Oolite Bulletins

Recently I've started taking passenger contracts, for which it seems you typically have to travel to quite distant systems, and for which the Advanced Navigational Array is quite useful.
However, there are a few things about it that I think can make it more annoying to use than it needs to be, so I thought I'd throw some suggestions out here. I'm prepared to dive into the code to implement these changes myself, but I'd like to get some feedback first (or if one of the core developers feels like doing it themselves that would be great ).
So, here are the changes I'd like to see:

1. Make the connection overlay a toggle rather than a hold-to-view button (it's doubly annoying because by default it requires you to hold shift to use it as well).
2. When calculating the optimal route, use weighted shortest-path, with travel time as the edge weight, so that the resultant route is the quickest route rather than simply having the fewest hops. Alternatively (better but more work), provide an interface to switch between the two different methods of calculating the route.
3. When the user selects a target to plan a route to, the hyperspace target should be set to the next system along the route, not to the final system (otherwise you have to pick your target system, see which system is next on the route it plots for you, and then select that system).
   As an extension to this, it would be nice to save the final target persistently, and when you arrive in a new system, re-plot the route to the final system and set the hyperspace target to the next system on the route. This way, you don't have to go back into the route planner at all, you can just jump from system to system -- of course, an advanced pilot will probably want to go into the nav. computer each time to work out if they can make some extra profit trading along the route, but sometimes you don't want the hassle.

John B

Hello,

as far as I'm concerned I really like your suggestions.

OoLife would be quite a bit easier and more comfortable. Maybe your suggestions could be implemented as a "Really Advanced Navigation Computer" thingy?

jpab wrote:

When calculating the optimal route, use weighted shortest-path, with travel time as the edge weight, so that the resultant route is the quickest route rather than simply having the fewest hops. Alternatively (better but more work), provide an interface to switch between the two different methods of calculating the route.

As an extension to this, it would be nice to save the final target persistently, and when you arrive in a new system, re-plot the route to the final system and set the hyperspace target to the next system on the route.

John B

Both of the above features are in trunk, so I presume will be in 1.74

El Viejo wrote:

jpab wrote:

When calculating the optimal route, use weighted shortest-path, with travel time as the edge weight, so that the resultant route is the quickest route rather than simply having the fewest hops. Alternatively (better but more work), provide an interface to switch between the two different methods of calculating the route.

As an extension to this, it would be nice to save the final target persistently, and when you arrive in a new system, re-plot the route to the final system and set the hyperspace target to the next system on the route.

John B

Both of the above features are in trunk, so I presume will be in 1.74

Well, that's nice

Actually, before checking back here again I had literally just been looking through the code to see what would be necessary and found that it already (in trunk) provides fewest-jumps or shortest-time routes, depending on whether the CTRL key is held down or not.

That just leaves the "easy" one of toggling the thing on and off instead of holding down a key to use it... do you know if that's already done too?

John B

jpab wrote:

That just leaves the "easy" one of toggling the thing on and off instead of holding down a key to use it... do you know if that's already done too?

John B

I doubt it somehow, but one of the Minds will know.
I'm just a player... I only pilot the things.

The time optimized route already exists in the trunk and will be available for 1.74.There are no plans to change the interface for now. The toggle mode has been already suggested recently (not in this forum), but it was decided that the current interface is more flexible and was left as is. The least-number-of-jumps route will be as is, with the time-optimized route switchable by holding down Ctrl together with the rest of the Advanced Nav Array combination. If one wants, one can assign a different key to the Nav Array, a key that does not require Shift to be pressed, to simplify matters. Holding Ctrl for time optimized route allows rapid switching between the two operating modes of the Array.

Oolite also now remembers selected destinations in trunk, so I guess the above requests should be reasonably well covered in 1.74.

Edit: Totally ninja'd again. I'm getting old