AI/Spawning getting lost on Operative Defense (Hunhow map, maybe others)

[BrazilianJoe]

I am not sure this bug is specific to this map, or of it's restricted to defenses. 

I did yesterday sortie, where it was an Operative Defense on Hunhow's Defense map. It may be because of some map feature. But maybe it just happened by chance. 

The Operative entered one of the tunnels and eventually got stuck to a wall. 

Enemy AI then started to spawn less/de-aggroed, idling at the spawn points until they saw a player. This caused the level to drag on for a very long time. We eventually finished it, but it was very tedious. A survival with the same problem would eventually fail due to lack of life support. 

My programmer mind starts conjecturing possible  bug origins:

1) Friendly AI positioning could think it's off-limits the playable area/positioning. Frienly AI should have a watchdog codeto check if it's stuck. Maybe it can use the level geometry and to a 1m short-range teleport orthogonal to the closest surface to try to get unstuck? Or just respawn close to a player ot a a friendly AI spawn point, as if it was the beginning of the mission. 

2) It is possible that when the operator got stuck, it started to be tracked as unreachable, causing the AI to spawn deaggroed, and the game state never recovered from that. 

3) It is also possible that the Operative never got stuck in geometry. Due to a code bug or host/client bug, giving/taking away the weapon could have accidentaly triggered the stop/follow friendly AI logic, which should only be used on companions. This could have wrongly re-flagged the Operative from "Defense Target" to "Companion", degenerating the mission. 

4) Taking away/giving again secondary weapons to  the Operative eventually unstuck him, but the game state was still degenerated - AI still spawned deaggroed. 

5) AI should have a stronger spawn logic, aggroing towards the players if the Operative/Defense Target can't be reached. 

 

Edited February 25, 2018 by BrazilianJoe