[2.0.14] Biters drop aggro against coastlines

[Lome]

I am a new player. I noticed when I build something like a wall or a chest against a diagonal coastline, it's possible to simply press myself against the object and all pursuing biters will simply forget I exist. Is this a known bug? I would think that it is but am posting anyway. I wouldn't call it game-breaking, but in the right situation there is some bigtime cheese potential here. It's kind of lame that a giant horde of monsters will literally instantly give up and eventually return to their base at the sight of a single wooden box lol. If I am dumb enough to aggro a bunch of bugs that I'm not prepared to fight, I want to DIE for it... well unless there's a big forest nearby I guess.

[Loewchen]

Post a save and screenshot please, see 3638.

[Lome]

Ok, sorry about that and no problem. I couldn't find a log file so I guess that is one problem, but other than that no problem. I attached a couple screenshots and what I'm pretty sure is the save file for that level.

All of the boxes in the screenshot can be used as safespots to de-aggro the biters, and plenty of the unoccupied coastline could be used for safespots as well. Once they're all de-aggroed, you can kind of run around a little bit within a certain radius of the safespot and they won't re-aggro unless you walk outside that radius. Sometimes they kind of randomly re-aggro even when I'm in a safe spot although they can't do anything while I'm there. Occasionally one of them may start attacking the box if it manages to stay up against the box long enough before dropping aggro, but this is rare. I think this exploit should work with other structures too; also, it works with any biome type, not just sand. Oh and apparently landfills can be used as very quick and easy safespots too; that's why there are a couple landfills in the screenshots/save. *Opinion Warning* I can understand a remote island being safe since biters can't swim, but plopping down a landfill that is only accessible to the player feels cheap.

More Opinions/YAPping:
Yes I know it's a game about building a factory and you're meant to subjugate the bugs with macro not micro and this is very situational micro at that, but in certain situations where there is a stronger focus on survival such as in death worlds, I don't want to have to rely on cheap cheese metas to more easily survive/destroy spawners. Yeah there are worms to protect the spawners, but dealing with them is way easier when you have an invisibility cloak against the biters.

[StrangePan]

I've verified my suspicions. The biters are losing agro when the player is standing on shorelines because the pathfinder is technically failing to find a valid path because shorelines are for all intents and purposes counted as "water", even though the player can technically traverse partway into it. Biters are also unable to cross tiny patches of water (as in the landfill case) because they use a slightly less accurate, yet faster method of movement than the player that does not take tile transitions into account.

[kpreid]

Maybe they could search for a nearby reachable spot and try to attack anyway, if they would otherwise give up? I don't know what the exact melee range of biters is, but spitters can certainly still attack in this situation.

[StrangePan]

After further review, I don't think we'll be fixing this one, at least not for a while. This behavior is a consequence of how pathfinding, biter navigation, unit AI, and player movement is designed, so a lot of stuff would have to be carefully changed to fix this. So I'll move this to minor issues for now.