Desgin: Layout of planetary and star systems is 2D - can it be 3D?

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The devolopers originally had the solar system 3d, but it became too confusing.

I'm OK with the planets around a star being 2D, but stars being 3D in relation to each other would be more challenging. At present even in a large galaxy your home star system usually only has one connection to other star systems. This makes it a bit too easy to defend. You can shift all (or most) of your fleets out to the next solar system without worrying too much about defending you own star system.

I guess you could get the result I'm after with more connections between star systems but I'd just like to see it more 3d if possible.

Yes, I agree with haveing the systems 2D but the stars should be 3D to each other. It would also be cool to have binary and trinary star systems so you could have more then just one point of entry to a system (atm I think it is just a few connections between the stars).

Binary and Trinaries have defiantly gotten brought up before Personally, I'm hopeful

i agree that id like to see 2D systems with 3D interconnections between stars but if the devs had that origanally then there must have been a reason for flattening it. i hope they can over come what they were worried about but if not... its not that big a deal to me, maybe a option would be nice. i think making it more 3D would make the game seem more cutting edge. aslo i like the idea of bi and tri star systems... multiple entrance points make me happy on the inside. though again maybe a begining option for those who done like the idea.

I'm hopeing that there will be more options for a custom game (maybe even a galaxy edditor) in the final version. Maybe that is best talked about in a separate post.

Exactly, we don't want SINS to become the space map mess SOTS was.

Lordkosc, don't assume everybody had the same problems as you did. Because I had no problems at all with SotS starmap and currently it seems to be MILES ahead of Sins map. Especially with Born of Blood expansion that I also have and where you see 3D zone of influence.

Really, I hate bringing this up and comparing the two but I can't be "silent" when people with poor 3D perception bash a game they were unable to play well. You always had an option to play in a 10 star galaxy.

I think the idea that system maps are 2d and then the stars relative to each other is 3d, and kosc. Since Sins (no pun intended) only includes(as of now) max 10 systems i don't think it would be a problem. Sots had the possibility to play with literally hundreds of system.

And i didn't find the Sots system confusing, you just had to get used to it.

The 3d star map was a major selling point for some, on the other hand it was the reason I got rid of the game a week after I bought it. To each his own.

Also take into account the 3d map in my opinion is fine with a turn based game, where you have more time to look around searching for planet X, I couldn't imagine trying to use it in real time. At least not in a game with a large number of planets/systems.

I would mind the solar systems being more 3D again (they used to be) in relation to one another in the galaxy. It wouldn't really confuse things and it's really more for asthetics.

i hope he meant "wouldnt mind" ... and if so YAY!!! having a 3D galaxy map would make me so so very happy. Infact i would tell ALL my friends to get the game... especially once the multi-player beta is out. (not that im not already tellin them   )

SotS? I had to Google that to figure out what it was (interesting results, lol). Must forget about what I saw cause I don't have enough time to play that as well.

SOTS is great. My favorite thing in SOTS that I'd like to see in sins is the multiplicity of planetary defenders. You had alien menaces, slavers, asteroid monitors, meteors, derelicts from an ancient civilization, and more. That's a whole lot better than just measly pirates.

But the pirates want yer booty!

Heh, I did mean "wouldn't" thanks.   It's Ironclad's call, though.

The code still exists to make everything (planets and stars) placed in 3d and have some planar rotation. You can easily mod this in as well. There are two reasons why they are no longer in 3d. First, it is more confusing with little gain besides asthetics. Strategy-wise, the connectivity is what matters, not the dimensionality. We could have overcome this problem by having the default galaxy generator guarantee 2d maps and having a galaxy generation option that allowed for a 3d layout for advanced users. So why don't we do this? Well it turns out there is a technical reason. It is summed up like this: if you want a zoom-to-cursor camera you can't have stuff on widely different heights/planar orientations. We made the decision that since zoom-to-cursor is something that is actually useful and since strategy isn't affected by dimensionality and zoom-to-cursor is mutually exclusive from widely variant heights/orientations we would scrap 3d placed/rotated stars and planets.

The next question will be, well other game(s) have a zoom-to-cursor camera and they are 3d games why can't Sins? The problem isn't having stuff in 3d, its having widely differing heights/orientations, which in our sampling of all know games with zoom-to-cursor cameras, there are none with the same scale. We would have no problem moving/rotating planets and stars a bit here and there but in order for those distances to be noticeable enough that it would improve asthetics they would have to change by a lot, so much so that zoom-to-cursor wouldn't work.

So modders beware: if you change Sins so that planets and stars are moved up and down and/or have their planes rotated, be sure to play in attached camera mode, not zoom-to-cursor mode.

I'd sacrifice zoom to cursor for asthetics and the features you mentioned...

Is the ability to modify the dimensionality and the rotation already in the game (Beta2) ? I've looked around quite a bit and haven't found anything pertaining to those features.

I'm all for it as well, I made a post about it some time back. The results there was about the same as here haha. If it can be added with a mod, I'm totally getting it.

it doesnt have to be wildly 3d. galaxies/systems are roughly along one plane, you could get away with 3-5 height levels and have the feeling of 3d without the map getting too wacked out. with an option to flatten the map, like eve.

would it be possible to leave the planets in 2D around a star, but have astroids be slightly 3D? They should realistically be close to the plane of the galaxy but it would be nice to have a little variaty in hight from astroids.

I can see the issue with zoom to cursor on a local system scale, but when you are just talking about making galaxies on different height levels there does not seem there would be too much of a problem. When you are zoomed into a system it is 2D like it is now and zoom to cursor acts the same. When you zoom all the way out to being able to see every system all of the galaxies are on "relative" 2D plain (because the up-down distance is small on that scale.

I think what most of us would be happy with is when we are looking out across the map while in system view we could see the galaxies above and below us.

At least the stuff will be there for the moders to mess with at release.

./shudder, I can't live without zoom to cursor, only smart way to do it!

maybe I'll try it again, but it didn't make me love it so much that I need it.

well since you are generally zooming in on planets/stars it could be "zoom to nearest planet/star" and then once ur in the grav well it wouldnt make much of a difference...
unless that is completely impossible...