The Routing Engine determines the algorithm used to compute the jump path between two star systems. Each engine makes different trade-offs between speed and route quality.

Greedy — Decent route, fast pathfinding.

The Greedy engine picks the nearest eligible system at every step, always moving as directly as possible toward the destination. It is extremely fast and works well for most routes, but may occasionally miss a slightly shorter or more efficient path because it never backtracks or reconsiders earlier choices.

Weighted A* — Optimal route, recommended for neutron routing.

The A* (A-Star) engine uses a heuristic search that weighs the cost of jumps already taken against an estimate of the remaining distance. This guarantees a more optimal route — fewer jumps or less fuel. While A* can be slow over very long general routes, for neutron routing the search space is small enough that computation time is acceptably fast, making it the preferred choice over Greedy for neutron plotting.

For neutron routing, Weighted A* is the recommended default — it is acceptably fast and produces a more optimal route. Greedy remains available if you prefer the fastest possible computation time.