Why Ships Don't Follow Hyperlanes Correctly

It's a new expression of a long-existing problem

from GalCiv3 Forums

When a ship is moving in the galaxy, it has a start point and an end point (obviously).  No matter where these two points are, it is possible to draw a straight line from the start point to the end point.  This line will ignore all impassible objects and all areas that cost more or less movement points than the basic 1 per tile.

When the game uses the code that calculates the path the ship needs to follow to get from the start to the end, the code takes into consideration the impassible objects and areas that cost extra movement points as well as those that cost less than 1 per tile to calculate the most efficient path.

When the game code that moves the ship takes over, many times it ignores the calculated path and tries to take the straight line to the destination.  It seems like the longer the distance between the start and end the more likely the calculated path will be ignored.  I have seen this many times before Retribution (and reported it several times), so it has nothing to do with the hyperlanes.  With retribution it is more obvious when the a ship takes a "shortcut" that takes more movement points instead of the longer path, in number of tiles, that takes fewer movement points.

In my current game with the 3.7 opt-in I was seeing this, so I took a screen shot each turn for 3 turns showing the calculated path and the location of the ship each turn.  I then combined them into this picture showing the calculated paths and ship location for those turns.


The path the ship is taking is almost straight to its destination, but it won't take it all the way because there is a black hole in the straight path.

I also recorded a short video that shows the calculated path and actual movement for 1 turn.  You can download it here.

Since the devs have a much easier time finding the cause of the problem if a save is provided, here is one at the end of the first turn in this sequence.  As shown in the above picture, the ship is just south of the home star system.  Just click TURN to get the ship to move in a direction that is almost at a right angle to the calculated path.  This can be continued for many more turns, if necessary.  I'm using several of my mods in this game, but I don't think that matters.

I hope this helps find the cause so it can be fixed.

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Yeah it's a pain, in war time it can be devastating. 
The only solution found thus far is to baby walk ships a few parsecs at a time. 

 

luceo non uro

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

In this latest 3.7 update, it seems that pathfinding has improved. The ships now seem to follow the path indicated on the map. At least, they do a better job of it than before.

As noted above, during wartime this is an important detail.

 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

3.7 seems to have fixed the issue for me, I no longer need to baby-step my ships to the hyperlanes

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

As I mentioned, this is from a game with the 3.7 opt-in from 4-26.  While there is some improvement in ships actually following the indicated path, it seems to be mostly for paths where the destination is closer to the origin.  If the destination is too far from the origin, ships will ignore the calculated path and take a straight path until they can't.

I am trying to show what seems to be the problem.  It seems like there is a section of the code that calculates the path shown on the screen.  It does a good job of calculating the most efficient path in all cases.  Then there is a section of the code that actually moves ships.  It seems to do a poor job of using the calculated path and of calculating a good path on its own.  This causes a lot of cases where ships take a very bad, inefficient path to the destination.  That is what the picture and video show.

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