SSE Exterior Navemesh Woes

[NexBeth]

Well, I've pretty much done nothing but exterior navmesh this past month+ to no avail. Still experiencing problems. Learned a lot though. Better at xEdit.

 

I tried the cutting/re-naming/sinking navmesh method; didn't work. NPCs don't want to cross cells. Then, starting anew, I tired renaming recreated navmesh. Of course working on 7 cells, the CK is frequently renaming navmesh as you go along. So I went in to do the meticulous renaming process of back to vanilla which is detailed at [skyrim] Fixing Navmesh Deletion Using TES5Edit - Knowledge Base - AFK Mod and in a few other tutorials. I did both of the above procedures from scratch twice. I feel completely competent about following instructions and ensuring that navs were renamed back to vanilla correctly. Failed. NPCs don't want to cross any cell. In desperation I looked at some FO navmesh tutorials (and discovered that FO nav is different (and better) than what we have with Skyrim. However, their tuts didn't really help much.

 

The perfectly working navmeshes are the ones that got recreated while I worked resulting in deleted vanilla navmeshes. These work flawlessly without fail. No kidding. No problems entering/exiting any cells within my mod or adjacent vanilla cells. Of course, with this I have flags for deleted vanilla navmeshes.

 

Otherwise, the next best thing are my cells with single triangles sunk below my cells that are named for corresponding vanilla navmeshes (that I'm no longer using). My renamed navs remain in place. This is not ideal because while my cells are working ok within my 7 cells, there is a problem with npcs traversing back through vanilla cells linked into my Cell 7. Now Cell 5 boarder to/from vanilla cell works fine. (Go figure.) Also, animal NPCs seem to "know" that something is wrong and they act oddly.

 

This is a problem I feel starting with the AE update. Previous SSE mod had navmesh where all vanilla nameshes were sunk below terrain and I recreated my own navs. This worked flawlessly with numerous NPCs that I tested. Also, I'll mention that I get no errors in Xedit or the CK regarding navs that I've worked on; yet NPCs don't want to cross cells.

 

Not sure where to go from here. I spent a year reworking this mod to bring over from LE to SSE but I'm not at all happy about this development.

 

Any further ideas or help are welcomed.

[NexBeth]

I'll just update this topic to give a heads up to fellow modders on my final findings.

 

Once I tried repeatedly employing every navmesh technique possible to resolve this I started to think the problem was the game cell rather than something that I was doing wrong or that my mod was bugged out. The cell in question is Wilderness 00009721 found at 21,-12 (the largest Nav 000FA1CD). It seems to be a problem with SSE, and not original Skyrim. I've made numerous tests, making various tests on my own mod, creating additional test esps and even tested other published mods that were built in this cell. (It has been months since I last posted on this and that is how long I have been looking at this issue and attempting to troubleshoot it.) All the additional published mods I tested had issues for NPCs traversing this cell. I also found that placing an NPC in this cell results in all of them moved to an adjacent cell if this cell has in any way (small or large) modded navmesh. The problem is such that even moving a nav triangle (not cutting nor adding) results in the problem manifesting.

 

The dilemma now for me is how to work this problem into getting my mod published (or not publishing it).