Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (Full Version)

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dpabrams -> Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 2:37:04 PM)

I am struggling mightily with just a simple company sized March down the autobahn. The formation for the company is March (-spacing), F-fast advance with a way point on the autobahn. I believe I do not touch SOP for the company so as not conflict with the March order. The trouble is the path finding for the vehicles in the company is horrid. Vehicles travel off the autobahn and into woods or other squares that are not on the road. I assume this is a "stacking" issue and maybe this will improve when "stacking" is increased? I do not understand why a company in March formation simply cannot haul ass down the autobahn in a nice orderly convoy, without vehicles going off the road and rearranging the convoy during a March. This is the simplest of formation moves, yet the path finding AI struggles mightily with it, or I have been doing it wrong?



actrade -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 2:47:17 PM)

I have had the same issue. The DEV mentioned using the march command, but I believe the stacking issue is making organized movement very difficult. Try sending a formation across a bride if you want to see how bad this can get.



EchoOne -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 2:50:40 PM)

Strange, I don't have any problem ordering all formation(s) in march formation (for example, midnight surprise). Even I was able to order one of my formations to cross the bridge in march formation with no problem. (change SOP to "quick", rather than using "cover")

In Midnight surprise, I had to use all march command a lot in order to reach the objective much quickly. Rolling through the wooded area via road et cetera



EchoOne -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 3:01:46 PM)

to change SOP to "Cover" if you need an infantry to go through the wooded or from house to house. I seldom use "Cover" for MBT if necessary to screening, for example, my Leopard 2A1s from their line of sight...like hugging the edge of the wooded area or hilly area et cetera. Once reach the "battle position", I can change the formation such as the line or wedge formation.



actrade -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 3:05:19 PM)

Try and get your units across the two bridges in "who'll stop the rain" and let me know how that goes.



EchoOne -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 3:08:04 PM)

Actrade, I will try that "Who'll stop the rain" scenario and see if my march command working well. I will right back with you



EchoOne -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 3:29:35 PM)

Actrade, I was able to order three Fuch to cross the bridge with march command with no problem



EchoOne -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 3:36:49 PM)

until next waypoint, as the leading Fuch was able to cross the third bridge but other two Fuch got confused and smashing against the second bridge's guardrail in order to manage to stay in the formation as ordered. Hmm, maybe we found a bug?



EchoOne -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 3:47:11 PM)

I guess that we may have to order each Fuch to cross the bridge, individually. Once cross all bridge(s) I can order all three Fuch to regroup in the march formation?



noooooo -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 3:59:39 PM)

It's because the bridge only allows one unit on it at a time which means when one of your vehicles is on the bridge, all others vehicles get confused and think that bridge is obstructed. As the developer said he will increase the maximum unit count per cell which means pathfinding won't get as confused.



dpabrams -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 4:42:22 PM)

On the left I have selected each tank in a company to line up nicely along a road for a pending March order. Next I select the command tank and reattach it, thus forming up the company again and give the company a Fast move just down the way and BINGO the formation scrambles across the creek and into the woods. This is a problem.

[image]local://upfiles/15939/3F82F05DDD5E45FABED28398F7F3433B.jpg[/image]



dpabrams -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 4:48:26 PM)

Now, here we have are company in March, with a fast command to and along a road. Just one simple way point and we have tanks off into fields and woods. T

[image]local://upfiles/15939/FA90AC5328034B4A9E70285B81F995EF.jpg[/image]



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 6:52:17 PM)

I am also having some problems with formations and movements.

First, and this may be my fault, is that when I place a tank company in the deployment phase in line on a road and reattach them as soon as I set a waypoint they all get rearranged. Not sure why it does that. They also get rearranged by choosing the formation and hitting the march order. As soon as I do that poof, rearranged.

I'm having trouble doing this now but it worked just last night. Is there a correct way to perform this action? I was setting up a battle to do some tests because my formations have some real pathfinding issues from going way off the roads, picking random routes with some tanks, others saying it is unable to find a path etc, all within a simple march to a waypoint.

Also, the tanks that moved through the heavy woods moved as fast as those down the road with an occasional immobilize. IMO, it should be a very slow trek. Seems unrealistic.

Lastly, 2 tanks were moving down the road and the one went right through the other and they traveled together almost exactly on top of each other.


[image]local://upfiles/21148/92DEE8D5383F435881A3A4A487EC9388.jpg[/image]



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 6:57:41 PM)

after setting waypoint

[image]local://upfiles/21148/BA9D50BB62BC4C5C881F676C0E344786.jpg[/image]



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 7:29:20 PM)

so a reload. The only time my units were not rearranged is if I start the battle first. Here I set a waypoint with Quick modifier and march.

[image]local://upfiles/21148/315D66BA77704DC5BAAF08912869BA08.jpg[/image]



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 7:31:53 PM)

and a mere few seconds later.

Is there any way to increase the upload size of pics on this forum? 200 kb is inadequate.

[image]local://upfiles/21148/1DC6334A0B73432C808689195201993C.jpg[/image]



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 7:46:21 PM)

They are engaging from the get go in this example so maybe they are using evasive measures but that doesn't explain the new paths for any of the units. I'll test some more.

As a quick note, last night 3 tanks in march down a road to a close waypoint did 3 seperate things. 1 moved good down the road through turns etc. The second chose to immediately go off the road, through the forest, around several houses before moving to the waypoint and the last just sat there with info given that it had no path.

At this point they don't seem like anomalies.



dpabrams -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 9:20:00 PM)

Yeah, I think the path finding is flawed. I just had a company of tanks in March with F-fast orders going down the two lanes of the autobahn and one tank goes off into the woods and is immobile? This is not right and it is a disappointment. This was never brought up in play testing?



dpabrams -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 9:32:20 PM)

UPDATE......... I seem to be having better luck if I maximize (+) spacing while in March, when a company is on the road with F-Fast orders. So far it's working as I would expect. Perhaps the (-) Spacing was the issue. I suspect with the units so close together that they were walking all over each other, while trying to avoid the same square and chose terrain that was not road.



noooooo -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 9:40:38 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: dpabrams

UPDATE......... I seem to be having better luck if I maximize (+) spacing while in March, when a company is on the road with F-Fast orders. So far it's working as I would expect. Perhaps the (-) Spacing was the issue. I suspect with the units so close together that they were walking all over each other, while trying to avoid the same square and chose terrain that was not road.


I'm guessing this is the case because it seems there is some kind of randomness in the speed of individual units (you notice this when you get a line of units to move forward some units move faster than others even on identical terrain) and different speeds cause units to try to bump into each other's cells then get confused because another unit is blocking that cell.



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:09:26 PM)

Well I thought I was getting better results with the Column order, and I was at first. Then they all bunched up. The waypoint in the example below is East of that HQ tank. The 5 tanks to the immediate West ofthe HQ unit were doing a fair job of following behind in column after the initial confusion but the tank highlighted has chosen its own path on another road and all the units to its west have no orders for some reason.



I'm not sure what is going on, and I can handle some 'bumping' of tighter units. Seems every game suffers from this to some degree, usually (hopefully) straightening itself out in time to complete the order, but here, things are much worse. The units disregard the orders, some stay behind, others bump around for what seems too long, the units constantly try to update its path around 'squares', while others completely choose their own roads to take.

Certainly not a column. Tell me the pathfinding is not completely FUBAR.

[image]local://upfiles/21148/9EE30023CF9542E4BF52FA08D9EFB6B1.jpg[/image]



nikolas93TS -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:19:21 PM)

Is that river impassable?



Veitikka -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:20:14 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: dpabrams

Vehicles travel off the autobahn and into woods or other squares that are not on the road. I assume this is a "stacking" issue and maybe this will improve when "stacking" is increased?


Exactly. I've even thought about disabling the 'narrow' formation spacing, because in the current system the units collide with each other, because of the one-unit-per-cell limitation. I hope I can increase the unit limit in the patches.

While waiting for that, I recommend to not use the narrowest spacing when moving.



exsonic01 -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:20:25 PM)

Those issues are coming from traffic due to bridge and winding narrow road during March formation. I saw that if first car stops to make a turn, the second car stops and sometimes try to find alternative way, that makes chaos and delay. This happens when there is a bridge and unpassable water, or when marching column should do multiple turns to follow the road. Vehicles trying to find alternative route, then attempt to go around, which results funny yet dangerous route finding.

Large spacing between vehicles would help, but still sometimes happen. Plus, as far as I know, devs are trying to improve this, by allowing 2 or more multiple units in single 30m x 30m basic unit cell. That will help to reduce those behaviors.

Also, I usually don't use march formation in the field. I only use march formation in city, only when there is no enemy nearby, and preferably on highway. I found that AIs feels more easy to find a good route on highway.

This is one of the reason why platoon is better to maneuver than company, especially for AI. Human can fix this issue, but AI feels hard to fix. If you want to set up challenging AI, consist AI force with platoons only, that will help a bit.




Veitikka -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:34:38 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Missouri_Rebel

First, and this may be my fault, is that when I place a tank company in the deployment phase in line on a road and reattach them as soon as I set a waypoint they all get rearranged. Not sure why it does that. They also get rearranged by choosing the formation and hitting the march order. As soon as I do that poof, rearranged.

I'm having trouble doing this now but it worked just last night. Is there a correct way to perform this action? I was setting up a battle to do some tests because my formations have some real pathfinding issues from going way off the roads, picking random routes with some tanks, others saying it is unable to find a path etc, all within a simple march to a waypoint.


Same here. The units collide with each other because they're too close to each other.

quote:



Also, the tanks that moved through the heavy woods moved as fast as those down the road with an occasional immobilize. IMO, it should be a very slow trek. Seems unrealistic.


Perhaps those moving on the road slowed down because they tried to match the speed of those moving in the woods?

quote:



Lastly, 2 tanks were moving down the road and the one went right through the other and they traveled together almost exactly on top of each other.


There's no collision detection in the game. The one-unit-per-cell limitation has been the primary way to avoid collisions.



Veitikka -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:39:38 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Missouri_Rebel

so a reload. The only time my units were not rearranged is if I start the battle first. Here I set a waypoint with Quick modifier and march.

[image]local://upfiles/21148/315D66BA77704DC5BAAF08912869BA08.jpg[/image]


This is not the correct way to use formation movement. The formation should be let to organize its units automatically. If you don't want them to reorganize between waypoints then select formation->free.



Veitikka -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:47:46 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Missouri_Rebel

Certainly not a column. Tell me the pathfinding is not completely FUBAR.


The pathfinding algorithm is excellent. It's just about what map cells the units see as passable or impassable, and currently any unit blocks the path because of the one-unit-per-cell limitation. If the units should follow a road then the 'march' formation should be used, waypoints placed along the road, without the narrowest spacing.



noooooo -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:50:19 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Veitikka


quote:

ORIGINAL: Missouri_Rebel

so a reload. The only time my units were not rearranged is if I start the battle first. Here I set a waypoint with Quick modifier and march.

[image]local://upfiles/21148/315D66BA77704DC5BAAF08912869BA08.jpg[/image]


This is not the correct way to use formation movement. The formation should be let to organize its units automatically. If you don't want them to reorganize between waypoints then select formation->free.



Yes, that doesn't seem to work because relative positioning is really important to the AI formation. The chance of you ordering them in the exact same ordering as the AI does it low. For example:
https://vimeo.com/301470164

As you can see in my video when you get your units to do a 180, instead of just turning around and going, they have to organize themselves in the exact same relative positioning before they move forward. This doesn't happen if you use free formation.



noooooo -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:53:48 PM)

Incidentally I think that could be a pathfinding quirk that can be improved upon because relative positioning to each other shouldn't matter. It only wastes time.

Perhaps it would help pathfinding AI to have it like this: Instead of going into the exact same relative positioning, each unit position in the formation searches for the closest unit of the same type and puts it there instead. This way getting back into formation would be significantly faster and more dynamic and doesn't waste nearly as much time.



Missouri_Rebel -> RE: Pathfinding, March formation, CONFUSION? (11/18/2018 10:59:18 PM)

I assumed that I could click a location on the map and if I chose March and Quick they would find the quickest path down roads to that waypoint. Are you saying I need to set a waypoint at every turn and corner? Mius Front has the former. Do I need to perform the latter for movement?



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