The "Cultural starbase" and "Fusion Plant" require a new game.  The other two are retroactive. 

While ships now do a better job of using hyperlanes, the pathfinding has gone too far in the other direction.  Ships now prefer to take a path that uses the most tiles with hyperlanes instead of the most efficient path.

Here is a screenshot showing this.

I was trying to move the ship to the planet to the upper-left.  The path chosen by the pathfinding can be seen.  It does not look very efficient.  I decided to count and label the tiles and movement costs to see how bad it was.

This picture shows the result.

For the path chosen by the pathfinding:
1 large red dot = 1 movement point used = 1 move
1 small red dot = ½ movement point used = ½ move

For the best path:
1 yellow square = 1 movement point used = 1 move


I saved the game at this point.  The save is available here.  Maybe a Dev can look at to see what is going on when the path finding chose the longer path.

I had checked and found that the Galciv3GloabalDefs.xml file for Retribution had a change.  The <PathFindingPartialDistanceModifier> had been changed from 5.0 to 10.0.  Since 5.0 was used when pathfinding ignored tiles with hyperlanes before the hot-fix and 10.0 is used when pathfinding is excessively preferring tiles with hyperlanes with this hotfix, I decided to try a mod using a value of 6.0 in hopes that it would reduce the preference for hyperlane tiles without going too close to ignoring the hyperlanes like happened before the hot-fix.  It didn't work and may have made things worse.

I have a screenshot and save if they might be useful.

I plan to try different values for <PathFindingPartialDistanceModifier> to see if I can get better results.

I think I have found what is causing the problem with hyperlanes.  This is using this hot fix without the mod that changed <PathFindingPartialDistanceModifier>.  I have a ship at one end of a hyperlane.  The pathfinding thinks the ship can travel 20 hyperlane tiles in one move.  This is early in the game when I only have +100% movement in the hyperlanes, which means any ship can only move 2 hyperlane tiles in one move.  The pathfinding is wrong by a factor of 10 when it considers the hyperlanes.  If I am using the mod that changes <PathFindingPartialDistanceModifier>, it gives the same result no matter what value I give <PathFindingPartialDistanceModifier>.

This is easily verified.
1.  Build a long hyperlane.
2.  Put a ship on one end of it.
3.  Hold down the CTRL key and move the cursor along the hyperlane to see how many moves the pathfinding thinks it will take to get there.
4.  You will see a change when you move from the 19th tile to the 20th.
5.  Do the same thing on a path that is not along the hyperlane and see that this time the pathfinding is correct.

Edit 6 hours later

After thinking about this for a while, I have come the conclusion that the pathfinding is not the problem.  It determines the best path based on the information it is given.  For some reason it is given the information that a tile in a hyperlane for a player with +100% movement only uses 0.05 movement point, so a ship can move 20 tiles in the hyperlane and only use one movement point.  With this information the pathfinder has to choose the path it chooses because it seems to be the best path.  The first screenshot I posted in Reply #4 shows the "correct" path based on this bad information.  That path would let the ship reach the planet in 5 turns if the bad information about the movement point cost was correct.  The next screenshot shows that the actual best path would take 6 turns.  The pathfinder had to choose the path it did because it was given bad information.

The problem is that for some reason the pathfinder is being told the wrong information.  This is what needs to be found and corrected.

Hi,

I've also been finding the path finding rather wonky as the pathfinder tries to use hyperlanes even when quite inappropriate.

Incidentally, if you're stupid or rather inobservant enough to build a hyperlane too near a black hole as I've just been then pieces may get  immobilised  when you try to move them past the blockage. Obviously I can fiddle around with this but a mild pain.

Would it be possible to have a pathfinder function on the map so that before settling your hypergate you could see where the path goes to the intended connector?  It's  a bit hard to see by eye over large distances though I suppose you could walk along the map with your mouse. 

Anyway, if that were possible without extreme faffing then it would be v nice.

Cheers,

Jon

Hi once more,

I've just tried an earlier save in the same game just a few moves before and it's working fine. It's possible that the Hyperlane Streaming tech is causing the problem and indeed when I just added it (via an epiphany rather than faffing with the console) the pieces started freezing so I think that must be the cause. 

Cheers,

Jon

When I want to move a ship over long distances, I will do the first move manually and only then set the target. Then I can see whether the path is fine or not, without the ship actually moving.*

One reason is that if an obstacle appears on the path (such as an AI ship), the path needs to be adjusted to the situation. Personally I'd prefer if instead the ship would follow the laid out path up to the point where the obstacle comes into sensor range, then stop, and wait for manual orders.

* P.S.:

Actually I would prefer if ships wouldn't start moving upon setting a target, then I could check the layout of the path before doing the move. More importantly, and that is my main reason for editing my post, I wouldn't accidentally moving a ship in the wrong direction by clicking somewhere while having accidentally selected thew wrong ship (this happens to me rather often, especially when playing late into the night...)

I am seeing all of the puzzling pathfinding issues noted above plus I've noticed that citizen transports frequently become lost of the transfer planet is too far away from the homeworld.  This results in having to transfer them to a closer planet and then change them to another planet before they reach it.  That process is repeated until they get to the target planet.  It's a pain and didn't used to occur in my experience.  The result of all of these pathfinding issues is a significant increase in the need to micromanage ship paths.

We just updated the opt-in with adjustment to the path weights for hyperlanes.  Let us know how it feels.

Not, I was playing last night, and my auto moves go way out of their way cause of lanes. The black holes used to not cause game frezes when their not in your auto paths.

If you were playing last night, you won't have the latest changes.   You may need to restart steam to get it to update.  

Haven't had time to try out yet today, but very gratified that it seems to work.  I've been annoyed by the pathfinding lately, so definitely interested in trying a new game this weekend now.

I've noticed the pathfinding improvements as well. Much better now. Nice going!