system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do games like Roller Coaster Tycoon manage/pathfind for so many entities?

Games like RCT, starcraft, etc. seem to cram so many objects into the scene, and they are all pathing somewhere and updating with values. I know some basics of pathfinding algorithms, but applying them to EVERY object that is looking to go somewhere seems so taxing. How can games like these manage to cram so much without any noticeable effects?

Obviously RCT doesn't have much data to actually process, being fairly simple and dated.

But is it just efficient algorithms alone? Or are most games not updating every entity all the time to cleverly space out the processing?
gpt
One thing you can do is pre-compute the paths and store that data somewhere. That way, when you want to know the quickest path from p0 to p1, you are just looking up the answer (which is O(1)) instead of computing it when needed.