The Utterly Atrocious Vehicle Pathing

Death by terrible pathing has been going on for to long.

It is utterly atrocious on every level . Vehicles will outright disobey orders in favour of either staying put and not moving or rotating their rear to the enemy and have what seems to be some kind of drunken dance.

Mg's when told to deploy in a certain direction will sometimes ignore it and deploy the opposite way.

= BIGGGGG FRUSTRATIONS!

Are we playing different games?

unlike every other RTS the ground is clustered with obstacles. there are shot and sight blockers and a great physics engine. so its extremely hard to program pathing. which is a good thing.

if it s too hard for you, enjoy starcraft

Only real complaint I have is that we still have the phenomena of tanks randomly stopping and starting. But that's less of a pathing "design" issue and more of a bug that happens to effect pathing.

The command points not being path blockers would be nice, but it's not the end of the world as it is now.

The only tweak that I could see making a difference is changeling or removing the functionally of a vehicle pivioting prior to movement if one clicks close to the tank. I think this inconsistency is a major cause of vehicle issues.

Also if you haven't rebound u (reverse) to a more accessible key, you've already messed up.

unlike every other RTS the ground is clustered with obstacles. there are shot and sight blockers and a great physics engine. so its extremely hard to program pathing. which is a good thing.

At the very least they could remove the collision on territory/VP flags.

Most other pathing issues are annoying but workable as long as you're familiar with whatever causes it. I suppose fixing pathing is beyond the game's life cycle but it wouldn't hurt if someone made a tutorial about avoiding pathing issues.

Call me a fanboy but I did a comparison of the pathfinding of both CoH and CoH2 on Scheldt (CoH2's community version that was transferred over) and I experienced worse pathfinding in CoH2 than in CoH, particularly on the bridges.

In CoH the vehicles glitched into each other and somehow made it across on the other side, in CoH2 they started pushing each other and so forth until it was a completely standstill with no vehicle being able to move, except for the rear ones being able to reverse.

Pic for reference: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1224446370

Yeah COH1 had better pathfinding. COH2 was really rushed and has fundamental things about it's game engine be flawed like the pathfinding. You can tell Relic know's it's an issue because they've made multiple changes to improve pathfinding only to revert most of them because the engine is too wonky.

I just hope they don't get too cute creating a new game engine with COH3. COH2 already looks really good and good enough. Just optimize, optimize, optimize and fix things like pathfinding. We'll all pay the $60 for the new campaign.

Are we playing different games?

We must be because I have all of the same issues thekingsown10 has

Some days I have more lag than others and when I do my vehicles go where ever they want almost like I am watching someone else play the game. I attribute the different scenarios to:
- Network lag. Long lag means your vehicle is somewhere else when it gets your commands.
- Seems like you click behind a vehicle and it may back up. Click again and it tries to turn around. As InsaneHoshi said try to only click once or use the backup key. Clicking behind a vehicle is no guarantee it will back up.
- As A.Soldier refers to, COH2 has more elegant code for vehicles and units. They try to get out of each others way in a realistic manner, as opposed to glitching/phasing thru each other. Sometimes the moving may conflict with what you are trying to do.

I do not know what causes the MG pointing the wrong way bug. I see it the most on units that I send a fair distance to setup. My guess is something blocked them from getting to the desired setup position so they just drop where they are when they get "lost". Or perhaps the command did not make it from server to host in time (lag) so they just stop and drop.

Both of these things are game changing when they happen. Try to notice more of what is going on around the unit and where exactly did you click. Did your mouse double click? Did you have lag? Was another unit coming thru the area at the same time?

We must be because I have all of the same issues thekingsown10 has

Some days I have more lag than others and when I do my vehicles go where ever they want almost like I am watching someone else play the game. I attribute the different scenarios to:
- Network lag. Long lag means your vehicle is somewhere else when it gets your commands.
- Seems like you click behind a vehicle and it may back up. Click again and it tries to turn around. As InsaneHoshi said try to only click once or use the backup key. Clicking behind a vehicle is no guarantee it will back up.
- As A.Soldier refers to, COH2 has more elegant code for vehicles and units. They try to get out of each others way in a realistic manner, as opposed to glitching/phasing thru each other. Sometimes the moving may conflict with what you are trying to do.

I do not know what causes the MG pointing the wrong way bug. I see it the most on units that I send a fair distance to setup. My guess is something blocked them from getting to the desired setup position so they just drop where they are when they get "lost". Or perhaps the command did not make it from server to host in time (lag) so they just stop and drop.

Both of these things are game changing when they happen. Try to notice more of what is going on around the unit and where exactly did you click. Did your mouse double click? Did you have lag? Was another unit coming thru the area at the same time?

I really had to a make a thread about it which I have never thought to do before. I realised the reason why I start shouting at the screen and get very frustrated when playing CoH 2 is ALWAYS BECAUSE OF THE DAM RUBBISH PATHING!!!

"Ah great I've built a Brummbar that should help me deal with those rifle blobs, ok now just reverse up they are getting to close .. reverse!!! .. MY GOD REVERSE DAM IT PLEASE WERE GOING TO DIE!!!(unit decides to spin around and face rear to enemy and then stop) oh look an M36... "

just an example of playing CoH 2, some units will literally stick to nearly everything and anything and will get stuck .

As for the MG there was literally nothing I can remember that was blocking it as when giving the order again the MG team obliged to my orders but by then it was too late as it already swarmed by conscripts. Although relatively rare it has happened a good few times.

"Ah great I've built a Brummbar that should help me deal with those rifle blobs, ok now just reverse up they are getting to close .. reverse!!! .. MY GOD REVERSE DAM IT PLEASE WERE GOING TO DIE!!!(unit decides to spin around and face rear to enemy and then stop) oh look an M36..."

That one is clearly a problem with refusing to use reverse button.

Another thing that messes you up is when a tank targets some other unit than the one you want it to. So it just starts spinning towards that target. Pay attention to your VEHICLES ONLY button.

The only time I would call this a bug is when it targets units that are not in the game anymore, like the last guy running off the field when his team weapon is killed. You tank starts pointing away from the front lines and gets rekt shooting at a phantom unit

That one is clearly a problem with refusing to use reverse button.

I never use the reverse button. I click reverse in the menu. Then COH2 dicks me because the UI needs fixed. I click on the button but am moving fast so I may drift off the button as my mouse button comes up.

When coding there are two events you catch MOUSEDOWN and then MOUSEUP. For a program like MS WORD you want to use MOUSEUP to make sure the user is on the button when the mouse is released. For a game you want the MOUSEDOWN event because the user is moving at a frantic pace.

COH2 UI uses the MOUSEUP event, not the MOUSEDOWN event. Needs fixed for COH3.

I never use the reverse button. I click reverse in the menu. Then COH2 dicks me because the UI needs fixed. I click on the button but am moving fast so I may drift off the button as my mouse button comes up.

When coding there are two events you catch MOUSEDOWN and then MOUSEUP. For a program like MS WORD you want to use MOUSEUP to make sure the user is on the button when the mouse is released. For a game you want the MOUSEDOWN event because the user is moving at a frantic pace.

COH2 UI uses the MOUSEUP event, not the MOUSEDOWN event. Needs fixed for COH3.

I can understand your problems if you really do use UI in coh2. In all rts games in history, hotkeys were used for that though. In coh2, the UI is pretty much only needed as a clue on where to look for a hotkey in your grid. Other than that it is completely useless as the micro needed for the game makes trying to use two clicks for one command a terrible solution.

What I do myself is to make usage of reverse command even faster and smoother is to bound one of the additional buttons on my mouse to an autohotkey command that issues hotkey for reverse down-up and immidiately left mouse button down-up. That way I can reverse with just one click on my mouse and the order is given in the place where my cursor is.

I use the reverse button hotkey and it makes no difference vehicles still go braindead.

The only tweak that I could see making a difference is changeling

I know it's a typo thing, but that brought some nice memories from my White Wolf fanboy days. And I thought that maybe that's what's wrong with your tanks, too much Cold Iron.

thats why tanks without turret are mostly the victims with this issue...while other can shot on the enemy while dancing around...a stug or brumbar are helpless and will be lost by pathing.

i dont get why so often a tank can drive a path...but when you drive backwards the SAME way...it cant...it clitch around and dance like the driver is drunken and cant count to 3.

I really had to a make a thread about it which I have never thought to do before. I realised the reason why I start shouting at the screen and get very frustrated when playing CoH 2 is ALWAYS BECAUSE OF THE DAM RUBBISH PATHING!!!

"Ah great I've built a Brummbar that should help me deal with those rifle blobs, ok now just reverse up they are getting to close .. reverse!!! .. MY GOD REVERSE DAM IT PLEASE WERE GOING TO DIE!!!(unit decides to spin around and face rear to enemy and then stop) oh look an M36... "

just an example of playing CoH 2, some units will literally stick to nearly everything and anything and will get stuck .

As for the MG there was literally nothing I can remember that was blocking it as when giving the order again the MG team obliged to my orders but by then it was too late as it already swarmed by conscripts. Although relatively rare it has happened a good few times.

Isn't more a lag issue than pathing? I have solved 90% of pathing issue by carefully driving and positioning my tanks. Like never placing your tank back to a pathing blocker. ie: never put a tank back to a flag point.
Also the IA doesn't like when you spam a command, everything is about being smoothy as possible. I really think your main issue is the lag not the pathing, and yes use the hotkey at least for this one.

Mg's when told to deploy in a certain direction will sometimes ignore it and deploy the opposite way.

This is certainly a bug I have encountered.

As for vehicle pathing, well it is complicated.

I will take an educated guess and say the pathing is mostly handled by a 3rd party system called Havok, and I am not sure how much Relic can improve upon the pathing themselves.

COH2 is a complicated game, there is a lot of variables that vehicles must take into account. vCOH pathing might be better since the game has less going on, less props, less dynamic objects etc

This is certainly a bug I have encountered.

As for vehicle pathing, well it is complicated.

I will take an educated guess and say the pathing is mostly handled by a 3rd party system called Havok, and I am not sure how much Relic can improve upon the pathing themselves.

COH2 is a complicated game, there is a lot of variables that vehicles must take into account. vCOH pathing might be better since the game has less going on, less props, less dynamic objects etc

I couldn't think of a more fitting name for the pathing system in this game than Havok because that's exactly what it causes.

I played a match just recently when my vehicle got stuck by seemingly invisible walls and then a t34 ghosts right through it for easy rear shots.