On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Tim Ansell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 11:27 -0500, SmokingRope wrote:
>
> > One last thing, it's currently difficult to really keep track of a
> > ship's location. A star-system view might be a possible solution.
> > After battle,  some way of knowing where your ships end-up without
> > trying to interpret the coordinates on your own would be helpful. (It
> > seems like in some cases my ships have actually left the solar system
> > after battle too)
>
> I'm not sure what you mean?
>

The issue i had was with merging fleets. I was unable to tell whether two
fleets in the same solar system could actually merge without doing some
extra work. The problem in general is how to represent the spatial
differences between ships which are close to each other. It would be ideal
to have a clear representation of where ships are. This might be beneficial
for combat in addition to merging.

I mentioned a solution above involving a distinct window/view for the
solar-system where ships positions are represented at a finer level of
detail. This was implemented in MOO3 and Ascendancy IIRC.

Another solution might be to have solar systems change from an icon to a
circle after a certain zoom level is reached. This way the solar system has
an area and the ships could be drawn with respect to the solar system and
each other (*without a seperate view/window).

A third solution i thought of would simply create sub-nodes in the object
tree that can be used to group ships that are close to each other. This
could break down quickly however. Ships could potentially be in two grouping
nodes at once, and this would result in a confusing interface.

Anyway, these were my first impressions and i wanted to provide some
feedback (first impressions are hard to come by). Despite my criticisms i do
believe the client is intuitive and a good start. Representing the spatial
differences between objects in an infinitely large universe is clearly a
difficult challenge.
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