reported Ground AI Waypoint and Pathing issues

[WirtsLegs]

Ok so I'm cramming a few issues into this report since they all seem kinda related, but please let me know if I should make separate reports.

 

Building a mission on Afghanistan and ran into a pile of ground AI issues including

1) Troops refuse to move after disembarking, pay attention to the south-inf-1 group, they embark fine but after disembarking refuse to move, I've left in a trigger i tried to use to get them going.

2) More seriously it seems ground groups are having issues with formations, check out the group named Line Abreast, you'll see it ignores its entire path and goes straight to its last waypoint, interestingly it will follow waypoints if i reduce the group size to 4, there is with that group a group with similar waypoints but off road and you will see it behaves as expected

3) Next possibly more of a map bug I'm not sure, but pay attention to the 4 lavs after the infantry group disembarks and how they choose to path through that small village (note all their waypoints in that area are on road)

4) Finally later on the group of 4 lavs gets a line abreast waypoint for a short stretch, they ignore it and stay in column

BuggedAI.miz

Edited July 18, 2024 by WirtsLegs

[WirtsLegs]

On 7/20/2024 at 8:03 AM, Squeaky_B said:

I'm having the same issue with "Go To Waypoint" not looping. But I'm having the issue with a group of 3 and a larger group.

1) Unit follows its route as normal

2) Gets to the last waypoint and goes directly to waypoint set in the advanced waypoint actions. Additionally at this point the formation and pathing goes all over the place, no idea what its trying to do. 

3) Once it reaches this waypoint it then stops and does not go to the next.

This is on the Afghanistan map, so I'll double check my other missions to see if they're broken now and update.

Update

Tested on the Kola that has the same setup.

3 identical groups that have looping on road waypoints.

2 of the groups stopped after going back to waypoint 0 while 1 of the groups continued its route.

The 1 group that continued its route did not change its formation and continued on road.

 

After this I'm fairly confident that the AI not looping issue is across all maps while the not staying on road issue may just be the Afghanistan map.

 

I havent tested goto waypoint at all recently, but given that just regular waypoints seem to have issues now the goto waypoint feature being unreliable as well would make sense

[Gierasimov]

Instead of go to waypoint 0 try go to waypoint 1.

I will test this as well as I am facing the issue, but @GazAce said it was working with waypoit 1

[Priest]

I don't think it's going to WP1 rather than WP0 that's making it work but maybe making sure the goto waypoint has a speed assigned to it? By default WP0 "speed" is zero, WP1 by default would have a speed. Success also seems to be sensitive to placement putting the "GOTO" waypoint at a good distance from the waypoint with the "GOTO TASK" seems to work better. It's still pretty quirky no matter what but can get it to work with some fiddling. Something is going on behind the scenes making it buggy, ED will have to answer what that is.

BUT I can get a looping route to work pretty reliably with a lot of handholding so to speak. In the attached mission I added extra waypoints to slow the group down around turns, it looks good, but also lets units in the group re-group if they get too far apart. Also added a few hold points (30 second duration) along the route, again to let the units in the group re-group if they get too far apart. The extra waypoints seem to help keep the AI group on task pretty well, too few waypoints they start patrolling the city every now and then. Maybe they saw something haha. Loop route seems to run pretty reliably for at least two hours.*

What I did notice when I added the hold points is on the first loop the AI group stops at the "hold" points, but then on successive cycles they start stopping short of the actual waypoint with the hold task on it. I noted where the hold points in the mission are with text boxes observable on F10 map. The AI group also slows down and speeds up outside of when they should based on waypoints set up around the turns starting on the second cycle. This suggests to me SOMETHING is breaking when the go to waypoint task is used. The waypoint route actually plotted is changing somehow that is not entirely clear. We can see this happening because tasks are being triggered when they shouldn't be based on where waypoints were actually placed. This would also maybe explain the weird offloading behavior when a simpler route with less babysitting is plotted out. The AI is running into phantom buildings or something? Maybe.

*EDIT: The route seems to work reliably with the M113s at least... I changed the units to BTR-80s no other changes and re-ran the mission and the group went haywire pretty quick. ED help!

 

Syria Route Loop Test.miz

Edited July 24, 2024 by Priest

[WirtsLegs]

On 7/22/2024 at 4:06 PM, Squeaky_B said:

Tested after todays patch in the hopes it was fixed but wasn't listed in the patch notes.

Same issue I'm afraid.

 

Example:

I have 3 identical groups of ground units with a circular on road route.

 

The final Waypoint has the group go to waypoint 0. All waypoints are set to "On Road"

 

 

With the following results

 

 

After this all 3 units stop indefinitely.

Just to note, 2 of the units actually do 2 loops but stop of the 2nd. Where as one of the groups stops at the end of the 3rd loop despite being identical in setup.

 

Hope thats of some help, really hope this one gets fixed.

 

 

Not to derail things here but my report is nothing to do with the "goto waypoint" task

that would be more appropriate in another unique bug report

[Squeaky_B]

2 hours ago, WirtsLegs said:

 

Not to derail things here but my report is nothing to do with the "goto waypoint" task

that would be more appropriate in another unique bug report

Ah sorry about that, I must have got tunnel visioned on the title.

Moved it to here and removed my posts to clear it up for you.

[NineLine]

2 & 4 are reported already, I will look at the rest soon. 

[NineLine]

Self-fulfilling prophecy ... should be checking this out today

[gulredrel]

Also had troops staying where they were after disembarking and not moving to further waypoints. Also embarking near map objects is wild.

My M113 went to a place near a hangar and the troops never embarked, even the stopping point was within the embarkation zone radius. Need to create a clean mission to save a track. Got them on board after moving the waypoint. Is there a trick where to put the vehicle's embarkation triangle from the advanced waypoint actions in relation to the embarking troop embarkation zone? Or is it just trial and error?

[Gierasimov]

On 7/24/2024 at 4:59 AM, Priest said:

I don't think it's going to WP1 rather than WP0 that's making it work but maybe making sure the goto waypoint has a speed assigned to it? By default WP0 "speed" is zero, WP1 by default would have a speed. Success also seems to be sensitive to placement putting the "GOTO" waypoint at a good distance from the waypoint with the "GOTO TASK" seems to work better. It's still pretty quirky no matter what but can get it to work with some fiddling. Something is going on behind the scenes making it buggy, ED will have to answer what that is.

BUT I can get a looping route to work pretty reliably with a lot of handholding so to speak. In the attached mission I added extra waypoints to slow the group down around turns, it looks good, but also lets units in the group re-group if they get too far apart. Also added a few hold points (30 second duration) along the route, again to let the units in the group re-group if they get too far apart. The extra waypoints seem to help keep the AI group on task pretty well, too few waypoints they start patrolling the city every now and then. Maybe they saw something haha. Loop route seems to run pretty reliably for at least two hours.*

What I did notice when I added the hold points is on the first loop the AI group stops at the "hold" points, but then on successive cycles they start stopping short of the actual waypoint with the hold task on it. I noted where the hold points in the mission are with text boxes observable on F10 map. The AI group also slows down and speeds up outside of when they should based on waypoints set up around the turns starting on the second cycle. This suggests to me SOMETHING is breaking when the go to waypoint task is used. The waypoint route actually plotted is changing somehow that is not entirely clear. We can see this happening because tasks are being triggered when they shouldn't be based on where waypoints were actually placed. This would also maybe explain the weird offloading behavior when a simpler route with less babysitting is plotted out. The AI is running into phantom buildings or something? Maybe.

*EDIT: The route seems to work reliably with the M113s at least... I changed the units to BTR-80s no other changes and re-ran the mission and the group went haywire pretty quick. ED help!

 

Syria Route Loop Test.miz 17.19 kB · 0 downloads

 

Waypoint loop is now fixed in the latest update.

[Flappie]

@WirtsLegs I think I found the cause of issue #1: when they get out of the vehicle, they are in a RED alert state. Set them GREEN and they will do what they're told to.  Can you please test and report back?

[Flappie]

Issue #3 is clearly a terrain issue.