Support score events as well as line courses

[jcundill]

Score Event (eg typically 40mins or 60mins to get the max points possible by visiting as many controls as possible, not necessarily all of the same value, and there being a penalty for late finishing):

• There is the placement of controls - looking for a good general spread, such that the distance to visit all controls would be a significantly tantalising challenge for the fast runners (eg 40min event, say 4min/km, running distance = 10km => shortest route to all controls should be say 11km?)
• For mid-range runners - say we wanted them to be able to visit 10 controls by going 6.6km (ie 6mins/km)
• For slow/walkers - maybe at 10mins/km we would want them to be able to visit 7 controls in 4km?
• Then there is the issue for some scoring schemes of having different points for different control Id’s - and then the challenge becomes how to distribute the high value controls (Some setters want to give all participants the ability to get to the high points and the difference in results comes down to having the running speed to pickup the minor points as well. Another approach is to put the higher points at the extremities so they are only available to fast runners (but this is a less favoured approach).
• For the common Australian StreetO the controls are (Total of 26 controls):
• 4 controls worth 20 each; 4 worth 30 each; 4 worth 40 each; 4 worth 50 each; and 4 worth 60 each
• 4 or 5 high pointed controls (eg 80,90,100, 110, 120)
• 1 very high point control (eg 200)

[jcundill]

• One “Algorithm” to set this type of event is:
• Have the start finish reasonably central on the map - divide the map into 4 zones (could be the 4 quadrants)
• in each zone put one 30 point, one 40, one 50, and 60 and one high point control
• put the single very highpoint control a reachable distance from the start for all runners
• sprinkle the 20 pointers around relatively central to the map so that these can be got if you have time to divert to them (or arrange a course to run by them)
• keep all controls reasonably well separated from other controls (ie no “short” legs).

[jcundill]

Scoring a candidate set of Controls is basically https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/orienteering-problem

Optimising Control Placement is probably scoring structural factors.

Evolution would want to take both location and points into account

Initial Candidate Course Seeders would need re-working to make use of the above mentioned placement options, rather than generating a naive line course of an appropriate length as they do currently.

[jcundill]

Working on this. Work in progress is on the tsp branch