There is nothing more immersion breaking in this game right now than how badly AI units do pathing up ladders. A lot of the main gameplay is at least up to levels of rough adequacy. But sieges and the ladder mosh puts are pre-beta level broken. It's not reasonable to expect fans to put up with this problem indefinitely. I don't think there's anything left in the game as horribly broken as the siege AI.
Which is a real pity because if it could just get that polish it needed on sieges, this game would be in amazing condition. It would remove the single biggest remaining frustration players have with the game and may wind up solving the siege performance problems along the way (pathing calculations for a large battle are one of the things that eat up a lot of CPU cycles, bad pathing -> requiring more frequent recalculations -> extra load on the CPU)
That said -- it's time, TaleWorlds. If you can't fix the existing module start the process of ripping it out and replacing it. Some legacy spaghetti code is probably at the core of why it performs so badly in siege right now anyway when the pathing isn't all that bad in general.
The core of the problem in my mind is based in my observation of how things are NOT working, everyone is trying to get to the spot at the bottom of the ladder so they can climb up, but the spot is only just big enough to accomodate one person and collision is making it impossible for anyone to get to that precise point as a result.
The solution could be as simple as widening the snap-to-ladder aperture so that if soldiers are at the base of the ladder, at least one soldier sticks to the bottom of an empty ladder at any given time, and assigning a FIFO priority chain in terms of who goes next rather than making them all engage in a mass shoving match to get to the exact spot of the bottom of the ladder at the exact same time.
Alternatively, make them cluster 3 paces back from the ladder and only release one soldier from that position at a time, and that only when a certain group of pixels on the ladder is clear at the moment. We know this can be done because the method is used in other siege functions, such as assaulting the gate where a group of reserves hangs back while specific members of that group are assigned to points in front of the door.
Either way would be a simpler and more effective solution than the spastic mosh pit we have going on at the bottom of our ladders right now.
It would also be useful if there was a column formation in the game in general. If there was, it could be adapted to make the troops line up and take turns on the ladder.
Which is a real pity because if it could just get that polish it needed on sieges, this game would be in amazing condition. It would remove the single biggest remaining frustration players have with the game and may wind up solving the siege performance problems along the way (pathing calculations for a large battle are one of the things that eat up a lot of CPU cycles, bad pathing -> requiring more frequent recalculations -> extra load on the CPU)
That said -- it's time, TaleWorlds. If you can't fix the existing module start the process of ripping it out and replacing it. Some legacy spaghetti code is probably at the core of why it performs so badly in siege right now anyway when the pathing isn't all that bad in general.
The core of the problem in my mind is based in my observation of how things are NOT working, everyone is trying to get to the spot at the bottom of the ladder so they can climb up, but the spot is only just big enough to accomodate one person and collision is making it impossible for anyone to get to that precise point as a result.
The solution could be as simple as widening the snap-to-ladder aperture so that if soldiers are at the base of the ladder, at least one soldier sticks to the bottom of an empty ladder at any given time, and assigning a FIFO priority chain in terms of who goes next rather than making them all engage in a mass shoving match to get to the exact spot of the bottom of the ladder at the exact same time.
Alternatively, make them cluster 3 paces back from the ladder and only release one soldier from that position at a time, and that only when a certain group of pixels on the ladder is clear at the moment. We know this can be done because the method is used in other siege functions, such as assaulting the gate where a group of reserves hangs back while specific members of that group are assigned to points in front of the door.
Either way would be a simpler and more effective solution than the spastic mosh pit we have going on at the bottom of our ladders right now.
It would also be useful if there was a column formation in the game in general. If there was, it could be adapted to make the troops line up and take turns on the ladder.
Last edited: