Pathfinding too slow!!

OnePercent

OnePercent
I had to make a flame bait title because my last politically correct one had absolutely no recognition what so ever (no one posted and I don't want to bump it for the fifth damn time)


Point is, The way the server handles path finding is actually O.K but for an explorer, It's Terribad.

THE PROBLEM: The "web crawlers" that FDEV uses, (interestingly is a similar term to what google does to find websites and add them to the search index) Are too slow because the "web crawlers" will try to find a path in ALL directions.

THE REACTION: We have to wait a long time for these "paths" to crawl their way to our intended destination (again, Not a problem for someone wanting to just jump to the next system, but for an explorer who wants to travel 500 ly in a reasonable amount of time, it sucks)

THE SOLUTION: Really simple, To the design Devs, Please implement it in a way so as the server uses all it's bandwidth to only calculate a PATH to the SELECTED SYSTEM RELATIVE TO MY POSITION.

Say I want to jump to system X which is 50 ly away, I then select it and instead of the server wasting all its effort of calculating a nice massive sphere of potential paths, It only focus's on THAT ONE SYSTEM.

Regards,


Every single explorer. :D
 

Ravenov

Ravenov
I've been finding this out just today since upgrading to a 30ly jump capable Asp, takes so much longer than even my cobra at 25ly.
 

johnUK

J
It is slow, perhaps affected by internet speed or the commander's computer, I don't know. You could argue it's being thorough though, just in case the fastest/shortest way isn't the obvious.
But, it takes a long time, perhaps an extra tick box to "look for direct route only" would help us impatient folk (speaking for myself). The max distance I've had a route for was 100 or so Ly, too.
But there are other things that the devs are (need to) working on.
Personally, I'd like multiple commanders being added first.
Happy New Year
John
 

OnePercent

OnePercent
johnUK said:
It is slow, perhaps affected by internet speed or the commander's computer, I don't know. You could argue it's being thorough though, just in case the fastest/shortest way isn't the obvious.
But, it takes a long time, perhaps an extra tick box to "look for direct route only" would help us impatient folk (speaking for myself). The max distance I've had a route for was 100 or so Ly, too.
But there are other things that the devs are (need to) working on.
Personally, I'd like multiple commanders being added first.
Happy New Year
John
Click to expand...

Exactly my thoughts, You don't even need that check box (though it would make more sense intuitively speaking) you could just select a system and it calculates based on your selection, You'll find it would be really really fast.
 

gazzareth

G
You're right, but routing like that is new into the game. Hopefully they will separate the spiders web from the flight planning to give us instant routes and more than 100ly planning.

G
 

soma

soma
From the perspective of a computer scientist:

I think the problem is that they are using Dijkstra's Algorithm, which finds the shortest path from one origin to every destination in the graph. I *assume* they had the feature which calculates the "Massive Sphere" first, Dijkstra's Algorithm is an efficient way to do this.

Later, when the demand for a route planner became clear, they most likely went for the quick and easy solution: they implemented route planning by simply re-using the shortest paths from the sphere visualization. With the huge number of star systems in our galaxy this solution was quick to implement but is not really optimal in terms of waiting time. There are different algorithms which are better suited to calculate routes from A to B (the A* algorithm for example), implementing them just takes some time and effort.

TL;DR: As it is right now I would not consider the route planning feature final. As with many other things it is work in progress, and I am sure it will improve over time :)
 

Anton Cano

Banned
Anton Cano
I completely agree with the OP. The game should only bother calculating the most economical or fastest route to my selected system, not to all systems in a 100ly bubble. Saves processing power and time to do it the suggested way.
 

Windscreen Smudge

W
Fact: It would be faster and save FD scads of money if this were done client-side, and there would be no security issue with hacks and exploits.
|
Yes/no on the capability of the ship to jump to the destination has always been server side and can stay there. Route planning is purely a comfort feature and visual tool for assistance. Hacking it to create a route that your ship can't otherwise travel will not result in you being able to make those jumps, it'll just make the planned route's visual representation useless.
 

Matt

M
It seems slow even for a naive implementation (unless there are a LOT of stars that are not visible on the map).

I am not sure if the distances are cached at the server, but that would be a sensible approach for near instant routing once we've basically crowd-sourced the distances from each and every star :)
 

Thorvald

Thorvald
Ok what am I missing? The routing is instantaneous for me... However most of the time the stupid thing won't route at all (the route box is red and un-clickable) even if I pick a system that is only 45 ly away and I know of two simple jumps manually to get there. If I pick a nice large 80 ly economical trading route it calculates it just fine (when the stupid button isn't red).

Am I not using the routing selection correctly and/or is the computation done on your own PC instead of their servers?
 

BACKER#50040

B
I agree with OP. Everybody would love to see a better way of calculating routes, especially explorers and traders. I heard some romour that it speeds up a bit if you set the galactic map settign to low in options, haven't tested it myself. Hopefully it helps :)
 

gamecat

gamecat
Thorvald said:
Ok what am I missing? The routing is instantaneous for me... However most of the time the stupid thing won't route at all (the route box is red and un-clickable) even if I pick a system that is only 45 ly away and I know of two simple jumps manually to get there. If I pick a nice large 80 ly economical trading route it calculates it just fine (when the stupid button isn't red).

Am I not using the routing selection correctly and/or is the computation done on your own PC instead of their servers?
Click to expand...

The reason the button is red is because it hasn't calculated the path there yet.

If you leave the galactic map and come back to it you'll see it may well have calculated it but anything above 45 ly can take forever. The reason why is that to plot the paths each 10 LY adds more and more paths increasing the plotting requirement excessively for whatever algorithm they are using. Also I would imagine the procedural nature of the galaxy adds to this calculation time. As someone said above this algorithm really needs updating.
 

Helvellyn

Helvellyn
Thorvald said:
Ok what am I missing? The routing is instantaneous for me... However most of the time the stupid thing won't route at all (the route box is red and un-clickable) even if I pick a system that is only 45 ly away and I know of two simple jumps manually to get there. If I pick a nice large 80 ly economical trading route it calculates it just fine (when the stupid button isn't red).

Am I not using the routing selection correctly and/or is the computation done on your own PC instead of their servers?
Click to expand...
It's not instantaneous for you, you're just not waiting until it's got as far as populating the 45 ly away system. It'll change from red once it's got there. It's calculating every possible route in advance, rather than one you ask for when you ask for it.
 
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