Rebuild visitedstarscache.dat

Evoflash

Evoflash
Does anyone know if it is possible to rebuild visitedstarscache.dat from EDDiscovery or EDSM?

Reinstalled Windows in a hurry and (a) forgot to copy Appdata and (b) never backed Appdata (double fail), now all my visited stars are unvisited which is going to make mapping Eord Flyue sector a lot less efficient.

I have tried Importstars.txt but have discovered what everyone else seems to know - that it is broken.

Thanks for any help anyone can give.

CMDR Evoflash
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
Yeah, I ended up needing to rebuild mine at one point too. I wrote a script to rebuild it from my travel data, which I was already pulling from EDSM's API anyway. But I've been hesitant to make any code publicly available since I don't know where FDev stands with regards to Terms of Service.

What I'm tempted to do is create an online tool to generate it from journals... but of course that doesn't help cases where people lost their journals due to a Windows re-install or hard drive crash (etc). Pulling from EDSM's API isn't all that practical since you have to pull one week's data at a time, not knowing when the commander's flight log entries actually began, or which weeks actually have data. And still work around the rate limit on the API.

And yet if you open a support ticket, they'll tell you to use importstars.txt (last I checked), even though that hasn't worked for quite some time. And for someone with a long enough flight history, EDSM will time out trying to generate one of those for you too.

No easy solution here.
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
No, that was the visitedStarsCache containing more systems than you've visited. According to FDev support, importstars.txt was not intentionally disabled.

EDIT: That is, some people where loading visitedStarsCache with EDSM data, which is too much to do via importStars.txt since it would take ages to load millions of systems that way. So they limited visitedStarsCache to match your travel history in terms of number of systems, but importStars was meant to still work to recreate that if you needed. But it's been broken ever since.
 
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varonica

varonica
Orvidius said:
No, that was the visitedStarsCache containing more systems than you've visited. According to FDev support, importstars.txt was not intentionally disabled.
Click to expand...

Yeah I remember that was a big issue a while back, people combining everyone visited stars cache so they could set their filter to unexplored stars only (well except for the systems never reported to EDSM), but it seems easy to break things and hard to fix them in game coding world!
 

Caydran

Caydran
In 2016, Frontier announced how visitedstarscache.dat and importstars.txt was supposed to work.

robbyp said:
Its not broken, its disabled by design due to certain users abusing importstars.txt
Click to expand...
You say disabled, due to abuse?
Orvidius said:
No, that was the visitedStarsCache containing more systems than you've visited. According to FDev support, importstars.txt was not intentionally disabled.

EDIT: That is, some people where loading visitedStarsCache with EDSM data, which is too much to do via importStars.txt since it would take ages to load millions of systems that way. So they limited visitedStarsCache to match your travel history in terms of number of systems, but importStars was meant to still work to recreate that if you needed. But it's been broken ever since.
Click to expand...
You say, No, that was the visitedStarsCache, but still due to abuse?

In either event, it seems today, Horizons and Odyssey still create the visitedstarscache.dat and will add stars to it as you play, but now ignores the importstars.txt file and today, does not work as the Frontier announcement referenced.

Furthermore, all of this is now an exploit, for which Fdev quietly stepped in and disabled?

Neilski said:
Well, the FD person QA-Jack used the word "exploits" without saying what they meant by it. You reckon that's what was meant? (Not sure why programming your ship about visited stars should be regarded as an exploit.)
(Precise quote: "This functionality was disabled in 2020 to prevent exploits")
Click to expand...

Maolagin said:
From others who have worked with these, the changes seem to include A) a file format that includes CMDR-specific information, and B) the game client rejects the file if it contains significantly more stars than server-side tracking thinks you've visited. That sounds like it was aimed pretty specifically at people who were downloading a new VSC from external sites. It's not really clear why they considered that an exploit (that it potentially allows PC players an advantage over console players has been suggested but not confirmed), but I agree that's probably the "exploit" QA-Jack is talking about.

Following that logic, I don't imagine they're going to care if you use 3rd party tools to restore your own cache after a reinstall or similar. But it's definitely at your own risk, I wouldn't really expect them to clarify further what's allowed vs not.
Click to expand...
In conclusion, the import of stars to the cache has now been disabled by FDev. The cache still works and will collect your current game visited stars, but importing them (your history) is now disabled.
 

Caydran

Caydran
It looks like @Suremaker has resurrected a way to get your VisitedStarsCache.Dat file to work.

First, you need to login to EDSM (hopefully you have been updating your info to them via their API) and download a new "ImportStars.txt" which will contain your travel history.

After Logging into your account at EDSM, use this link: https://www.edsm.net/en/settings/export

You can also use the "First Discovered" list at EDSM if you only want the importstars.txt file to contain only your first discoveries.

Place your new "importstars.txt" in the same directory as your "visitedstarscache.dat" file.

Download @Suremaker's tools and read the instructions. He is online and welcomes questions.

VisitedStars cache and ImportStars.txt

I don't know if this is a bug or known issue, but.... I looked in the elite directory where the "visitedstarscache.dat" file lives, and there is none. The only file there is my "importstars.txt" file. So, does running Elite in either Horizons or Odyssey create the visitedstarscache.dat DB and...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

VisitedStars cache and ImportStars.txt

I don't know if this is a bug or known issue, but.... I looked in the elite directory where the "visitedstarscache.dat" file lives, and there is none. The only file there is my "importstars.txt" file. So, does running Elite in either Horizons or Odyssey create the visitedstarscache.dat DB and...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

Follow these two threads for rebuilding your VistiedStarsCache.dat file.
 
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Erei

Erei
Ned Flandalorian said:
They downloaded all the data from EDSM and imported it into their game. So any system that had been visited by anyone running a plugin would show up as visited for them... making it easier to find systems that were undiscovered.
Click to expand...
And it's bad because.... ?
If anything such a feature should be ingame by default.
 

Caydran

Caydran

VisitedStars cache and ImportStars.txt

I don't know if this is a bug or known issue, but.... I looked in the elite directory where the "visitedstarscache.dat" file lives, and there is none. The only file there is my "importstars.txt" file. So, does running Elite in either Horizons or Odyssey create the visitedstarscache.dat DB and...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
Erei said:
And it's bad because.... ?
If anything such a feature should be ingame by default.
Click to expand...
So people hunting undiscovered things like guardian ruins and NSPs should be able to see all the systems that have been already searched, taking all the challenge out of it?
I guess the game should also display a big "YOU WIN!" screen every time you load it up, just so everyone can feel accomplished without making any effort?
 

Erei

Erei
Ned Flandalorian said:
So people hunting undiscovered things like guardian ruins and NSPs should be able to see all the systems that have been already searched, taking all the challenge out of it?
Click to expand...
It's a challenge to randomly pick a system and hope for the best now ?
Damn, I didn't know I was a hardcore gamer ! Git gud folks !
Ned Flandalorian said:
I guess the game should also display a big "YOU WIN!" screen every time you load it up, just so everyone can feel accomplished without making any effort?
Click to expand...
Yes, it's notoriously true that every unexplored system have a guardian ruin in it.

Also, "making an effort" imply you actually make an effort. Picking a random system is not actually an effort. And no, picking a random system over an explored one is not actually more challenging.
 

Evoflash

Evoflash
Just fly 10kly out of the bubble and you’ll find that 1 out every 100 or 200 systems you visit has already been visited. It’s not hard to easily find things.
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
Erei said:
It's a challenge to randomly pick a system and hope for the best now ?
Damn, I didn't know I was a hardcore gamer ! Git gud folks !

Yes, it's notoriously true that every unexplored system have a guardian ruin in it.

Also, "making an effort" imply you actually make an effort. Picking a random system is not actually an effort. And no, picking a random system over an explored one is not actually more challenging.
Click to expand...
You think you can just open the galaxy map, pick any system at random around the Regor sector and it will be unexplored? As opposed to actually being able to see which ones are unexplored according to edsm?
 

Erei

Erei
Ned Flandalorian said:
You think you can just open the galaxy map, pick any system at random around the Regor sector and it will be unexplored? As opposed to actually being able to see which ones are unexplored according to edsm?
Click to expand...
No, but I never said that. I just said warping around hoping it would be unexplored is not a challenge nor anything difficult as you said it was.

Also, you seem really angry for some reason.
 

Ned Flandalorian

N
I'm not angry. It's just very clear you don't know what you're talking about, with regards to in-game exploration nor basic probability theory.
 
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