can do it in one line IF the roads were contiguous,

MirmidonGroup:OnSpawnGroup(function( SpawnGroupT )SpawnGroupT:TaskRouteToZone( ZONE:New( "Tbilisi" ), true, 40, "On Road" )end) -- will send them off to the Zone Tbilisi and follow a road when called.

 

if I start trying to dynamically ascertain routes by making one waypoint into three, it's begining to get unneccessarily complex for a simple Push Task, when just a road would do. Plus I'd need to work out which hole in the road to avoid dynamically because this doesn't apply to one group or route or coalition, everyone has to use the same road system.

Bonus points if you can work out how to keep groups together and not get stuck on bridges, but that's a bit out of scope (but not irrelevant).

 

I worked on this with Birger in AutoGFT for a few months and the dynamic routing was super hard due to little things like this, and bridges and rivers and mountains. On road is the way to reliably get from A to B, for sure.

[Pikey]

we are currently testing routes in the new terrain, some routes have been changed and adjusted already. I will take a look at this, but I doubt you will see a fix until we get the new terrain.

Cheers, these two are the biggest known issues in the south barring bridges and rivers that are iffy for routing. In Russia, the road system is much better, but a little sparse. Generally speaking if you can join these two the road system entirely works, baring AI use of bridges and the circling bug.

[Grimes]

This was one of my oldest bug reports. There is a key word used in that sentence. :)

[FlightControl]

Great post! Indeed, little things like this can ruin the experience. @ED pls fix this guys since you are working on the map. If possible, do a (an other) QA check of road connections on the maps, because there are more hidden blocks like this on the Caucasus map and other maps. (Tedious work, i know).

[Grimes]

Attached a mission containing all the road connection issues from the current map that I used in the bug report and have checked over on the new map. If I missed anything please place units at the location so it can be checked. Note that the 420km detour isn't marked, but its been fixed. Just place different unit types or something to easily differentiate from the ones I placed.

roads_need_connected3.miz

[Pikey]

Added your work to the first post, Cheers.

[Pikey]

Hi ED, did you manage to solve these roadway issues for 2.5?