Scaffold stalls building process

Support Other Reports
1

Title:
Scaffold stalls building process
Summary:
Unreachable scaffold stalls the building process
Steps to reproduce:

  1. It happens off and on when building a single clay house and the 2-bed clay house so far.

Expected Results:
Hearthling should build a ladder to reach new level of scaffolding
Actual Results:
No ladder is built
Hearthlings idle/do other tasks
Building left unfinished, until you manually build a ladder which seems to fix it.
Notes:
image of “uncreachable” scaffold
Attachments:

Versions and Mods:
Alpha 13
System Information:
Windows 10 Pro - 64-bit

2

Just checking (sorry for the seemingly obvious question), you do have wood available in a stockpile/crate, right?

3

Yep, I do. If I manually build a ladder there, hearthlings resume building right away.

4

OK, good to know. I will ping @Albert to review this after the holiday. If you encounter this again, can you save the game and upload it prior to manually building the ladder?

1 Like
5

Here is the save. Hopefully I did this right.

2 Likes
6

i believe its simllar to muilt story bug which mentioned earlier

7

Maybe. Though, they recently retooled the AI and the scaffolding logic to help improve buildings placed in tight spaces. These new tweaks are more likely the cause.

FWIW: You can see an example of scaffolding and ladders which have been cut off from access during construction in one of my recent bug hunting streams. It actually occurs while I attempt to rescue a Hearthling which no long had a viable route to the village and its AI therefore went idle. The moment I placed ladders for her to use, other Hearthling builders started using them to tear down ladders that they had placed earlier in construction but were no longer able to reach.

Root cause on this feels to me like an ‘order of precedence’ AI issue. Namely: there needs to be some logic to determine reasoning behind why a building should be built in a given order, so that scaffolding and ladders are left in place until all prerequisite tasks have been completed. ‘Tunnel in, tunnel out’, if you will.

Example:

  1. This part of the proposed building is unreachable.
  2. Resolution: Build first ladder down, walk over, and then build ladder/scaffolding up cliff face to reach building location.
  3. Build the previously unreachable portions of the building.
  4. Tear down ladders/scaffolding.
  5. Pull first ladder.

What’s happening now: Each individual Hearthling seems to review all 5 of those steps individually, and periodically, to determine if they’re complete and/or viable. And when they do so, they do not appear to take the needs of other Hearthlings or other dependent tasks into account. This leads to stranded workers and stranded scaffolding/ladders.

“Hey, we built that part of the building. Cool. We don’t need the ladder on Step 5 anymore.” … Except yes we do, because Step 4 isn’t done yet, and hey, the other Hearthling that just finished Step 3 is still down here.

Instead, something like a dependency tree is required, like this:

Logic:

  1. This part of the proposed building is unreachable.
  2. Resolution: Build first ladder down
  3. Walk over, and then build ladder/scaffolding up cliff face to reach building location.
  4. Build the previously unreachable portions of the building.
  5. Tear down ladders/scaffolding.
  6. Pull first ladder.

Dependency Tree:

  • Step 6 is complete when Step 5 is complete.
  • Step 5 is complete when:
    ** Steps 4 is complete,
    ** The equipment is Step 3 is no longer needed, and
    ** There are no Hearthlings which currently have an AI Path that requires this ladder.
  • Step 3 is complete when there are no more build tasks assigned to this area of scaffolding/ladders.

This logic tree then invalidates Steps 5 & 6 as viable work options for a Hearthling until all dependent conditions are met. Bob’s your uncle, no more premature build equipment removals or stranded builders.

1 Like