Summary:
This bug predates A18. I’ve seen it in at least A17, if not earlier. For a while, I couldn’t quite figure out how to describe it, let alone reproduce it, but I think I finally got it.
When AI paths are long enough AND hearthlings are busy enough at the time, hearthlings will confuse a container that the player has requested to be moved, with a container that’s currently in storage nearby. The hearthling will then place a different empty container where to-be-moved container should have gone. This will result in the to-be-moved container being placed into storage – EVEN IF that container is not empty.
Non-empty containers within other containers has been fixed at least once before, but it appears as though a version of that bug remains unsolved.
Steps to reproduce:
Load this save (2.7 MB). In it, you’ll find a stone chest that contains 21 stone chests. Inside one of those 21 chests is a chest full of wood.
Using the place item UI, place stone chests anywhere outside the walls, a few at a time, until the one containing wood has been placed.
Very deliberately, undeploy EMPTY chests a few at a time until all available hearthlings are actively in the process of hauling a chest.
Once everyone is actively hauling a chest, instruct your hearthlings to MOVE the chest containing wood to an open space right next to the town flag.
Observe a different hearthling eventually pull a spare chest out of inventory and plop it down where the wood chest was supposed to go. Once that happens, you’ll see that the wood chest is instead placed into storage.
Expected Results:
The wood chest should be placed where instructed, and all empty chests should end up back in storage.
Having this in one game, first time in this release. A20 r701 One game out of 6 or so.Not fixed by reloads. Currently the problem is with Fine Leather Bound Chests, haven’t seen it with the other containers. I assume that might be a not normally in use container, with multiples enough to cause this problem. Most games I use Stone Chests for long distance hauling, never had a problem. No idea if the fix was container specific or not so figured I’d detail that.
Only the move/new instead part is still in effect, the full chest isn’t going into storage, just remains where it was indefinitely, with the move icon dropped. Similar subject thread that was the only other I could find (might be a search words used problem, and there are more): Moving chest causes hearthlings to place new
Both of these are in support, which I am not eligible for (long ago started doing the inventory cap removal, because of how I gather my resources), so this is more of an informational update, not a support request. Only ‘mod’ I use is the remove cap change in user settings. Just in case it could matter though, 28 hearthlings, Inventory items 3133.
Not game breaking,because you can still get them to inch the container along, just more micro-management heavy. All from a desire to maximize the net worth of each item I was keeping in game.
Update: Seems confined to Fine Leather Bound Chests, possibly tangled with building code. Not just happening in long hauls. Chest sitting successfully finally outside the building, won’t get the move icon to go into the building at all, and instead a fresh empty chest is placed in the building.
Workaround is inching the chest to outside building. Then setting the filter to none, so that the contents gets restocked indoors.
