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 | Sector Mining Tour Planner (SMTP) |
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Note: In case you think "SMTP" stands for something completely different:
You are wrong. 
The idea was originally brought up by Pilot Antanael (EU). This is a first try
to implement it.
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| Ways of calculating |
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If one starts to calculate the best connections (read: travel ways) between given
‘roids, soon a problem pops up: There are always x! unique waypoint combinations
(permutations) to compute.
So, e.g. for 5 ‘roids, there will be 5! = 5*4*3*2*1 = 120
permutations. Having 10 waypoints, there are 3.628.800 permutations, and for 15 ‘roids
there are... well... too much. This problem is commonly known as "TSP" (Traveling
Salesman Problem), we re-name it to "TMP" here (Travelling Minership Problem, that is).
Trying to solve the TSP errr TMP problem by using complete numeric combination
routines will end up in very long processing times. There are several approaches
to solve that, all of them using high mathematics and some sort of "non-optimal"
solution process (the provided solution might not be the best OF ALL possible
solutions, just a good one). I found several links like
http://www.math.princeton.edu/tsp/index.html
http://www.lalena.com/ai/tsp/
http://jochen.pleines.bei.t-online.de/index.htm
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| Application |
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Anyway, as most of the things I found were interesting, but far too complicated
for the common miner I am, so I decided to do it a more easy way (read: I didn’t
get it; not at all).
Up to a certain number of ‘roid positions, SMTP does complete numeric calculation,
thus it should present THE best (shortest) combination of waypoints.
In case the number of ‘roids exceed that certain limit, 50.000 random combinations of all
waypoints are computed, the best one is finally filtered out. So, the results of
the "random routines" may vary and not represent the overall best mining tour
("it’s A BIT optimized then, hehe").
Up to now, no journey starting point (like a JG) can be defined. The first ‘roid
position presented by the solution is random.
SMTP is a local VC++ application that provides access to the myRotacol database
file. The results are formatted to be used with JGRot. You must copy/paste it to
a JGRot file.
The program is at an early development phase. Don’t expect it to be bug-free,
and don’t use it on your company’s main server or any space mission control
computers ;-)
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