This is probably attacking a sacred cow It is an iconic image from Elite after all
Quite so. If McLane were still here a tantrum would be under way by now. (And on this occasion I just might be egging him on.)
Venator Dha wrote:
Why not remove the circle completely
Simply have the lines from ANA (but not the route planing)
Because that would be easier to do, therefore it cannot possibly be the solution. Seriously, why would anyone waste time on this obscure detail when there are so many other things more important that need attention?
Why not remove the circle completely
Simply have the lines from ANA (but not the route planing)
This is an excellent idea. Instead of a circle lines from the current system would drawn to the possible destinations. This would definitely be my number one solution for this annoyance. If it feels too much of a change, it could be an option in the config file just like the spinning model in the f5 screen.
If there's need for getting rid of the old rounding calculation model, I'm still interested in trying to calculate the new positions.
Wildeblood wrote:
Seriously, why would anyone waste time on this obscure detail...
Simply because to my eye it currently looks like a quirk and I find the problem of altering the network of systems by moving them while not changing the connections an interesting one.
Easy enough to do - but you don't get a visual impression of how much spare fuel you have. With the circle you can not only tell (mostly) where you can reach, but how much fuel you can afford to use on injectors and still get there. With the green/red bar on the fuel gauge once you've set a destination, maybe that's not necessary, though?
Easy enough to do - but you don't get a visual impression of how much spare fuel you have. With the circle you can not only tell (mostly) where you can reach, but how much fuel you can afford to use on injectors and still get there. With the green/red bar on the fuel gauge once you've set a destination, maybe that's not necessary, though?
It should be fairly easy to put together.
One other visual problem would be for 0LY pairs. It might look as if the adjacent planet wasn't reachable, because there wouldn't be a visible line: players would have to know that you don't need to have a line to travel down. One advantage of the circle is, I suppose, that it represents universality: everything inside is reachable, everything outside is not (with, as spara has pointed out, occasional glitches ...).
The colour of the links is in gui-settings.plist, as is the colour of the fuel circle. What I plan to do is set the default (non-ANA) link colour to alpha 0, so they don't appear normally - but it's then a tiny OXP to hide the circle and show the links.
{ Could a mod move this whole sub-thread over to Suggestions, to keep this thread for nightly bugs, please? }
Possibly. You can get cases like (one-dimensional) A=0, B=7.1, C=7.15, D=14.3 : you can't move C close enough to A without moving it too far from D, and vice versa. If you move C close enough to A and bring D in closer to C to compensate, D ends up too close to B, so you have to move B as well, and maybe that has knock-on effects to a system behind A...
To complicate matters further: the existing misjump routes across the Great Rift and to Oresrati should be preserved - at least in terms of what systems are involved; the precise LY measures can change - and the disconnected systems in general should be reachable from the same systems by "unsafe" galjump as they currently are. (But as someone trying to update Xeptatl's Sword, you'll be aware of those requirements already...)
Cody wrote:
Disembodied wrote:
Or, possibly, exact jump distances may depend on the direction of the prevailing Witchspace Trade Winds ...
An interesting concept - perhaps Witchspace Trade Winds are the reason why galactic hyperspace jumps are one-way only! <grins>
To further complicate matters, misjumps between 2 systems can result in shorter travel times in 1 direction but not the other due to 1 way rounding down while the other direction rounds up. Even moving systems very slightly (0.15 LY for instance) doesn't solve that -- like cim says, it can completely break misjump routes across the Great Rift and to Oresrati.
Even if the existing routes aren't disrupted by changes to make the jump circle look pretty, their travel times will change from what they are currently.
Really don't like the line version - it gives no impression of range / time or spare capacity without clicking on each target system to see the distance, especially when the tanks aren't full. The circle method is much more intuitive, except for the few systems right on the edge where you sometimes have to click to check.
Really don't like the line version - it gives no impression of range / time or spare capacity...
Would it be possible to replace the sharply drawn circle we have now with one that's just a little blurred/fuzzy, so the rounding discrepancy isn't obvious, thereby continuing to provide a visual indication of range and spare capacity, and add the lines as the definitive indicator of what's reachable?
Not really a fan of the lines-only look, for much the same reasons as ffutures mentions above. A combination of lines with fuzzy circle as suggested by JD would get my vote.
Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied