Staff v/ Guests

[SensualEthiopianPolice]

It just hit me: I've never seen staff get lost. They always manage to head to the ride. Maybe this is worth keeping in mind if you try and fix the broken guest AI.

[YoloSweggLord]

This is because the ride calls the closest mechanic. Assuming your park is well-staffed, the likelihood of the mechanic being close enough to avoid getting lost is extremely high. I actually have, in the past, seen mechanics get stuck in the process of responding to a breakdown before; they just don't display a "lost" status. Guests, on the other hand, don't pick rides that are the closest to them.

Edited May 6, 2016 by YoloSweggLord

[X7123M3-256]

I watched a mechanic walk up to the exit of the ride, turn around, walk up to the entrance, turn around, then leave and walk halfway across the park, still trying to find the ride. I'd have thought it something to do with zero clearanced paths (they have caused me endless trouble as they refuse to connect properly) - but peeps have no problem finding that ride. I still don't know what the problem is.

Also, the logic for setting staff patrol areas seems broken in the latest develop build - the squares appear partially gray and partially blue (and tiles assigned to other staff members do not show up at all, instead of showing up in gray like they normally do). I might make an issue about that.

[Spacek]

4 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

I watched a mechanic walk up to the exit of the ride, turn around, walk up to the entrance, turn around, then leave and walk halfway across the park, still trying to find the ride. I'd have thought it something to do with zero clearanced paths (they have caused me endless trouble as they refuse to connect properly) - but peeps have no problem finding that ride. I still don't know what the problem is.

Also, the logic for setting staff patrol areas seems broken in the latest develop build - the squares appear partially gray and partially blue (and tiles assigned to other staff members do not show up at all, instead of showing up in gray like they normally do). I might make an issue about that.

Aren't peeps going to the entrance and the mechanic going to the exit? There's a weird thing where if I mouse-over a hut with the path tool that the path will disconnect from the hut after I move the mouse off.

[X7123M3-256]

Yes, I should probably check that the exit is connected properly

[ziscor]

I recently built a ride in Group Park 3 that's the perfect example of this. The mechanic was trying to go through the entrance path when he was needed to get to the exit. Then, if you'd leave him at the exit manually, once he fixed the ride he was occasionally having trouble getting to the entrance (in cases of restraint doors being broken).

Basically, if Mechanics can get this much clueless while finding a ride that was specifically ordered for them to go to, it's pointless to salvage the code for Staff AI and use it for Guest AI. Instead of that we're gonna need entirely new code that is superior to the old AI. 

Aren't major changes going to be done once we have moved on to our own file format? I think this qualifies as being under that.

[X7123M3-256]

I'm not sure the AI actually needs a new file format to be improved - it's even worse than vanilla at the moment.

[Broxzier]

One reason staff doesn't get lost is because the nearest mechanic will be called when a ride breaks down, as YSL has pointed out. It's unlikely they will not find their way within the time it takes for the warning to pop up. Nevertheless I have seen it many times that mechanics DO get lost, even when there is a clear path to either the entrance or exit.

[X7123M3-256]

19 hours ago, Spacek said:

Aren't peeps going to the entrance and the mechanic going to the exit? There's a weird thing where if I mouse-over a hut with the path tool that the path will disconnect from the hut after I move the mouse off.

You were correct - the exit was disconnected but peeps will always leave the exit whether connected or not, so it appeared to function fine until the mechanic tried to enter through the exit. The worst thing is, I can't seem to fix it without disconnecting the entrance - zero clearance and paths do not mix well.

[Spacek]

Is there a wall in between the path and the hut? If there isn't, just click on the path again.

[X7123M3-256]

Clidking on the path again will connect the exit but it disconnects the entrance Zero clearanced paths are a pain to work with - just moving the cursor over a path can disconnect it.

[jensj12]

Staff AI is just as bad as guest AI. I've done some testing here: https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/issues/3423

The devs know the AI is bad, so we just have to wait until someone takes the time (expect it to be at least a full month of work) to understand and improve it.