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[R-26 Lightspeed]

In -1/Access on the seed "FlyingDamperNanovents", there's a Swarmer squad near the top-right Garrison.
That Swarmer squad kept changing the target of their patrol, without the squad leader actually ever moving more than three tiles from their starting point.
Eventually, the squad actually managed to reach one of the targets.

Example (right at the end of the gif) :


I had visited a Garrison that led me to Access and got the patrol data from a terminal there, which is how i could see the patrol paths.

I know that patrols can normally decide to change up their target early, but usually they still manage to move at least more than a few tiles towards it.
I guess my report might be more about that swarmer squad having great difficulty moving along their patrol path for some reason?

(Side note : Which is better, gifs (which can be embedded here) or videos (which have more time control)?)

[Kyzrati]

Well I normally might not be able to tell what's happening in the gif because it's really quite small and I can't seem to make it any bigger, but I guess it does get the point across in this case. That said, I'm sure they were blocked and forced to find a new path because Beta 14 contains a rather serious new pathfinding issue that was added while working out a proper way to remove the AI jumping potential (and it went kinda overboard) so this has already been addressed after the release and adjusted for Beta 15. You'll have to wait for that (so far just in prerelease testing), and until then know that there are definitely some weird paths being taken by AIs in groups at the moment in Beta 14 if you observe them long enough and closely enough, or just get "lucky."

[R-26 Lightspeed]

Beta 14 contains a rather serious new pathfinding issue that was added while working out a proper way to remove the AI jumping potential (and it went kinda overboard) so this has already been addressed after the release and adjusted for Beta 15.

By the way, i'm curious, why was "bots take more time to move when they jump over other bots" (just like Cogmind on flight) deemed to be a bad solution to "bot jumping"?

and until then know that there are definitely some weird paths being taken by AIs in groups at the moment in Beta 14 if you observe them long enough and closely enough, or just get "lucky."

I've seen the "take incredibly circuitous path because the path was temporarily blocked by another memeber of the same squad" a lot. And also one "pre-cargo convoy swarmers blocked by random green bot".

[Kyzrati]

Beta 14 contains a rather serious new pathfinding issue that was added while working out a proper way to remove the AI jumping potential (and it went kinda overboard) so this has already been addressed after the release and adjusted for Beta 15.

By the way, i'm curious, why was "bots take more time to move when they jump over other bots" (just like Cogmind on flight) deemed to be a bad solution to "bot jumping"?

Maybe you're not familiar with the jumping issue, but it was not uncommon for some players and strategies over the years and it meant that any hostile combat bot could in some cases jump any other bot, including over Cogmind, to get to a place from which to attack, including all bots with no flight capabilities, even jumping around corners. It had nothing to do with "the time taken" to do such

It took a while to resolve because the true cause was hard to track down, and I never saw it myself so tried several methods to address it before eventually finding a way to reproduce and fix it without breaking anything.

[R-26 Lightspeed]

Maybe you're not familiar with the jumping issue, but it was not uncommon for some players and strategies over the years and it meant that any hostile combat bot could in some cases jump any other bot, including over Cogmind, to get to a place from which to attack, including all bots with no flight capabilities, even jumping around corners. It had nothing to do with "the time taken" to do such

I am familiar with this issue as well, but i thought it was kinda minor compared to the fact that such jumping cost the same amount of time as a normal move, allowing stuff like every member of a synchronized Grunt squad chasing down a target to move three tiles per 120 time units (by jumping over the two other Grunts).

[Kyzrati]

Yeah but... they shouldn't be jumping in the first place, considering they can't jump and can do so around corners and even over your head xD. That's a little more important--the other part becomes irrelevant once that was solved.