Ingame route planner blows

Turd Ferguson

Turd Ferguson
So I thought I'd take a little jaunt over to Colonia in my new exploration ship using the Neutron Highway to get those exclusive blueprints.

I thought I could avail myself of the handy-dandy new 20k LY route planner now with neutron stars. So I plotted a course and got a total of 308 jumps for the first 20k LY of the trip.

I then went to the online Neutron Highway route planner and was able to plot a course with a total of 116 jumps from Founder's to Colonia! Of those 116, 13 were non-neutron stars, with about half of those being in the Bubble getting to the first neutron start on the route. After leaving the Bubble, I was never more than 2 jumps between neutron stars. Most of the time I was able to refuel from other stars in the systems, but did take a handful of detours to non-neutron stars for fuel.

The ingame tool's route using neutron jumps was over 3x longer and it actually MISSED most of the neutron stars available on the route.

So it's not bad for puttering around the Bubble, but for traveling serious distances, 3rd party tools win again.
 

nanite2000

nanite2000
My understanding is that 3rd party tools are more efficient at calculating the routes because they are dealing with orders of magnitude less data than the in-game route plotter. Considering less than 1% of the galaxy has been charted, the 3rd party route plotter is dealing with a hundred times less data.

This allows the 3rd party route plotters to have more complexity in their algorithms without impacting performance, whereas in-game algorithms have to be pretty simple to maintain a reasonable level of efficiency.

That's not to say I don't think the in-game plotter can't be improved mind. For example:
  • It won't plot a neutron boosted jump for your first jump, even if you are in a neutron system at the time, unless you already have one ready in your tank.
  • It won't try going 'vertically' on the galactic plane to find neutron stars, even if going vertically for 1 or 2 jumps results in access to many more neutron stars.
I would like to see the in-game plotter continuously try different algorithms, starting with the simplest algorithms that get you a basic route really quickly, followed by optimised routes based on more complex algorithms that update your route 'as you go'.
 
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Turd Ferguson

Turd Ferguson
at the very least, when you select routes with neutron jumps, the algorithm should start by taking ONLY neutron stars near the route and attempt to plot a course using those only given the boosted jump range. Failing that it can add other stars to bridge the gap between jumps. Even if I try to plot more than 2 jumps at a time using the 3rd party route, the ingame route planner goes off the rails and starts plotting "normal" jumps after the 1st jump. So even if I try to give it hints as to where to plot a route it gets off track within 2 jumps.

Another interesting thing, when I use the filter to ONLY allow plotting a route using neutron stars and select a section of the route from a 3rd party tool where 6-10 jumps are all neutron stars, so I've given it the start and end points of a route and KNOW there's a neutron star-only path, the ingame route planner STILL can't get it right and just fails to plot a course.
 

Werewolf13

Werewolf13
Thanks... Once one figures out how to use it it does work very well. (y)

Tried a route to Colonia from my home system. Just 46 jumps not counting refuel stops along the way when needed.
 

nanite2000

nanite2000
Turd Ferguson said:
Another interesting thing, when I use the filter to ONLY allow plotting a route using neutron stars and select a section of the route from a 3rd party tool where 6-10 jumps are all neutron stars, so I've given it the start and end points of a route and KNOW there's a neutron star-only path, the ingame route planner STILL can't get it right and just fails to plot a course.
Click to expand...

Nice try. But without any main-sequence stars in your filter, then your ship will have no way to refuel, and so route plotting will almost always fail unless you plot a route that can be completed on a single tank of fuel.
 

Turd Ferguson

Turd Ferguson
nanite2000 said:
Nice try. But without any main-sequence stars in your filter, then your ship will have no way to refuel, and so route plotting will almost always fail unless you plot a route that can be completed on a single tank of fuel.
Click to expand...

The route planner has no problem running me out of fuel using other options, so why would this one be any different? I'd be more than happy to keep track of my own fuel and find a star to refuel as necessary. In many cases, there's a scoopable star in the same system as the neutron star.
 

nanite2000

nanite2000
Turd Ferguson said:
The route planner has no problem running me out of fuel using other options, so why would this one be any different? I'd be more than happy to keep track of my own fuel and find a star to refuel as necessary. In many cases, there's a scoopable star in the same system as the neutron star.
Click to expand...
I'm not able to try this myself right now, but try going to a region with lots of L-Type, T-Type, and Y-Type stars, and set a filter that only allows plotting a route using those non-scoopable stars.

I have a feeling it won't work if you try to travel further than a single fuel tank, but can you confirm this behaviour? My expectation is that neutron stars follow the same logic as other non-scoopable stars.
 

SiriusStrider

SiriusStrider
The route plotter only looks at a pretty small corridor around the direct line to your destination, so ignores loads of neutrons that could help you. The only exception is the first stop on your route, where it will look much further to find a neutron to start your journey.

This leads to the strange situation that the plotter works best in dense neutron fields, while in neutron sparse regions it could easily run a shortest path algorithm with just a few hundred neutrons that you need to consider, and give you an optimal route.
 

Jukelo

Jukelo
No, it doesn't blow. Keep in mind what it has to do and it's already a miracle it can do what it does. If you've been around for a while, you'll remember a time before Frontier spent a lot of time and effort optimizing the algorithm, and back then we could barely plot a 100ly trip.

But of course 3rd party will be better for the purpose of travelling: they are offloading part of the work to the clients of the players who contribute since every point of data in the (comparatively tiny) EDSM database was obtained using the IG route plotter to being with, and most likely in a ship (say, an AspX or an exploraconda) with a similar jumprange to yours, and heading in the same direction. For this purpose, EDSM basically acts like a cache, whereas the IG tool has to process the full set of systems every time you plot a route since it's not just meant as a tool letting tourists go to places others have gone before.
 

Seizewell Warrior

Seizewell Warrior
I had a similar experience returning from Beagle Point. Even taking 2 - 3 kly sections from Spansh, I was seeing far more normal stars than refuelling would justify. However it's a double sided coin as if you Alt-Tab to the list each neutron jump to copy then paste the next location in the plotter, then the time saving is negated. You also have to make your own decision when to leave the highway for fuel and can end up "offside" if in a sparse area for stars. I had to waste a day and a half of ED playing gathering enough jumponium materials on planet surfaces so I could dig myself out the hole.

Towards the end of the journey I disregarded Spansh altogether and just put my final destination in the default plotter. Probably not much slower especially if you factor in having to stop for periodic FSD maintenance.
 

WR3ND

WR3ND
Can you imagine if the route plotter only plotting for discovered systems and explorers has to manually plot their jumps to discover new systems? :giggle:
 

Exeider

Exeider
Turd Ferguson said:
So I thought I'd take a little jaunt over to Colonia.
Click to expand...

That was your first mistake. Nobody just "takes a jaunt to Colonia." You commit to doing it. :p

Anyway, the ingame router isnt that bad, but what I would like to see if there was some level where you could get it to prioritize it plotting certain stars over others but not fully denying them in the plot.

As it is right now it's an on/off situation. On, they get included in the plot, off they dont. When a weighted plot would do. Weight it in heavy favor of neutrons and only plot where you need to fuel and where you absolutely have to, to get to the next neutron.
 

Deleted member 38366

D
The in-game Route plotter is indeed quite poor, especially when dealing with anything beyond approx. 1000LY or more.

For short plots however, it can be better than even the mighty Spansh Neutron Plotter - because it can detect & use Neutrons not yet known to EDDB/EDSM.
Extremely useful it becomes in EDDB-uncharted territory.

On long trips, I like to combine both to get the best out of it :
  • make a Spansh Neutron plot
  • perform a Neutron Cone boost (important)
  • with the boosted Range, plot to a ~500-700LY point in the direction of where I need to go
(in-game route plotter greatly benefits from a maximized initial jumprange, as it does a beyond-hemispheric circular search in a volume affected by the current Jumprange)

This method tracks the known Neutron plot, but still can heavily utilize any yet-unknown Neutrons to optimize the route - while feeding unknown Neutrons into EDSM, which helps the next guys going that route via Spansh and cutting down on my jumps.
Win - Win.

PS.
A 20k LY in-game Plot not only takes ages, it'll also miss 99.9% of all Neutrons along the way.
Its algo is just extremely inefficient, the longer the plots the worse it gets upto becoming nearly useless.
So the best way is : catch a Neutron (manual search if needed), then try a short (~300-500LY) in-game plot while boosted to find the next ones. If one is there along the route, the plotter will find it - especially if the boosted jumprange is like 200LY or more as that gives it a nice large initial search hemisphere.
If nothing is found for the next jump target, changing the course and/or elevation by 100LY or more can also help make the in-game plotter find the next Neutron.
 
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Riverside

Riverside
I've done a few fast travel runs using the 20,000ly route plotter and I have gotten into the habit of re-plotting the route every few jumps. No external tools, just highlight the destination system, un-plot, re-plot. I am careful to do this with a full tank but it's never looked like it was actually going to run me out of fuel. It's an impressive feature imo.
 
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