How to Find the Nearest Station and Long Route Plotting
Finding Stations
During rescues, especially Code Black ones or deep space situations where a Seal response may take longer than the client is willing to wait, it is useful to know how to quickly find appropriate stations or carriers the client could be redirected to. Several tools can help with this.
HalpyBOT
HalpyBOT is the bot running in our IRC channels and provides many useful commands. This section lists the ones relevant to finding stations, but you can find a full list of commands at [LINK HERE]here.
| Command | Arguments | Use |
| !dssa | [System/CMDR/CaseNr] | Check for the closest DSSA carrier to a given location. |
| !diversion | [System/CMDR/CaseNr] | Calculate the 5 closest FDev-placed structures with repair capability near their main stars. |
| !landmark | [System/CMDR/CaseNr] | Check if a given point is near a landmark system. |
Inara
You can use Inara's Search Nearest feature to find the closest station or carrier to a given location with filtering options to ensure the station has Repair facilities, appropriate landing pads and limit its distance to their main stars. Below is a table showing what to enter in each fields:
| Field | Required? | What to enter |
| Near star system | yes | The system in which you or the client are located |
| Select galactic region | Do not use | |
| Government/Allegiance/Faction Name | May be useful if the Client is wanted by specific factions to avoid the station and system security attacking them. | |
| Station type | Can be used to filter for Starports only. This may be useful for Code Blacks as the O2 timer stops once the client passes the forcefield. | |
| Min. landing pad | recommended | If the client is in a Large ship this is needed to ensure the station has landing pads big enough for them. |
| Max. station distance | May be useful for Code Blacks to limit the station's distance from its main star to reduce the needed SC time. | |
| Use surface stations | recommended | May be useful for Code Blacks to limit the needed SC and orbital flight time.Additionally may be used to filter out Odyssey stations for Horizons clients. |
| Ignore Fleet Carriers | recommended | Carriers can be unreliable (may have limited docking, moved, or have inactive services). In Code Black cases they should be verified by Seals before letting the client log in. |
| Station services | yes |
Required to ensure the station has Repair facilities and, if needed, Refuel and Rearm facilities as well as Interstellar Factions if the client needs those. |
Inara will then return a list of matching stations and carriers, sorted by distance. The list includes system and station names, system distance from your reference point and the station's distance from the main star. Clicking on a station reveals further details to ensure it's a viable option.
EDSM
You can use EDSM's station search to find the closest station or carrier to a given location with filtering options to ensure the station has Repair facilities, appropriate landing pads and limit its distance to their main stars. Below is a table showing what to enter in each fields:
Inara's filtering and search function is a lot more advanced and detailed so we would recommend using it over EDSM.
| Field | Required? | What to enter |
| Commander Position | yes | The system in which you or the client are located |
| Docked Station | Do not use | |
| Station Type |
Can be used to filter for Starports only. This may be useful for Code Blacks as the O2 timer stops once the client passes the forcefield. |
|
| Government/Allegiance | May be useful if the Client is wanted by specific factions to avoid the station and system security attacking them. | |
| Facilities | yes |
Required to ensure the station has Repair facilities and, if needed, Refuel and Rearm facilities as well as Interstellar Factions if the client needs those. |
| Sort by | yes |
Set to "Distance to commander position" |
EDSM will then return a list of matching stations and carriers, sorted by distance. The list includes system and station names, system distance from your reference point, the station's distance from the main star and what facilities it has installed. Clicking on a station reveals further details to ensure it's a viable option.
Long Distance Plotting
During rescues you may need to traverse long distances to reach the client. Below are multiple tools and tips that will make plotting and going on those trips easier and smoother.
Fuel Management
During rescues you should be using a Fuel Scoop and refuelling at stars along the way. Only the Main Sequence Stars will let you refuel though so it is recommended that you filter your galaxy map to only route you through those stars. There are two mnemonics to help remember those star types:
- KGB-FOAM
- Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me
Once you have plotted a route on the galaxy map you will see two kinds of lines connecting the stars along the route, solid and dotted ones. Solid lines mean that you will still have fuel at that point while dotted ones mean that you will have run out of fuel at that point and will need to refuel beforehand. If you're filtering the map to only route you through Fuel Stars this shouldn't be an issue but it's still good to be aware of this.
Neutron Star Boosting
If you're confident in doing so you can use Neutron Stars to supercharge your FSD. This involves flying into the cone of the NS in supercruise and staying there until your FSD is charged. Doing so with Neutron Stars gives a 4x jump range boost while only having a low amount of danger as long as you always point away from the star and never drop out of SC while in the cone.
While supercharging is also possible at White Dwarfs they only provide a measly 1.5x jump range boosts while having a very large exclusion zone and tiny cones, making boosting off of them very dangerous and not worth it.
You can either allow the galaxy map to include Neutron Stars and White Dwarfs (it's unfortunately not possible to only include NS) by, in addition to the Main Sequence Star classes listed above, also including "Non Sequence Stars", or you can use tools like spansh to plot a very efficient neutron route.
spansh Plotters
The Neutron Plotter on spansh website is a popular tool to generate efficient routes from A to B that make heavy use of Neutron Boosting. Simply enter your starting (source) system and your destination system as well as the fully fueled jump range of your ship and hit Calculate. Spansh will then compute a list of Neutron Stars as well as the estimated total number of jumps.
Be aware that this plotter does not include fuel stars so you'll have to make sure to add fuel stops yourself if you notice you're running low or there are multiple neutron jumps after each other.
Spansh has a more advanced plotter which will include fuel stops and take secondary neutron stars as well as FSD injections into account, it is however also a lot more complex to use. In this plotter you also select start and destination system but you will also need to include a copy of your ship build which you can get from sites like coriolis or EDSY, the amount of cargo you have on board and select if you want to use secondary neutron stars, FSD injections, if you're already supercharged and if you plan to refuel at every scoopable star along the way. You can also choose which routing algorithm it uses.
There is also a plugin for EDMC which you can use to do the calculations or enter a generated list. The plugin will then automatically copy the next system into your clipboard once you've reached the previous one so you can quickly plot to that next system.