Identifying Odyssey Surface Settlements - one for the devs?

[Quizengine]

Hello players, and especially hello developers.

It is widely believed that there are 28 Odyssey settlement layouts, 4 Tourist, 5 Agri, 5 Military, 5 Industrial, 5 Extraction and 4 High Tech.

Even though there are many thousands of actual settlements, each one is laid out as one of these 28.

is there any data / log / ID / journal etc etc that holds what type of settlement layout each settlement is

I would like to write an app that would identify which settlement layout you are approaching / landing at.

The investigation I have done so far is based on the 'MarketID' of the "ApproachSettlement" event in the game logs. I compared the MarketID of several settlements that I know to have the same layout, looking for patterns / similarities in their MarketIDs but so far have come up empty.

My eventual plan is to integrate this identify the layout into the Odyssey Map Guide (https://www.quizengine.co.uk/omg/), such that as you approach a settlement, OMG would autoshow the settlement type you are landing at.

 

[robbyp]

I know of nothing in the journal

 

[robbyp]

I know you posted this here, but it may have been better in the api section because the crowd will be different. You could also ask at our edcd discord

 

[Quizengine]

I know you posted this here, but it may have been better in the api section because the crowd will be different. You could also ask at our edcd discord

Thanks for the advice. I'll take that onboard.

 

[Jack Winter]

You might have to ask FDev to add it to the journal files (assuming they'd want to accommodate the idea).

 

[Quizengine]

You might have to ask FDev to add it to the journal files (assuming they'd want to accommodate the idea).

Maybe. But my thought is that the game must already have a mechanism to 'know' which settlement is which layout.

I was hoping this might be encoded into some data that the game already exposes directly, hence my examining the 'MarketID'.

Or it may be all stored server side and the game retrieves the data it needs 'silently' without exposing it in any log. If this is the case, maybe they would allow some server call (using the marketID as an index?) to expose the settlement type?

Here's hoping anyway.

 

[Jack Winter]

Best of luck!

 

[metatheurgist]

The size +++ is half the factor. There are some double ups in the size cats, that's when it's a toss up.

 

[Ydiss]

It'd be nice if this information was officially supported by the UI, both to help actually find certain types but also to give them actual names.

 

[Schattenmacher]

Maybe. But my thought is that the game must already have a mechanism to 'know' which settlement is which layout.

...

For what reason?

 

[Quizengine]

For what reason?

Because the game has to 'know' to know what type of settlement to place? I suppose they might be 'hard coded' to their locations but that seems a lot of extra effort (and no benefit that I can see) rather than just instancing them.

 

[Jack Winter]

I'd imagine that the game "knows", but not everything the game knows is put in the journal files..

 

[Quizengine]

I'd imagine that the game "knows", but not everything the game knows is put in the journal files..

True, but I still hold out hope there is a way to discover this, otherwise my goal of having OMG 'autoshow' the settlement isn't going to work. Which would be a shame, since the utility would be some much 'cleaner' if that could be realised.

The only other way I can think to do it is to 'brute force' it, by recording the MarketID of every settlement and tying the ID to the settlement layout. A massive undertaking with tens of thousands of Odyssey settlements.

Of course that data already exists in the game. Would Fdev be willing to share a database of all Odyssey settlements with me? I can ask I guess. I am asking I guess. Please help Fdev.

 

[robbyp]

Zero chance of that.

 

[Jack Winter]

I'd imagine that the best you can hope for is an entry in the journal files.

 

[thistle]

I doubt that information exists outside of the seed info they used when generating the galaxy with settlements.

Unless settlements can change, but afaik it's only ownership etc that changes.

 

[CMDR Rabbit]

True, but I still hold out hope there is a way to discover this, otherwise my goal of having OMG 'autoshow' the settlement isn't going to work. Which would be a shame, since the utility would be some much 'cleaner' if that could be realised.

The only other way I can think to do it is to 'brute force' it, by recording the MarketID of every settlement and tying the ID to the settlement layout. A massive undertaking with tens of thousands of Odyssey settlements.

Of course that data already exists in the game. Would Fdev be willing to share a database of all Odyssey settlements with me? I can ask I guess. I am asking I guess. Please help Fdev.

Maybe you can piggyback it on 2hot2messy and get the CMDRs delivering Hutton Mugs to record the type of settlement , along with the name or id, that they deliver to

 

[Quizengine]

Maybe you can piggyback it on 2hot2messy and get the CMDRs delivering Hutton Mugs to record the type of settlement , along with the name or id, that they deliver to

That's a sound idea. Thank you.

I don't know any Truckers myself, but I'll ask my squad mates if they do.

 

[Quizengine]

I doubt that information exists outside of the seed info they used when generating the galaxy with settlements.

Unless settlements can change, but afaik it's only ownership etc that changes.

I remember from Odyssey alpha that they talked about 'hand placed' settlements.

 

[Jack Winter]

IIRC, there are well over 100.000 settlements, that'd be a real chore to do manually.. Much better if FDev would add it to the journal files.