Tmpe: ParkingAI - Ditching of cars is still happening

[VictorPhilipp]

Although the parking AI is greatly improved, some cims still abandon their cars and teleport back home.
I've build a few towns connected with national highways, but no public transportation. Only one town has work and shops, So from the other towns they have to go by car. After a while I find parked cars with the owners back home, a town away which is only connected with a national highway so walking is impossible.

https://github.com/VictorPhilipp/Cities-Skylines-Traffic-Manager-President-Edition/issues/146

[VictorPhilipp]

It's a shame there aren't any tow trucks - imagine seeing a car being towed (like a trailer) back to someone's house?! :)

[VictorPhilipp]

There are multiple reasons why cims teleport back home. If vehicle despawn is enabled and they are on a bus which despawns, they teleport back home. If the building is demolished where they are located att they may also teleport.

Which is causing the teleportation in your case? (I know it's not easy to find an answer to that, I have spent weeks debugging the Parking AI and waiting for such events to occur)

[VictorPhilipp]

Well considering the state of this new town (no public transportation yet), demolishing of the building seems the most logical reason for them to teleport back. Nevertheless if they teleport back, so should their car i think?

[VictorPhilipp]

You'd need to detect every possible scenario where a cim teleports back. Would be better to wait until cim tries to get to car and can't, at which point it could teleport back (or, cough, tow truck!!).

What happens if there's no available parking when the vehicle tries to teleport back?

_But tow trucks tho... See if an asset creator will make a tow truck depot and a tow truck vehicle, then drive tow truck to where car is, attach car as its trailer, and send both to where the cim is waiting. It would be so cool. Probably not ever going to happen, but it would be super cool if it did (and also open door to car breakdowns feature later on?)_

[VictorPhilipp]

In this area something fishy is going on, I've provide plenty of parking spaces, a lot parking going on but also a lot of ppl searching for spaces. The traffic info view is enabled, thus the red buildings indicate not sufficient parking space.
https://i.snag.gy/sRe4ca.jpg
Im using the dafault parameters for the global configuration file.
And a top down view: (The red lines are pedestrian paths)
https://i.snag.gy/xT4aI1.jpg
EDIT:
While watching specific cars, they often drive to their freshly determined parking spot, when arriving there they decide to search for a new spot (much further away), perhaps because their spot is already taken? (this is quite a busy area). So they end up driving past all available parking spots, while going towards their new designated parking spot on a different parking lot for instance.

[VictorPhilipp]

Could it be an issue similar to #140 ?

[VictorPhilipp]

Not sure, there are plenty f possible U-turns available here.

Still it's weird, I've build similar setups elsewhere in the city and it is working there, however smaller scale and road parking available. :-)

But in this particular district, I've wanted "clean" roads, and all the parking on the parking lots.

[VictorPhilipp]

More to the original issue, Now i've added a first and only train line between my cities. I've found the case of Elisa who went drinking with friends:
https://snag.gy/yRLAiO.jpg and either teleported back home or took the train (blue line)

EDIT
So i followed here for a while using the "Favorite cims mod"it kills even more FPS but okay (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=426460372) And i Stayed focused on her car, a few times the status changed from "at home" to "confused" but after a few minutes it changed back to "at home". So perhaps she tried to use it?
However it was weekend (Rush hour mod) so I don't think she had to work, but perhaps she wanted to go somewhere.
Finally, Sunday afternoon she died. causing the car to despawn as well.

[VictorPhilipp]

So I followed some more Cims. This behaviour seems to occur in the following situations:
Cim goes to shopping --> Car is best option to go there --> cim wants to go back --> Public transport is a better option now --> car ditched. Sometimes when they go back shopping in the area they might go on public transport to the shops and take the car back home.
This does not happen very often (yet), please bare in mind that my public transport in my city is not really decent. I really like this much improved parking AI compared to previous version. Hoping you can get it perfected.

I hope this helps :-)

[VictorPhilipp]

When a cim is in a car, would it be worth cutting the last segment from the route so they essentially seek parking space prior to reaching their destination?

Finally, Sunday afternoon she died.

That's depressing.

[VictorPhilipp]

I will check if I can reproduce the issue. Elisa should definitely not have used the train to get back home. But maybe she drank too much? :)

[VictorPhilipp]

Related to #171?

[VictorPhilipp]

https://github.com/dymanoid/RealTime/issues/72

Another case, might be helpful for solving this issue.

[VictorPhilipp]

Dymanoid mentioned that in recent update the virtual cims will no longer teleport so won't ditch their cars.

From what I can see at a cursory glance, there is far less car ditching happening but needs proper testing to be sure.

In any case, it would seem that at least part of the issue is external to the scope of TM:PE as it relates to the AIs that control cim behaviour (eg. when/how to go to work, whether to visualise or virtual, etc).

[VictorPhilipp]

Unfortunately, it seems that the game teleports citizens using various AI classes. So teleporting is not just a TM:PE's or Real Time's or Rush Hour's or whatever problem. It would be interesting to know how much teleporting code did Colossal Order implement in general and how much of it do we override by our mods.

[VictorPhilipp]

Hmmm, if the teleporting is outside of TMPE's control. Perhaps the following makes sense: If a Cim is despawned --> despawn the parked car and respawn it near the new cims location.

[Sipke82]

This is indeed still hapening.
Perhaps its an idea to do some kind of check every now and then, and if a parked car has a cim at home at a greater distance as defined by: MaxParkedCarDistanceToHome", then the car should be despawned?

Because now slowly the parking lots are getting filled with "dumped" cars... and eventually it will lead to cims looking for parking spots but there arent any, causing gridlocks...