EVE Search - Travelling salesman and gathering from wrecks...

I played the game back in the day without knowing the problem as formally formulated and had some fun with it, here is how I did it, and it has more variables than wrecks, tractors and salvagers:

Firstly I used a dedicated ship to salvage. It's the most efficient way. Used the gallente destroyer, 8 high slots. Using mwd, 4 tractors and 4 salvagers (more salvagers would have been more efficient with my skills if capacitor had not been another variable).

I headed to the closest wreck and tractor when at range then tractor every other wreck at range or head to the next wreck and repeat. When the wrecks are in range of salvage, distribute salvagers evenly on the wrecks you have on your tail. If you have more wrecks on range than tractors then approach the closest until you are in range of looting.

You have to introduce stops to let the wrecks get to you and loot when you can't use the programmed stops to do so.

You have to manage your capacitor, using the mwd when the distance is long enough to not overpass the wreck and when not enough wrecks are being salvaged (less than 4). But you have to modify that line when your capacitor is low, slowboating until all tractored wrecks are salvaged, then mwd.

Now that we have put into consideration all eve modifications to the problem, let's go back to the Traveling salesman. We start by choosing the closest wrecks to move, but we don't make long trips changing the direction, I mean if we left no wrecks behind when going towards the closest wreck, then that's the next wreck, but if we left wrecks behind then we group the wrecks depending on their distances using the farer wreck behind to stablish how we make the groups, cleaning the group we are in or if we are not inside a group, we calculate the best route with those groups in mind, going for the closest but without going back to where we come from.

Some of those procedures were made from intuition (wich is the best way to mind solve complex problems, by the way, although impossible to teach to machines). I've tried to put those procedures into medium-level language (between human and computer :P) and maybe they have flaws in things that I computed but I've forgotten or failed to transcribe.

PS: If you look for an actual aplication of this problem in the game, it is in picking up items between different stations and going back. It is in the route planner inside the game, that have a limit on the number of destinations it can calculate in a reasonable time and it is in the out of game map aplications, check that out if you're interested.

I did something a bit more complex when I had to open the map to know the distances, but now I just use the nearest location to pick the items without opening the map, although going for items on the same region and changing regions when I know I am on one of the systems near other regions.