Transit tubes pathfinding

Hi @riwenna,

It looks to me like things are working as designed. Dupes always try to find the fastest path, but there are some hidden considerations in this case.

For one thing, tubes are optimized (and intended) mainly for long distance travel. There is an added cost to standing and waiting at the entrance, so for very short tubes the dupes may simply decide that walking is faster, even if it's through water.

Secondly each entrance has a limited amount of charge, and will allow as many dupes as it can currently transport to "wait in line", up to 4 dupes can try to use a fully charged entrance. If it's only half charged, only 2 will attempt to use it.  Any dupe that would exceed the current charge will take another path if one is available.

As for the navigation rendering, that's a quirk of how our pathfinding interacts with tubes. The navigation line shows where the dupe is currently allowed to path to, and until they actually try to travel through a tube and reserve a spot at the entrance, they aren't allowed to access the tube. Once a dupe has started pathfinding through a tube, the navigation line should draw through it.

Great base by the way  

So, making the distance from tube enterance to tube enterance 1 tile longer in my second example makes them opt to use the tube since it makes the distance just about long enough?

If I may ask, does the fastest path calculation take into account: a) transit tube distance (i.e. would the "path weight" through the tube be smaller if I used a transit tube crossing to make it shorter), and b) the time they take to shake their feet while passing through water? As shaking themselves dry after passing through water is a fairly new animation taking a while to play out time, it actually makes it longer (in time) for them to go through water then through a transit tube I think (haven't timed it).

As for the navigation rendering, it still doesn't look quite correct: please look at my second example. The rendering shows a path into the right tube enterance (while not through, it clearly seems to indicate they can enter it), but not into the left tube enterance. They are still taking the tube gladly both ways.

56 minutes ago, riwenna said:

So, making the distance from tube enterance to tube enterance 1 tile longer in my second example makes them opt to use the tube since it makes the distance just about long enough?

Yep.

57 minutes ago, riwenna said:

If I may ask, does the fastest path calculation take into account: a) transit tube distance (i.e. would the "path weight" through the tube be smaller if I used a transit tube crossing to make it shorter), and b) the time they take to shake their feet while passing through water? As shaking themselves dry after passing through water is a fairly new animation taking a while to play out time, it actually makes it longer (in time) for them to go through water then through a transit tube I think (haven't timed it).

a) yes, tube distance is considered, a crossing instead of a bend might make it short enough

b) no, time spent reacting to being wet (or anything) is not considered during pathfinding

1 hour ago, riwenna said:

As for the navigation rendering, it still doesn't look quite correct: please look at my second example. The rendering shows a path into the right tube enterance (while not through, it clearly seems to indicate they can enter it), but not into the left tube enterance. They are still taking the tube gladly both ways.

Yes, that is the current limitation. The tube won't correctly display as a valid path unless they've already decided to take the tube. Basically this is a reflection of whether they currently have a spot in line at the entrance.

Ty for the info Not a bug then I guess, but since some of the emotes take quite a while, the shortest path even when runspeed is considered often isn't any more...

I guess displaying the correct paths is of less imporance as long as they find em, but still, since the dupe who's path I'm displaying in the second screenshot is not inside the vacuum fridge area, it's odd that he would've already decided to take the tube exit (but not the enterance to get there in the first place).