Spawning offscreen with a travel package instantly teleports to destination

[SKKmods]

We see this sometimes with workshop attacks where the attack spawn marker is far enough away to be in an unloaded cell and spawned actors just teleport straight to the package target of workshop location center marker. Yes even when its not walled in with good navmesh path, so it is believed that the spawn markers must be inside build areas, but I digress.

 

I am trying to do A LOT of offscreen/unloaded spawning for travel and find that 2/3 times the actors just teleport to the destination, or into the loaded area around the player, but the other 1/3 start pathing normally. Same actors, packages, start and end points.

 

The endpoints are persistent (workshops and such else I couldn't ref them) and have tried different target selectors (LinkedRefs, ObjectReferences, Aliases ..) and packages (Travel, Sandbox ...), they all do the same thing. Only 1/3 of spawns behave.

 

My workaround is to stamp a GameTime AV on the actors, register an OnDistanceLessThan check and if they arrive witin 0.01 gamedays of the timestamp clean up and redo. 100% creative 0% elegant.

 

Anyone else have insight or experience of this ?

[PJMail]

Not an answer but a question - are these Actor's persistent?

I am very surprised that 1/3 work otherwise (spawn in an unloaded area and then path normally to you).

Or do you mean start pathing normally when their cell loads?

 

I have certainly seen Actors 'shortcut' their travel package and teleport to the destination (when the start and/or endpoint is unloaded).

And they don't seem to care what is at the unloaded point (inside a box? That is fine!).

 

Just wondering if you can use some sort of ondistance or oncellload event to trigger their travel package so they don't start pathing until they are loaded and the whole path to the travel destination/player? is also loaded...

 

Or am I totally missing what you are trying to do (prestage attackers so they realistically ambush you from multiple directions).

Edited April 18, 2022 by PJMail

[SKKmods]

I want actors to path unloaded to unloaded.

 

From/to anywhere on the map to anywhere on the map.

 

The start popint will never be loaded, the end point may or maynot but in principle I have zero interest in the loaded state.

 

Base game provisioners and trade caravans do this with varying success.

 

As it works 1/3rd of the time it is clearly some defect in the offscreen AI pathing system.

[PJMail]

I wish you the best of luck.

 

My Vertibird NPC does this - but I had to have a background monitor that checks if it is geting closer to it's destination and when the delta is zero gives it a 'kick'.

It was persistent, and sending it an animation action of 'move' gets it going again - but in your case monitoring and kicking every NPC sounds like overhead you may not want.

 

Also, as you found, sometimes it never needed a kick, and sometimes multiple. I wonder what is so special about provisoners (other than Bethesda had to put some effort into making them work).

 

I also found you get no events from an unloaded NPC, so was stuck with a timer.

Edited April 18, 2022 by PJMail

[SKKmods]

After another crap-tonne of exteremely tedious testing it looks like:

 

When a simple AI travel template package starts pathing, if any part of the path crosses the curent loaded/active uGrids around the player the package automatically and unstoppably teleports to the edge of the loaded/active area.

 

If the path does not cross the curent loaded/active uGrids around the player it tracks straight line time/speed/distance offscreen from package start to destination. Unless or until it intersects the active radius when it may or maynot unpredicably teleport to the edge of the active area based on path update/refresh logic I cant be arsed to decompile.

 

I would guess/infer that this is another aspect of the fundamental "PLAYER IS ATLAS" game engine design where everything revolves around the player. Creating off screen situations is supposed to be done statically with placed crap in the CK for the player to "discover". Ho hum.

[PJMail]

A random encounter system without Random Encounter Zones - very interested. That will be an achievement.

 

So straight line pathing occured when the player's current loaded area wasn't involved - I thought you found actors teleported to destination 2/3 of the time?

Did the straight line ignore terrain? Sounds very quantum - they were only really at a point on their path when you observed them.

[SKKmods]

> I thought you found actors teleported to destination 2/3 of the time?

 

Exaclty, it appears to be when the path intersects the players active area. Its almost as if I'm actually running test observations and not making this stuff up !

 

Yes straight line ignores everything, the world is unloaded. Looks like a simple start XYZ to XYZ end distance/bearing calculation, since the world is flat rather than an oblate spheroid so no cos mean lat rhumb lines needed (nav 101).

[PJMail]

So that explains why Bethesda has hard-coded "find flat navmeshed location to place NPC onload" for every NPC in the game.