DOTLAN EveMaps

Some of you might have followed my twitter posts in the last days and realized that I was working a lot in the background. Most of the stuff was just background stuff and database preparation for upcoming future things but the most notable are those two.

Topics

• Reintroduction of strategic levels ehm … sovereignty levels (how I’ll continue naming them)
• Updated alliance history database (with now available graphs for system hold by strat ehm sov levels)
• System statistics for jumps andkills (up to 30 days before I purge them)

Reintroduction of Sovereignty Levels

When dominion was launched in December, CCP removed the sovereignty levels from the API,  cause they got replaced by the new shiny index system for strategic/military/industry categories. Instead of replacing the sovereignty level with the harmless index levels, CCP introduced the sovereignty status API for sovereignty related structures but got removed a few days later … but that’s another story.

To not mess up with sovereignty database during the introduction and the pre-phase where people could move their sov stuff around without loosing their sovereignty level I decided remove them completely until CCP would introduce a Index API which never happened. Since I’m already having the date since when an alliance is holding that space I just turned it into the old sovereignty Level. (0..5 based).

Alliance History

But that wasn’t what I wanted to have in the end. So I took a copy of the sov database, deleted everything up to pre-dominion start and started to replay 7.5 GB of XML API Files which I had archived. After 2.5 hours I had a clean new shiny database with all the time-based strategic index ehm sovereignty level changes. Some more database work to merge the new changes on the alliance history database and I was nearly ready to go.

System Statistics

I know you all love statistics, especially the npc kills and  jumps which are important for the lone wormhole space tourists to check out the activity of their hidden backyard. You now have a dedicated page with all the juicy details and scroll back in time for up to 30 days, if you’re really interested on how many NPC you’ve killed per hour before you lost the system 🙂

Some days ago, the fellow blogger Kaar Baak started a campaign and send a questionnaire to the majority of EVE community developer with a big response. If you wanna ready my interview or one of the other devs check out his blog.

EvE Online Meta-Gaming: Meet the (Other) Devs #12 – DOTLAN

Preview of our interview:

[…]
What is name and current version of your app?
As DOTLAN EveMaps is a website there’s no real version number like in distributed programs. But even I’m doing all the work solo, I’m taking heavily use of SVN (subversion control system) to track my development and merge stuff from the dev trunk to the live page.
Current SVN Revision: 363 (March 2010)

How long have you been working on your app?
I first started in winter 2007 when I converted a PDF map of the region providence/catch into some PHP scripts which could generate his hand drafted map out of a database with regularly updates. Some weeks later I got the idea that such kind of a map would be useful for the complete eve player base and started to play around with JavaScript and SVG to build a map editor/generator. In July 2008 I finally released the first version of DOTLAN EveMaps which only contained maps, nothing else. In the past 1.75 years since the initial release the complete page got updated several times many features were added.
[…]

In preparation for Tyrannis, I’ve already prepared a planet distribution page, so you can find your favorite planet type easier in your neighborhood. At this moment, it’s unsure how the planetary interaction addition is changing the Eve Universe, but I’m sure there will be some addition to DOTLAN EveMaps as well. If you’ve any ideas let me know.

Examples:

• Planet distribution overall
• Planet distribution in Pure Blind
• Planet types in X-7OMU

Planet Distribution

I’ve added a few small updates. Let me quickly rush through them:

• You can avoid faction space in the route and jump planner (example: avoid minmatar space if you’re in the amarr faction warfare).
• New and disbanded alliances will be listed on the alliance live changes page.
• Alliance live changes extended to 48h instead of 24h
• You can select “Corporation” as information overlay on the region map to see the system distribution per alliance/corp.
• The corporation details are now showing the systems and outposts a corp is controlling.
• Alliance details are now showing the disbanded date (in the case an alliance is closed).

As already mentioned on twitter. In the last 2 month the visitor and traffic numbers got a very high boost after the dominion deployment. People are visiting the dotlan evemaps more frequently then ever, cause changes can happy every second. The traffic counts and visit nearly doubled from november to january. But check the numbers by yourself. Below you can also find 2 linked graphs/pictures I posted on twitter already.

Source: Webalizer, Datarange: August 2009 – January 2010

Some additional graphs/pictures:

Question time: When did Goonswarm recently lost their space?

No ... Dominion has no big impact on DOTLAN EveMaps

Welcome fellas in the new laggy year 2010 🙂 As CCP deployed Dominion 1.1 during my vacation, I just updated the Supercarriers and their jump range for in the heavily used jump planner. But that’s not all:

Out of the comments and requests of the last blog post, I found one feature really interesting and missing completely in all current jump planning tools.

The Jump Portal Fuel Calculator:

Mostly Black Ops pilots have the problem of the fuel bay which is always to small to do anything meanful. The fuel needed for bridging ships is mostly a big unknown in risky situations deep in nullsec space.  If you’re planning a trip using the jump planner and you’re selection a ship which is capable of bridging other ships, you’ll get the possibility to add the ships to the final calculation and get the result how much fuel you and your guests are consuming. That applies for Titans and Jump Bridges as well.

I hope the calculation is correct and you’re all happy with the interface and functionality.

Example: Black Ops Bridge: 4 Manticore, 4 Hound, 1 Falcon

As DOTLAN is currently the biggest history and statistic database for Eve Online. But when it comes to alliance and sovereignty tracking, there’s always room to extend. When we would have a green field, what informations would be really nice to get. Lets start with a wishlist for 2010. I’m sure that most of those ideas won’t made it into eve’s real api world, but that’s what wishes are for.

The return of SovereigntyStatus API

As already blogged, CCP removed this specific API to maintain the current fog of war. This was based mostly of the fact that onlining TCU units were shown via API before somebody was actually in a system to report those. Every other state what you could read from the API was mainly common knowledge. Example: If an alliance has sovereigtny in a particular system, you know that there must be a TCU. If Alliance B is dropping SBU’s in a system where Alliance A has sovereignty you basically have several hundred pilots in space fighting for this system or defending it. With all the intel channels several thousand players already know that there’s a big fight going on for sovereignty. So there’s nothing to hide. (@CCP remove modules in onlining/anchored state and you’re ready to go.)

Additionally if you include SBUs in the API it would be nice to track current campaigns from alliances who’re fighting for/defending their space.

System Indexes

Well, I don’t think I really need to say more. I would love the show more graphs in the System Details and Alliance Lists. Btw the strategicIndex is the most important for the majority of people, cause with Level A you’ll be able to install feature B, etc.

Concord wars

An API that would list current wars and their state would be nice. I know you can query every corp/alliance information ingame, but it would be a really interestesting statistic to show current and past wars of an alliance or corporation. I think R.E.P.O’s list would be never ending 🙂

Batch operations

Querying corporation details for several thousand corps is a pain in the ***. It would be nice to introduce batch opererations where you can query corp details for corp 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 in one API call instead doing X seperated calls. It would recude the CPU and network load tbh.

With just 1 hour left this year, I wish every reader and pilot a happy new year. If I find more things for the wishlist, I’ll update the blog. If you have updates, place a comment here.

Well. Fly safe

to everybody in New Eden. Red or blue, carebear or pirate 🙂 I would like to thank all people that gave me feedback, donations or content which I could include. I would also like to thank my corpmates who supported me.

Well, lets see if CCP brings back some new interesting things into EVE and into the API as well in the new year. I hope you all enjoy the next upcoming days with your family instead of eve drama going on everywhere.

Until then. Fly safe

Well, lets make it short. I fixed a bug where outdated stats have been shown on the IGB map version. The cache files for the dark and IGB theme didn’t got purged after new data was available. Users of the IGB Version have seen outdated numbers for jumps, kills and other live stats. The ‘default’ theme always showed the right data.

Thanks for reporting me that issue.

Well, lets make it quick. After I got feedback from various sources I decided to disable the mouse wheel zoom support on all (expect the ingame region map) by default. If you feel the need to zoom in you can still use the zoom icons or just toggle the mouse icon and the wheel support is enabled/disabled.

A couple more bugs are fixed as well.

CCP Chronotis just announced that they’ll remove the SovereignyStatus API which lists all Territorial Claim Units and Sovereignty Blocking Units.

Quote:

Folks,

We will be soon be removing /map/SovereigntyStatus.xml.aspx API which allows you to see the sovereignty structure status for the universe. We would like to eventually re-release it with restrictions to either the corporation or alliance owning the sovereignty structures so they can get a good overview of the status of their solar systems.

The information provided by this view was far too extensive compared to what is available ingame where you should rely on traditional scouting for this intelligence data. The ‘fog of war’ should be maintained here without having a far too revealing view through the API.

As per CCP Elerhino and Incognito’s previous responses, we will also be working on adding more relevant sovereignty APIs in the future such as the sovereignty index and changes overviews from the dashboard in related ongoing development.

-Chronotis

In the final end this will means, the time I put into the Sovereignty Structures View was wasted. 🙁 I can understand that the API contained far too much sensitive intel informations. The first 12 hours in the onlining process of a TCU are the most critical, as the TCU is still in a vulnerable state and and can easily be destroyed by a remote repping battleship gang.

Well. Lets see what CCP’s final decision will be. Maybe the API will only get restricted and a couple of informations are not available or available only to those systems where a particular alliance has their structures in or it is getting completely removed.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1228297

UPDATE

The SovereignytStatus.xml.aspx API is already down. Woah, this time CCP was really fast.