Fishing Ships go to other side of the map for no apparent reason

[Mercy9545]

GAME INFORMATION

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• GAME BUILD #: 101.102.8319.0
• GAME PLATFORM: Steam
• OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10

ISSUE EXPERIENCED

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In one game my Fishing Ships would frequently, after depleting one fish, ignore all the visible fish close by and sail to a fish on the other side of the map.
Specific description of events:

• At around 12:22, my Fishing Ships deplete a fish. Another one is close by, yet they sail to one far away to the left.
• At around 13:05, I manually task them to a different fish.
• At around 16:48, my Fishing Ships deplete this fish and start sailing to the north, ignoring the fish closer by.
• At around 17:43, I manually task them to a different fish again.
• At around 21:10, they go to the north again…
• At around 21:50, I retask them again…
  Now they have normal behaviour for a while.
• At around 30:05, they deplete a fish and instead of sailing to the fish to the east, which is closer by, they go far to the west, under enemy Castle fire. I forget to retask one Fishing Ship, which you can later see stubbornly fishing on the other side of the map.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

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• Less than 25% of the time / matches I play (RARELY)

REPRODUCTION STEPS

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I honestly don’t know what caused the issue, but I have a hunch that the fish they ignored were scouted by my allies, and not by me. It could therefore be that the Fishing Ships simply couldn’t ‘see’ what my allies had scouted. On the other hand, I also know that if you haven’t scouted any fish, but your allies have, that your fishing ships will go to the closest fish scouted by your allies. (This behaviour can also cause them to sail to the other side of the map, but I don’t consider that to be a bug.) Thus, it cannot be the case that Fishing Ships are always blind to what your allies have scouted, so I am in the dark here.

EXPECTED RESULT

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After Fishing Ships deplete a fish, they are supposed to task themselves to another fish that is close by.

IMAGE

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GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)

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• MP Replay v101.102.8319.0 #(73855) @2023.01.28 101341 (1).aoe2record (3.7 MB)

[Mercy9545]

I have found a way to consistently reproduce this bug.

Reproduction steps

1. Download the attached scenario.
   fishing_test.aoe2scenario (9.7 KB)
2. Start a Standard game in this scenario with the following settings:

• You and the AI are on the same team
• You and the AI start in the Dark Age
• You and the AI are Dravidians
• Shared Exploration is on

3. After the scenario starts, right click your Fishing Ships on the Salmon next to your Dock. Do not click anything else.

Now watch how your Fishing Ships first deplete the close salmon, then sail to the other side of the map to deplete the salmon that is visible there, and then sit idle.

Apparently, Fishing Ships ignore fish that has been scouted by one of your allies.

Two notes:

1. You will receive the same outcome if you put Shared Exploration off and start in the Castle Age, so that you have Cartography. This shows that this is not a difference between Shared Exploration and Cartography.
2. You can see that I tried to set up a similar test with Lumberjacks on the right of the map. They have a much shorter search radius than Fishing Ships, though. This results in them not going to any tree after depleting the closest one. I therefore could not test if Villagers experience the same problem as Fishing Ships.

[XelNaga8080]

i encounter this bug yesterday in a nomad team rank game too.

[Mahazona]

Maybe the fishing ships are doing a smuggling operation?

[Felizon89]

Thanks for this detailed report! We’re now tracking this issue