Engineer Path Finder app

DoogleVonLang

D
Hi everyone,

I wrote a pathfinding app that finds the shortest path through a set of engineers. I thought others might find it useful, so I thought I'd promote it a bit.

I found with new ship loadouts I was bouncing all over the bubble engineering my modules. I figured there must be a shortest path to visit all required engineers, so I wrote an app to find it. Here is an example of how it works:
demo1.png

Start by selecting the modules you want to upgrade. Then select the engineers you have unlocked. Finally choose your starting system and hit run. The app will find all engineers who can upgrade your modules to the highest level and find the shortest path to take to visit them all.

That's it really; pretty simple. Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

Find it here.
 

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[VR] Orodruin

[VR] Orodruin
Very nice idea, do you use a travelling salesman algorithm to find the shortest path?
Any way of introducing ship's jump range and use number of jumps rather than number of lightyears?
Any way of by default penalizing engineers that have lengthy journeys in supercruise? (Such as counting 1 minute per jump and then add the typical supercruise journey time to get the fastest route rather than the shortest)

Have not had the time to run it, but is there a way of selecting the grade you want to engineer to and/or if you only want the experimental? (Useful when you - like me - engineer FSD, thrusters, etc remotely before even setting out on the engineering road trip)


Edit: I read through the Git-hub. Some comments:
- It does not need to be actual routed jumps. You could add something like a "route efficiency factor" and then approximate the number of jumps by distance/(factor*jump range) to get something approximate.
 
Last edited:

CptArcher

CptArcher
Northpin said:
Nice idea.
I do most my engineering remote, but i still have to run them engineers down for experimentals
Click to expand...
This is how I engineer often too. Sometimes all I need is the secondary effect and I don't need an engineer that has the G5 rating, even one with G1 will do in those cases.

Op, can you make your app just consider just the secondary effect in regards to pinned blueprints?
 

Kekkonshiki

Kekkonshiki
DoogleVonLang said:
Hi everyone,

I wrote a pathfinding app that finds the shortest path through a set of engineers. I thought others might find it useful, so I thought I'd promote it a bit.

I found with new ship loadouts I was bouncing all over the bubble engineering my modules. I figured there must be a shortest path to visit all required engineers, so I wrote an app to find it. Here is an example of how it works:
View attachment 191737
Start by selecting the modules you want to upgrade. Then select the engineers you have unlocked. Finally choose your starting system and hit run. The app will find all engineers who can upgrade your modules to the highest level and find the shortest path to take to visit them all.

That's it really; pretty simple. Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

Find it here.
Click to expand...
What a brilliant idea! Thanks for doing this. (y) (y) (y)

EDIT: Although, on attempting to run it, AVG flagged it as potentially harmful and uploaded the exe to their lab for analysis. They'll let me know in about 40 minutes if it has a virus.
 
Last edited:

[VR] Orodruin

[VR] Orodruin
Kekkonshiki said:
What a brilliant idea! Thanks for doing this. (y) (y) (y)

EDIT: Although, on attempting to run it, AVG flagged it as potentially harmful and uploaded the exe to their lab for analysis. They'll let me know in about 40 minutes if it has a virus.
Click to expand...
Avast told me it was safe and thanked me for checking the file to expand their database.
 

DoogleVonLang

D
[VR] Orodruin said:
Very nice idea, do you use a travelling salesman algorithm to find the shortest path?
Any way of introducing ship's jump range and use number of jumps rather than number of lightyears?
Any way of by default penalizing engineers that have lengthy journeys in supercruise? (Such as counting 1 minute per jump and then add the typical supercruise journey time to get the fastest route rather than the shortest)

Have not had the time to run it, but is there a way of selecting the grade you want to engineer to and/or if you only want the experimental? (Useful when you - like me - engineer FSD, thrusters, etc remotely before even setting out on the engineering road trip)


Edit: I read through the Git-hub. Some comments:
- It does not need to be actual routed jumps. You could add something like a "route efficiency factor" and then approximate the number of jumps by distance/(factor*jump range) to get something approximate.
Click to expand...

Interesting ideas. I like the option to set the grade you want to upgrade a module. I also like the idea adding experimental effects, and weighting an engineer based on distance from system entry point. Approximate number of jumps vs distance might also be a nice addition.

@Kekkonshiki yeah your anti-virus software is probably going to complain when you run this app; it is the nature of running an unknown executable. I'm looking into what I can do to help, maybe I can whitelist this somehow with AVG...

Some antivirus software packages will allow you to upload the exe for testing, and tell you if it's clean. Or you could build and run the source yourself. You just need visual studio, clone and run 'create_solution.bat'. In hindsight, this should probably have been a web app. If lots of people find this useful maybe I'll port it to browser.
 
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