It seems to be a mixed bag I have seen both an NPC and a PC on auto pathing avoid a field and then run through another.
Additionally both NPC and PC seem to have problems with multiple tiered ladder based pathing. When going from a far point to a far point I have repeatedly gotten my party stuck because they refused to go down the ladders. When manually telling them to go down to the next level they will do so but then go back up to group up with the controlled character. Some ladders I had to split the entire party and hold their hand the entire way down.
NPCs seem to have the same issue I bugged the Dweller encounter where the 2 bottom level NPCs would just run around confused and the 2 on the T2 platform couldnt get los and didnt climb the ladder and just stood there.