Lots of awesome Galmap plotting info
even more great info on plotting
Serraphix told me he got his bumper sticker already. Now I'm anxious xD
That's understandable considering the street value of these things.So far it's been pretty good luck on the deliveries. I've only had one person so far that seems to have not received their sticker so I sent out a replacement. We'll see if #2 makes it out there.
Someone also asked further up about the Bumper Sticker outage. Pointing the finger at Senator Hairpiece aside, I just plain ran out. I can get more printed, but doing them one at a time costs about $5 a pop and as much as I like spreading happiness through the world via the magic of Buckyball Bumper Stickers, it comes out my own pocket. If I order another 50 the rate drops in a huge way, but it's a question of interest... There's gotta be people finishing the Run to make it worthwhile. A few more finishers have trickled in (reminds me, gotta update the Big Board) but I'm holding off on making that order until a more substantial number finish. I just don't wanna be stuck with 47 BBRA* bumper stickers at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, back to the clock conundrum. First, thanks to all the monkeys who tried to bang out a solution! Raiko made some educated guesses on what my intentions are and was pretty spot on. There were a couple interesting solutions as well. The reason I've been doing the clock-screenshots was because it was a method that required no additional software, hardware upgrades or even any special effort on the pilots other than hitting the F10 key. Quick, easy and painless, it pretty much allows anyone to race and is still completely viable as long as the race checkpoints are stations or arrival points.
Mandating Recordings: Probably the simplest solution from my standpoint, but as Alec rightly pointed out, this will crush older PC's and also requires additional software and hardware.
Use of an overlay: Gets rid of the overhead of the recording software and allows timestamped screenshots anywhere in the galaxy. The downsides are that it still requires external software and additional setup, plus the added complication of adding the local timezone of the user. It's nice for everyones' clocks to show GMT, though in practical terms this isn't a big deal since everybody races separately from one another.)
Timestamps from screenshots: Probably the most reliable method, but this requires that users actually upload the graphic files to a shared drive instead of posting them or sending them as attachments, and would require extra work to download/unzip/etc. Whine whine whine, I know, but if you have to do it for 50 people it adds up.
I'm still pondering, and in the mean time hoping that in the next two weeks or so FD puts a nav marker on the sysmap for current position or puts a permanent dash clock somewhere in the cockpit.
I have been trying to get a feel for why the 'knock off a bit' theory and 'round your range down to a whole number' worked. Looking at this I had noticed the consistency of the last 3 jumps being shorter nearer the core (and I think it tends to be 4 the further out you are) so have been playing with this in spreadsheets to find 'my' magic numbers.
This also ties in neatly with Esvandiary's algorithm and your observations of the number changing with distance. I am expecting the 90% in my "last three jumps at 90% of max range" will slowly reduce as I get further out from Sag A* and at some point star density will mean 4 rather than 3 jumps. Whilst we don't need to worry about plot times that far from the core, it can still have an impact on optimising number of jumps.
I did think that rounding down to nearest 0.5 would fail if you are very close to it already, so your results make sense to me. I think it only gives an approximation of the 3 jump calculation, and I only tested that it worked within that, rather than with actual plots.
TSee, what worked for me was the round-down bit as mentioned here, but only to 11 jumps and no more, and it makes me wonder about something else Esvandiary said. The source of Esvandiary's algorithm said that the plotter basically used a quick "get it in the area ASAP" algorithm, then used a "get to this star system ASAP" for the last few, with 3-5 jumps estimated. When I was trying to plot, beyond 11 jumps tended to stall, which makes me wonder... does it work in groups of 5, then try to get to the target star system? In other words, is the optimal number of jumps some multiple of 5, plus one? Just some idea to experiment with...
Thanks for this, interesting observations - I will definitely have a play with your multiples idea. I am currently getting 27 jumps but maybe a multiple plus the last 3 or 4?
This also made me go back and validate my last '3 jumps' assumption - on my Type 6 run, with a 29.something range, I was getting the last 4 jumps as shorter but I wasn't using magic numbers, I was plotting as close to 1000 as I could. The additional short jump could be because it had an 'awkward' distance at the end. Looks like I need to pay more attention to the jump distances on each segment to see how many shorter jumps I am getting.
changing my ship to a Diamondback Explorer. The Cobra wasn't working out well. :/
CMDR Uberfish
Ship: Diamondback Explorer
Name: Metallic Aardvark II
Starting my run about now, if anyone wants to see what desert bus in space looks like, steam broadcast on ID SF_Uberfish![]()
Finally murdered enough pirates to kit Zarathustra to perfection, as well as licked enough Federation boots for that Sol permit.
She launches on her maiden voyage tomorrow.
No cargo space though, so I'll have to store my drinks in the overhead compartment. At least (hopefully) this run should be faster than my first.
Just finished! 14 hours, 6 minutes and 44 seconds! PC crash and galmap errors really didn't help but, I did it!!!!
Gonna sleep before I make the official submission. so sleepy and sad no more stickers, oh well
Here's a selfie before I sleep...
View attachment 47032
Just finished! 14 hours, 6 minutes and 44 seconds! PC crash and galmap errors really didn't help but, I did it!!!!
Gonna sleep before I make the official submission. so sleepy and sad no more stickers, oh well
Here's a selfie before I sleep...
View attachment 47032