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[Dame de la Licorne]

Hiya,

Eons ago in the 2D days, caravans wouldn't bring wagons until the fort had a road (typically dirt at the beginning, at least in my forts).  Now, caravans can magically zoom across anything smoother than a boulder more quickly than their accompanying pack animals (which is exactly opposite what you would expect).  So I'd like to see the road requirement return, with a warning message from at least the first caravan (typically dwarves) similar to the one that existed in 2D.

The other major trader-associated issue (not a bug, but noticeable) is the FPS drop whenever traders are on the map, presumably due to their path-finding.  I'd like to suggest a dual-purpose for the roads to address that issue as well.  Once a road is built, it becomes a permanent, pre-determined path, so that the game only needs to calculate distances away from the road.  Caravans will be forced to use the road, resulting in 0 path-finding lag from them, since their path was pre-determined and only gets re-calculated if roads are changed/added/removed.  This would also help with some of the pathfinding in dwarf mode, since roads could be used to designate high-traffic permanent paths within the fort so the dwarves don't have to recalculate their paths as often.  (E.g. calculate a path to the nearest "road-merge" for item & dwarf, and then use the pre-calculated path on the road between the two merge points.)

- Dame de la Licorne

[GavJ]

Wagons are quite capable of moving over non-roads. See: oregon trail (the actual one, as well as the game I guess). It's not like they had a paved superhighway going from Missouri to Oregon.

But yes they should definitely be slower than pack animals. Hopefully that is just a simple parameter change (I thought he said he fixed that recently, though?)

Also, I suspect that the FPS drop is from the merchants milling around as individual creatures (which it would look weird if you got rid of) and all the additional items, not so much the wagon pathing.

[bluephoenix]

What if I want to use smooth block floors instead of "roads"? Would they count even though they are technically not the same as the "roads" one can construct?

[Dame de la Licorne]

bluephoenix,

I don't think smoothed block floors should generated the same automatically-saved paths, given that we can put them anywhere.  If a player were to floor over an entire fortress (or even just the soil/cavern layers), that would generate a LOT of "paths" that the game would still have to sort through and would cause the same amount of pathing lag as now.

Maybe an addition could be "signposts" that would use the same system as roads, but that players could place at convenient locations or intersections.

-Dame de la Licorne

[GavJ]

would cause the same amount of pathing lag as now.

i.e. almost zero. Once every couple of seasons, like 5 guys have to path for a day or two... so what? You haven't established that the problem trying to be solved here actually IS a problem.

[King Mir]

I oppose this for a few reasons:

1) While it might make some sense for caravans to prefer traveling by road, it's doesn't make sense for that road to only start a couple hundred feet from your fortress. If there has to be a road, it'd have to go all the way to the nearby towns, and there isn't a way to do that.
2) If caravan path-finding is a problem, the solution should be one that can be adapted to work with multi-tile creatures, not to further special-case caravans.
3) There are enough early game challenges without adding a requirement to build roads the first year. Especially if that road extends out of your embark zone.
4) Caravan path-finding doesn't actually seem like a problem in my experience.

[TacoSundae84]

It would be nice if roads were used if you made them, but I don't think they should be required. The FPS drop from caravan pathfinding is incredibly noticeable, especially in heavily forested areas. The FPS drop I experienced in a recent fort that was in a heavily forested area usually brought me down from about 40fps to 10 until they all got to the depot. My current fort only has a few scattered trees, and I usually still drop by about 10 to 15 fps until the hit the depot - better but still annoying. So a 3 wide paved road from depot to edge of map always being used by merchants if it's available would be really nice for those of us on low-end machines.

[Dirst]

It would be nice if roads were used if you made them, but I don't think they should be required. The FPS drop from caravan pathfinding is incredibly noticeable, especially in heavily forested areas. The FPS drop I experienced in a recent fort that was in a heavily forested area usually brought me down from about 40fps to 10 until they all got to the depot. My current fort only has a few scattered trees, and I usually still drop by about 10 to 15 fps until the hit the depot - better but still annoying. So a 3 wide paved road from depot to edge of map always being used by merchants if it's available would be really nice for those of us on low-end machines.

Wouldn't setting the road tiles for high traffic draw in the pathing algorithm like a magnet?  Once on the road, pathing should get simple and any remaining FPS loss is due to tracking a wagon-load of items.

Of course, if your road leads off to the west, it's likely that the RNG gods will cause all caravans to enter from the north or south.

[Bumber]

Wouldn't setting the road tiles for high traffic draw in the pathing algorithm like a magnet?  Once on the road, pathing should get simple and any remaining FPS loss is due to tracking a wagon-load of items.

Non-player units would need to actually respect traffic settings for that to work.

[Dirst]

Wouldn't setting the road tiles for high traffic draw in the pathing algorithm like a magnet?  Once on the road, pathing should get simple and any remaining FPS loss is due to tracking a wagon-load of items.

Non-player units would need to actually respect traffic settings for that to work.

Okay, new suggestion...