Airship Guide

[Nyalia]

Spreadsheet updates:

First, please keep ship names work-safe. I do sometimes access the spreadsheet at work, and there are likely others who do too. Thank you.


I was totally wrong with the idea that Survey affects survey time. I misread some data I had. Sorry! I still have no idea what Survey does. It might determine if you find a second item, or it might just be a stat that does nothing until rank 50, and then it has to be a specific value to visit endgame sectors? If you think about it, Favor and Survey are linked and clearly have less of an effect together than every other stat. When you upgrade one, you get the other for free, and with no penalty unlike all other stats (all of which come with some penalty to another stat). So, it wouldn't surprise me if Survey and Favor did very little relative to the rest. Favor appears to be directly correlated with higher exp bonuses. Survey is definitely required for later sectors. When we have more data, I'll do a second item comparison and see if there's any correlation there.


If anyone cares, here's the actual formula for how long a trip takes:

TotalTime = TravelTime + SurveyTime

TravelTime (in hours) = (21/speed)*TotalDistance
SurveyTime (in hours) = (21/speed)*10*TotalCeruleumBarrels

TotalDistance is the sum of the distances for each leg of the trip. It does not include the "Survey Distance" of 13 per hop.

The SurveyTime is clear when using a ship with a speed of 70 - the sectors that cost 1 fuel all take 3 hours exactly to survey, ones that take 2 fuel all take 6 hours exactly to survey, and so on. If you select a location that's exactly 10 from home (SC05), the travel and survey times are VERY close (except not exact because the distance isn't actually exactly 10).

Keep in mind when using this formula that the distance between two points on the map is NOT an integer! The value shown is rounded, but the actual value the game uses is definitely a decimal. So, it may show like, "10" and actually mean "9.78" or whatnot. So, the above formula will give an approximation if you use the rounded values, not an exact one. At some point, I'll do the math and replace all the distances in my chart on the spreadsheet with the actual precise values, just because I'm obsessive like that xD


I've added to the spreadsheet a tab where you can mark one or two sectors that you want to travel to, and it'll tell you how much time it would cost to add another, not to the end, but to the optimal point in the trip. It'll also show you the optimal order in which you should visit the sectors. Currently, it only works with up to 3 sectors. If you select three, it won't show the costs of adding a fourth, and if you select four or five, the optimal order functionality breaks.

Still working on a concise, variableless formula to determine the shortest path between four points. (Three was easy - the best middle point is the one that minimizes the formula (distance from PointX to PointA + distance from PointX to PointB + minimum(distance from Home to PointA, distance from Home to PointB)), and the best first point was the remaining one with the lower distance from Home to that point. The complexity goes up when you include a fourth point, and I'm having issues making the formula work without variables. But, that's the fun of functional programming!)


The sheet still doesn't have a spot to travel 5-point journeys. I'll add that soon, but in the meantime, just put your 5th leg on a new line with an indication that that's what it is. Given how rarely people hit four points, I don't think that there will be very many anyway.