Release Neutron Highway long range route planner

Hello! o7

Little suggestion: add N° of Bodies to either Main Fields or Fields to Show when searching for systems.

As a fleet carrier owner, I often find that my target system is full and my FC can't jump there, so I search for nearest systems with only one body. That way I'm sure my FC won't land some 300K ls away from the main star.

It would be cool if we didn't have to click on every result to check the N° of bodies of every system.

Maybe this has already been suggested or it's already implemented and I don't know how to do it.

If the latter, please tell me how. Thanks! o7
 
Hi Spansh!

From a fellow web developer, tip of the hat to your work here. I am impressed by the speed in which your Road to Riches tool works, as well as the UI you've put together. You also do a great job being responsive to your users. I had a few questions:

1. Feature request: Target Credits. For example, I want to save up 100,000,000 credits for some ship outfit. I'd like an optimized circular route to hit that 100,000,000 target. I understand having another metric to optimize around adds complexity to the algorithm. Traveling salesman!

2. Have you considered using machine learning to find optimized values for your tool? If not, I might want to take a go at it some time. I understand that there are a lot of variables involved so it may not result in anything useful.

3. Do you open-source this tool? No worries if not, I was just curious about the code. :)
 
Hi Spansh!

From a fellow web developer, tip of the hat to your work here. I am impressed by the speed in which your Road to Riches tool works, as well as the UI you've put together. You also do a great job being responsive to your users. I had a few questions:

1. Feature request: Target Credits. For example, I want to save up 100,000,000 credits for some ship outfit. I'd like an optimized circular route to hit that 100,000,000 target. I understand having another metric to optimize around adds complexity to the algorithm. Traveling salesman!

2. Have you considered using machine learning to find optimized values for your tool? If not, I might want to take a go at it some time. I understand that there are a lot of variables involved so it may not result in anything useful.

3. Do you open-source this tool? No worries if not, I was just curious about the code. :)

1. This is something I could consider. The routing is done after choosing the systems to visit. Essentially it finds the highest profit systems within your chosen radius, picks the number which you selected then finds a route around them.

2. I did look at using machine learning to enhance some of the newer routing algorithms (essentially using them to power the heuristic function for A*). The problem however is training it. It takes a long time to generate actually optimal routes. It's something I may look into in the future, but it's not a high priority.

3. I have open sourced a couple of parts of some of the algorithms at https://github.com/spansh/a-star-router . This is now a bit out of date as I've improved things quite a bit since then and the code isn't particularly clean either. I also use a different spatial index to look things up. I am seriously considering open sourcing different parts of the site based upon tier goals on Patreon (the first being the front end, second being parts of the back end code and the third being the entire codebase). I'm just not sure where I'd want the tiers to be, since the site still doesn't quite pay for it's own hosting currently. That said, I'm happy to discuss parts of the algorithms and explain how they work and integrate with the various technologies I use.
 
[ENHANCEMENT REQUEST]

Road To Riches tags or excludes systems within 20Ly of source system so commanders call sell data there.

I created a new Commander recently, and I've been leveling up engineers with alternative methods to reduce resource usage. Several engineers take cartographic data as the alternative, so it would be helpful to have an option to exclude systems that are too close to the source system for sale there. This could take several forms:
  1. A checkbox for "Sell data at source system"
  2. A text box for the "Sell At" system with the 20Ly exclusion zone centered there
  3. A column in the target system list for how far it is from the source system
  4. An additional slider for an exclusion radius with a "notch" for 20Ly
The checkbox is probably the most straightforward and self explanatory with the "Sell At" text box being the most flexible.

--

Great tools, keep up the good work!
 
1. This is something I could consider. The routing is done after choosing the systems to visit. Essentially it finds the highest profit systems within your chosen radius, picks the number which you selected then finds a route around them.

2. I did look at using machine learning to enhance some of the newer routing algorithms (essentially using them to power the heuristic function for A*). The problem however is training it. It takes a long time to generate actually optimal routes. It's something I may look into in the future, but it's not a high priority.

3. I have open sourced a couple of parts of some of the algorithms at https://github.com/spansh/a-star-router . This is now a bit out of date as I've improved things quite a bit since then and the code isn't particularly clean either. I also use a different spatial index to look things up. I am seriously considering open sourcing different parts of the site based upon tier goals on Patreon (the first being the front end, second being parts of the back end code and the third being the entire codebase). I'm just not sure where I'd want the tiers to be, since the site still doesn't quite pay for it's own hosting currently. That said, I'm happy to discuss parts of the algorithms and explain how they work and integrate with the various technologies I use.

Machine learning is indeed expensive to do. You either have to tie up your own machine with an appropriate (and expensive) GPU, or pay for computing power in the cloud. AWS has some great machine learning instances that aren't too expensive, especially if you use spot pricing.

I understand why you would not open source your work and I appreciate that you have shared some aspects of it.

Thanks for taking time to respond to my questions!
 
Heya @Spansh, Love the data dumps and going through them. The information is fun to do little projects with!

However, with the release of odyssey, your "galactic" sized data dump has reached a ridiculous number, probably because there are nearly 90 settlements in some populated systems, each with it's own unique station-sized data, and I think it's made the data dump kinda... ridiculously huge.

Is there any way we, or well, I can get a new type of dump? Labeled "exploration".

Unique benefits of this "exploration" dump:
  • No station Data
  • No Carrier Data
  • No commodity, combat, faction, etc data.
  • Only celestial object / biological / geological / exploration based data

honestly, just a reversal of the "populated" dump :D

Thanks, Love all the work you do!

Arboo
 
Heya @Spansh, Love the data dumps and going through them. The information is fun to do little projects with!

However, with the release of odyssey, your "galactic" sized data dump has reached a ridiculous number, probably because there are nearly 90 settlements in some populated systems, each with it's own unique station-sized data, and I think it's made the data dump kinda... ridiculously huge.

Is there any way we, or well, I can get a new type of dump? Labeled "exploration".

Unique benefits of this "exploration" dump:
  • No station Data
  • No Carrier Data
  • No commodity, combat, faction, etc data.
  • Only celestial object / biological / geological / exploration based data

honestly, just a reversal of the "populated" dump :D

Thanks, Love all the work you do!

Arboo
I think you're overestimating how much size stations add to the file. The stations dump is only 500MB zipped (same as the populated one), I strongly suspect that you'd only save a few hundred MB at best from the filesize. You'd be better off simply processing the file line by line rather than trying to do the same thing (I do process that file myself every day using a streaming JSON parser, it takes around 3 hours including some preparation work like downloads and data patching 9:00 to 11:51).

It wouldn't take much for me to add the dump (since I generate all those files in parallel) but I think you'd still be looking at a 42GB file compressed.
 
doing exobiology, i would love to have a route calculator with atmospheric planets to land on. just for exobiology reasons. thanks for having a topic to post in!
 
Hey! Love the toolset you've written. Just a small feature request? Fuel Scoopable stars. It is handy to be able to route to stars I can fuel scoop along the way.
 
Hi is there anything in the works to help log and plot routes from exobiology data? Cannon Research has recently posted a price list for various exobiology data bits and having a road to riches like option for exo data and I'm wondering if this data can be incorporated into one your wonderful route planners...

Also along these lines they seem to have data cross referencing star/system/atmosphere types for bacteria. Could this be combined somehow with the existing DBs. https://canonn.science/codex/where-bacteria-roam/
 
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Actually another thought on an effective route planner - Hybrid Neutron and Road to Riches Plotter:

In other words you set a neutron highway route but instead of chaining neutron stars directly one after another; the plotter would send you to valuable scan worlds just off your neutron path. Thus you could pick a route that would take you great distances ending at a fun destination and intersperse valuable planet scanning along the way and ensuring you end up with a decent chunk of exploration data when all said and done.
 
Hello! I love to use your website's tourist planner for a variety of purposes, as well as the other features.
I was wondering if it would be possible to add an option to save the systems put into the tourist planner, or at least a way to download and upload a CSV file so that I could use the same systems again and again? I have found the planner particularly useful for BGS updates, but I start from different systems and make small changes regularly, so when using the planner, the order will be different, and I have to input all of the systems I'm checking for updates in repeatedly. This is over 20 systems, so it gets to be a bit tedious.
Regardless, I love the site and will continue using it which ever way you decide. :)
 
Hey! I'm having trouble with the galaxy plotter all of the sudden. Normally it works great but as of tonight, it fails to plot through any neutron stars at all, even though the "Use Supercharge" box is checked. Help!
 
Hey! I'm having trouble with the galaxy plotter all of the sudden. Normally it works great but as of tonight, it fails to plot through any neutron stars at all, even though the "Use Supercharge" box is checked. Help!
What settings are you trying to use (ie from where, to where and what range)?
 
What settings are you trying to use (ie from where, to where and what range)?
The route was Stuemeae FG-Y d7561 -> Beagle Point. The build is: https://s.orbis.zone/g3ov. 'Use Supercharge' is checked, none of the others.

Since then, I found the plugin for EDMC that allows you to import routes, and since I don't mind manually diverting for fuel stars, I just used the Neutron plotter fornow, and it works perfectly! Still, I love using the Galaxy plotter because it automatically routes through fuel stars.

Thanks, and thanks for the tools! They've been invaluable on many expeditions.
 
The route was Stuemeae FG-Y d7561 -> Beagle Point. The build is: https://s.orbis.zone/g3ov. 'Use Supercharge' is checked, none of the others.

Since then, I found the plugin for EDMC that allows you to import routes, and since I don't mind manually diverting for fuel stars, I just used the Neutron plotter fornow, and it works perfectly! Still, I love using the Galaxy plotter because it automatically routes through fuel stars.

Thanks, and thanks for the tools! They've been invaluable on many expeditions.
The reason is the annoying neutron gap running along all the 0 axis of the galaxy (You're basically trying to travel along the 0 x axis). I have some code in place which tries to avoid this and nudge the plotter off the acis to try and find neutrons but out near the edges of the galaxy (where we have much less knowledge about the galaxy) it doesn't work as well. If you attempt to move 500 or so LY off the axis and replot it does a lot better. If you also move your destination off it works fine.

Moving the source system away https://spansh.co.uk/exact-plotter/results/AE7DC7B4-FF79-11EB-85AC-E9C194EB4526
Moving both systems away https://spansh.co.uk/exact-plotter/results/162AB1F6-FF7A-11EB-99BD-E8C194EB4526

You can use the nearest known system search https://spansh.co.uk/nearest to find a system (in this case I simply subtracted 500 from the x and y coordinates of the start system and the end system to get it off the -400 to 400 range of all of the axis
 
I'm on my first carrier-based exploration trip now and I absolutely love Spansh Carrier Router. Truly amazing tool! :love:

Would it be possible make it prefer a certain Z-axis while plotting the route? I'm going to traverse the Galaxy centre now and it would be great if I could make the route at 1 kylie from the plane. So, if starting and ending waypoint are both around the plane and I set:
  • preferred Z-axis: +1000
  • max Z-axis change per jump: 200
the router would try to get to +1000 within first 5 jumps, stay there until 5 jumps before the ending waypoint and then descent to reach it.

My gut feeling says it would be extremely hard to achieve. But hey, it's worth asking, right? ;) It would be extremely useful for a NS-loving and high/low-areas-loving explorer like me. :)
 
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