What causes a GOAP planner finding no plan?

The goal's required world-state keys never match any action's effect keys exactly, so the A* search over action space cannot connect the start state to the goal and returns empty.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix a GOAP Planner Finding No Plan for a Reachable Goal

Quick answer: Audit that effect keys and values are spelled and typed identically to the preconditions that consume them, and confirm at least one action's effects satisfy each goal key.

Your GOAP agent just idles because the planner returns an empty plan, yet you clearly have actions that should chain to the goal. Almost always a precondition key does not match the effect that is supposed to produce it. Here is how to track it down.

How to fix it

1. Diff goal keys against effects

List every key the goal requires and confirm some action lists that exact key in its effects with a satisfying value. A typo like hasWeapon vs has_weapon silently makes the goal unreachable.

2. Check value types and comparisons

Ensure the planner compares like types. A goal wanting ammo >= 1 will never be met by an effect that sets ammo = true; keep numeric and boolean state consistent.

3. Trace the open/closed sets

Log nodes the A* search expands. If it never expands the action you expect, that action's preconditions are unmet from the start state, revealing the missing intermediate action.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

The errors you never hear about are the ones quietly costing you players. Visibility turns them into a worklist.