Ship crew pathing is too fiddly

[Cousarr]

In addition to my issue with getting troops to go up a ladder in an otherwise functional design, other designs have even further issues with getting pathing to work. Both issues are detailed below:

Ladders:

In the below tramp freighter design, the crew are able to find the way to their stations, but the troops are unable to use the ladders to go up a deck to get to theirs and remain in the crew quarters. Further, when issuing the "follow me" command to the troops, they mill about the ladders rather than climb them.









Walk paths:

In the below shuttle design, the crew were able to find their way to their stations prior to the addition of the hull door. The walk path network was expanded to attempt to help them find their stations. The crew find their way to then end of the Y junction and then stand there. The troops run straight into the nearest wall.

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I was able to resolve the issue with the shuttle by updating the obstruction model. The issue with the ladders still stands. Even following updating the obstruction model, the troops in my simplified design that does not have doors between deck levels mill about the base of the ladder even under "follow me" orders.

[Vectorus]

Are the nodes snapped together and about the height of your species CG off the floor? In my experience that really helps for a start. Will have more thorough look later. Ladder paths should be snapped to walk paths at both ends.

I think of paths as a railway track with your centre of gravity as the locomotive. If the station they're at is not linked to their destination station they have real trouble, as they do if the track wants them to scoot along the floor. They are not reliable at going cross country between stations, even a short distance. Sorry if you know all that already.

[Cousarr]

I was unaware of the potential need for the ladder path to start at the species' CG. I'll try that in my ladder lab tonight and see if that fixes it. I already have a walk path snapped to both ends of the ladder path.

[Cousarr]

I was able to get the ladders to work for the AI. It requires some very specific setup and it also eliminates some of the functionality for the player.

Things required to make ladders work for AI:
1) The ladder path must start at avatar CG height
2) The ladder path must end at avatar CG height
3) The ladder path must be connected to the walk path network at both ends via walk paths
4) If there is an associated hatch, the ladder path must be associated with that hatch
5) No ladder paths may overlap any ladder path intended to be used by the AI

This means that because the ladder path must be associated with the hatch and cannot peacefully coexist with another ladder path sharing the same space, the ladder path is only mountable (press 'e' to mount by default) when the associated hatch is open. This makes perfect sense to the AI but could counter-intuitive to players. Players may think that a ladder path is non-existent and not think to open the associated hatch prior to attempting to use the ladder.

[Raymoo]

Seems bad that all your paths would end up being race-specific.

[Raymoo]

Should this setup be working? The paths are at my race's CG height. I've tried attaching the top walk path both to the end of the horizontal indicator, and to the tip of the vertical ine.


EDIT: figured it out, the ladder was just too close to the wall. It was half a meter away instead of a meter.