About

I created this tool to help find interesting colonisation candidates. I intended to use it for personal use only, but I thought others might also be interested in it, so I turned it into a web app.

To start using the tool:

1. Enter the name of a colonised system (optional).
2. Enter the name of a faction you want to expand (optional).
3. Select the order in which you want the results to appear.
4. Select if you want the search results to include systems that have been claimed (but not colonised).
5. Click search.

After a short wait, the tool will populate the "Colonisation Candidates" section with results matching your search within about 1000 ly of Sol.

Clicking on the name of any of the systems in the result will open an accordion box that displays details about the selected system.

These include:

• An overview of the system.
• Details about the rings and hotspots in the system.
• Details about the notable bodies in the system.
• Stations in systems within the colonisation range can be used to colonise the selected system.

The budget for this project was £0, so I was limited in using the services I already had access to from other projects. As a result, my underlying database implementation was less than ideal.
This means that the search takes 10-15 seconds without any search parameters. Providing either a faction or a colonised system significantly improves wait times.

I am working on improving the search performance. Please be patient.

There are currently five search order options:

• Combined Value
• Most Landable Bodies
• Most Hotspots
• Notable Body Value
• Distance to Sol

While "Most Landable Bodies", "Most Hotspots", and "Distance to Sol" are self-explanatory, the other two options are less so.

"Notable Body Value" is not the in-game value of the bodies in the system; instead, it is the point-based system based on the body type.
The breakdown of points is as follows:

• Black Holes, Neutron Stars, Ammonia worlds - 1 point
• Water worlds - 2 points
• Earth-like worlds - 3 points

Why these types or values?   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Combined Value" is a weighted combination of "Most Landable Bodies", "Most Hotspots", and "Notable Body Value".

It's not hard to find which systems have been colonised (it's systems with a government) and not too tricky to work out which have been claimed (it's systems that have a colonisation ship that is not yet colonised), but it's hard to find systems that have been claimed and then abandoned.

Because of this, I decided to include the option to show claimed systems. When you do this, any systems that have been claimed will display the last time someone docked at that system's colonisation ship. If that was long ago, the system might be abandoned and ready to claim again.

This tool leans if a system is claimed in two ways:

1. While performing the daily update, a system colonisation ship is found in an uncolonised system.
2. An EDDN data contributor docks at a system colonisation ship.

The tool doesn't know if a system has been claimed if neither of these criteria is met.

If a system is missing from the list, there are a few possibilities:

1. The system was discovered today and has not yet been added to the database.
2. The system was never sent to EDDN and thus never entered the database.
3. The server considered the system boring (no notable bodies, no rings, and no landable bodies.)
4. The system is outside this tool's range (more than 1000 ly ish away from Sol).

The tool's database is updated with all the new discoveries, claims, and colonised systems from the previous day once per day at 5 a.m. UTC.

This tool decides if a system can be colonised if it is in range of another colonised system (with a valid station type). Extra-bubble stations that can't be used for colonisation cause issues with this, resulting in colonisable systems being marked as colonisable.

I believe this issue will be solved over time as these systems eventually become linked to the bubble.

I intend to set up a post on the Frontier forum for you to report issues. If I remember, it will be linked below.