Jump Planner

How the jump planner builds a route

Enter an origin and a destination, pick the hull class and set your Jump Drive Calibration, and the planner returns the shortest path it can find between them. What makes the answer different from a plain jump calculator is that the graph it searches contains both kinds of edge: every jump your drive can make at your current range, and every stargate.

The result is a leg-by-leg sequence. Each leg says whether it is a jump-drive jump or a stargate transit, how far it is in light years, and how many isotopes that specific jump burns. The totals underneath give the jump distance, the split between jumps and gates, and the fuel one way and for the round trip.

Stargate transits burn no fuel, so only jump-drive legs count towards the isotope totals. That sounds obvious and is exactly why mixed routes are worth planning: a single gate hop in the middle can cut a leg short enough to save thousands of isotopes.

Isotopes per light year, by hull class

The base consumption below is the hull's own value before any skill. Jump Fuel Conservation reduces it by ten percent per level, and the four jump freighters get a further ten percent per level of the Jump Freighters skill on top of that. Both multiply cleanly, with no stacking penalty.

The rounding happens per jump, not on the total, which is why a route split into more short legs can cost slightly more than the same distance in fewer long ones.

• Dreadnought, Carrier, Force Auxiliary: 3,000 isotopes per light year, 3.5 LY base range
• Supercarrier: 3,000 per light year, 3.5 LY base range
• Titan: 3,000 per light year, 3.0 LY base range
• Rhea: 10,000 per light year, 5.0 LY base range
• Anshar: 9,400 per light year, 5.0 LY base range
• Ark: 8,800 per light year, 5.0 LY base range
• Nomad: 8,200 per light year, 5.0 LY base range
• Rorqual: 4,000 per light year, 5.0 LY base range
• Black Ops: 700 per light year, 4.0 LY base range

Range and Jump Drive Calibration

Your maximum jump range is the hull's base range multiplied by one plus twenty percent per level of Jump Drive Calibration. At level five that is double the base: a dreadnought goes from 3.5 to 7.0 light years, a jump freighter from 5.0 to 10.0, a Titan from 3.0 to 6.0.

This is the single setting that changes a route the most. Dropping from Jump Drive Calibration V to IV takes a dreadnought from 7.0 to 6.3 light years, and on a long move that is often the difference between four jumps and five. The planner recalculates the whole path the moment you change it, so it is worth stepping the level up and down to see which legs actually depend on that last skill level.

Forced waypoints and alternatives

Intermediate nodes let you force the route through systems you have chosen, in order. Use them to route through a staging system, to keep a leg inside friendly space, or to avoid a chokepoint the shortest path would otherwise take.

For any system on the route you can open its alternatives: the local stargate connections, and every other system within jump range of the previous leg. That turns the planner from a single answer into something you can argue with, which is what route planning under a hostile hotdrop threat actually is. You can also disconnect a stargate leg to force the planner to solve that stretch with the jump drive instead.

Reading the tactical map

The route is drawn on a map that can be switched between a rotatable three-dimensional camera and a flat top-down view, and expanded to fill the screen. Systems on the route are full nodes, systems near it are context dots that gain their names as you zoom in.

The marks follow the in-game map: the alliance holding sovereignty is shown as its logo inside the node, the security value sits next to the system name in its own colour, and a diamond outlines the origin. Forced waypoints, jump-drive jumps, stargate transits and off-route systems each have their own colour, listed in the legend on the map.

Jump fatigue and activation cooldown, jump by jump

Every jump drive, jump bridge or covert jump adds jump fatigue, a timer that decays in real time even while you are logged off, and starts an activation cooldown during which you cannot jump again. The planner follows the rules CCP has used since March 2018: the cooldown after a jump is the larger of 1 + light years jumped and one tenth of the fatigue you had before the jump, never more than 30 minutes; the new fatigue is the larger of 10 × (1 + light years) and your previous fatigue multiplied by (1 + light years), never more than 5 hours.

The distance that counts is reduced by the hull, using the jump fatigue multiplier from the game data: jump freighters and the Rorqual count one tenth of the light years, Black Ops battleships one quarter, combat capitals the full distance. That is why a jump freighter can chain jumps that would park a carrier for hours. A practical example: a carrier jumping 5 light years three times waits 6 minutes after the first jump, reaches the 5 hour fatigue cap on the second, and faces a cooldown of almost half an hour before the third. Stargate legs add no fatigue, and because the time spent flying them is not known the planner does not subtract it, so the real fatigue can only be lower than the figure shown.