> [!FAQ] What is this? > In April 2023 I was playing EVE Online at [EVE University](https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/EVE_University) and living in their now-defunct []()[Wormhole Community](https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Archive:Wormhole_Community). During this time I refreshed the introduction class for Pathfinder (a web application used for mapping and tracking wormhole connections) with a new slide deck and new visuals as the old one was very out of date. > > As E-UNI's WHC no longer exists and Pathfinder is no longer in use at E-UNI, I am hosting the slides and speaking notes I created here in case they are of value to others, and as a demonstration of my own capability developing and delivering training material as I cannot share material that is property of my employer. # Pre-Class ## Slides **Sides**: [Link to Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9xd2v9l4iqtfdovj2nlqk/RC4-CLASS-Intro-to-Pathfinder.pdf?rlkey=xgwpom04twvjldsqg7wxjoyyq&st=zptkusm2&dl=0) ## Presenter Advice: - Don't get bogged down in detail in the early slides. - You want to skate quickly through slides 1-7 to get to the good stuff: Nodes, Connections, Signatures. # Slides 1-2 - Intro and Outline - Welcome to the class - Basic etiquette: set yourself to push-to-talk or toggle mute on, use classroom-questions on Discord for any questions. - There's no in-game component to this class. Remain docked and/or fly safe. - Outline - This slide is a quick overview of what we'll be covering. - This class will be presented with E-UNI Wormhole Community as the primary audience, as WHC makes the most use of / reliance upon Pathfinder. - I am assuming that all/most attending have a functional understanding of wormhole mechanics in Eve and the relevant terminology, e.g. CRIT, SHRINK, and EOL for hole health, static connections, signature scanning, etc. - We don't have a ton of time to backtrack on that material. Happy to provide clarifications or refreshers where needed ... - ... but if you're coming into this cold I do recommend you hang in there and take Intro to Wormhole Mechanics the next time you see it on the calendar. - This course is NOT exhaustive, this is an Intro to Pathfinder. - Pathfinder has lots of features and UI elements, I mainly want to cover all of the ones that will be relevant for you to read, understand, and update Pathfinder. That's a lot in itself. # Slide 3 - What is Pathfinder? Pathfinder is a web application that acts as a mapping tool for Eve Online, aiding especially in visualizing and navigating through the ever-shifting network of wormhole chains. Pathfinder integrates with Eve Online via the ESI API, which allows the tooling to automatically populate some (but not all) information about the J-Space systems a character encounters, and link through to other 3rd party services to ease intelligence collection. This information can then be shared in real time with other authenticated users of the same Pathfinder instance, e.g. in a Corporation or Alliance context. # Slide 4 - Accessing Pathfinder LINKS: E-UNI Pathfinder: https://pathfinder.eveuniversity.org/ Wiki: https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/EVE_UNI_Mapper To start, Pathfinder uses Eve's ESI API for authentication and to request information from the game/API about your character. Examples include: - What system you're in, and what system(s) you jump to. (Used for populating the map) - What ship you're in. (Used to subtract mass from known holes you and your corpmates jump through) Click the sign in with Eve button and authenticate your Eve Online account, same as you would in Alliance Auth to access other E-UNI sites/services. Once complete, click your desired character portrait. You'll be taken to the map next. # Slide 5 - User Interface To start, let's take a quick tour of the interface. First - You can adjust the layout of Pathfinder to suit your needs via the monitor icon at the upper right. - Can select between two columns with a full width map, or three columns with a two column width map. The circular arrows will also flip/mirror the layout. - This does automatically scale with window size, and Pathfinder does play nice with browser zoom levels. (Ctrl & +/- or Ctrl & Mousewheel) - This view can also be used to (de)select the windows you want visible in Pathfinder. - At bare minimum, you should select Information and Signatures. - I recommend running with all of the System windows plus Connection mass tracking enabled. Sort the items that are a higher priority higher in the respective columns e.g. Signatures, Information, and Structures. Second - Pathfinder supports drag and drop rearranging of most windows. Any window that has the six dots icon in the upper left can be moved in this manner. - The Map itself cannot be moved. A quick tour of the Windows themselves - Map - Shows you the chain as it is currently known to be. - Think of it like a canvas, most items in the map can be selected (left click), dragged, have additional connections created, and have additional right click options. - Signatures - A one to one copy of the probe scanner window from in game. - As players scan signatures, they can Ctrl+A select all Ctl+C copy all items from their probe scanner, and paste them into this window via the Signature Reader. - System - General information about that system, including a shared notes pane. - Structures - all known structures in system, can be updated via copy and paste from DScan similar to the signatures window. - Killboard - zkillboard integration showing recent activity in the selected system. # Slide 6 - Data Quality LINKS WHC System Naming Scheme: https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/WHC_System_Naming_Scheme WHC Bookmark Naming Scheme: https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/WHC_Bookmark_Naming_Scheme Before we can actually talk about Pathfinder's features, we need to talk about **data quality.** The quality, health, or usefulness of data based on various factors. In order for Pathfinder to be effective in an organizational context, that is in a WHC or Uni-Wide context, the data in Pathfinder needs to be: - complete - Have we mapped the chain around us? - timely - Is the data fresh or stale? - and conform to WHC standards. - Are any systems mislabeled or not easy to read? Garbage in, garbage out. - **Bad data results in lossmails.** - If you allow Pathfinder's map to go stale, or worse if you populate it with crap, nonconforming and incomplete information, this results in inefficiency: - ... wasted time and effort by you and others in finding content and identifying danger in the chain. We don't expect you to be omniscient, we don't expect you to be terminally online. We just expect you to do the minimum: - update signatures when/where you see they're aging, - bookmark what you scan (especially * holes), - follow the naming conventions, and - **ask when you aren't certain of something.** # Slide 7 - The Map This is your roadmap to the wormhole chain(s) as we understand them to exist at that moment in time. There are some basics that you need to understand first: - The map is made up of two types of objects. - **Nodes** - these are solar systems, both of the K-Space and J-Space varieties. - **Connections** - These are jumps between systems, most commonly wormholes but can also be used to represent gates. - On clicking either type of object, additional views will appear below and beside the map wherein you can see and add more information about that system or connection. We'll address each of these in detail later. - When an authenticated user, yourself or other WHC members, jump a wormhole from a node that is present in the map, Pathfinder will automatically create the new node for the system you land in and the connection (with the mass hit from your jump) back to the system you came from. - **BUT**: Pathfinder will not automatically update any other information. - It cannot associate the signature with the jump or destination. Do this manually. - It will use the last known name/alias for that system. You'll need to update this. - Pathfinder does not automatically know the lifespan, mass consumed, or allowed ship size of the hole. Set these manually. - Pathfinder may spawn the node on the map in a very ugly / hard to read position. Move the node so it aligns cleanly with other nodes at the same depth of the chain. - **==This is why the slide on Data Quality is important.** # Slide 8 - Nodes Let's examine a node from the inside out. We'll start with Innuendo. For most wormhole corporations, the Home system(s) will be a "locked" node, see the lock icon in the top right. ### System Type In the top left you'll see the system type. - For wormhole space systems you'll see the system C# rating. - K-space systems will show as H for Highsec, L for Lowsec, and 0.0 for Nullsec. - Color coding is applied to the text, so e.g. - Highsec is green, Lowsec is orange, Nullsec is red. - C1-C2 J-space is blue, C3-C4 are yellow, C5-C6 are red. - Shattered systems e.g. C13 tend to be a flat purple color. Thera is bright yellow. ### System Alias Innuendo - This is the system alias. By default Pathfinder will use the in-game system name e.g. Stacmon or J211936, but by double clicking on the node you can edit this value to whatever you want. - In an E-UNI context, you will nearly always see Innuendo (our home) and the statics out from Innuendo on Pathfinder. These are: - Eggs - A B274 wormhole leading to highsec. - Bacon - An O477 wormhole to a C3 system. Remember, E-UNI WHC has specific schema for how systems are named in Pathfinder, and how bookmarks are named. - E.g. Bacon chain always uses B, Eggs chain always uses E. - 2 B1 is two jumps from Innuendo, in the Bacon chain, and is the first 2-jumps deep system identified in that chain. - 3 E2 is three jumps from Innuendo, in the Eggs chain, and is the second 3-jumps deep system identified in that chain. That naming schema is important in this context because the system aliases you see in Pathfinder are frequently updated ***manually*** by WHC scouts. - Pathfinder does save the system alias from the last time it was seen in chain / on map. But, if you encounter e.g. Perimeter right now in your scouting, it might be a highsec hole at .2 B5H. - But the next time you get a hole to Perimeter, it might be Eggs. - Make sure you double check the saved alias and update it accordingly. You will also see some special users of the System Alias. - If a hole has a particularly well known and very active entity living in it, e.g. LAZERHAWKS, their name will typically be appended to the end of the system alias. - Be cautious with these holes and/or be ready for PvP. Some holes are saved on the map via the Lock System option with a special alias, and are stored in the top left of the map. - You can ignore these until/unless they become linked in the chain. - When these systems become linked, the alias and/or the system notes will contain instructions on what to do / who to contact. - Examples include ... - When a unista has a krabbing hole, and want to be contacted (usually a Discord @) when the hole appears in chain. Usually this is a courtesy so they can do some hauling and/or roll the connection shut for hole control purposes. - ... when Stacmon is Eggs or is in close jumping distance to Innuendo. Uni Hauling will want to know this in order to complete any deliveries. - In this circumstance, flagging the connection as Save Mass is a good idea. More on that soon. ### System Information This provides specific information about the system above and beyond what is present in the map node. I would particularly direct your attention to: - The top bar next to the system name contains links out to other 3rd party tools. - K-space systems link out to the relevant views in Dotlan and EveEye. - J-space systems link out to Dotlan and Anoik.is - The notes pane. - If there's information about the system or people living there that'd be useful to someone else coming across the system later, you can leave it in the notes tab. - E.g. is this nullsec system a staging system for one of the big null blocs? Is this C3 lived-in, by who, and link to their killboard. - Recommend you prefix notes with a datestamp and your character shortname, e.g. 2023-03-21 LMN: - Do try to keep the notes pane "evergreen", provide information that is more likely to be relevant to the next WHC member who comes through the system can follow up on and verify. - If the thing you're noting is going to disappear at the next server downtime, it's probably not worth noting. ### Statics LINKS: Anoik.is http://anoik.is/systems If a system has static wormholes, their system types will be shown in the middle row, right hand side of the node. - To stick with Innuendo as the example you will see an H and C3. These are what we call Eggs and Bacon. - Same color coding as mentioned before remains in effect here. ### Lock Icon If the system has the "lock" feature toggled on, a lock icon will be shown in the top right of the node. - This can be toggled via right click on the node, "Lock System" option. - The lock prevents modification of some, but not all, elements of the node. Namely, its position on the map is fixed, and it cannot be renamed. - Signatures can still be updated . - Connections can still be added and modified. ### Weather Icon If the system in question has "weather" or a special type of star, e.g. a Black Hole, Wolf-Rayet, or Magnetar, a colored box icon will be displayed in the top right of the node. - This box can be hovered over with your mouse, and will display a bubble containing the relevant information about the weather and its associated strength, buffs, and debuffs. ### Node Outline The outline of the node can change color according to the value of the "Set Status" variable on the node. - Understand that the system is status is never automatically determined, and must be set manually. - These outlines follow a fairly standard color coding schema. - No outline means the system status is unknown, or unactioned. A gray outline means it has not yet been scanned. - Blue means friendly. - Green means empty, nobody is living there. - Orange means the system is occupied, someone is living, krabbing, or otherwise present there, but disposition is not known. - Red means hostile. Someone(s) are in that hole and are/have/will/likely-to shoot at you. ### Characters in System If another authenticated user of the same Pathfinder instance is logged in, and present in a system, you will see their name appear as an additional single line along the bottom of the node separated by a dashed line. - This is for at a glance determination of where someone is in chain. - This value is a single line, and in the event that there is more than one character in system this line is biased towards the most recent user to enter system. - For nodes where multiple Pathfinder-using characters are present, a bubble will be present above the node showing the number of characters (e.g. 10) with an upward or downward facing triangle to show trend of players entering or leaving respectively. - If you need a list of Pathfinder-using characters in system, a downward arrow will be present in the top right of the node. Mouseover it, and the node will expand to show a characters list and the last ship they were known to be in. Remember, these features show only characters who are registered on and using the same instance of Pathfinder that you are. Pathfinder has no knowledge of e.g. hostiles in system with you. # Slide 9 - Connections Connections between nodes represent jumps. These are most often wormholes, but can also be gates. - To my knowledge: ansiblexes, cynos, clone jumps, and filaments also result in a dynamically created link in Pathfinder, but more often than not you'll be deleting these as they are temporary or not for general usage by other readers of the map. Connections are automatically created when an authenticated user moves from one node in chain to a new node, but the connection is NOT automatically populated with any information. This must be done manually. Pathfinder's connections have both color and consistency changes applied to denote the state of the hole, which we'll cover below, to denote the hole's time and mass remaining, size of ship that can be jumped, and whether the connection is a stargate. **Rules of thumb:** - Connections with curves are wormholes, connections with straight lines and navy blue fill are gates. - Connections with solid outer lines can take Battleships and Orcas and below. If you see dashed outer lines, there's a size limit that you need to double check. - Just because the connection is in Pathfinder, doesn't mean it's still there. Double check the signatures window before you take something blingy out expecting an outhole to exist. ### Time To Live Wormholes have three stages of time remaining, Fresh, Reduced (Also "Fresh"), and EOL; but the one we really care to see denoted in Pathfinder is when the hole is End of Life, "EOL". - This can be set by right clicking on the connection and selecting "Toggle EOL" - The relevant connection will turn a fuchsia / bright purple color. ### Mass Remaining - **Pathfinder does NOT automatically assign the mass remaining to new connections. You MUST do this manually.** - Wormholes have three stages of mass remaining: Fresh, SHRINK, and CRIT. - You can set the mass status by right clicking the connection -> mass status - Gray fill means the connection is either "fresh" or not defined. - Yellow means reduced mass or "SHRINK" - Red means critical mass or "CRIT" - Navy blue means the connection is a jump gate. #### Preserve Mass By right clicking on a connection and selecting "Preserve Mass", a red box with the words SAVE MASS will appear on the connection in Pathfinder. - This is a clear indication to all reading that the hole is being saved for a specific, mass-intensive purpose, and users should limit the ship size they jump with. - Shuttles, frigates, even most cruisers are okay. Please don't bring a rolling Battleship through. - If in doubt, ask in Mumble if the Save Mass indicator is still accurate. ### Ship Size Limit Connections can have their Ship Size limit defined in Pathfinder, with a letter indicator applied to the connection on the map. **- Pathfinder does NOT automatically assign the ship size limit to connections. You MUST do this manually.** Pathfinder also will alter the outer lines of the connection to denote ship size limits. - Small holes have frequently-dashed lines. - Medium holes have noticeably longer dashes. - L and XL holes have complete, unbroken lines. As a refresher: - Smallest means Frigates, Destroyers, and specially fit HICs - Medium means unplated Nestors, Battlecruisers, and below. - Large means Battleships, Orcas, and below. - XL means Capitals: FAXs, Carriers, Dreads, but NO Titans or Supercarriers. ### Bubbles If a connection is known to be bubbled (that is, a Warp Disruption bubble is present), this is denoted by a green, semicircular bubble on the connection where it meets the relevant node. - This can be toggled by right clicking the point where the connection meets the relevant node, and selecting "bubbled." - Note: you must right click the spot where the connection meets the node. Not the connection itself. This is a very subtle difference and can be hard to select if zoomed out or on high mouse sensitivity. ### Gate Connections Gate connections e.g. in K-space can be added to Pathfinder, but must be defined manually. These are rendered as dark blue / navy blue fill, with the exterior lines of the connection incorporating right angles and straight lines, whereas wormholes connections use curved lines. ### Connections Window Below the map, if you select a connection you will find a corresponding Connection window. This gives you a more detailed summary of the known attributes for that hole. - You can also view a log of authenticated Pathfinder users who have jumped that hole, with their ship type, mass, and time since jump. This gives you a great guesstimate as to the health of the hole from a mass perspective, but is not perfect. - Again, this only logs users of the same Pathfinder instance. It won't tell you about Joe Newbro who came daytripping, or the four Wingspan Tengus that jumped into your home an hour ago. # Slide 10 - Signatures When selecting a node, a Signatures window will also appear below the map. This aligns with the cosmic signatures / probe scanner menu you would see in game. However, this Signatures window is not automatically updated. Pathfinder relies on user input to keep the Signatures in a given system up to date. Fortunately, this is made relatively easy by features of both the game and Pathfinder. To update system signatures: - Select your probe scanner menu in-game. - Ctrl+A to select all rows, Ctrl+C to copy to clipboard. - Tab out to Pathfinder, click on the relevant system node. - Navigate to the Signature menu and click the “Signature Reader” icon in the top right. - Click into the Scan result box, Ctrl+V to paste. - Tick the Lazy Delete box to automatically purge no-longer-present signatures. - Click “Update Signatures” in the bottom right. Updating signatures for the systems you travel through is one of your core responsibilities when scouting. - Having accurate and timely information about what sites are available in the chain is what makes making boatloads of ISK in wormholes viable. - If you want to get good at scouting and scanning, then updating signatures is a basic habit that you need to start forming. Also, be cognizant when using lazy delete that even though the signature and connection of a dead wormhole no longer exist, there are still bookmarks in the Chain folder that need to be cleaned up. - That someone might as well be you. Pick up after yourself. # Slide 11-12 Additional Features ## Snapping Simply snaps all nodes to a grid - Helpful for keeping Pathfinder organized and visually appealing. - Try to keep all nodes of the same depth and width aligned, although sometimes exception must be made. ## Magnetism Nodes will subtly repel each other. - This helps prevent overlaps or creation of nodes that are squashed together. ## Signature Overlay **This requires a little extra coaching because it's not clearly explained in the UI.** From the top right "Map" menu, you can toggle on/off the Signature Overlay view. - This adds wormhole signatures at each end of the connection and red and green arrows. Once you add a wormhole code (e.g. U210, K162, S199, etc.) to a signature: - The signature overlay will update showing the code on the relevant end of the connection. - The red diamond indicating that direction of the hole is unknown will flip to green and change into an arrow, showing the hole's direction. - E.g. that the hole spawned in that system over there, and its exit side is in Innuendo. This is useful for enforcing hole control. - It allows the player to quickly comprehend from the map what holes can be rolled away, e.g. incoming / K162s. # Slide 12 - Additional Windows Pathfinder makes several additional windows available depending on the context of the selected system. We'll cover these relatively rapidly, but do ask questions! ## Structures The structures window shows you all known player-owned structures and NPC stations in a given system. - This can be updated in a similar manner to the Signatures, only instead of copying all from the Probe Scanner, you'll be copying from your Directional Scanner instead. - Owners, notes, etc. can then be applied in the window. ## Killboard zkillboard integration that does exactly what it says on the tin. - This can be filtered and allows click-through to the relevant killmail and player, corp, alliance boards. By default, kills within the last hour are shown. - If there have been no recent kills (that zkillboard knows of) then a "No kills within last x hours" message will be shown. ## Routes By default this view will always show you the shortest known route to Jita, and will always do so when selecting a K-space node. - Additional destinations you want to check distance to e.g. Stacmon can be added using the magnifying glass Find Route icon in the upper right. - Filters can be applied using the Settings icon. ## Graphs When selecting a K-space system, graphs will appear showing Jumps, Ship/Pod kills, and NPC kills in that system over the last 24 hours. - This is useful for at a glance checking how often your K-space connections are. - ... Especially if you're interested in taking a PvP roam out. # Slide 13 - Rookie Mistakes LINKS: How to Undock (WHC): https://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=236&t=120250 Now, before I launch into the common mistakes we see in/around Pathfinder, let me be clear: - Eve is complicated, wormholes especially... - ... and now you have to learn a whole supplemental web application just to play the game effectively. - It's a lot, we know. It's going to be okay. I have made ALL of these mistakes myself. - Above all else if you're confused, ask questions. - Don't allow what you don't know to intimidate you. E-UNI is a place for learning, use this place and its resources to your full advantage! Forgetting to set ship size, mass remaining, and EOL for new connections in Pathfinder. - There is no easy fix for this. You need to make the mental association that if you're looking at the Show Info view of a wormhole, odds are high that you also need to update something in Pathfinder. Incorrect / inconsistent system aliases. - Practice. Especially practice by making bookmarks. - If you're uncertain when starting out, ask someone to double check your bookmarks. We're happy to help. - We try to group systems in Pathfinder together vertically or horizontally on the spokes outward from Innu according to their depth in the chain. - If something doesn't look quite right, ask about it. Incomplete or stale signatures in Pathfinder for systems <= 3 jumps from Innuendo. - Even if you're not in a scanning ship, copy and pasting signatures is always a thing you can do. - Lazy delete will automatically take care of associating known signatures and deleting expired ones. - It's better for everyone to have a set of signatures that are five minutes old with a couple unknowns, than a set that's fully scanned but 8 hours old. Structures in system, but missing from Pathfinder. - Saved information in Pathfinder, for some systems, is quite literally years old. - There's ~2600 known J-space systems, and which ones we get in chain are RNG. - Assume any structure you see on DScan is new (to Pathfinder), because it very likely is new. - Pathfinder has been in use for years by E-UNI, and cached information within Pathfinder has been reset maybe three times at most. # Q&A # Extra Credit ## Running your own Pathfinder server I'm no expert here but if you in the future have need to run your own Pathfinder instance: - Say because you don't trust any other corp/alliance/host. - Or because you're standing up your own corp/alliance. Pathfinder Github project: https://github.com/goryn-clade/pathfinder Server requirements - Webserver with LEMP stack (Linux + nginx + mySQL + PHP) - PHP 7.2+ - PHP framework requirements - MySQL 5.7+ - Redis (preferred), or some other manner of server side caching ## Mythbusting Won't Pathfinder's developer or the server operator be able to see any information populated into Pathfinder? Say via a "back door"? - Technically? Yes, that is technically plausible. - Realistically, they would be monumentally stupid to take that risk. - No evidence has come to light in the decade+ that various Wormhole mapping tools (not just Pathfinder) have existed that these tools have been used to collect intel from their users. - This would be in direct violation of CCP's 3rd party developers terms of service. A violation would kill the project, cutting off access to EVE's APIs. - There used to be more Wormhole mapping tools, including one run by a now-defunct org called Hard Knocks. (Think of Snuffed Out, but the J-space equivalent) - The urban legend was that Hard Knocks was scraping intel from other orgs instances of the mapper, but this has never been proven and no evidence provided. - The reality is that a wormhole org as large as Hard Knocks was, would have a very extensive and complete picture of their wormhole chains (plural) just from their own scouting, without the need to put their project at risk via a severe ToS violation.