This blog post is a bit different than usual – instead of talking about a major new game mechanic, I’d like to instead take a quick – but in-depth – look at something relatively minor, but that I thought was interesting. I will, of course, continue to write regular-style blog posts as well.

In Starsector, fleets will often orbit a planet for some time – trade fleets offloading cargo, patrols preparing for duty, and so on. The orbits of some well-to-do colonies can get quite crowded, with fleets overlapping each other and being difficult to pick out. This isn’t a huge problem in terms of game mechanics, but it’s still occasionally inconvenient and just messy to look at.

The other day, encountering a particularly egregious case, I wrote a quick algorithm for the fleet AI to use to avoid overlapping other orbiting fleets  as much as possible.
Read the rest of this entry »