Preferred Pathing Navmesh questions

[damanding]

I'm planning another bridge for a bridge mod and this time I want to include preferred pathing navmesh so the poor NPCs don't have to cross the river via the water. My understanding of navmesh thus far: blue navmesh is under water, red is general navmesh, orange is preferred path navmesh (used for roads mostly). Questions: Does Bethesda ever have a tendency to set preferred pathing through water around non functional bridges? If so, is there a unique color for it? If they do set preferred pathing through water and it's not readily identifiable by color, if I create new preferred pathing over my new bridge will this confuse the NPCs? I'd just like to have a better understanding of what I'm doing so I can do things correctly. :)

[yourenotsupposedtobeinhere]

Preferred pathing and water pathing are handled by AI packages, meaning that not all NPCs will use them the same also how they function.

 

Water (Blue) Is best used when the NPC will use swimming animations, so not really for water ankle deep. If the water is shallow enough it can remain red.

 

I never use preferred pathing on water navmesh and try to never have a water navmesh with a portal marker.

 

Most NPCs will choose standard (red) navmesh over water so you are usually fine for people with travel packages, followers use a different system that involves porting and re-evaluation so it is more about where the player is then whether it is preferred or not.

 

Bad navmesh can cause traveling NPCs to go in odd directions or appear under ground or not move at all, etc etc.

 

Play test it and back up your pluggins, it is hard to un-navmesh things.

[damanding]

Thanks for the clarification! In this particular location Bethesda already included preferred pathing along the road right up to the edge of the bridge on both sides of the bridge with the bridge mesh (it's the kind where the two bridge halves are at an angle and don't meet) and the bridge mesh itself is all red navmesh. Since the bridge doesn't actually meet they can't cross it and have to go around. Since the preferred pathing already leads up to the bridge itself, I might just extend it to go over the addition I make. However in the case of the Gibson Pier bridge I don't recall the road leading up to the bridge already having preferred pathing but maybe I just didn't look or don't remember. But if the preferred pathing wasn't already leading up to the bridge then just the red navmesh would have been preferred by NPC travel packages over the water navmesh. So either way it accomplishes what I and the requester want which is to not have to see some poor provisioner or other NPC swimming across a river right next to what should be a perfectly good bridge. I can't believe that after 200+ years people wouldn't have made some sort of rickety bridge to go across the gap as a preferred route over swimming. I swear Bethesda doesn't think logically about how much change there is after 200 years post nuclear disaster. Their set design approach is more just a few years post nuclear disaster.

[yourenotsupposedtobeinhere]

I swear Bethesda doesn't think logically about how much change there is after 200 years post nuclear disaster.

This is the first step down the road of understanding/disappointment regarding Bethesda and their abilities. You are on the right path.

[damanding]

Apparently I missed this in my previous visits to the CK wiki. http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Category:Navmesh

 

 

 

Note that triangles can be marked as both Water and Preferred. Such a triangle will be marked with a teal color.