Esvandiary: Congratulations! That is a spectacular time!
Also congrats to everybody who has finished, this is truly spectacular. You guys are truly awesome sharing hints and tips, especially regarding plotting near the core.
Cheers, I look forward to being beaten by the Gjallarhorn soon enough (after all, this time you know it's a race
)
Speaking of sharing hints, after a couple of tests from near Sadge I think I'm definitely onto something with the multiple-of-jump-range thing.
I feel like I should make it a bit clearer than last time though:
1. Take jump distance (e.g. 30Ly)
2. Get to the highest multiple of that as you can within 1000Ly (or your intended distance) - e.g. 990Ly
3. Subtract "a bit" - I've tended to go for a few light years for long routes, so call it 985Ly
4. Look for stars at about that distance and pick one
The problem (I think) with routing normally is that the route planner sees 990Ly of jumps and goes "OK, let's do the fastest route we can for most of the way and then optimise the last bit to be the shortest jumps possible"
That last part is the problem. If the last part of the route is 95Ly and you have a jump range of 30Ly, that
has to be 4 jumps. So, then it tries to optimise that route to be a set of nice short fuel-saving jumps by trying all the available stars. All hundred thousand of them. If, however, those last few jumps are also near the max jump range of the ship, it has a much easier time - there are far fewer possibilities that fit.
Step 3 is there because the other 25-odd jumps in the route won't perfectly match your jump range, they'll be just a teeny bit shorter - so if we look for routes at 990Ly we'll actually hit the exact
worst case, where the route planner has to try and make lots of short jumps.
Make sense? No? Excellent.
