2.4 Route Plotter - don't get it (jet-cone option)

[Nerix]

Hope someone can help me: I don't get the new neutron star route plotter introduced with 2.4. I expected to have something similar to spansh just ingame.

With my Conda in my current loadout I've tested to plot a route from Lelae to Boelts CG-X D1-280:

• Spansh: 288 Jumps https://spansh.co.uk/plotter/result...0&from=Lelae&range=33.6&to=Boelts CG-X d1-280
• Ingame, Fastest Route, no filters, Neutron Star option switched off: 558 jumps
• Ingame, Fastest Route, no filters, Neutron Star Option switched on: 538 jumps

The difference to Spansh seems to be ridiculous high. When I set the filter to only neutron stars, I cannot plot a route, as you obviously have to scoop in between and sometimes the neutron stars are not close enough.

Also the difference between 558 and 538 jumps seems to be quite small for such a distance.

Do I make a mistake or is it supposed to be like that? If yes, the new feature is kind of disappointing. With selecting "fastest Route" I expected an algorithm similar to Spansh, that calculates the minumum number of jumps irrespective of the detour.

 

[Nerix]

Anyone?

 

[Andovar]

Don't know anything about that Spansh site or what algorithm they're using behind the scenes, so kinda tough to compare.

Personally, I think the best thing about the new plotter is not having to re-plot every time you hit a neutron. (though admittedly, i've yet to try it... haven't had the urge for any long range stuff for a while)

 

[Mrat13]

Anyone?

I think it's because you have to be using the neutron highway, which doesn't intersect that much with where you are going. If you went to Sagittarius A however, you'd likely notice the neutron boosts much more.

 

[yowl]

Can you see where the first deviation is between in game and Spansh? Maybe the in game search is just not that good and doesn't vary off the direct very much, I notice that if you put the Spansh to 100% you get 578 so not even the same as in game no neutrons. At 99% it drops to 484 which seems a big drop, wonder how it uses that "efficiency"

 

[Deleted member 38366]

I've done half of my current Trip Colonia->Bubble with the in-game Neutron Plotter and the other half with the External one. 11000LY Plots.

Basically the in-game Plotter restricts itself to such a narrow course that it hardly picks up any Neutrons. About 10 Neutron jumps in those 11000LY (!).

As soon as I switched to the External Plotter (in an area already less rich with Neutrons), I was on the actual Neutron Highway immediately.
Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Refuel/FSD Repair stop.
The way it should be. It instantly shaved 100 Jumps off my list, compared to the in-game Neutron plot.

IMHO the in-game Neutron Plotter is either bugged or simply very very poor.
It's comparable with a ~90% Efficiency Setting in the spansh Plotter, resulting in a nearly linear-straight route - but missing almost all the Neutrons.

I'm back to using the spansh Neutron Plotter, the in-game one seems nearly worthless in comparison.

PS.
I've also noted plenty of oddball inconsistencies with the in-game plotter.
284 Jumps remaining, did a few hops (down to 279) and took a small break (quit to menu).
Logging back in an resuming the exact same course - it's 283 Jumps again (?!)
Just weird.

 

[Knightshark]

I've done half of my current Trip Colonia->Bubble with the in-game Neutron Plotter and the other half with the External one. 11000LY Plots.

Basically the in-game Plotter restricts itself to such a narrow course that it hardly picks up any Neutrons. About 10 Neutron jumps in those 11000LY (!).

As soon as I switched to the External Plotter (in an area already less rich with Neutrons), I was on the actual Neutron Highway immediately.
Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Refuel/FSD Repair stop.
The way it should be. It instantly shaved 100 Jumps off my list, compared to the in-game Neutron plot.

IMHO the in-game Neutron Plotter is either bugged or simply very very poor.
It's comparable with a ~90% Efficiency Setting in the spansh Plotter, resulting in a nearly linear-straight route - but missing almost all the Neutrons.

I'm back to using the spansh Neutron Plotter, the in-game one seems nearly worthless in comparison.

PS.
I've also noted plenty of oddball inconsistencies with the in-game plotter.
284 Jumps remaining, did a few hops (down to 279) and took a small break (quit to menu).
Logging back in an resuming the exact same course - it's 283 Jumps again (?!)
Just weird.

That doesn't sound good.
Let's hope they get this sorted out, at least before the Q4 exploration update.

 

[Allitnil]

I think it's because you have to be using the neutron highway, which doesn't intersect that much with where you are going. If you went to Sagittarius A however, you'd likely notice the neutron boosts much more.

Yes and no. Yes, in that you are essentially correct. The in game route plotter seems to assume a more or less straight line to the target whereas Spansh with the default settings will go a long way from the straight line in order to find neutrons. Since you've got to drop down to around -1000 LY below the galactic plane before there are a decent number of neutrons, the in game plotter doesn't consider this option whereas Spansh does. And that's why you are also wrong because the same sort of thing applies to a route to Sag A* - you've got to go up or down around 1000 LY to get to the main neutron fields and therefore the in game plotter still does poorly if starting from near the galactic plane.

With a bit of basic knowledge (ie that you need to first travel to where the neutrons are) the in game plotter is pretty decent. Not necessarily better then Spansh, but plenty good enough if you don't want to have to leave the game screen. That said, if you want to really optimise things then you've got to manually plot as to get full benefits from neutron boosting you need to fit extra fuel tanks and string together multiple neutron boosts before refuelling, with each jump tailored to your current fuel level. Neither the in game plotter nor Spansh can compete with this approach since they both work off a fixed max fuel range.

 

[Nerix]

I think it's because you have to be using the neutron highway, which doesn't intersect that much with where you are going. If you went to Sagittarius A however, you'd likely notice the neutron boosts much more.

Unfortunately not, it's pretty much Bubble -> Colonia.

I've done half of my current Trip Colonia->Bubble with the in-game Neutron Plotter and the other half with the External one. 11000LY Plots.

Basically the in-game Plotter restricts itself to such a narrow course that it hardly picks up any Neutrons. About 10 Neutron jumps in those 11000LY (!).

As soon as I switched to the External Plotter (in an area already less rich with Neutrons), I was on the actual Neutron Highway immediately.
Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Neutron-Refuel/FSD Repair stop.
The way it should be. It instantly shaved 100 Jumps off my list, compared to the in-game Neutron plot.

IMHO the in-game Neutron Plotter is either bugged or simply very very poor.
It's comparable with a ~90% Efficiency Setting in the spansh Plotter, resulting in a nearly linear-straight route - but missing almost all the Neutrons.

I'm back to using the spansh Neutron Plotter, the in-game one seems nearly worthless in comparison.

PS.
I've also noted plenty of oddball inconsistencies with the in-game plotter.
284 Jumps remaining, did a few hops (down to 279) and took a small break (quit to menu).
Logging back in an resuming the exact same course - it's 283 Jumps again (?!)
Just weird.

Thanks, similar to my impression based on my test above. Such a shame, in this state the ingame plotter is kind of useless for long exploration trips (at least when you plan to use a neutron route). Should work similar to spansh, hope they'll improve it.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Thinking about it, though...

It looks like the in-game Neutron Plotter does work just fine, but only on short plots (i.e. 250LY).

Only those long plots appear to give it severe trouble.
I can only guesstimate it, but it would seem it intentionally narrows its evaluation corridor on long plots to afford fast plotting and conserve resources.

One would need to test it, but I reckon its efficiency might look much better on 500-1000LY Plots.

--- edit ---

Just remembered EDSM

Here's the visual difference between the in-game 11000LY Plot vs. the spansh External Plotter @ 25% Efficiency :

(Yellow = In-game Plotter, Blue = changeover point, Red = spansh Neutron Plotter)

It's nicely visible how straight the in-game Plotter drove me - at the price of hardly ever finding me a Neutron to Boost with.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Thinking about it, though...

It looks like the in-game Neutron Plotter does work just fine, but only on short plots (i.e. 250LY).

Only those long plots appear to give it severe trouble.
I can only guesstimate it, but it would seem it intentionally narrows its evaluation corridor on long plots to afford fast plotting and conserve resources.

One would need to test it, but I reckon its efficiency might look much better on 500-1000LY Plots.

Additionally, we need to remember that Spansh also works best on up-to 1000LY plots.

 

[Andovar]

Looking at that route from spansh, i wonder if it would help you used it for the first part of your trip, and then switched to the in-game plotter.

Based on the trip they had listed there, once you follow it to Nova Aquila No 3, most the subsequent plots after that are only 1-3 jumps. Which seems like at that point it has you setup with enough neutrons in more of a straight path to your destination. Maybe the in-game plotter would work better from that point?

 

[Baton]

I like the ingame plotter better now. As mentioned before, you need to play a bit, I usually find nearest neutron field (this is typically 1000ly up or down,) go to it, and then the plotter works fine, taking me through unexplored systems and stopping to refuel so I have no complaints. Works fine with neutron boost with my experience.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Looking at that route from spansh, i wonder if it would help you used it for the first part of your trip, and then switched to the in-game plotter.

Based on the trip they had listed there, once you follow it to Nova Aquila No 3, most the subsequent plots after that are only 1-3 jumps. Which seems like at that point it has you setup with enough neutrons in more of a straight path to your destination. Maybe the in-game plotter would work better from that point?

Hm, I did sample Route-Plots and over any larger Distance, spansh plotted far fewer Jumps than the in-game Plotter.
In retrospect, I should have used the spansh Plotter right from the start. I would have saved me well over 100 Jumps also on the 1st half of the trip.

I think the closest I've ever seen the in-game plotter come was approx. 50% of the efficiency (number of jumps) that a spansh Plot offered.

Only in mostly undiscovered areas with little Neutrons known to EDDB/EDSM I can imagine using the in-game Plotter would be extremely beneficial.
The Colonia Transit Corridor is hence probably the exact other side of the coin.

 

[Zeede]

Am I the only one who thought that the OP was talking about the "Spanish" plotter?

 

[Baton]

Am I the only one who thought that the OP was talking about the "Spanish" plotter?

Probably - "jet cone" is an option of in-game one

 

[Mrat13]

Easy fix then (until further improvements), just allow us to way point trips, like say, go to this destination, but pass through this system, and allow multiple of these way points, then the computer can work in smaller stints, using less power, and we can guide it to the neutron highway.

Is their a problem I'm missing?

 

[Spansh]

So you can get as good/better plots with the in game router but you need to give it a good "guide". Drop down to +/-1000 LY into the neutron planes and then plot to the save level under/over your destination. It'll then generate routes as good (if not better) than my site. it will also route you through unknown neutron stars, and take into account refueling, something my site cannot do.

 

[Mechanist]

I'm in the Rift currently and used a mix of Neutron Router and in game router to travel.
I think the in game router uses almost 100% efficiency.

If you use 60% - 70 % efficiency with the neutron router you get much better results in most cases.

Also the in game router is more probable to plot "mainstream" routes (assuming 50+ jump range), so you don't get so many first discoveries as with the neutron router.

 

[Achibot]

I would agree with Spansh, as long as you manually move your ship into the "neutron plane" and plot to a destination at the same level the in-game plotter works quite well. Note that it is limited to plotting longer jumps in 1000ly segments as explained by hchalkley:

Cmdr Achibot,

What I think is happening here is that the long-range route plotter does still divide the long route into 1000ly steps behind the scenes (to avoid running out of memory during starsystem lookup) and you have a NS jump that's starting close to the end of one of these steps. There is the opportunity for further optimisation of the route here.

What this means in practice is that Neutron Jumps at the end of a 1,000ly can be truncated to less than the optimal distance. You can either ignore the inefficiency, make a single manual plot and then replot automatically whenever you notice it is jumping too short or force an automatic replot every 800ly to never see the issue.