Seeking Tricky Places for Companion Navigation

[aqualectrix]

Hi folks,



I'm trying to do an empirical evaluation of various companion follow/warp algorithms. I'm looking for particular places -- outdoors, indoors, caves, underwater, in the air, etc. where you've had an annoying time getting companions to follow you. These can be places in Bethesda's Morrowind or in a mod (though I'd appreciate a link if it's a mod).



Where do your companions get stuck, get hurt, or get in your way? I'd love to hear your most troublesome spots.

[Sniffles]

Do you mean pathing screw ups? Without intending to bad mouth an otherwise excellent mod, the add on package and quest for Skyrim, Falskarr, has several poorly done or not done at all pathing issues. Falskarr was a quick and dirty bang-it-together mod effort by a single individual in a very limited period of time and finding all the pathing issues can be a huge undertaking by an entire team of play testers.

Bethseda is fully aware there will always be pathing issues and even included a robust ResetAI in the Fallout4 console commands which disconnects a follower allowing it to restart and rebuild it's pathing.

FO4 Console:

ResetAI – Resets an NPC's AI. Example use case: An NPC is endlessly trying to walk through a wall, or similar non-traversable obstacle, and the commands ForcePathFailure and/or ForceRepath have revealed that it is not currently pathing. ResetAI will cause it to "forget" what it has "learned", which should stop its current behavior, and then begin "learning" again. As is apparent, the NPC AI is very limited, and the new results may not better, or even different from, the previous results, but it should provide at least a temporary respite from the immersion-ruining spectacle of an NPC relentlessly attempting the same obviously impossible action.

My partner has a .bat file for follower problems. Just click on the NPC and type bat Zap. It uses the function calls in some obscure arcane weirdness.

[aqualectrix]

I think I'm mostly not talking about pathing issues. I'm definitely not talking about AI-goes-bad-ness.

At least in Morrowind, the Bethesda following AI is bad enough -- even with correctly constructed pathgrids -- that companion modders usually include a "warping" functionality in their companion scripts. This forces the companion to teleport -- warp -- directly to the PC (a simplification: there are more sophisticated placement methods in many companion scripts) when they get too far away from the PC.

I'm taking a look at these various warping placement methods and how well they work in practice. Rather than try to build an obstacle course without any particular knowledge of trouble spots or situations, I'm hoping folks with experience with Morrowind companions might have some ideas about what kind of situations are tricky ones.

[Sniffles]

I understand now! And yes, the very worst of the worse is Morrowind temporary companion escort quests. I wish you all the luck in the world here is fixing this.
I don't recall any one location. It always seems the same. Anywhere you get too far ahead they warp, or stop, or forget what they were doing and wander off or on occasion, completely vanish from the game.

I'd suggest you get @emma 's companion mod Constance to test things out. She warps and is the most reliable in trying to follow, but is is always the same; save your game every few steps. And entering a new cell is always fraught with peril. Especially wilderness to dungeon transitions where it appears warping is mandatory. And if your path happens to have a lot of enemies around, you are screwed. They mosey along slowly but in comes a cliff racer and they dash off at lightning speed to go fight then forget they were following you. Happens anywhere on the map.
Most recently I simply quit playing Morrowind for about a year when Constance vanished from the game until by accident someone here on the forum tossed out the magical code to get her to respawn. Parked her outside Omalen Ancestral Tomb and upon coming out of the dungeon she was simply gone forever. Console couldn't find her.

[jgf]

Many caverns are tricky for NPCs to follow because they will always try to make a straight path from their location to the player; a rock, stalagmite, crate, or even a sharp turn blocks them, so they stand there til the distance is great enough to trigger the warp function. Some places in the Vivec corridors are also prone to this. The rocky paths in the Ald-Ruhn/Red Mountain area often trap NPCs so the only way to retrieve them is to walk far enough away for them to warp to you (how often I've cursed Constance for getting stuck between boulders or trees and just standing there turning as I move around).