A liitle suggestion about route planning

[psefergr]

Without trying to playing it smart i think that route planning is not saved when exiting or accidentally quitting the game because if everyone had 1000ly planned imagine how much bigger and time consuming the Save Game would be. So my suggestion is that only the final system which the route is ending to be saved occasionally and when game is loaded again the route is to be recalculated automatically.What do you think?

 

[777Driver]

The navigation side of things still needs a lot of work. We should be able to build/store/share/load routes.. All the system needs is to ability to save the data locally in a small txt file.

 

[Chris Simon]

For me, it would suffice if after the route is plotted, I could "drag it about" through the systems I want to visit.
The rest is a bonus.

 

[Zebaoth]

if everyone had 1000ly planned imagine how much bigger and time consuming the Save Game would be

That shouldn't take more than a few kB, if at all (~35 jumps for 1000Ly shouldn't add much data if you only save the system names and order).

Route planning would be far better if you could actually plot multiple waypoints,
remove the 1000Ly limit (why was it even limited like that?),
include a way to calculate the route based on star class preference as set by the player and
add the possibility to store routes, something like a bookmark just for a route instead of one single system.

 

[777Driver]

remove the 1000Ly limit (why was it even limited like that?),

1000LY covers all the routes in populated space, even to remote colonies like Sothis/17 Draconis. It used to be max 2/3 jumps, then went to 100LY, eventually increasing to 1000LY.

 

[Chris Simon]

remove the 1000Ly limit (why was it even limited like that?)

It wasn't limited, quite contrary it was gradually made better and why it's capped at 1000LY? Well, try to plot route in an area of higher star density and you'll see. It's an immense amount of computing. 1000LY means 30-40 jumps and for every jump the computer has to choose from all stars in vicinity (Which can be hundreds, sometimes thousands) the one that suits the needs of the route (right length, right direction) In galactic core it means the computer has to list through 30-60 THOUSAND stars to give you the route.

 

[Thetele]

That shouldn't take more than a few kB, if at all (~35 jumps for 1000Ly shouldn't add much data if you only save the system names and order).

Route planning would be far better if you could actually plot multiple waypoints,
remove the 1000Ly limit (why was it even limited like that?),
include a way to calculate the route based on star class preference as set by the player and
add the possibility to store routes, something like a bookmark just for a route instead of one single system.

More options you add to it longer it takes to calculate. Plotting in core is already really hard and take long time and you need to use some tricks to get it plot routs fast.

 

[tachyondecay]

remove the 1000Ly limit (why was it even limited like that?)

Because the farther you want to go, the more possible paths there are between you and your destination—exponentially more—and therefore, the more time and processing power it takes to find the fastest or most economical route you desire. (The devs have stated that the planner uses a modified A* search algorithm.)

If you go closer to the core, you'll see that the route planning limit drops drastically, owing to the greater density of stars making the algorithm chug even harder.

So while the 1000ly limit is not a "hard" limit—it could theoretically increase if the devs could optimize parts of the algorithm or the underlying graph of the galaxy—it's actually pretty cool that they managed to bring up that far. As mentioned, it covers pretty much anywhere you want to go in the Bubble.

I agree with your other points, though. More options to affect the route planner, or to customize a planned route, would be awesome.

 

[DNA-Decay]

Can anyone link to a third party route optimisation tool?

I want to visit all the systems in my Power once in the shortest route.

 

[Chris Simon]

Can anyone link to a third party route optimisation tool?

I want to visit all the systems in my Power once in the shortest route.

No, because it is against EULA. You're on your own, there, mate

 

[DNA-Decay]

It's completely not against the EULA.

Just got to figure a way to do it in excel.
(Please don't laugh but Visual Basic is the only thing I can code in)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra's_algorithm

 

[tachyondecay]

Can anyone link to a third party route optimisation tool?

I want to visit all the systems in my Power once in the shortest route.

EDDiscovery has a route planner, although I'm not sure how much help it would be with becoming a travelling salesman.

It's completely not against the EULA.

Just got to figure a way to do it in excel.
(Please don't laugh but Visual Basic is the only thing I can code in)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra's_algorithm

Dijkstra's algorithm is about finding the shortest path between two arbitrary nodes, not about finding the shortest (Hamiltonian) tour among every node. The travelling salesman problem is NP-hard--yes, there are algorithms that you could implement in Excel to do it, but given the number of nodes we're talking about in this case, I'm not sure your computer would manage to do it in any reasonable length of time.