Oolite Bulletins

I searched and found people suggesting this, but the posts were made a while ago, so I was wondering if this feature ever made it into the program? It would be really handy to be able to change the routes suggested by the ANA so that you could route around Anarchy systems and such and still be able to see the total travel time.

Since there are other seemingly undocumented features in the game, I figured it was worth asking.

EDIT: Plotting a route is extremely unintuitive. Why does it take 40.2 hours to go directly from Ensoreus to Ontiat, but if I detour through Xeesle, the travel time is only 20.8 hours? Are the travel times calculated by the program based on some factor that isn't at all obvious, or did someone actually go in and manually set the travel time between every set of systems within traveling distance of each other?

Without being able to plot your own course, it's impossible to know if a detour around an anarchy system, that seems to be a much more direct route, will add significantly to your travel time.

Rekrul wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 7:24 pm

Are the travel times calculated by the program based on some factor that isn't at all obvious

Travel time in hours = square of the distance in light years. Three 2LY jumps take less time (12 hours) than one 6LY jump (36 hours).

And, straight from the Master and Commander, the reasoning behind the travel time mechanic: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=75409#p75409

You cannot plot your own course currently. It's either least number of jumps or least travel time. It should be possible to add more options to the ANA by using different properties as the weight (cost) for the path finding algorithm, but it requires code intervention.

another_commander wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:26 pm

And, straight from the Master and Commander, the reasoning behind the travel time mechanic: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=75409#p75409

Thanks for the explanation.

I don't have a problem with the mechanics being the way they are, but it makes it hard to plot a course, especially when you can't measure the distance between any two systems to know how much time it will add to the overall trip.

another_commander wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:26 pm

You cannot plot your own course currently. It's either least number of jumps or least travel time. It should be possible to add more options to the ANA by using different properties as the weight (cost) for the path finding algorithm, but it requires code intervention.

That's a shame. such a feature would be really useful.

My idea was about waypoints, where I could be able to click systems in sequence (like in courier would mark all delivery systems in order he want to travel them, then it would show at each click total accumulated time and "next system" in navigation would be set like only first unreached item in the array wa elected. Upon reaching it next item would became "next system" and so on until last item is reached), all would be remembered (in array?) and planning would optimise just each part separately (all by time or jumps). Still some code to add

The GalacticSatNav OXP (which I think is obsolete with the latest ANA features) could be used as a coding reference for building a plotting tool. It doesn't let you store multiple systems in a sequence but it does remember a target system (so it shows you how to get the player's current system target from the chart and store that information for use later even after the player switches to a different system target on the chart) and it calculates the travel time and distance between systems (so it shows you how to do that).

I'm thinking along the lines of a primeable equipment where each time you press the activate key, it adds your currently targeted system from the chart to a list representing a custom sequence of jumps (it would display an "error" message if you selected a target system that is more than 7 LY from the last one you added to the list) and displays the total distance and travel time to reach that system along the route you've given it so far.

And maybe if you hit the activate button again while targeting any system already in the list, remove systems from the list from that point onward (so the list would be pruned to end at the targeted system), so you could test different route branches without having to rebuild the whole list.

There might be some other convenient things you could do with the mode button too. A simple one might be to have mode display the current list.