The Route planner discussion thread

Tarman

Tarman
The Galmap is better than it was, but it could be better than it is. Better route-plotting past a single jump for sure. Features to provide data at least about your own travels and points of interest should be simple to create and record. Player notes like DO NOT GO HERE AGAIN - CLOSEST STATION IS 400000LS AWAY or BEST PLACE FOR BLABLABLA. Notes like these should go right down to the system map level.

Perhaps even a way for players to trade their own personal data to another player. "I found this safer route, not many people know! You need the best jumper you can get but it gets you past the warzones no sweat. No, you can't buy my station data too, find your own sweet deals."
 

Zenicetus

Zenicetus
Gibbonici said:
I don't believe there's any gameplay reason for not having a route planning feature. You still have to do the navigation, only you do it in one go instead of a step at a time every jump.
Click to expand...

Galaxy scale is a problem that might limit this. Say that someone wants to visit the pulsar at the heart of the Crab Nebula. It's right there in the Galaxy map, one of the first things I looked for when the Galaxy map could show it. The huge supernova remnant nebula is there in the game, and the pulsar at the center. Very cool job FD, by the way, for showing this. We can go there.

But if we want to go there, it's roughly 7,000 ly from where the game starts me in Gamma. Or around 700 jumps with a 10 ly range. Shorter with a better FSD, but that's still a lot of waypoints for the game to manage and show on the screen without melting the user's CPU and GPU. And that's not even the furthest recognizable object I could click in the Galaxy map. The Crab is still reasonably local, on the same side of the Galactic disk as our starting locations.

A better route planner would be great, and I agree it's important. I would really like to see a volumetric color coding for the three major factions too, so I could know where the heck the boundaries are. But a route planner will still need some constraints, so users can't just click anywhere on the zoomed-out Galaxy map view and expect to see the entire route.
 

drlight

D
- Merge Threads

Hi! There is annoying thing for long distance travelling. I choose a destination system and a route is appear. Route consists of several jumps. After the very first jump galaxy map options (such as filters) resets to default. The route resets too, so I need to find my destination again by choosing filters, select it, select the nearest system at the route and jump. After that I need to do all the things again and again, system after system. Is this normal? Why my route doesn't save until I reach the target system (like Freelancer for example)???
Really, does it bother anyone or there are only hardcore gamers here that like so masochistic long distance travels? :mad:
 

777Driver

777Driver
robnewman said:
Don't know about anyone else, but I can quite easily find routes in the galaxy map... Just click on your final destination and all the intermediate jumps are changed to a yellow line (instead of blue)... Just make a mental note of each star on the route from my starting position to my destination, and voila... Route planning done... And if I need a reminder, I just go back to the galaxy map...
Click to expand...

Make a mental note? Lol are you serious ;) For short trade runs sure, but exploring?? Below is my route in the sidewinder from my start location 'HALF WAY' to SOL... I'm not the frikin Rain Man, no way can I remember all this..

LHS3447,LTT18486,LHS3479,ALRAI LCV B24,NLTT 48288,MCC811,ABUKUNIN,ALRAI CLY D129,SUMEL,ROSS 748,PA PARA,ANALI,FREY,LTT 15820,ALRAI GHM-A72,PALATES,ALRAI CB0 A60,ALRAI DB0 A60,ALRAI ZU-P-A5-3,NEZ PELERI,ALRAI AV-P A50,ALRAI CQ-PA5-3ALRAI BV-P A50,ALRAI BV-P A51,ALRAI EL-Y C32,ALRAI EL-Y C31,LFT 1504,ASHIMA,ALPHA SECTOR JW-W B1-6,CHOWEI,CORE SYS SECTOR SO-R B4-5, RUGAI,LTT7448,ZUGEN,LFT 1404

Edit - I use the rift, sure I can quickly lift it up to check the route on my notepad. I just don't understand what is so hard about displaying the next jump on one of the onboard displays. The galaxy map already stores the data.

@Ken - I tried the screen grab method a while back, again that only works for short routes, ultra long haul routes won't capture all the star names
 
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Tarman

Tarman
777Driver said:
Make a mental note? Lol are you serious ;) For short trade runs sure, but exploring?? Below is my route in the sidewinder from my start location 'HALF WAY' to SOL... I'm not the frikin Rain Man, no way can I remember all this..

LHS3447,LTT18486,LHS3479,ALRAI LCV B24,NLTT 48288,MCC811,ABUKUNIN,ALRAI CLY D129,SUMEL,ROSS 748,PA PARA,ANALI,FREY,LTT 15820,ALRAI GHM-A72,PALATES,ALRAI CB0 A60,ALRAI DB0 A60,ALRAI ZU-P-A5-3,NEZ PELERI,ALRAI AV-P A50,ALRAI CQ-PA5-3ALRAI BV-P A50,ALRAI BV-P A51,ALRAI EL-Y C32,ALRAI EL-Y C31,LFT 1504,ASHIMA,ALPHA SECTOR JW-W B1-6,CHOWEI,CORE SYS SECTOR SO-R B4-5, RUGAI,LTT7448,ZUGEN,LFT 1404

Edit - I use the rift, sure I can quickly lift it up to check the route on my notepad. I just don't understand what is so hard about displaying the next jump on one of the onboard displays. The galaxy map already stores the data.

@Ken - I tried the screen grab method a while back, again that only works for short routes, ultra long haul routes won't capture all the star names
Click to expand...

Dude that route made my eyes bleed.
 

gamecat

gamecat
Mat rix said:
Just a simple change of colour for the next system on the route in the navigation panel would do.
Click to expand...



Was just going to say this. It would be so handy to include this simple but effective way to follow your path. Or maybe add a little indicator as colour is locked on those panels.
 

MARPATdroid

MARPATdroid
Mat rix said:
Just a simple change of colour for the next system on the route in the navigation panel would do.
Click to expand...

Actually I really like this idea, I've been trying to think of a fair way to do this without dumbing it down too much by auto selecting your target for you. I think this is it, I also like the idea of a different colored landing pad for when you are in some busy starports.
 

Shads

Shads
if they make a route planner will it weigh a tonne like the docking computer? Are they using the original Charles Babbage design?
 

mitchman

M
The fact that routes don't give you the next system as waypoint automatically makes it hard to travel greater distances. Seems to be like this is a must have for release. It's my biggest nitpick right now, that and the fact that a dot . cannot me entered in the search (with Norwegian keyboard setup at least).
 

mrinku

M
Not so much a bug, and definitely not a feature, but when you select your destination it effectively discards the route to the first system you selected. Because *that* system is now your destination.

Don't ticket this, but by all means post on the *discussion* forum about getting a route planner added. Not a support issue but a "lobby the devs to add it" one.
 

hobblygobbly

hobblygobbly
Either way, there should be some persistence for it, either in the map or output to a list in one of the GUI elements (such as the left panel, could have a tab). In technical/programming terms, the route has already been calculated and majority of the work has been done through the algorithm that calculates the shortest/most efficient path based on constraints (such as economical/fastest), they just need to output the data they've already got to somewhere else. I think it's just one of those overlooked things but it'll add so much to "ease of life". It's already being stored in whatever data structure they've used which seems to be cleared every time.
 
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drlight

D
mrinku said:
Not so much a bug, and definitely not a feature, but when you select your destination it effectively discards the route to the first system you selected. Because *that* system is now your destination.
Click to expand...
It would be nice if trip computer automatically selects the next waypoint system after destination system selection.
 

Entilzar

Entilzar
replace the info panel with a space nav, I really don't need to know that I have deployed my landing gear as a text message and tbh messages could go in to the equally poorly desgined comms panel anyway,,

Enty
 
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