Avoid... Most definitely avoid! By the time you're about 1500Ly out towards Sadge, you either want to be at least ~50Ly above the plane, or some amount below it (haven't done it personally so I dunno how far you need to go
)
I'd recommend a bit more than 50. I was about 50 above and the route planner still meandered enough with my 34.95 LY jump range that I stumbled into the fringes of Aucoks.
EDIT: I have come to the conclusion that when using "fastest routes", the route planner is using a really bad algorithm. I think it is using "hop count" as its only metric, sort of like the IP routing protocol RIP.
I would think a hybrid hop count/distance metric would be better, possibly using something like Djikstra's algorithm (Shortest Path First), as used in the routing protocol OSPF (Open Shortest Path First).
Which is to say... if two routes have equal hop count, it should still use the one that covers less distance between the two.
I have this incessant urge to try to manually plot the fastest route to Sagittarius A*. Because I am convinced it is possible to build a faster route than anything the route planner would give you. But it would take weeks, and thankfully that is enough deterrent to keep me from actually trying it. So far.
Now, if I could somehow offload all the galactic topology data into some kind of database, it would be a fantastic challenge to write a program to do optimized long-distance route calculations! And that sounds like something I would enjoy.
