Measuring Your Travels: How to?

Katejina · Aug 12, 2015

Hey everyone. Most of you know that I've undertaken a huge expedition but probably don't know that I didn't really keep a full log of my findings.

I was wondering if anyone had a way to measure your total distance traveled without resorting to say, finding the side of a triangle between two points.

For instance. If I returned to the last station I was at before I set out, I could easily tell the distance between each system name I screenshotted with a find(WW, ELW, AM, etc), but I would be forced to calculate the distance between those two points to find out the additive distance.

Is there some kind of like, scale that would represent a certain distance (like a topographical map has). Not to say I couldn't just create one myself but there is no actual top-down view of the galaxy in-game and in case there is already some kind of application in place, I'd rather go that route first.

Thanks in advance!

iain666 · Aug 12, 2015

The coordinates on the galaxy map are in ly (so 1,1,1 is 1 ly from Sol on all three axes) and you can rotate your view on the galaxy map until it's top down (G and T to rotate your view on that axis by default)

Katejina · Aug 13, 2015

Right, but figuring individual distances covered between systems visited would require calculation, yes? I mean, if I wanted to say I traveled x amount of light years to circle the galaxy, I can't really use the x,y,z coords for that. I'd have to graph between every location I've visited. >__>

Ziljan · Aug 13, 2015

If you're using x,y,z coordinates, then technically if you go from Sol to Sag A and then back to Sol, you traveled exactly 0.00 LY.

Ha, but seriously, If you neglect all the extra mileage from twists and turns of leap frogging stars and only count the end points between plots then you can estimate the distanced traveled by adding up sub 1000LY plots. Add a fudge factor based on the type of ship you are using because you can't travel there in a straight line. For an Asp with 35LY range, then you're adding maybe 2-5% of the total distance. For a Cobra with 25LY range, you are probably adding between 5-15% of the total distance depending on the density of stars.

However, if you're the kind of explorer that squats in a specific region of space and cherry picks by jumping to the nearest juicy star system (Neutrons, Ks, Gs, BHs, etc) then you'll have add up all the single jumps together. That might require either Alt+Tabing meticulously to a spreadsheet, or a special tool that can scrap the text off your Nav Panel while charging FSD.

iain666 · Aug 13, 2015

Yeah, if you've not been keeping count then you're going to have to calculate. A gross approximation a la Ziljan would most likely do - it's what I'd do...

Katejina · Aug 13, 2015

Bleh. Well at least I won't be bored at work.

Alex Brentnall · Aug 13, 2015

I often do target exploration such as nebula etc. for that I used to plot as close to 1,000 Ly jumps as possible and then just count how many routes I'd plotted and multiply by 1,000. Since all routes are usually about 990Ly and not perfect I'd take the number of plots and multiply by 10 taking that off the total distance.

I also checked the distance the official route plotter showed between each of my exploration targets and after a 69,050Ly trip (adding all point to point numbers from the galaxy map) I found my actual distance was closer to 70,600 so its not that far off really. Basically the galaxy map is fairly accurate even over long distances provided you assume that you won't get perfectly straight jumps each time and add a bit of distance on.

Although I've never heard of an Elite Topographical map to answer the question in OP...

Genar-Hofoen · Aug 13, 2015

I know that the excellent EDDiscovery does system triangulation, so you could try using that, perhaps.

My own tool doesn't have any of that nifty kind of feature - it just logs your jumps and you can keep notes, record found star and planet types.

So I think EDDiscovery is your best bet.

Regards