So this one started on Twitch. On the 31st of August I was trying to get my EVE Online knowledge back up to date. I have not played properly since 2018. I have not resubbed. I have logged in to look at the in-game map, but I have not used it as a tool. While I was doing other things I had a stream on in the background, and I came across Erst, who was skyhook raiding.
I paid attention immediately, because EO-Map already has a Skyhooks layer, and at that point it was using size and colour to say the same thing, which was when a hook would become raidable. Dim and small if it was a long way off. Big and a bit pink if it was open now. The in-game map can tell you that as well. What it does not do, or at least not without a lot of clicking, is tell you what planet the hook is sitting on.
That is what Erst was fighting with. He would see a raidable hook, then have to bounce around in the client to find the planet and the planet type, because that is what actually decides whether it is worth going. The raidable ones, the ones you can steal reagents from, sit on lava or ice. Skyhooks exist on other planet types. They are just not the raid targets. Lava produces Magmatic Gas. Ice produces Superionic Ice. For a solo player in a hauler, the gas is the one you want, because the volume is much smaller.
| Reagent | Planet | Volume per unit |
|---|---|---|
| Magmatic Gas | Lava | 0.01 m3 |
| Superionic Ice | Ice | 1.50 m3 |
That is 150 times the cargo for the same count of ice. I had that smaller in my head, I have now checked it in game. It is not a claim that lava is always worth more ISK. It is why a solo raider looks at the planet type before they set destination.
I sat there watching him fight the in-game map for that one fact, asked a couple of questions about why he was checking it, and then after the stream I joined his Discord and dropped a note. I had changed the Skyhooks layer that same day. Size now tells you when it is raidable, or how soon. Colour tells you lava or ice. You can look at a region and see six lava hooks and go there. He said he would take a look, maybe the next time he raided.
Then he actually used it
On the 8th of September I got a Discord notification that he was going live for skyhook raiding again. I thought that might be interesting. I opened the stream, and near enough straight away he was on EO-Map, Skyhooks layer on. That is this stream, jumped to the start. The screenshot at the top is him hovering U9U-TQ. Orange and blue marks, lava and ice, sitting in a small overlay on top of the client.
I think the stream ran about three hours. What was useful, from my point of view, is that he is an experienced EVE player who had not used EO-Map before. He is used to the in-game map. He used this one for the thing it is supposed to do, and he named the friction as he hit it. Because the stream went on for hours I could actually ship a lot of that while he was still on.
I am not a coder. I have said that before. I am a vibe coder. Watching someone who actually plays use the map, live, with the game knowledge I do not currently have, is worth more than me sitting here guessing what an EVE Online player wants. I have ideas. I also have eight years of rust.
WASD, and wormholes in 2D
He figured out pretty quickly that you can put the map in 2D. Then he said it would be great if you could drive it with WASD, because your hands are on the keyboard anyway. Q and E to rotate. That was one of the quickest changes I have made, and it was the one he liked immediately. He used it for the rest of the stream. There is a checkbox for it under Display Settings, off by default.
He was also looking at public wormholes, and I was about to say, mate, EO-Map has that. Then I looked, and they were only drawing in 3D. In 2D they vanished. Which is silly, because the overlay already follows the layout morph. So that went out the same afternoon. Open Public Wormholes now and they stay on when you flatten the map.
The other thing that kept happening was the scroll wheel dropping him into Solar System View. That threshold was set too loose for New Eden. He did it twice, I tightened it so a normal zoom stops before it falls in, and he did not do it again. You can still go in on purpose.
Region names, and a two-click route
I made a bad assumption about region names. EVE has been around for 23 years. Every star belongs to a region. There are 70 of them. I assumed people would just know the names, and that drawing them on the map would be clutter. Then he was looking at another tool that listed the regions public wormholes connect, and he could not match that to EO-Map, because there were no labels. So Region Names is now a Map Layers toggle, off by default.
The routing was the bigger miss. It still worked the way I had it in my head. Set an origin. Set a destination. Calculate. Look at the ribbon. Decide if you want to send it to the client. The ribbon stayed on screen the whole time. I assumed that was how people used a map in EVE Online. It is not.
What I mean by that is, he was using routing to answer a much smaller question than I had built for. How many jumps is it to that hook. Not a planned journey you sit and admire. Travel in EVE Online is jumps through stargates. You look at a thing, you decide if it is close enough, you go. So I added Quick Route to the right-click menu. It only shows up if you have signed in with EVE SSO and the map knows your location. You look at a skyhook, right click the system, Quick Route, and it calculates from where you are and sends it to the client. Two clicks. It does not do anything the routing panel could not already do. It just stops you having to do the whole origin and destination dance for a question that simple.
The information was already there. The planet type was already there. The route from your location was already there. It just took too many clicks to get at it.
The other thing he found confusing, and he said so on stream, was the leftover ribbon. If you have calculated a route and you are flying it, and you are halfway there, the first half is not useful any more. You have already done those jumps. If Follow is on, the map now hides the systems you have already been through. The stored route is still the full one. It just stops drawing the bit behind you.
Public wormholes on the ribbon
He was using public wormholes to get about, and the routing on EO-Map will include those if they help. That is the screenshot below. Jita to NKU-D5. 11 gate jumps, 2 ship jumps, 2 public wormhole legs, 40.47 LY of hole-to-hole distance. The orange ribbon is the straight stargate hops and two curves for the holes.
If a route goes through Thera, Thera sits a long way off in wormhole space, and the ribbon was drawing all the way out there and back. That does not play nicely with the scale of the map. I collapsed those to a curve between the k-space entry and the k-space exit. The Route Systems window on the right still lists the wormhole, including the IDs from EVE-Scout, because if you are doing that kind of travel you still have to scan them.
What I have not done yet
There is still more sitting in that stream. I want the hover card on a system to show how many jumps it is from your current location, so you do not have to calculate a route just to find that out. Quick Route makes it cheap. Hovering would make it free.
The Route Systems window is also getting wide. You can see that in the screenshot. And looking at how cramped the map is in his overlay, I probably need to start shrinking or hiding chrome when the window is that tight. You can already do a lot of that by hand. Pin what you want on the left. Change the UI scale. Hide the news ticker, hide the top bar with the social links. I did not walk him through any of that on stream, because he was busy using the thing. Automatic shrinking for a stream overlay is a problem for another day.
So yeah. The skyhook colours were the same idea as Quick Route. Someone who actually plays said lava is the one I want, and I should not have to open a menu to find out. Rearranging what was already there is often the useful change. Adding WASD felt bigger than it was. Watching him use it was the bit I cannot fake from here, because I still have not flown around New Eden in years.
If you play and something on the map is in your way, let me know and I will have a bash at it.
If you have some time I would highly recommend going and watching this stream. It is quite entertaining. I will not tell you what happens or how many times he dies. There were a few nerve-wracking moments. Did he come out ISK-positive with the help of the map? Who knows.