Router Plotter Bias

[Old Duck]

I'm a beachcomber, meaning I like to look for undiscovered worlds close to the Bubble. I'll find a section of space I'm interested in and then perform a volumetric search pattern in that area. This means I'm manually picking the next system to jump to via the galaxy map, no routes. In this process I've observed something interesting - some systems are thoroughly picked over, often by multiple CMDRs (probably due to their proximity to the Bubble), while other systems in the immediate vicinity are left undiscovered. Thing is, the picked-over systems often have "junk" planets, whereas the undiscovered systems have some really nice finds!

This makes me wonder if the route plotter "favors" certain systems over others when plotting a course to some distance target. Obviously a CMDR who uses the KGBFOAM filter will only get those systems, but I've seen undiscovered K-class star systems next to picked-over M-class systems with those boring ice worlds. The whole thing reminds me of that Star Trek episode where Picard and the crew learn that warp drive has been "damaging" space in all the well-traveled lanes. It would appear that ED also has "well-traveled lanes" with very specific jump points preferred by the route plotter. Thoughts?

 

[Orvidius]

I think it's highly likely that some systems are favored more than others, for the plotter. I think this comes down to several different factors:

* Many of the ships passing through these areas may have sufficiently similar jump ranges that some systems don't get considered.

* Many players choose sufficiently similar destinations that anything slightly off from those paths, even by the tiniest amount, may also get overlooked.

* The plotter has to take a lot of logic-shortcuts in order to function quickly. This may lead to some unintentional bias. For instance, if it were to always start by bisecting the path and finding stars nearest to that mid-point, it's likely the same ones may get selected for everyone, regardless of jump range.

* Some systems may be of types that are popular to skip, in the filter options.

EDIT: The M versus K thing you've noticed-- That actually makes a lot of sense to me. When I'm in dense areas, I'll often filter out both, and visit mainly G and hotter. Anyone who doesn't filter on star class will hit a lot of M-class systems. For K to get the same treatment, people would need to mainly filter out just the M-class stars, which I'm sure a lot of people do too. The difference probably mainly comes from the fact that most people don't filter them out, and hit a huge number of Ms on their way through.

 

[Sapyx]

Another thing to consider is: voids. Small regions of space within which there are either no stars or only contains stars that everyone normally filters out (like protostars). Think of them as anti-nebulas: regions of space that everyone wants to stay away from. The route plotter has to either punch right through them, or go around them. Stars on the surface of the "void" are more likely to get hit by the plotter than stars that a bit further away, as the stars on the void surface are always going to come up top of the list whenever the route plotter's optimum trajectory dumps it in the middle of the void. And if you've got a cluster of voids with only a few stars in the middle of them, then that "route" is likely to be a constriction for the route plotter and it pushes everyone though those same stars.

 

[Orvidius]

Yeah, I think anywhere there's a smaller number of stars for the plotter to choose from, whether due to actual density, or due to common filter choices, there will always be some stars that are more likely to be hit, and others less so.

 

[LifesAJourney]

I've always suspected that the plotter prefers M-class systems a lot. Cannot prove it, though.

 

[Orvidius]

It only prefers M-class in the sense that there's just a lot more of them to choose from.

 

[Old Duck]

The moral of the story for me personally is that the route plotter isn't the best way to find undiscovered planets. When I was a "young" explorer looking for my first undiscovered planets, I plotted a route heading out from the Bubble, and I had to travel over 1000 LY to find my first undiscovered system. Just recently I took a trip to Elephant Butt Nebula, almost 3000 LY away, and every single system in the route had been discovered. However, when I started beachcombing by manually selecting systems on the edge of the Bubble, I found undiscovered systems within 20 LY of populated planets! So these days when I'm being a "true explorer", I only use the route plotter to get to my fishing hole, but then I cast the net by hand - as in, I manually select planets to visit from the galaxy map.

 

[GlowyHedgehog]

I've noticed on plotting a long route that 99% of the jumps are up near my max jump range, but every now and then there's a jump which is alot shorter; I've seen jumps as low as 7ly. Nothing to do with lack of stars, it even did this when unfiltered on the way to Sag A*. I clear and re-plot the route from the star just before the short jump and it re-plots a full jump as the next one.

I can think of two causes of this; first, the plotter bisects the route (or trisects, or whatever) and then finds that there's a small jump left over to reach each mid-point; or, it plots in both directions and this small jump is where they meet. I tend to discount the latter since often the last jump is not at full range.

Other than that, I've noticed no particular bias.