Desync errors with ground units

[jamesbigmac]

I've been trying to figure out why my game is desyncing, but it's really puzzling to me. I can move my air units around as much as I want, have them attack each other, and perform any other actions, but as soon as one of my ground units move I get a sync error, then a sync error occurs every 401 frames after that. I'm not sure what is going on, but I'm going to post the infolog.txt to see if anyone else can identify what the problem is with it.

The weird thing is, it only seems to happen on the map IsisDelta_v02. Every other map stays synced up even though they are all downloaded from the host just like regular (so the map versions are the same).

Any ideas?

[jamesbigmac]

Got it fixed.
Deleted some of the zip files in the paths folder on both machines that I was using and there were no longer desyncs.

Can someone explain to me why the desyncs happen? When the path files are different, what does that do to the game?

[Kloot]

If the path-cache files are different across two machines, then (depending on the exact difference and commands given to units) the pathfinder code can/will generate different paths for the same unit(s) on each machine which causes the simulation states to diverge when those paths start being followed --> desync.

[Beherith]

This might not be 100 percent correct, but its something like this. The pathing is calculated based on heightmap only, if the features or typemap changes, then the old path calc is used, which results in desync.

Edit: kloot beat me to it with the correct answer.

[jamesbigmac]

Thanks guys.