You might try making a slight change in the XY plane so that the tradelane is at a diagonal rather than straight up/down. Perhaps it calculates in-bound/out-bound by difference between beginning and ending lanes relative to sun. Just a thought as I haven't messed around at all with tradelane creation yet...

.sig/ Well, here we are, but where are we?

I don't have an answer, but I do have a question. Have you experimented in rotating the trade lanes so that the rings are side by side, instead of one on top of the other? It's been bothering me for a few days now that they chose to design them in this fashion, rather than like a standard modern Earth-based highway. It removes the whole "top or bottom" question when entering a tradelane, too.

Also, just to pick nits: Planetary systems form in disks, and therefore all of the planets in a system are in the same plane, more-or-less. Having planets spread out all over the place makes little sense, scientifically speaking. A star can surely pick up one or two, on very rare occasion, as it passes by/through the system, and it of course would not necessarily be in the same plane as the rest of the planets. But having a system with more than three planets, and having them randomply placed throughout that system just hurts the already lacking realism in the game. Space stations, though, would almost certainly benifit from NOT being in the ecliptic of any given planet or asteroid field, as it would spend most of its time away from potential desasters caused by orbiting debris, such as asteroids meteoroids.

Captain Flint,
I have tried running tradelanes at an angle. You have to get the positioning, and rotation PERFECT otherwise it goes very wrong.

ut
I have tried placing them on there side for the same reasons. They still work, you simply fly the ship on its side down the trade lane.
I am also aware of the lack of science behind my idea. I tried to set up a system realisticly but came across a few problems.

1) planets orbit the sun, and as a result setting up tradelanes between them becomes problematic at best.
2) the planets look fine when set out in a fashion to show there orbits, but adding the bases and outposts makes each planet look very cluttered.
3) without trade lanes it takes a very long time to travel between two planets despite increasing my cruise speed to 600
4) I simply got tired of the fact that I have a cube 320000 x 320000 x 320000 and im only using a tiny proportion of it.

If you have any ideas on how to create a realisic system then I would love to hear them as that was my original idea.

Hrmm. I wonder if there's a way to alter which direction is "up" for the tradelanes. I suppose I can look into that for myself, but I honestly can't get any deeper than the inis.

I did mention that I was nit picking

A cool idea, I think anyway, would be to make a large system space and have two systems in it. They could be at angles to each other, too. You could even put an intra-system jump gate from one star to another. They would probably have to be small systems, though. Otherwise, they'd just be too close together.

Again, I pointed out that stations need not orbit in the orbits of planets, and therefore can be anywhere. You said something about planets looking cluttered with bases. Did you mean on the nav-map?

Jump holes need not be in the planetary disk, since any nearby wormholes are simply drifting through the system. Someething like a wormhole would not be created with the star, and therefore its angular momentum wouldn't need to be conserved. Also, it makes finding jump holes a hell of a lot harder. Same goes for shipwrecks.

Maybe your system has an Oort cloud? They're spherical, and surround the sun.


I'm not necessarily saying that having planets everywhere is a BAD thing, simply that it's not the PROPER thing. I agree that systems are a major waste of avaliable space, and something should be done with them. I also realize that most people don't truly care where the planets are in relation to each other. They just want to get there fast, and they want it to be profitable. I'm just a little picky, since astronomy happens to be my subject of interest.

If I come up with some other ideas, I'll be sure to post them

Would definately appreciate any ideas as I intend to recreate the entire universe as well as mod ALL the ships, and add capital ships, light and heavy bombers (etc). I cant stand the way that in a universe it only takes me 5 hours to visit EVERY base in the game (except a few enemy bases, they wont let me land!) I also cant stand the ship progression. In this game a light fighter has no chance against a very heavy fighter. I intent to redres this ballance by changing light fighters to less better weapons, faster, more manauverable with shorter cruise charge times, So that light fighters can make suprise attacks, and leave before being blown to hell. Whats the point in a game where people are only flying around in only 3 ships aout of a possible 40!

Capital ships should be BIG, and EXPENSIVE. Effectively, if you want it, you have to work for it. It also limits where you can go. (Try getting a battleship through a dense asteroid field). I also want to find a way that when you die, you loose your ship! Death is currently only a problem for traders
(Pirate... Oh look, I blew up and lost 70 diamonds that I didn't pay for! what a pity)

I just feel the games needs a bit of longevity and a bit more fun. Large systems, Preferably realistic, or massive, Badlands filled with explosive gasses, radiation, mines, jumpholes (etc), and ships that are ALL worth flying.

Sorry this post is so long, just thought I'd put down my thoughts for others to see.

No known way to make you lose your ship, but you can do some pretty funny things with the lootable = true/false line. Things like you die, and all of a sudden you have no power plant or engine (I don't remember which it was dropping on me). Whee!