Feature: Pause system, API to pause and resume agents without re-evaluation

[Temasdin]

Currently, it’s unclear how to easily implement pausing and resuming the performance of AI agents without re-evaluation.

Sometimes, we need to pause the AI. For instance, a simple pause menu might require globally pausing the entire system. Alternatively, we might want to pause specific agents, which would be a local agent pause rather than a system-wide one. Upon resuming the game or reactivating an AI agent, we would like them to continue pursuing their previously paused goals and the last action without re-evaluating, as re-evaluation could lead to loss of state or data.

• Setting Time.timeScale = 0. However, this approach is suitable mainly for pause menus and even then, not always
• Disabling the GoapBehaviour along with its IGoapController does not actually pause the ongoing AI logic that is currently being executed
• Caching agent goals via agent.CurrentPlan.Goal followed by agent.ClearGoal() stops the AI, and later, calling agent.RequestGoal(cachedGoal) resumes the logic without re-evaluation. However, if the agent is toggled too quickly, attempting to read its goal risks throwing a null exception when accessing agent.CurrentPlan
• Calling agent.StopAction() causes a loss of state and triggers re-evaluation

It would be great to have a clear API that allows pausing an agent without losing its state or data, ensuring that when resumed, it avoids re-evaluation, and the previously paused action continues seamlessly (provided that the conditions are still valid).