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[Shrugger]

Let the fleet movement autopilot avoid storms, coronas and other damaging terrain. Needn't be excessively smart pathfinding, just don't ever fly through damaging terrain unless it's on manual.

[mendonca]

Would just like to point out that this is not practical when considering 'sustained burn' and probably not reasonable to expect the AI to make any smart decisions about this generally i.e. re-route to avoid storm? Even if there is an aggressor in the way? Turn the other way and risk getting caught in a more intensive storm deeper in the nebula? Avoid all nebulae? Stop and wait? With only 4 days supply left?

I may be wrong but I can't imagine a better overall solution than just going straight and leaving any decisions to the player.

[Shrugger]

All valid points.

[TJJ]

Needn't be excessively smart pathfinding, just don't ever fly through damaging terrain unless it's on manual.

Never? What about when your destination is surrounded by, or inside damaging terrain?
Or if the fleet itself is already inside damaging terrain?
Or the alternative route is much longer, or impossibly small to navigate at speed?
What about multiple overlapping terrains?
How do we account for terrain that disappears/appears/moves?

The rule bounds for SS's terrain and movement mechanics are so lax, that even a basic avoidance algorithm would be complex and computationally expensive.

I believe this is intentional; reliably avoiding hazards can be challenging even for the player, making it somewhat engaging gameplay. (Especially when combined with enemy fleet avoidance)

[xenoargh]

All this could be solved, with a proper motion-planning system; I don't think that the Fleet AI does any AI* at this point to optimize routes, though; it just does simple look-forward checks.  AI* with different costs per "tile" is probably too expensive, though, given the frequency of storm changes; storms would have to be longer-lasting events and happen more rarely to keep this from becoming computationally excessive.

[vagrant]

honestly I would take multi-waypoint / destination pathfinding through the map over any kind of intelligent pathfinding. I like planning the route I take especially to distant analysis missions.

[Algro]

Something to point out. The main purpose for terrain is to make travelling a bit more challanging/interesting. If what you wish is some sort of easy come easy go situation where we only have to wait, what's the point of having terrain then, other than for the looks?

[zaimoni]

Let the fleet movement autopilot avoid storms, coronas and other damaging terrain. Needn't be excessively smart pathfinding, just don't ever fly through damaging terrain unless it's on manual.

That's already excessively smart: Dijkstra search and its son, A* pathfinding.

In this case I'm pretty sure Java is "fast enough".  However, it likely would be too slow (look at the total market re-implementation for .9 ... that kind of too slow).

[Zavek]

since we get solarshielding from the industry how about surge protection? removes a bit of the debuff from nebula storms?