CATS (Carrier Administration and Traversal System)

!!! This is an old version of CATS. A new version is being worked on which is easier to install and uses a GUI. !!!

CATS is a flight computer to help guide your Fleet Carrier in Elite Dangerous across many thousands of light years automatically.

It does this by navigating the Carrier menu and selecting the destination, as well as restocking the depot with Tritium after every jump.

Features

• Automatic jump plotting
• Tritium restocking
• Route time estimations
• Keeps track of jump time (in case a jump is longer than 15 minutes)
• Discord integration

Installation

The script has been tested on Python 3.9, though it will likely work on other Python 3.x versions as well.

The required Python modules can be installed by running:

pip install -r requirements.txt

in the directory of the downloaded files.

Tesseract also needs to be installed in order to read the jump time. Here's an installation guide: https://medium.com/quantrium-tech/installing-and-using-tesseract-4-on-windows-10-4f7930313f82

(Note: if tesseract --version doesn't work on the command line after setting the environment variable, try rebooting your PC.)

Setup

Run python main.py in the directory of the downloaded files. It should create a settings file, which you should edit before running again.

The settings file

• webhook_url: The webhook URL for Discord integration. Google "discord webhook" if you don't know what that means.
• journal_directory: The directory that contains your Elite Dangerous journal files. Normally C:/Users/[Your username]/Saved Games/Frontier Developments/Elite Dangerous/. Make sure you use forward slashes, and a slash at the end. If there are any spaces, keep them in there, don't use quotes.
• tritium_slot: How many up presses are required to reach tritium in your carrier's cargo hold from the transfer menu. Please note - this is different depending if there's already tritium in your ship's cargo hold or not. Please put at least 1t of tritium in your ship's cargo hold before measuring this.
• route_file: e.g route.txt. Put a file with this name in the same directory, containing a list of systems in order you want the carrier to jump to. Make sure this file doesn't have any leading or trailing blank lines, and that all the systems are valid.

The photos file

This contains links to photos that can be used by the Discord embed - one will be selected randomly when any message is sent. By default, it contains pictures of my carrier (Satellite Five). Change to pictures of your own carrier, or anything else, if you want.

Usage

• First, dock with your carrier. CATS doesn't work remotely, as it needs to be able to restock Tritium.
• Make sure your cursor is over the "Carrier Services" option, and that your internal panel (right) is on the home tab.
• Then, run python main.py.
• Don't touch your computer while CATS is navigating your carrier or restocking tritium or something will probably go wrong.
• A countdown is provided in the console once navigation is complete - at this point, it's safe to control your computer again.
• Once the carrier has jumped, a second timer will countdown for the jump cooldown. Once this hits 150, it will restock tritium - again, don't touch your computer until it confirms it has restocked successfully.

CATS will automatically switch focus to the game window when it needs to control the game - so if you have something over it and it suddenly switches, let go of your keyboard and mouse.

Issues/stuff being worked on

• This currently only works on Odyssey. Horizons support is being worked on.
• The system reads the time-to-jump using an image-to-text library that isn't always entirely dependent. It will also only work if Elite is on your primary monitor, and both your primary monitor and Elite's resolution is set to 1920x1080.
• Sometimes the menu bugs out and starts randomly selecting things. It shouldn't cause any damage; CATS will eventually realise the jump wasn't plotted and will try again.
• CATS can detect when the game crashes normally, but sometimes Elite likes to crash in really funky ways, so CATS will just continue attempting to plot the jump. Basically, keep an eye on it where possible, but everything should be mostly automated unless a crash occurs.

Disclaimer

Scripting in this manner is technically against FDev's TOS, although as far as I know, they haven't banned anyone for automating carrier jumps. Still, it is not my responsibility if anything happens to your account from using this script.

o7