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Question [ver.4.2.3] settler pathing problems

okamiamateru

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19
hi i encounter a weird thing in my settlement after using sim settlement, when the city plan is used ( i use the default city plan) the pathing of settler is pretty much normal and new element added by sim settlement is regconized , however after a certain period of time ( i.e mostly 3 days in-game) all the pathing seem to have been erased, it affect every NPC in-game even your companion , to be specific all settler that is within the confine of the city will not move and your companion will not be able to follow you into the city , as if the entire pathing script of the area is gone , this happen at every single settlement that is built by sim . Please help me
i have a hunch that the mod "unlimited companion frramework" is resposible however i have been using that mod since the begining of my game so i can't uninstall it and revert back to the save before the installation because such "clean" pre-every mod save dose not exist
thank you for your patient and best regard
jack
this is my system spec and load order as of writing this thread (i'm using MO2)
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And if you want to build in Sanctuary, spend time watching the NPC's and how they path. They are good at going on their routes - building not in their way will be more rewarding.

John
 
Okay I wish I didn't visit this thread because now I've become more aware of the problem. I just didn't think of the "standing settlers" as a problem before

I'm on 4.2.2a and this happens to me on default city plans of Hangman's Alley, Red Rocket Station, and Oberland Station (All on level 1, if not 2)

So like another user has mentioned, this is not solely a Sanctuary problem.

And it doesn't happen if you use the complex city plan, which isn't compacted. From what I'm observing, all compacted city plans have these pathing problems.

very interesting if true
 
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@RayBo no in the vid was right after i spent 2 hours real life in vault 111 , i did that 1 time before just to test for myself the vid was to show that the problem still presist and can be somewhat fixed , and i do know about the santuary navmesh issue , but i have tested ( clean game , only sim , 2 hours real life time wait period ) at vault 88 too and it's still a problem .
To clarify what i'm saying is i'm aware of the sanctuary nacmesh issue , i only use sanctuary as a test bed with clean game to find the issue , after that i test at vault 88 and the pathing bug is still present with all fix suggestion apply ( wait in real time , not use any mod , and have FO4Edit clean my game )
 
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@RayBo no in the vid was right after i spent 2 hours real life in vault 111 , i did that 1 time before just to test for myself the vid was to show that the problem still presist and can be somewhat fixed , and i do know about the santuary navmesh issue , but i have tested ( clean game , only sim , 2 hours real life time wait period ) at vault 88 too and it's still a problem .
To clarify what i'm saying is i'm aware of the sanctuary nacmesh issue , i only use sanctuary as a test bed with clean game to find the issue , after that i test at vault 88 and the pathing bug is still present with all fix suggestion apply ( wait in real time , not use any mod , and have FO4Edit clean my game )

What do you mean clean in xEdit? You mean the autoclean function or do you mean clean the save with ReSaver?
 
Since I have too much time on my hands, here is my attempt at showing that this is an issue with compacted city plans. I recorded 2 videos, both at Oberland Station using the same city plan, except that 1 was done with v1.0.13a of the mod that has compacted plans and the other is done with v1.0.12 that doesn't.

In the compacted version, my companion can't get into the settlement at all and goes all the way around it to get to the other side.
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In the city plan that is not compacted, my companion follows me right through the middle of the settlement on the railroad tracks without any issue.
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These are on v4.2.2a of SS since I have the problem unpacking the city planner's desk in v.4.2.3 that I posted the other day.
 
Since I have too much time on my hands, here is my attempt at showing that this is an issue with compacted city plans. I recorded 2 videos, both at Oberland Station using the same city plan, except that 1 was done with v1.0.13a of the mod that has compacted plans and the other is done with v1.0.12 that doesn't.

In the compacted version, my companion can't get into the settlement at all and goes all the way around it to get to the other side.
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In the city plan that is not compacted, my companion follows me right through the middle of the settlement on the railroad tracks without any issue.
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These are on v4.2.2a of SS since I have the problem unpacking the city planner's desk in v.4.2.3 that I posted the other day.

Understood and we do appreciate the great videos and assessment. They were very helpful.

Folks think it is something like an object is "flagged as Obstacles."

Honestly, they will not be able to figure this out without significant additional resources. "people and time" anytime soon.

Suggest trying the complex CP, the uncompacted, or just a different one.
 
I'm glad the videos were helpful. This bug didn't bother me too much, and I can work around it now anyway. More, I spent the time because the software engineer in me wanted to know for sure what was happening. If I can help more, let me know.
 
I'm glad the videos were helpful. This bug didn't bother me too much, and I can work around it now anyway. More, I spent the time because the software engineer in me wanted to know for sure what was happening. If I can help more, let me know.

Thank you for understanding! :friends

There are a lot of priorities. This is a good thread where folks are contributing helpful insights.

This is a community forum of very smart folks, and I am not a fan of BS. As you said, folks will have to find ways to work around this that work for them for now.
 
i mean the autoclean function

Autoclean just does the mod . It doesnt clean your save. You have to use Resaver. But if you are doing that to clean unattached scripts, the game is close to toast anyway.

It is a good tool to see if your active scripts are out of control. Just as a benchmar . I run 400+ mods and have about 4 to 6 active and 1 to 2 unattached.

My current game had 19 when I was outside vault111 but it was for bird critters which I believe it is for all the spying crows flying around.

John
 
wait i'm i being an idiot this whole time ? so just don't use the default city plan and get the optional file of this mod ?

You're not being an idiot. There are reasons to use the compacted plans - mostly better performance. For the time being, if you have a PC that can handle the not-compacted plans performance-wise, and you want better pathing of settlers and companions, you can use plans from the "RotC - Complex City Plans" Optional Files download from the main Sim Settlements page or v1.0.12 version of the City Plan Pack.

There are probably other user-created, not-compacted city plans on the Nexus, but I'm not going to track them all down.
 
I abandoned that save and changed my load order around, so give me some time to re-create the scenario to answer you definitively. I don't believe that they were.
 
Short answer: No, the tracks don't highlight.

Long answer: Here's another video for you. Please forgive me for not doing any editing out of dead time to make it shorter. I put timestamps in the description to help you jump forward to what you care about.

I'm again at Oberland Station, but this time I'm using the default RotC city plan. In the video, I'm running SS v4.2.5, but the settlement was built and leveled up running SS v4.1.7 where the city plans are not compacted. You can see as I look around in workshop mode that everything highlights separately. You can also observe that NPCs are walking around the settlement doing their thing. I then refresh the city plan to switch it from v4.1.7 to v4.2.5. Looking in workshop mode shows that some items highlight in clumps proving that the refresh did switch to the compacted version of the city plan. While still in the settlement after the refresh, the settlers seem fine and are still doing their thing. I fast travel away and then sleep for 3 days to give the cell a chance to reset. When I fast travel back, Preston will no longer follow me into the settlement and my settlers are all clumped together and my attempts to give them "Go" commands either does nothing or causes them to teleport somewhere out of view.
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As someone that's a mod user and not a mod author, and has never before encountered the term SCOL, my guess as to what's happening based on what I'm seeing is that when the compacted city plan groups far apart objects like this:
20200413145858_1.jpg

and this:
20200413145915_1.jpg

then the entire area inside the bounding box of all the combined geometries becomes impassable to NPCs.
 
SCOL = Static Collection.
When all those pieces are being added to the collection any with navmesh are ignored (which is why no floor pieces are within any SCOL), so pathing should not be interfered with.
Ai pathing is so unreliable it's hard to replicate issues like this. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, npc's will group up like in your video and then after several days just start moving around normally again.
I'm not saying this is what's happening with your save, just it's hard to chase down stuff like this.
 
For what it's worth, this is easy for me to reliably reproduce. Steps:
  • Build compacted city plan
  • Leave for a period of time (I don't know the min required time, but 3 in-game days works)
  • Return to settlement
  • Settlers and companion can't reach most of the settlement
My understanding of navmeshes is minimal. From what you said, floors have them, but walls don't. But NPC pathing takes walls into account in some way because NPCs don't walk through them (ordinarily). So collision detection must be at work with them in some way. If collision detection happens on the bounding box of the SCOL rather than the individual geometries contained in it, then that would still match what I'm seeing when I saw the entire area contained in their bounding box becomes impassable. Why the player character isn't affected, I have no idea.

Or, I'm completely wrong about why it's happening. But empirically, I know it's from compacted plans.

Anyway, I'm not impacted by the issue anymore because I wrote a FO4Edit script to pull all the city plan records out of SS 4.1.7 into an override mod. So now I can run current versions of SS and still get the 4.1.7, not-compacted RotC city plans. The only thing I've given up so far is access to a city plan for Spectacle Island, which I can live with.

As I said before, if there's any testing I can do to help, let me know. I'm happy to assist.
 
@jugato Literally created an account just to thank you for such a detailed response. I just got back into Fallout and recently picked up Sim Settlements and this issue was driving me bonkers. Hopefully with the insight you provided I can have some success with my 3rd attempt on getting the settlers to move around and make the city feel "live."
 
@jugato With this issue can you talk (not just command) to companions when they won't path through settlements?
Also, do you have Crime and Punishment or Advanced needs installed?
I'm getting a similar problem to to yours currently.
 
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