Pathfinding and colonization

Rogan Josh · April 28, 2003, 07:24

Is anyone else having trouble with pathfinding?

Last night I found a nice sweetspot planet and wanted to send my colony ship to it before it got gobbled up by one of the other races for whom it was green. I built a colony ship in a system only 2 lanes away (ie. with one system in between), created a task force (something I find annoying btw since it uses up an extra turn) and tried to send it to the system in question. Pleased with myself I hit 'turn'....

....and the colony ship heads off into deep space. Not following the star lane though - it takes a straight line path from my system to the new system! Estimated arrival in 34 turns!!! And I can't bring it back because you can only redirect when they are at systems. Goodbye colony ship.

The reason I send these guys out manually is because I find the autosend never seems to work. My ships sit around at another systme until I get fed up and send them manually anyway. Then, half way there, the autosend suddenly kicks in and sends its colony ship too! Sometimes, if the proposed colony is rather far away, it seems t forget about the first ship it sent and sends another one....

Anyone else see things like this?

Sometimes this game makes me want to pull my hair out!

Daz · April 28, 2003, 07:35

Do you have auto-colonization on?
How do you send the colony ship to the desired planet? I guess you deploy the task force and send the ship to the desired system, or?

I didnt quite get what your procedure is...

Rogan Josh · April 28, 2003, 09:05

Quote:

Originally posted by Daz
Do you have auto-colonization on?
How do you send the colony ship to the desired planet? I guess you deploy the task force and send the ship to the desired system, or?

No, I switched autocolonisation off. As you say, I deploy a task force with only a colony ship in it and send it to the system just like I would any other task force. Off it went, but not using the star lanes.

In principle, even with autocolonisation off, you can semi-automatically send a colony ship to a desired planet by clicking on the planet, clicking on the fleets tab, and clicking create colony (or somesuch - I forget the wording). The AI will then send your nearest active colony ship to colonise the planet. But it is very erratic.

Daz · April 28, 2003, 09:51

Hmmm, weird. Must be a bug then.... or something in between (maybe enemy colony???).

And yes, youre right. That option where you select a planet and mark it for colonization doesnt work very well. It doesnt keep track of the colony ships already onroute, and you cannot define any order for the planets to be colonized.

Kloreep · April 28, 2003, 18:39

You didn't drag and drop the TF onto the sweet spot system, did you? That's the only possibility I can think of (IIRC, drag and drop forces the TF off-road, overriding AI pathfinding).

SINISTER1974 · April 29, 2003, 03:54

"I built a colony ship in a system only 2 lanes away (ie. with one system in between), created a task force (something I find annoying btw since it uses up an extra turn) and tried to send it to the system in question."
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You can hit the "B" button when done creating the taskforce. SHows flags, bborders, etc.... Then hit it again- your task force is ready to use that turn. Kind of cheesy but it sucks to wait 1 turn on a taskforce you built that turn.

"And I can't bring it back because you can only redirect when they are at systems. Goodbye colony ship."
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Click on the taskforce, cancel its orders (should be the second button down), and it will stop at the next system on its flight path and wait for new orders. I use this a lot, saves me a lot of time.

"the autosend suddenly kicks in and sends its colony ship too! Sometimes, if the proposed colony is rather far away, it seems t forget about the first ship it sent and sends another one...."
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This you have to keep a close eye on your sitrep. Make sure you know the planet where you want them sent (green, yellow, red). Once the amount needed to colonize the planet (green=1, yellow =2, red = 4---usually unless you have a better built colony ship), go to that planet and turn off the "send colony/colonize planet option. AI wont send anymore. Keeping a close eye on the sitrep and your fleet will save you time and money for anger management courses.

Be aware and act. Dont let your friendly AI run wild.

Also it is better to manually move your colony ships/fleets around. AI is very unpredicatable. I like to build out away from my home system and build in. And AI likes it the other way around :\ Hope this helps a little :/

Daz · April 29, 2003, 06:09

Yeah, you're right. Watching the SITREP helps until you start building several colony ships in one turn. Then it all falls apart again...

I do it manually....

And dont get used to the "B" option. Its gone with the code patch....

Rogan Josh · April 29, 2003, 06:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Kloreep
You didn't drag and drop the TF onto the sweet spot system, did you? That's the only possibility I can think of (IIRC, drag and drop forces the TF off-road, overriding AI pathfinding).

I don't think I did. I certainly didn't mean to, but it is possible - my mouse is a bit crappy.

For me, the biggest issue in this game has to be the crappy 'friendly' AI. Even with dev plans which all have manufacture, infrastructure etc and no military, the AI run planets still make non-stop troop ships.

Daz · April 29, 2003, 07:25

Just make the troop ships obsolete until you really start needing them.

I know this is a silly way of doing things right. Say thank you to the whiners who have a problem with micromanagement.

Flinx · May 1, 2003, 13:01

I have observed similar behaviour, though it has usually been along long star-lane paths to avoid a system on the direct route and arrive from a different direction. I have not played for a few weeks (waiting for the code patch, plus I was on vacation) but I started to notice that in some cases the AI takes longer paths when a shorter path would put your colony ship in an encounter with an enemy ship or planet before the destination system. So, in this case, if there were an enemy in the middle system, the AI would take the next possible route, which appears to have been off-road.

Just a guess.

Anyway, I do think the path finding algorithm is broken, because there are times when I can see no reason for why the AI chooses a non-optimal path.