Release Neutron Highway long range route planner

Spansh

S
The Elite: Dangerous Index can be found at https://www.spansh.co.uk

Features

  • Route plotter, so you can plot a route between systems prioritising neutron star supercharging to reduce your journey time
  • Waypoint routing, allows you to route via systems you may like to visit on the way (Sol to Beagle Point via Colonia and Sagittarius A*)
  • Prioritises supercharged jumps
  • Breaks plots over 20000LY automatically
  • No maximum distance
  • No maximum jump range
  • If you do not wish to prioritise neutrons (and simply want a route breaking down into roughly 20000LY gaps) then set the efficiency to 100%
  • Display your route on a graphical map of the galaxy compared to the direct route so you can see how far from the straight line you deviate.
  • Allows you to find nearby "known" systems from rough coordinates (useful if the system you're trying to get to hasn't been visited before).
  • Display a map of known neutron stars in the galaxy to let explorers see where they should explore next
  • Road to riches router to find you a route passing through high value systems with bodies to scan
  • Saves scanned bodies so that it will not re-generate them (log in to the site required)
  • System searching to find systems with unusual/desired attributes
  • Body searching to find bodies with desired attributes (for instance particular materials)
  • Trade route generator to optimise your trading
The tool will minimise the number of jumps you have to make during a long distance journey. For instance a trip from Sol to Colonia with a 40LY range normally would take 2 visits to the galaxy map and roughly 600 jumps. With neutron boosting it comes down to 164 trips to the galaxy map (roughly 213 jumps at 60% efficiency). Going up to a 45LY range it would be 2 visits to the galaxy map and 540 jumps. With neutron boosting it comes down to 112 trips (124 jumps at 60% efficiency).

In order to use it just put in your start system and destination system and your jump range and hit submit. It will then give you a list of star systems to plot via the galaxy map. You can tweak the efficiency in order to control how far off the direct route the system will take you to find neutron stars (The in game router tends to work roughly the same as 99.5 efficiency).

Short story,
  1. Enable "Use jet-cone boost" option on the galaxy map.
  2. Put system into the galaxy map in game (PC users can click the "Copy" button and paste it)
  3. Click plot
  4. Jump until you get to the system
  5. If the system is a neutron star, supercharge your FSD
  6. Take the next system on the list and go to 1
It does not currently take into account the requirement to stop for fuel or repairs to your FSD so pay attention and make the odd detour to scoop when you're getting low on fuel or need to repair. What I tend to do is jump until I have 1 jumps worth of fuel left and then route myself to a KGBFOAM star closest to the next neutron star I was heading to. Because of a lack of data, it is also possible that it will route you via a neutron boost into a group of systems which you do not have the jump range to get out of, so please be a little careful (this is mostly a problem with a very low base jump range).

It can take up to a minute to calculate a very long route through a particularly badly mapped area so be patient. It will tell you if it has broken for any reason.


Edit History

Edit 02/12/2016: I spent some time optimising the site this evening with some new ideas, I had optimistically envisaged a 5-10x speedup. However the resulting speedup is somewhere in the region of 50-100x, a Sol to Colonia plot now takes under 2 seconds.
Edit 11/01/2017: Substantially upgraded the server, plots should now be speedier and will run more at the same time.
Edit 26/05/2017: Another speed up on the router, fixed a bug with intermediate system jumps. Added waypoints to routing.
Edit 16/08/2017: Beta site link with new features
Edit 18/08/2017: Added 2.4 information
Edit 19/03/2019: Large update with new features
 
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goemon

goemon
wow! I#LL give it a try on my next long trip.

i wrote myself something similar with a spreadsheet, but that's less convenient.

lso - as somebody flying a DBE regularly, so no AFMU - how about an option not using neutron stars? :)
 

Spansh

S
I am considering adding an option where what it'll do is just break down the journey into 1000ly (ish) jumps so it can be done in game. That's not too hard
 

wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
Really nice tool, rep +1. It would be very much appreciated if you could find a bit of time to add it to EDCodex. That way more commanders can potentially find your great tool. The only thing you need to add an entry is to create an account.
 

Mengy

Mengy
Wow, this seems very slick and useful. I'm leaving for Colonia either tonight or tomorrow, and I'm planning to neutron highway my way there for testing purposes, think I'll make use of this tool!
 

Guy De Lombard

Guy De Lombard
I'm on the way to the galactic center and I already love this tool !
Made yesterday nearly 5400ly in only two hours, using 28 neutron jumps [up]
 

Cmdr Zach

Cmdr Zach
Using this now to get to Hawkin's gap. Very useful, but needs a further tweak I think. It's dragging me way off course to hit more Neutron Stars making the journey actually further.

Seems that way anyway.
 

Rewision

Rewision
Hey I really like this tool and the potential it got :) I have a few thoughts for things that could be added if you are going to update it.

1. A option to set how many neutron stars in a row you want max so that you automaticly get a route that is optimized for your ships fuel capacity. This means you dont have to leave the route to refuel if you get alot of NS in a row and will therefor be more effective. :)

2. Add so its visable how many neutrons are in the route that got generated and also how many normal non neutron jumps are in the route (the second one might be harder?). This will let you see if the route is well optimized or if the area through wich you are traveling needs to be explored more when it comes to NS. I imagine that a route to colonia will be very good but might be other often visited places where alot of neutron systems have not been visited or added to eddn. That way cmdrs can chose to fill in the route with some extra NS on the way to help improve it a bit or maybe even go all out finding as many as they can so the next cmdr that want to go in that direction will be abel to find a more optimized route. :)

3. Guess it ties in automaticly but if the above is possible a total nr of jumps. Some might be lazy and dont want to do the adding of 2 numbers.

I guess thats it for now, hope I gave you some ideas :)
 

Spansh

S
Rewision said:
Hey I really like this tool and the potential it got :) I have a few thoughts for things that could be added if you are going to update it.

1. A option to set how many neutron stars in a row you want max so that you automaticly get a route that is optimized for your ships fuel capacity. This means you dont have to leave the route to refuel if you get alot of NS in a row and will therefor be more effective. :)

2. Add so its visable how many neutrons are in the route that got generated and also how many normal non neutron jumps are in the route (the second one might be harder?). This will let you see if the route is well optimized or if the area through wich you are traveling needs to be explored more when it comes to NS. I imagine that a route to colonia will be very good but might be other often visited places where alot of neutron systems have not been visited or added to eddn. That way cmdrs can chose to fill in the route with some extra NS on the way to help improve it a bit or maybe even go all out finding as many as they can so the next cmdr that want to go in that direction will be abel to find a more optimized route. :)

3. Guess it ties in automaticly but if the above is possible a total nr of jumps. Some might be lazy and dont want to do the adding of 2 numbers.

I guess thats it for now, hope I gave you some ideas :)
Click to expand...

1. This is something I will be adding, however part of the problem (with all of these points) is a lack of data, with 400 billion systems in the galaxy, and just oevr 4.2 million "discovered" and "submitted" to the data network, we're at less than 0.01% of the systems known. This means I have to assume a lot with regards to what you'll be able to plot in game. Whilst the bubble is pretty well mapped, as is the route to Colonia, there are a lot of areas with almost no known systems. Until someone flies out there and discovers them I can't use them. I can add breakpoints in the route when there are multiple neutron jumps to say "stop here and find somewhere to fuel".

2. Again, the problems are partially down to the amount of data we have. Also if I have to calculate every non neutron jump (which is less useful data because if you can just route in game it will be vastly quicker to do so) it takes time. I should be able to add an estimation of how many jumps based on the distance you have to travel which may be enough information.

3. See 2, but if an estimation of regular jumps is ok then I can easily add the two numbers for display.


With regards to the lack of data, I should be able to add a visualisation of which areas are less well mapped for those explorers who want to contribute to the network (not just neutron stars, regular stars are important as well).

Cmdr Zach said:
Using this now to get to Hawkin's gap. Very useful, but needs a further tweak I think. It's dragging me way off course to hit more Neutron Stars making the journey actually further.

Seems that way anyway.
Click to expand...

Yes unfortunately for the CG (and many less well trafficed places) the amount known about the areas inbetween is limited. At the moment the system is configured to prioritise Neutron Stars over everything but it will never make you visit a star which wouldn't get you at least 25% towards your final destination to travel to the next neutron (the absolute upper limit of what would be beneficial). I can reduce this ratio which means that lets say you had to travel 1000 LY to a neutron star right now it would have to get you at least 250 LY closer to your final destination, if I reduced this to 3x then it would have to get you 333 LY closer (and so on). The main problem with this is lack of data, however I can make the "ratio" configurable, so people can choose how far out they would like to go (in some cases it might be beneficial to travel that far out as you may find a string of neutron stars that way while you may not get any on a more direct route).

The system at the moment will always choose the closest neutron star that does not take you "too far" out of your way. There is an argument that if it wants you to travel 8000 LY to get to the next neutron star from where you are, you'll never get that 6000 LY back without an incredibly unlikely amazing string of jumps, I'll look into adding an automatic ratio with range/distance meaning the further it wants you to travel for a single jump the less tolerant it will be for "detours".


Ultimately, the more data we have the faster this system will calculate routes and the more optimal each route will be. So the final solution is to keep exploring :)


Edit: That said since last nights update people submitting data about those systems have greatly improved the routing. At the moment I only update once a day when EDDB releases their updates howveer I have written a subscriber for a direct feed for the ED: ata Network which will mean updates happen instantly, I will look into running this full time
 
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wolverine2710

Tutorial & Guide Writer
wolverine2710
Something to consider. There are a couple of tools out there which send data to EDDN, EDDB, EDSM which afaik contains or sent data which is usefull for you and the users. Perhaps good to check out which tools do help the tool and add them to the OP (first post).

Copy/paste from another post.
Anthornet is right when he said "EDDN only offers real time data! No archives sorry.". There are however sites which archive EDDN messages. You might want to look into "EDDN on DynamoDB" and contact the author, Askarr. See also his announcement of the tool here in an EDDN thread here

A snippet from the EDCodex page: "This tool provides for an ongoing archive of the JSON sent over EDDN. No validation is performed beyond schema matching. No de-duplication is performed. The objective is simple: capture everything that got sent through EDDN. If your own services missed a section of data, this is where you should be able to find it. The data is hosted in AWS DynamoDB (at present, only EU West 1). The documentation for the API can be found in the provided links." Note: You have to contact Askarr to get a read-only key for the non-sql database.

When combining the daily dumps of EDDB, EDDN on DynamoDB and EDDN its possible to create a situation that your tool is permanently up to date....

I apologize, haven´t much time atm so no links. The mentioned tool can however be found on EDCodex - just use the search option.
 
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Spansh

S
I've now added ratios, as an interesting side point, if you are not interested in Neutron stars, then set the ratio to 1, and it will simply break down the route into 1000LY chunks (as far as it can).

A ratio of 4 means it will go as far as 75% out of the way to get a 4x neutron boost, a ratio of 3 means it will go 33% out of the way and a ratio of 2 means it will go 50% out of the way.
 

Rewision

Rewision
Spansh said:
I've now added ratios, as an interesting side point, if you are not interested in Neutron stars, then set the ratio to 1, and it will simply break down the route into 1000LY chunks (as far as it can).

A ratio of 4 means it will go as far as 75% out of the way to get a 4x neutron boost, a ratio of 3 means it will go 33% out of the way and a ratio of 2 means it will go 50% out of the way.
Click to expand...

Dont you mean 4: 75%, 3: 66% and 2: 50%? Also "with out of the way" not exactly sure what you mean? Do you mean it will aim for 75% neutrons at ratio 4? can this lead to a increase in total jumps? or is it more that it tries to break it up for fuel/repairs?

Also about estemation the number of normal jumps if you think it can be done within or close to 10% then I still think it can be very usefull to be abel to see at a glance how many procent of the route is neutron stars. For my ship that has fuel for 4 jusmp 75% neutronstars with no more then 3 in a row would be optimal. So if I see something close to that I know it will be really good.
 
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Spansh

S
Rewision said:
Dont you mean 4: 75%, 3: 66% and 2: 50%? Also "with out of the way" not exactly sure what you mean? Do you mean it will aim for 75% neutrons at ratio 4? can this lead to a increase in total jumps? or is it more that it tries to break it up for fuel/repairs?

Also about estemation the number of normal jumps if you think it can be done within or close to 10% then I still think it can be very usefull to be abel to see at a glance how many procent of the route is neutron stars. For my ship that has fuel for 4 jusmp 75% neutronstars with no more then 3 in a row would be optimal. So if I see something close to that I know it will be really good.
Click to expand...

Yes, correct, I did mean 66%.

At ratio 4 given the following:

System A => 200LY away from destination
System B (Neutron) => 175LY away from destination and 100LY away from System A

So you would jump 100LY to get to System B which would bring you 25LY closer to your final destination to give you a boosted jump. Assuming you had a 25LY jump distance this would be roughly break even (You'd use 5 jumps to get 125LY closer to your destination either way). You'd lose out time due to replotting, but this system isn't designed to handle short distance 1-2 jump plots anyway.

At ratio 2 the following is the worst situation:

System A => 200LY away from destination
System B (Neutron) => 150LY away from destination and 100LY away from System A

So with a 25 LY jump distance it would take you 5 jumps to get 150LY closer to your destination rather than the 6 jumps it would normally take you (saving one jump).

At ratio 1 the system will only plot neutron stars that miraculously happen to be directly within your path to the final destination.

The ratios can be decimal values, so you can use a ratio of 1.5 for 33% and 1.1 would be slightly under 10%. I may change ratio to efficiency and have it as a percentage with 100% being 1 and 25% being 4, which may make it easier to understand for people.

You can see a sample Sol to colonia with a ratio of 1.1 here:

http://www.spansh.co.uk/?from=Sol&t...E2264D8-AE6D-11E6-992F-AA14F6AC7326&ratio=1.1



I've put the estimation in, it assumed a 90% efficiency in in game routing which is probably worse than it actually is. it also totals up distances as well, however useful that is.
 

Cmdr Zach

Cmdr Zach
Big ask, but at this point seeing a plot on a 3d map of each potential route - like some sat navs - would really add to the usefulness of this.
Or instead of the slider, calculate no. of overall jumps for each ratio route (estimate based on max jump range) and pick the least.
 
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