Yes this entire problem could be circumvented by the physics code being essentially a less-than-or-equal-to check

but that is not the world of a 20+ year old code base

it is the distance you add to the base distance to handle the fact that the physics engine updates around once a second

there's nothing inherently wrong with having the buffer, but the AI code from 10 years ago misunderstood what the offset value was for

it was not in fact the range to your destination when you can free up the rest of the behavior

today's bug from a decade ago was caused by the absolutely insane way checking distance is done, using the distance you want to check then an offset because the system has an incredibly slow update cycle

exactly

this was literally the metaphor I used for describing it to people, but I forgot about the Shark Who Tasted The Internet

possibly

people here were asking me if I thought it was absurd to be paying like $25 for tacos and I just laughed because we at least have the excuse of being separated from Mexico by 50% of the Atlantic Ocean