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Author Topic: Make planets easier to find  (Read 25383 times)

3istee

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Make planets easier to find
« on: June 16, 2012, 05:10:13 PM »

Hello,

as I played Starfarer, I've noticed the planets orbiting the sun in different speed.
Altough this is nice, it sometimes takes long to find the planet/orbital station I was searching,
because the location is everytime different and you can't say "this planet is a bit left of this one" or so.
Maybe there is a way to improve this. I just have one suggestion that might help:
Give the planets a trail in a specific color which shows the orbit of it.
Maybe make the  trail as wide as the planet with low opacity or make it thin with high opacity.
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Unwoundpath

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2012, 05:27:03 PM »

You do know there is a map, right? Just press tab.
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3istee

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #2 on: June 17, 2012, 04:39:54 AM »

This is exactly what I ment.
The Trails should be visible on the map.
Nowhere else.
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Unwoundpath

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #3 on: June 17, 2012, 05:34:41 AM »

That would server no purpose to me, personally, because you just got to know how far away from the sun they are, and it gives you an idea of the "Trail" in your head.
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3istee

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2012, 08:25:12 AM »

Then you would have to learn how far every planet is away from the sun.
At the latest when there will be more planets and solar systems than just this it will become unhandy.
Not to speak of mods, you will have to memorize where every single planet is in order to get there.
Maybe it's easy right now but in the future (or already now with mods) it will become harder.

And also, there is no reason for not implementing it, is there?
If you find the trails annoying there could be a button or some other option to disable them.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #5 on: June 17, 2012, 08:27:58 AM »

How is this a problem?  I really see nothing wrong with the planets as they are now.  Are you new to the game?
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Upgradecap

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2012, 08:36:55 AM »

I cannot frankly understand how you can miss a planet. O_O
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3istee

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #7 on: June 17, 2012, 08:48:48 AM »

As I said the planets now are very few and you can easily find them, but in the future there will be more.
For example just play the mod "Uomoz's Corvus", it adds lots of planets.

And the planets are just a help to find the orbital stations for me.
But in the future you can't ever know which planet belongs to who.
This is why I wanted trails for the planets (in the color of the fraction owning it).

Right now you can't miss the pirate planet or base (even if it is "hidden", altough it's hard to navigate to it sometimes because
of a ton of fleets flying around), because there are 2/3(?) planets around it. If it were just one little planet or
something like that you wouldn't instantly know who is the owner of it, you could probably link it of the type or size.

But in the mod (and I think it's not a problem of the mod, there are just more planets and stations and so on) it's sometimes hard
to find for example the Tri-Tachyon station, because it is that far outside and rotating fastly because of the distance.
Also you will have to search longer because of it, as it has a larger orbit. If there were a trail you would immediately see the
orbit and the planet, because you (should) see where the trail starts (e.g. by making the opacity greater at the planet and lower at the end)
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Vandala

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #8 on: June 17, 2012, 09:01:30 AM »

It's no all that bad of an idea actually.

As long as we improve the design of it and make it possible for the player to toggle these effects on and off.

I don't think its a good idea to have a trail for planets, but instead have orbital lines and a single line from the planet to the body its orbiting, do this for all such celestial bodies and everything will be clearly visible.

You could even add distance and range numbers to the lines that either tell you the distance or the number of days it takes to travel to them. This could really help to better guess how far you can travel with the amount of supplies you have, which will eventually become more important.

CrashToDesktop

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #9 on: June 17, 2012, 09:09:26 AM »

After you play the game for a while, you'll get to know the system a whole lot better.  For example, I know Corvus III roates around slightly slower than Corvus II, and it's also kinda hard to miss the huge orange planet on the map.
You know you can click on the planet on the map and you'll automatically go it it?
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TJJ

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #10 on: June 17, 2012, 09:20:49 AM »

It'd be simple enough to have a navigation hud listing all stations, their distance and heading. Click station in hud to automatically navigate to it.

I don't think planetary trails would aid navigation all that much. In addition how would trails be determined? In the global coordinate space, or relative to the parent body?
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Thaago

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #11 on: June 17, 2012, 09:36:24 AM »

I'm a little confused - why don't you just click on the planet in the map? That makes your fleet fly to it. Sure you might need to manually dodge a pirate along the way, but once you get around just click on the map again. Though I would like to be able to unpause in the map in regular mode.
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3istee

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #12 on: June 17, 2012, 09:39:37 AM »

Yes I know that and I also play it for not long,
and I don't have any problems finding the Hegemony Planet,
but I travel a lot more often to the Tri Tachions which are far outside.
And almost everytime I search the whole orbit it has until I find it.
Then there is the jump gate of the Purifieres (in the mod) which I find harder to find.

What is the problem with adding a few trails?
And still this is just one little solar system, are you going to learn every single solar system with all the planets and their distance?
That would  be hard, especially if Alex decides to make a random solar system generator or something like that.
Or is it so disturbing when there are some lines on the map?

@TJJ: Good Idea,
but what do you mean with the last part?

I think of it something like this:


@Thaago: I know how to fly there but I talk of finding the planet/the orbital station on the map, for example the one of the Tri-Tachyons.
Or planets in other solar systems in the future, as there will be more than one.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2012, 09:56:06 AM by 3istee »
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #13 on: June 17, 2012, 11:00:40 AM »

OK, is it that hard to find the TT station?  Their planet practically never moves from the same spot.  Look at the map once and search for everything, it's not very hard to remember that kind of stuff, find out where the planets start from from it's easy.
And about unpausing in "regular" mod, you can unpause the game on the campaign map in Dev mode, but it's glitchy if you get into a fight.
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Quote from: Trylobot
I am officially an epoch.
Quote from: Thaago
Note: please sacrifice your goats responsibly, look up the proper pronunciation of Alex's name. We wouldn't want some other project receiving mystic power.

3istee

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Re: Make planets easier to find
« Reply #14 on: June 17, 2012, 11:26:56 AM »

Seriously? When I look on the map it's always on some way other position than before.
And there is still the problem, that in the future there will  be more.
You can't just memorize everything.

What's bad about getting a bit of overview?
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