I’ve had 3 Patrons spawn in underwater when attempting to get to my tavern, the Sunset Tavern.
The first one spawned inside the foundation of my main home, which is in the water and adjacent to the tavern. Reasonable for that one to get ‘stuck’ underwater. But still unreasonable for the game to not check if there’s a player structure at that spawn-in point.
However, the other two spawned underwater, free of any obstacle, and stayed there.
It appears the spawn trigger only looks for ‘the ground’ to place a Patron…even if that ground is the ocean (?? it’s not salt water ??) floor.
I would suggest that if a Patron hasn’t reached their seat in X-seconds, the game despawns said Patron and starts the countdown to a new one spawning in; repeat until the targeted seat is filled.
It appears to use the same spawning method as Purges; each time the spot is randomized (but can still be the same location).
The one dude that spawned into the wall was spawned to the right when facing the Tavern Bar prop, as was the first ‘diver’. The second ‘diver’ was spawned on the left side.
I’m fine with it getting several dozen “erroneous spawns” in a row before getting one that actually works. …while coin isn’t an issue it’s annoying to have yet another swimmer or Poe fan.
And while they Patrons that are seated get swapped out. I don’t know if that trigger is put on hold “waiting” for those Patrons that get stuck somewhere.
It seems to me like the game is deliberately placing them somewhere where they can’t move
I have a tavern outside the main base, and most of the area around it is empty
This works more or less fine, but when the tavern was inside the base, the game absolutely loved putting them on rooftops
These random spawns just drive me crazy in games; it’s just as stupid as in Fallout 76, where whenever I build a new base, the fast-travel point is always placed in the worst possible spot
In both cases, the simplest solution would be to let the player manually set the point—it would just be another placeable that could only be placed within a certain (small) distance from the pub and on already occupied territory.
It’s better than the current RNG script, which doesn’t work very well, and it would also reduce the server load a little.