The Route planner discussion thread

[CMDRKNac]

Now you can browse station data, ie: http://www.elitedangerouscentral.com/systems?q=Eisele Dock&type=station
After some fighting with hosting limitations I was able to import a few stations today from a master list.

Now I'm going to implement a way to upload and process automatically CSV files from OCR scans to populate commodity data and have a complete online station browser. (Then after that thje next function in the todo list is a 'mission running' help tool which will use that commodity data + route planner.)

 

[ModZero]

I'm going to go out on a limb and bet it has to do with performance.

400 billion systems. That's a LOT. Now, how are they connected?

They aren't. That's a large part of the problem. If there were static routes between systems, it would be quite possible to do it by pregenerating or caching the data. But the graph depends on what ship you're flying, and how loaded and equipped it is. That makes preprocessing impractical, and makes the best graph search solutions impractical. This is different from most e.g. AI problems, where even though the terrain might look freeform, it can be internally represented as a static graph.

This is going to be a guess (and your post is a fine example why such guessing is a bad idea, but it's too late in a day for restraint), but I suspect a large part of the game isn't stored at all - that would explain some curious design choices, like not persisting asteroid status. You just have an algorithm that generates something that's a good approximation of our galaxy (ways to create such functions exist for some problems, they were used for certain approaches to image compression), and store exceptions for areas that you want exactly described (b/c, for example, you have real astronomical data about them). In some ways that's better for your search problem - you don't actually have to do all the IO involved in graph search - but storing preprocessed search data would get into the way of that. AFAIR something like that was involved in one of the old Elite games, though I might be misremembering...

 

[Berty Dastard]

Trip planning now appears to be extended to 100 ly - well done FD, much better

 

[cowboy]

- Merge Threads

...for the final jump, let us choose an in-system destination to navigate to!

(or at the very least, make destinations in the System Map selectable)

<3

 

[FX2K]

Now that's just being lazy

 

[ddunwoody]

It's awesome out there isn't it?

Yes.



I think I might have followed your route on the way back about half-way, until route planning came in. Very handy for those big gaps in NGC 1999, so thank you!

 

[Egan]

I just can't get it to work properly at all after the 2.2 update. Doesn't seem to hold a course at all after leaving the galaxy map. Thing is, it seemed to be working ok until I got kicked off the server earlier - expanded range and all.

 

[Dynamo]

They aren't. That's a large part of the problem.

Thanks ModZero, reading all the responses and all the programmers stating how the calculations are easy, and there should be a database with all the connections it in pre-calculated and so on made me think I was going crazy. The obvious thing people were overlooking is that systems are not connected, as you said due to the connections not being consistent per agent.


I think the routing update is great - although one thing I would like adding, is a keyboard mapping to allow you to target next system in the route.

I know I can go back into the nav panel and do it manually, but a mappable button would be so nice Still, musn't grumble, as the panel focus buttons now override track IR, which is good!

 

[Gibbonici]

I think I might have followed your route on the way back about half-way, until route planning came in. Very handy for those big gaps in NGC 1999, so thank you!

Glad it helped somebody

The worst part for gaps is the high-rimward approach to the Orion star nursery. Hope you managed to avoid that on your way in. Even a route planner can't compensate for a 19LY jump range when the stars are 23LYs apart! Had to burn off almost all my fuel for the mass saving to get out of that mess. I was never so happy to find a Class M star in my life after that

 

[Andargor]

manual course plotting option please.

This. /8char

 

[mitchman]

Trip planning now appears to be extended to 100 ly - well done FD, much better

Still broken usability-wise. Set a target, say, 80 ly away, then click the route. No route is showing up in the game, just the 80 ly target which you obviously can't jump to. They should just get rid of the set route button and always do a route when you set a target, if possible. 100 ly is still not good enough when all the external tools handles more easily.

 

[Jezzah]

The route planner is a right mess I'm afraid for sure.

I had to travel 300 ly earlier and it was the most irritating experience I've had in the game yet. I have a 20 ly FSD so I figured 15 jumps maybe 20 mins ... It took over an hour with much frustration .

The interface is clunky enough without having to fiddle through back and forth into the nav screen only to find the "route" isn't working and is displaying the final destination.

From my experience it seems that the planner has a few problems.

1. It seems to struggle with individual points that are over 18 ly ...but not all the time. Which makes it unpredictable.

2. It also seems that some points when they are not displayed in the nav panel the route planner can not add them but it appears like it has when in the galaxy map. This means that point needs to be manually flown to by selecting in the galaxy map. Stop at it then re plan.

Not sure what the fix is as some of these issues have been around for some time now beta at least. As an alpha player I understand the problems but new players in 5 days time will not understand them and it'll frustrate them a lot more than I have been.

 

[Andargor]

Like others have said, it seems to want to calculate the spiderweb before allowing you to set a route. And at the next stop, it doesn't auto-advance.

Can I set my own waypoints, please?

 

[Jagax]

Still broken usability-wise. Set a target, say, 80 ly away, then click the route. No route is showing up in the game, just the 80 ly target which you obviously can't jump to. They should just get rid of the set route button and always do a route when you set a target, if possible. 100 ly is still not good enough when all the external tools handles more easily.

Think you're doing it wrong.
You don't first set target then route. You just do route without setting destination.

 

[StarStorm]

Thanks, I will try this

 

[FX2K]

I know it's still early days and I'm sure you've already thought of it but it seems the plotting the route is tied to the 'spiderweb'. That can take some time to render especially with long jump range ships. It would be nice if the route planning was decoupled from it and only worked out the route needed between the destinations. I usually turn off the spider web as it's showing me stuff that I don't need to see but having to turn it on, wait and then find out that the route planner won't even reach my destination as its too far is a tad frustrating.

Looking forward to the range being a bit further the route planner doesn't help much when your Asp does 31 ly.

This...

Trying to plot an 80ly year trip with a 23ly range and it's unavailable until every single combination of routes I can take from my starting location has finished calculating and rendering. Even though I am totally ignoring all of those since I know where I want to go. Then, when it finally completes and the plot route button finally becomes available, it still fails.. If I exit the galaxy map and return, I can see the route in yellow, but its not being plotted on a jump by jump bases for me to actually use.

Surely it would be much more efficient plotting the desired route independently....you could probably increase the single routes range by quite a lot too then, leaving the 'spider web' at a lower range for those that liked it / use it when they are not sure where to head next.. it is useful, but I don't think the spider web needs to be 100ly, only the route plotting (if not more)

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Patience for this one.. I mean they are recreating something more complex than a regular car GPS. It has to take into account 3 dimensions and create its own nav system. This will take time. I'm just happy its in for the smaller ships this is a help even if it is only 3-4 jumps for me.

 

[KillingTime]

I just can't get it to work properly at all after the 2.2 update. Doesn't seem to hold a course at all after leaving the galaxy map. Thing is, it seemed to be working ok until I got kicked off the server earlier - expanded range and all.

I've noticed that my Cobra doesn't show the furthest systems in it's navigation tab despite being able to jump to them if I select them in the galaxy map. I think this has something to do with route-planner barfing on us. If I set the route to use the most economical (i.e. shortest point-to-point) then it works fine.

 

[FX2K]

Patience for this one.. I mean they are recreating something more complex than a regular car GPS. It has to take into account 3 dimensions and create its own nav system. This will take time. I'm just happy its in for the smaller ships this is a help even if it is only 3-4 jumps for me.

Oh I'm not complaining, just agreeing that the issue seems to be the spider web and how plotting a route is tied into it.
The backbone is in, which is a big step forward... just needs a bit of work that's all.

 

[Therris]

Is it a known issue that if you use the route planner, it does not take into consideration your jump capabilities? I can jump 20LY at a time, and yet the route planner takes me from system to system individually.... I realize my jump capabilities evolve as I use up fuel, but why would I use the route planner if it makes me jump 3LY at a time, when I can jump 20LY at a time if I just plot manually?