Explorers, you dont need automatic routes, you need waypoints!

[bobilon]

Everybody who does exploring knows that problem. How to get fast from current system to desired one. And then, you fly between planetswhich takes even more time then galaxy map planning. For interssystem travelling Frontier devs gave us route planning.

Its great feature, if you are trader. But as explorers, we often fly on vaste distances to get to our desired area. For us is route planning limited up to 90LY worthless. IMHO its VERY difficult for Frontier systems to calculate route for larger distances and we cannot infulence which systems we want to visit.

Solution is MANUAL WAYPOINTS. This feature would allow us to plan multiple systems, which we want to visit. This route plan should be also a part of savegame, as we dont want to manually plan your route again after relogon.

But this feature would need at least one importat change: generate economic/fastest spiderweb for latest waypoint.

Second, and more important feature would be at least 2d system map with actual main plantets postitions related to main star. We would be able to plan route in form of target lists between them, which can save us really a lot of time. This map also may display areas which already has been scanned with basic or intermediate scanners.

 

[worldoflard]

This would be great. During rares trading I need to travel about 150ly, so I keep note of one or two intermediate systems, so I only have to drop into the galaxy map once or twice and plan the next leg. If I could say "travel to Z via X and Y" that would be awesome, and more than good enough for my needs.

 

[777Driver]

I just returned from a trip to the California Nebula, was able to plot up to 130LY each time. The time to calculate a route depends on CPU power, I have mine overclocked to 5.2ghz so it's very fast. All that being said, the whole ingame navigation needs all the help it can get. That ipad thing between our leg's should be an FMC that allows us to plot/save/share routes.

My one and only gripe about this game is the lack of modding community due to the pure online nature of the game. I have seen what mods have done to flops like X-Rebirth, or the amazing X3TC, they would have a field day expanding ED

Fortunately we at least have a ton of third party tools at our disposal.

http://www.elitedangerouscentral.com/ & Elite Co Pilot

 

[Shads]

I'd just like to be able to mark the last system viewed on the gal map. How many times have you checked out a system ans thought "thats interesting I think I'll visit" Click.....lost.

 

[bobilon]

It would be also great to be able to mark interstellar routeplans as permanent, so traders wouldn't have to create the route again after each trip.

 

[bobilon]

support me, i think this is great idea

 

[Ravenstar]

The galaxy map needs much improvement. The moment you open the map it starts generating routes in all directions out to 100Ly, this should be optional and alternatively it should only generate once you've selected a destination. This way it could do a specific directional calculation.

Waypoint system sounds cool but I'd think you'd need an additional module for this. Something that calculates or triangulates points between stars. This way you could cut through empty space and more or less travel a straight line to a destination. Better watch your fuel

 

[lefty1117]

+1, I support this idea too. Though as the poster above indicates, I think the galaxy map needs a big overhaul in terms of searchability, route planning, filtering, etc. Just not enough "stuff" that it can do, yet.

For example, I want to be able to search the galaxy map for systems with a specific faction. Or I'd like a heatmap that shows my rep across multiple systems. etc. Galaxy map on its own is beautiful and impressive in its scale, but there's so much more that could be done with it from an information perspective...

 

[Slategrey252]

Waypoints would be nice, as would the ability to retain a route after saving and logging off

 

[Tigga]

It is not technically difficult for the system to be improved. Routing 1000+ LY shouldn't be a problem, the game just works very inefficiently at the moment.

EDIT: Here is a post I made on it yesterday: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=92174 . Essentially the game finds paths to all local systems, starting with the closest. This roughly scales with the radius^4. In other words, double the radius, 16x the work. Finding a single path to a single star is actually a fairly cheap operation, but finding paths to 10,000+ stars is not so cheap, and there are a lot of stars within 100LY (approximately 10,000-100,000).