Manual plotting on low density regions

Romeo India Charlie

Romeo India Charlie
Yesterday I gave up on a location I wanted to visit because I was unable to plot it. It was high above the galactic plane and the system density was very low. I have a note on that system "FSD injection in and out" so I knew there could be some issues reaching it. I was not able to plot it on my first try, a simple and normal click to draw a route. So I changed the settings to use FSD injection and still no route was plotted. Then I started searching for nearby stars and then I wondered "how do I know that I can reach star A via star B?" Weirdly enough I got a route plotted to a nearby star, that included my final destination, the one I was unable to plot to, even with max FSD injection.

I don't want to turn this into a discussion about tools or the quirks of Galmap's path finding algorithm. What I'm looking for is advice on how to deal with these situations because I have a bunch of locations that are on low density regions and I lack the knowledge to address them.

I have two major points I want to address:
  • How can I know the distance between two systems using only in-game tools? I have written code to handle this but for it to work I need the coordinates of the systems. I'm aware that there are tools where I can get the coordinates (e.g. EDSM), however they depend of having the system in their databases. This said: is it possible to get the coordinates of a system or determine the distance between systems in-game, assuming you are not in one of them?
  • How do you deal with finding systems that are nearby your target location? When system density is low, most systems position in 3D space is not at all obvious which makes it very difficult to understand where we should be focusing our attention.

Or in other words, how do you tackle manual plotting in these regions? How does one look for the path to a specific spot in the middle of nowhere?
 

Dr. Nagi

Dr. Nagi
Ok so, about coordinates: you can read them off the grid if you have it enabled. Figuring out the distance between them without external tools... is impossible unless you're very good at doing maths in your head.
As for how I tackle plotting:
I go bit by bit and watch my jumponium levels very closely. If I end up in a dead-end, I turn back around. That happens.
If you're in a region that is explored by others, you can use the 3D map of EDDiscovery to help with navigating.
 

iain666

iain666
Picking a path through the edges of the galaxy is one of the things I find most fun and rewarding when exploring. Plot to the edge of where you can near the target system and then you have to go one jump at a time, you can't plot a route longer than one jump with FSD injection.

The orange hats are your friends. If you focus on a system in the gal map you will see nearby systems acquire a little orange hat - this indicates that if you were in the system under the cursor, with your current fuel level and the FSD injection level selected on the left active then you could jump there.

You can use this to find a route backwards from the target to density you can plot to.

Alternatively, so long as you have fastest routes selected so you see the possible jumps from your current system as lines on the map, these do take account of the FSD injection so you can use those to advance in the right general direction until you can get there. This can be the only way to proceed with in-game tools when you're trying to go up or down as you can't see far enough on that axis for the orange hats to be useful but the paths can be followed.
 

ShadowNUAR

ShadowNUAR
I just copy the name of the system without attributes and through a search on the map I’ll find the nearest ones or, as in my case, everything is at + -3k
 
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