reported earlier Trucks stuck on bridges...

[Fuzzy_bear]

I've gotten to the point now that when I make missions or move vehicles I create way-points "off-road" and then back to the road to try and prevent convoy's from behaving in this manner. It would seem though that normal civil traffic also influences this this behaviour along with with bridges being modelled too small or narrow for the size of the roads they're on. I don't know if Small single lane type roads are modelled differently from the larger 4 lane type motorways. But I gather(from observation) that road surfaces on maps function much the same as DDS layers that are just overlayed on the terrain(different viewing angles will sometimes make roads appear to be floating mid air). So unless bridges and roads are made as part of the terrain(one hell of a lot of work presumably) I doubt AI behaviour can be altered to fix this issue. Just a thought... but possibly a re-modelling of bridges would be a step in the right direction(again a lot of work)but that's just a guess for a seemingly plausible fix. I've also seen convoys swerving on an open motorway to avoid invisible objects.

Edited September 29, 2013 by Fuzzy_bear

[upupandaway]

 

The most epic pathfinding ever:

 

 

Nice stack! I didn´t get that many at once...

 

Posted some images of this because it is really hilarious and annoying at the same time. It´s basically the same thing here with yet another quirky glitch when they just attempt to cross over the water.

This bug can be a real gamebraker for CA at times and getting the vehicles back on track works only if they are controllable and then only with a lot of work...

They were sent along a road using CA-group command on the map during MP (client) when they ended up like this. When taking control over one of them you will warp this specific unit to the groud and by repeatedly activating vehicle control you might be able to break free one at a time (which just happened in the first image, placing you under the bridge). I also observed huge furballs of (around 10 or so) friendly units stuck together in one spot with the AI completely f*ed up, but that didn´t happen on a bridge.

 

Also, the routes the AI takes on detours when trying to avoid such obstacles are sometimes just as weird...

Is there any offcial word on this major glitch? I´ve seen this happen a lot.

Edited September 30, 2013 by upupandaway

[gunterlund21]

this bug has been around for a very long time and hasnt been addressed. My guess is it wont be fixed until EDGE comes out.

[ENO]

Okay guys- this is a long shot and I know it.

 

Recently I've had a couple mission concepts flop because the vehicles keep getting stuck on bridges... Not just stuck, either- I mean... like some perverted mechanical mating ritual, entire convoys have been found stacking themselves up into Televehicle Towers many stories high.

 

 

 

I guess what I'm wondering is whether or not anything exists to monitor whether or not vehicle groups stop moving for more than... let's say... a minute while absent of any hold orders or being dead...

 

I watched with no small degree of embarassment yesterday as vehicles swerved with great enthusiasm and either flung themselves off bridges or locked themselves in tight behind other vehicles and obstinately not moving ever again.

 

I haven't ever seen one of these tall vehicle towers during its formation- however I have seen the result-

 

Anyone got a workaround to something like this? A script that detects a group or vehicle stuck on location and respawning that group at the nearest valid location (ie: not on a bridge).

 

I know- it's a stretch... but this anti collision behavior is just- ...

 

anyway. (reading my sig)

[Ripcord]

this anti collision behavior is just- ...

 

Ah progress......

 

I am guessing here that the devs were fixing some other kind of messed-up irrational AI behavior when they coded this and this is an unforeseen consequence of an improvement.

 

Next they will go in to fix this in a new iteration, and inadvertently break something that had been working.

 

The circle of AI development life.

[Grimes]

The issues have been around for a long time and there hasn't really been a decent solution yet. Scripting wise its perfectly easy to respawn the group someplace close, the problem is the actual detection of the units being stuck and what orders to give the AI after you respawn em. We don't have access to the real time route data. The mist function just grabs the groups route from the editor. So a full on custom script to fix it is a little difficult.

 

You can mitigate it by:

 

Don't attack vehicles when they are on bridges.

 

As a mission builder, give AI the detour route around the "high bridges" directly north-west of Sochi. For some reason AI simply don't like those bridges and its been a long standing bug that has yet to be addressed.

 

Make a sacrifice to the AI gods.

[ENO]

I was hoping you'd say that. Next time AI shoots me out of the sky like a drunken donut, I'll donate my unfettered soul to the cause.

 

(Let me know if it works!)

[Yurgon]

Vehicles stuck because TOT missed

 

In a mission I'm building, I literally spent hours watching an AI ground unit driving towards its designated hold point, and every single time it got stuck just a few hundred meters from its destination.

 

I think I finally broke down the cause of the problem: It seems as if the ground unit is behind schedule because it just can't go fast enough to reach its waypoints in time. It then tries to find a shortcut (although the waypoints are set to "On road") and ultimately gets stuck because the shortcut turns out to be some kind of trap.

 

I set up a simple test mission to show the problem. It contains 4 ground units with identical waypoints. Unit #3 should get stuck within 10 minutes. In my tests, time acceleration didn't introduce any additional problems, but obviously YMMV.

 

Units #1 (GAZ-469) and#2 (HMMWV) are relatively quick and can master the track at 30 kts, no problem.

 

Unit #3 is a GAZ-66 light truck that, in my tests, always gets stuck. This is the unit I originally placed in my mission.

 

Unit #4 is another GAZ-66, but its waypoints are set to significantly lower speeds. In my tests, it reaches the destination with no problems, as can be seen in the attached screenshot.

 

Prior to this sample test mission I had also tried to set the offending unit's waypoints to "Off road", but that didn't change the outcome.

 

I did search for "stuck vehicle" with very limited success, so I'm not sure whether this is already known, but in case another mission designer has the same problem, maybe he/she will come across this thread and spend less time debugging the problem. :)

 

Edit:

 

Huh, I'd actually intended to start a new thread instead of just posting a reply, but "Trucks stuck on bridges..." was the best search hit for my problem, so I guess this thread is actually a pretty good place to put this post. :smartass:

yurgon_stuck_ground_units_test.miz

Edited February 2, 2014 by Yurgon

[ENO]

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=114779&highlight=AI+stack+bridge

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=102119&highlight=AI+bridge

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=86775&highlight=AI+crossing+bridge

 

Just some reading material.

 

This has been an issue for a long time and has really, really soured my taste for trying to get units moving around. Smaller numbers and lower speeds seem to help. Also, armor is more prone to it than light vehicles.

 

I have noticed that occasionally at the start the vehicles get out of order- and the lead vehicle spends the entire mission trying to get "in the lead." By doing so it causes it to swerve back and forth like formula one- forever... and sometimes they get caught up on sides of bridges. When others move to get around, they too get caught up...

Edited February 2, 2014 by ENO

[Ranger79]

I believe this is why my Happy Bus Mission is SNAFU'ed. I had infantry cross a bridge and slow down 3 times on a bridge to plant charges. On the other side they would deactivate. I won't comment on my feelings towards the QA process for releasing these patches.

[Yurgon]

This has been an issue for a long time and has really, really soured my taste for trying to get units moving around. Smaller numbers and lower speeds seem to help. Also, armor is more prone to it than light vehicles.

 

In my case, it was a single GAZ-66 causing the problem. I never imagined there'd be a problem with that. 30 kts doesn't seem too fast for such a vehicle IMO. Besides, AFAICT the ME always limits waypoint speed to the unit's max speed. But it seems I was wrong about that.

 

After countless hours of mission debugging, I'll just flip the unit to a UAZ-469, easy enough. So far, I haven't encountered the bridge-stacking-problem myself, but it seems as if there's still lots of ME debugging fun ahead - and I haven't even released my first mission. :cry:

[ENO]

I have begun erring on the side of caution now with the speeds- even though it SEEMS like a reasonable speed (it is)... with larger groups it increases the likelihood of a problem.

 

In other missions, I've simply had separate groups patrolling sections where there are no bridges. Anything crossing a bridge is a small group with light armor...

 

Typically my missions involve the "patrol / patrol route" script and will have to cross it many times and chances are that at some point during a turn around the vehicles will get our of order and spend that ENTIRE time bunched up awkwardly... light vehicles minimize the impact.

 

It's not a question of if... just a question of when.

 

I watched one of my missions for 4 hours last night during a test (actually, back to back tests... see my mist in zones issue thread)... and watched it happen again and again. Even light vehicles in convoy at speeds that are too high (I had them set for 25knts) will separate and stay separated. I dropped the speed to 15knts for everything and that appears to have worked... everything stays in uniform military spacing- but again we run into the ordering issue... where lead ends up near the back or in the middle.

Edited February 2, 2014 by ENO

[Grimes]

In my case, it was a single GAZ-66 causing the problem. I never imagined there'd be a problem with that. 30 kts doesn't seem too fast for such a vehicle IMO. Besides, AFAICT the ME always limits waypoint speed to the unit's max speed. But it seems I was wrong about that.

 

Annoyingly I could have swore the AI travel at the max speed of the slowest AI unit in the group, but that doesn't seem to be the case, I may need to revert back a few versions to double check that one. AI also have different turning capabilities, some AI are able to corner at speed better than others. The GAZ-66 seems to have a pretty terrible turning capability and has to slow down a lot.

 

After a bit of testing though it seems the issue is caused in part by mission clock exceeding the estimated time of arrival and the AI decide to just give up. Notably the waypoint marking lines on F10 view simply disappear and the AI make a b-line to their end point. The AI have a time-out of sorts for trying to reach certain positions and it looks like the AI are trying to reach the final WP but run out of time and the time-out simply stops them in their tracks.

 

I believe this is why my Happy Bus Mission is SNAFU'ed. I had infantry cross a bridge and slow down 3 times on a bridge to plant charges. On the other side they would deactivate.

 

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and just advise you to try setting the alarm state of the infantry when they are on the bridge to green. If that doesn't fix it I'm not sure what will. AI are finicky on bridges and infantry are finicky in general, combine the two and chances are something might screw up.

[ENO]

Annoyingly I could have swore the AI travel at the max speed of the slowest AI unit in the group, but that doesn't seem to be the case, I may need to revert back a few versions to double check that one.

 

 

I'm positive it USED to do that- but now you've got me wondering if it still does.

[Yurgon]

Annoyingly I could have swore the AI travel at the max speed of the slowest AI unit in the group, but that doesn't seem to be the case, [...]

 

Just to clarify, I'm using groups of only one unit.

 

That doesn't mean the problem you describe doesn't exist, I'm just saying that I'm positive it didn't cause the problems I observed.

 

AI also have different turning capabilities, some AI are able to corner at speed better than others. The GAZ-66 seems to have a pretty terrible turning capability and has to slow down a lot.

 

Yeah, that looks very much like the GAZ-66 I placed in my mission. It looks as if that vehicle can't go much faster than 30 kts, that's why it falls behind schedule with every turn and corner if it is set to 30 kts.

 

After a bit of testing though it seems the issue is caused in part by mission clock exceeding the estimated time of arrival and the AI decide to just give up. Notably the waypoint marking lines on F10 view simply disappear and the AI make a b-line to their end point. The AI have a time-out of sorts for trying to reach certain positions and it looks like the AI are trying to reach the final WP but run out of time and the time-out simply stops them in their tracks.

 

That sounds very plausible. Thanks for the feedback!

[gunterlund21]

Bridge crossing problem has been around for years and is still unfixed. My guess is it will get fixed when EDGE comes out. Best resolution is to break your groups down into a max of 4 vehicles and cross at speeds of less then 10Kph. If you look closely at the vehicle path you will often see the path approach the bridge then double back the turn to recross the bridge which can cause the jam. That is why you need to cross a very slow speeds so the vehicles can navigate around each other.

[Buzpilot]

this bug has been around for a very long time and hasnt been addressed. My guess is it wont be fixed until EDGE comes out.

 

There's no logic that EDGE will fix this, just because the world change and look better, the AI logic will probably just get copied and behave like it does now.

[gunterlund21]

There's no logic that EDGE will fix this, just because the world change and look better, the AI logic will probably just get copied and behave like it does now.

 

Both of us are speculating. I got to believe edge is more than just a graphics engine upgrade.

[cichlidfan]

Both of us are speculating. I got to believe edge is more than just a graphics engine upgrade.

 

I am speculating that EDGE is going to disappoint many when it does not 'magically' fix all sorts of things.

[wolfstriked]

I am speculating that EDGE is going to disappoint many when it does not 'magically' fix all sorts of things.

:cry:.........NO!

[upupandaway]

It won´t bring world peace?!

[JunMcKill]

The bug still continue in the 1.2.8, the best way to solve the bridge stuck is taking control of the vehicle and pressing the C key in order to make the vehicle "warp" through the bridge to the ground.

[NineLine]

I am speculating that EDGE is going to disappoint many when it does not 'magically' fix all sorts of things.

 

I am sure it wont be the cure all, but I hope the new maps will be more ground unit friendly, specially seeing as they are gong to open the market towards high fidelity ground units soon ;)

[Wichid]

So I was having fun doing a convoy escort mission by myself but on our multiplayer server...

 

This pretty much ended the mission :(

 

 

I had been careful to avoid a route that included railway bridges because of the teleport issue but this is unavoidable!

[chardly38]

This problem need to be fixed. Edge could be years away and i think people want this problem fixed. A hot fix. There is nothing more enjoyable that having to go every mission and move AI. If possible