VisitedStars cache and ImportStars.txt

Caydran

Caydran
So, in conclusion, those interested should grab @Suremaker's tools, use them to regenerate your VisitedStarsCache.Dat file, make a copy of it and store it safely.

I put all @Suremaker's tools in the same directory as the VSC/ImportStars and backup the entire directory.

For the short term, it all works. FDev will be along shortly.
 

Caydran

Caydran
Esteban said:
Sorry, just couldn't help laughing. Thank you! :p
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Well, I doubt Frontier will have a problem with this since they officially announced it as a "Feature" here in 2016.

Then, without any official public announcement at all, a FDev named @QA-Jack quietly eluded to this "Feature" being disabled and declared an exploit in 2020.

So, If Frontier has a problem here, it is one of their own creation. They can publically announce a feature in 2016, but then in 2020, cannot publically announce a disablement of that same feature, now calling it an exploit and expect us not to complain about it not working?

Typical Frontier. They develop and advertise a feature and then they quietly disable it without notice.
 
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Lhorndra

Lhorndra
Suremaker said:
As I do not have an original importstars.txt, I could not check if it works, but I implemented the feature based on the assumption that the file has a list of the system names, separated by the new line.
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Exactly. There's a system name, followed by CR, LF, and then the next system name. I've attached the beginning of my file here, exported via https://www.edsm.net/en/settings/export
 

Attachments

  • ImportStars.txt
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Lhorndra

Lhorndra
Suremaker said:
I have just pushed a new version that uses a simpler EDSM endpoint. It should load the system Ids faster and have no rate limiting I mentioned above.

New release link: https://github.com/Suremaker/edsm_scanner/releases/tag/1.0.5
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I, too, can confirm that this version works. And it's relatively fast.
Thank you SO MUCH for this! Now I have a lot more blue dots in my galaxy map. :giggle:

One thought, though: wouldn't it be even easier if we could choose the format of ImportStars.txt directly on the EDSM website? After all, that's probably the most logical point for all this. (I know that you have nothing to do with the website, @Suremaker , I'm just saying.)
 

Neilski

Neilski
Just found this thread.
Am wondering if the apparent 3876 limit is simply a reflection of the number of systems visited by the person testing it, e.g. @Suremaker themselves? The game client knows that number, and could (and perhaps should) reject any VSC that has an excessive length. This would also of course neatly remove most of the grounds for concern about exploits...
 

Maolagin

M
Neilski said:
Just found this thread.
Am wondering if the apparent 3876 limit is simply a reflection of the number of systems visited by the person testing it, e.g. @Suremaker themselves? The game client knows that number, and could (and perhaps should) reject any VSC that has an excessive length. This would also of course neatly remove most of the grounds for concern about exploits...
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That was my first thought too when I saw that number, but on further reflection I actually doubt that the game client does know how many systems you've visited. It's doing a "have I visited this system" query to the backend server when you try to pull up a system map. This might be cached somewhere but the server is obviously the source of truth, since you can reinstall the game and still view the system map for systems you visited earlier. There's no reason to think the servers support a "tell me all the systems I know about" query, since otherwise you'd expect the game would just use that if the visited cache file needs rebuilding.

So while 3867 feels awfully arbitrary, I can see the client having some hard cap as a crude countermeasure to users loading in millions of systems.
 

Eahlstan

E
Definitely not frozen, I haven't docked in months and my number increases every time I play.

Went from 110370 (last docking) to 120761 (today).
Quite embarrassing compared to the times I played more, but it is definitely not stuck.

That said it's also worth mentioning that Orvidius tested the changed VSC a long time ago and concluded that the limit is indeed bound to the number of systems the commander has visited.
 

Zieman

Zieman
Zieman said:
Looks like it doesn't update until you log in again. Exit to main menu seems to be enough.
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Seems to act weirder than that.
If I'm not completely mistaken, mapping a planet just jumped my counter up a couple of jumps, and I didn't map anything in the previous system, but did in the one before that...

EDIT: nah, looks like the update happens on a timer. Once every 10 minutes (just like commodity market refresh at stations) :)
 
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CMDR Evolution

CMDR Evolution
Hello all,

Sorry in advance for my ignorance. I've just found this thread as my PC died a few weeks ago and I've had to rebuild my drive C.

Can anyone advise if I'm trying the wrong method and how I'm meant to use the merger tool please?

  • I went to github and looked at the instructions for: VisitedStarCacheMerger
  • Initially, I tried running the merger exe from the downloads folder - a CMD window appears for a fraction of a second then vanishes, with no changes made to VisitedStarsCache.dat in my appdata folder.
  • So, then I tried putting the VisitedStarsCache.dat and ImportStars.txt files into the downloads folder (with the file VisitedStarCacheMerger.exe), tried the same, same result.
  • Likewise for appdata.
  • Although It doesn't seem to show how we run the commands, I then guessed we use Windows Powershell?
  • I navigated to the folder in Powershell and tried this command from the guide:
VisitedStarCacheMerger.exe VisitedStarsCache.dat "ImportStars.txt"

  • But this is the error I'm getting:
kbttQcG.png


Can anyone help please?

Many thanks,
Evo
 
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varonica

varonica
CMDR Evolution said:
Hello all,

Sorry in advance for my ignorance. I've just found this thread as my PC died a few weeks ago and I've had to rebuild my drive C.

Can anyone advise if I'm trying the wrong method and how I'm meant to use the merger tool please?

  • I went to github and looked at the instructions for: VisitedStarCacheMerger
  • Initially, I tried running the merger exe from the downloads folder - a CMD window appears for a fraction of a second then vanishes, with no changes made to VisitedStarsCache.dat in my appdata folder.
  • So, then I tried putting the VisitedStarsCache.dat and ImportStars.txt files into the downloads folder (with the file VisitedStarCacheMerger.exe), tried the same, same result.
  • Likewise for appdata.
  • Although It doesn't seem to show how we run the commands, I then guessed we use Windows Powershell?
  • I navigated to the folder in Powershell and tried this command from the guide:
VisitedStarCacheMerger.exe VisitedStarsCache.dat "ImportStars.txt"

  • But this is the error I'm getting:
kbttQcG.png


Can anyone help please?

Many thanks,
Evo
Click to expand...

I can, that method was killed ages ago since it allowed players to import visited stars that other players had visited but not themselves so it gave players a way of cheating the system by making it easier to identify system that have not previously been visited, you cannot concatenate separate visited stars lists anymore. Basically, you aren't supposed to merge lists, that's a nono!
 

CMDR Evolution

CMDR Evolution
varonica said:
I can, that method was killed ages ago since it allowed players to import visited stars that other players had visited but not themselves so it gave players a way of cheating the system by making it easier to identify system that have not previously been visited, you cannot concatenate separate visited stars lists anymore. Basically, you aren't supposed to merge lists, that's a nono!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. Where you said it was killed off ages ago, it seems that this method was working as recently as April this year (on this thread):

Lhorndra said:
I, too, can confirm that this version works. And it's relatively fast.
Thank you SO MUCH for this! Now I have a lot more blue dots in my galaxy map. :giggle:

One thought, though: wouldn't it be even easier if we could choose the format of ImportStars.txt directly on the EDSM website? After all, that's probably the most logical point for all this. (I know that you have nothing to do with the website, @Suremaker , I'm just saying.)
Click to expand...
 

Evoflash

Evoflash
CMDR Evolution said:
Thanks for your reply. Where you said it was killed off ages ago, it seems that this method was working as recently as April this year (on this thread):
Click to expand...

The method that @Suremaker gave us worked for me however I'm not command line literate so I do recall fumbling to get it to work. and if I recall I think I needed to install Python to do so (again I'm absolutely ignorant of Python). I may be confused. Good luck.
 

CMDR Evolution

CMDR Evolution
Evoflash said:
The method that @Suremaker gave us worked for me however I'm not command line literate so I do recall fumbling to get it to work. and if I recall I think I needed to install Python to do so (again I'm absolutely ignorant of Python). I may be confused. Good luck.
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Thanks Evo :). Great name BTW. Kind regards, Evo lol. I found another comment from a different thread:

Lhorndra said:
Hi everybody,
If you have an account at EDSM, there's hope. These short instructions should work for Windows 10.
  1. Download the EDSM scanner tools by @Suremaker here: https://github.com/Suremaker/edsm_scanner/releases
  2. Unzip the binaries into some folder.
  3. Export your EDSM flight log via https://www.edsm.net/en/settings/export and save the ImportStars.txt into the same folder as above.
  4. Find the file VisitedStarsCache.dat. It's usually in C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\[user_id]\. Copy it into the same folder as above.
  5. MAKE ANOTHER BACKUP of the original VisitedStarsCache.dat, just to be sure.
  6. Start the Windows command prompt (cmd.exe), change into the folder with the scanner tools from above.
  7. Execute VisitedStarCacheMerger.exe VisitedStarsCache.dat ImportStars.txt. This merges the systems from ImportStars.txt into VisitedStarsCache.dat.
  8. After it finished, copy VisitedStarsCache.dat back into C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\[user_id]\ and overwrite the old version there.
Caveat: only the 3876 last systems from your EDSM flight log will be merged into the cache file. Here's the original thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/visitedstars-cache-and-importstars-txt.596540/post-9799598

Oh, and the scanner tools are really great for all sorts of stuff, like finding unscanned planets etc.
Click to expand...

Then tried using CMD (not powershell) and it's worked :).

Fly safe, o7
 
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