Navmeshes and Safe Containers

[LeCommunistSpy]

Simple question:

 

If there is no navmesh around a container in a relatively large radius (like if it was in the middle of a steep but climbable rubble pile), does that mean that container is safe in the wasteland and will not be stolen from?

[madmongo]

I played around with navmeshes a bit when I first learned how to do them. I wanted to see how accurate I needed to be with a navmesh for it to work in-game. I found that NPCs will stray slightly outside of the bounds of a navmesh, so you don't need to be super-critical in how you design your navmeshes. If you're a bit sloppy, the NPCs will still usually figure out how to go where they should go. It's good when you are manually creating your own navmeshes, because it means that you don't need to be extremely detailed and make sure you get every square inch of walkable space covered in little navmesh triangles. You can expend a lot less effort and there won't be any difference in-game.

 

If the gap is small, that means that an NPC would still be able to access your container. But you did specify that the gap was large. That should be enough to keep an NPC out of that area, at least while the player is in that area.

 

The one part of this I can't answer is what happens when the player isn't in the area. There are scripts and things that work behind the scenes, and those may not care much about the navmesh.

[EPDGaffney]

I can confirm that off-screen NPC actions do not require any navmeshing. I had an NPC that was set to run his scripts even when the player isn't in the area (meaning, unlike the majority of NPCs, his No Low-Level Processing box was not ticked in the G.E.C.K.), but I forgot to do my navmesh, and though he acted funny when he was on-screen, as soon as I left, the game updated that he had completed his task.

 

But who is going to steal from the container? Don't think I've ever really seen that happen, if I'm honest. Unless an NPC is scripted to do so, at least as far as I'm aware, the only other problem would be NPCs that are in combat and feel the need to grab a more powerful weapon from your container, which is somewhat rare.

[Andyno]

I may be wrong, but maybe checking "Ignored By Sandbox" in Reference window should prevent NPCs to touch your stuff. It could be used also with doors, if you don't want to NPCs go where they shouldn't.