General gathering problem (HW/SB only)

[GraySpectator]

Everyone who has at least one lvl51+ DoL skill knows the way gathering nodes are placed in HW/SB content: in most cases it’s a triangle, each corner of which is formed by group of closely placed nodes. Nodes of other “corners” are far enough: you won’t see their markers on the map. From what I see here in the grids topic, in the most cases this problem is solved via the simpliest way: a “star-like” grid with beacon in the center (covering all “corners”) and two-way lines to each corner from it. When I see someone grinding like this, it looks like a big red flag “HELLO I AM BOT” to me… just because normal players would never farm like this. Real players run in circles, to improve performance. Or, well, rather triangles than circles. We can make our boting toons run this way, but it is tricky…

The most logical way to implement it looks like the following to me. Let’s say each “corner” is a number – 1, 2 and 3. Between each pair of nodes we should place a beacon: say, A before 1, B before 2 and C before 3 (i.e. A on the direct way from 3 to 1, but closer to 1 rather than to 3 – we should make sure Miqo actually “sees” nodes #1 from the beacon A). All “major” ways (i.e. ways between all corners and all beacons) should be one-way, just lesser ways within nodes of the same corner can be two-way. The logic behind this is simple: Miqo starts in a corner (say, 1), digs everything out, then flies to beacon B, observes, “notices” nodes in the 2nd corner, digs and so on.

To be short, it does not work. Do you remember that A is the closest beacon to 1? So Miqo actually return to A to observe, rather than go to B. Oh, but there are one-ways? Nah, Miqo does not care 🙂 It just makes full circle to run from 1 to A, observes, finds nothing (1st corner is empty already), then follows to B – which is even worse than “star” design. Moreover, sometimes it manages to run from A to C somehow (instead of B), skipping the 2nd corner full of “alive” nodes. Anyway, it behaves really, REALLY weird. So far I’ve found just a single way to deal with it: to remove all beacons from the grid, and make gatherer use compass. This way is less suspicious from other players’ PoW: at least now character correctly runs in circles. Though, the most observant rivals might notice that toon is using compass (it has spell animation, you know), which is still a giveaway (no sane players would use compass after every “corner”, as they should remember at least an approximate location of the next “corner”).

So far I see just a single solution of this problem: Miqo should take one-way routes into consideration while calculating distance to the nearest beacon, rather than use linear distance or some other alike means. Maybe I miss a simplier solution, though.

[LyfoxParticipant]

Instead of starting from corner 1 start from beacon A. Miqo will remember that she already checked it and follow to B.

[GraySpectator]

Might work, gotta try it… which, still, does not fix the occasional problem of travelling from A right to C. Either way, I’d really like to hear the Miqo representative answer: how does Miqo choose the next beacon to travel to? Something tells me that it calculates linear distance, ignoring routes, let alone one-way settings… which is quite wrong tactic.

[MiqobotKeymaster]

Miqobot traverses beacons in increasing order of their waypoint numbers.
For example, if beacon A is #3, beacon B is #7, beacon C is #11, the order will always be: A -> B -> C

This way you are always in control how you want Miqobot to visit beacons, regardless of linear distances, navigation path distances, or unidirectional connections. If you wish to change the traversal order, all you have to do is delete beacons and recreate them in the preferred order.

The only time distance calculation takes place is the moment you click “Start”.
At this time Miqobot detects the closest beacon and rotates the sequence to make it the first to visit. But the order remains unchanged: B -> C -> A
Even if you start Miqobot at the position between A and B (with A beacon being closer at this moment), she will backtrack to A only once. But this issue is indeed very easy to avoid with the method Lyfox described.

In addition, if Miqobot visits a beacon implicitly while navigating from one gathering node to another, it still triggers a sequence rotation. This rule is designed to prevent occasional backtracking when the next gathering node is visible directly on minimap and the beacon is not used.

If you have any other ideas for AI improvement, please let us know.

[flintruckerParticipant]

Edit: On a second thought, Miqobot explained it pretty well.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by  flintrucker.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by  flintrucker.

[GraySpectator]

Miqobot wrote:

Miqobot traverses beacons in increasing order of their waypoint numbers.

Oh damn it %) I would never expect waypoint numbers have any meaning, hehe! Well, too bad you can’t change waypoint numbers, but I guess next time beacons will be the last waypoints I create…

Thanks bunch for the explanation!

[zgo63925Participant]

Gray wrote:

Well, too bad you can’t change waypoint numbers

Build your grid smartly, wait for QoL changes supporting it, edit the grid text file to edit numbers.

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