Enchancing the 2D Stellar Map

Suggestions
1

Current 2D map represents JP points as straight lines. It’s the simplest way to represent JP topology, yet it’s inconvenient in represeting relative distances, even without cycles, because the actual joints are sub-graphes, not points:

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Yet displaying the in-system JP map inside the actual system circles is uncomfortable: we do perceive stellar systems as nearly point objects, representing them like big objects cotradicts with the idea of map. In addition, this would just make organizing the map harder.

So, what I’d suggest is to represent JP as a separate type of points.

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Initially, a JP may be placed at the map corresponding with it’s position on the system map, just as the initial proposition. This would give an option to represent the lengths of paths bypassing the central star aside.

This also adds a significant degree of freedom for a player in organizing the Empire Map, allowing such options as:

  1. changing a connection representation without changing the familiar placement of it’s system, when a player wants to visually lengthen the connection corresponding to it’s practical length or to circumvent another system;
  2. gathering connections into bundles to make more place for system clusters (like sectors or alien territories);
  3. lay any specific connection through some free place on the map, when it’s easier to place a larger label.

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In addition to this option, I think it would be a bit more convenient to place JPs in pairs at the in-system map level. That is, the JP in the 2nd system would be always generated in the reverse bearing from the 1st one. It would simplify the starmap organization and prevent topographical confusions greatly without taking away anything substantional from the gameplay.

2 Likes
2

P.S. Also, this adds an ability to represent one-way-stabilized JPs at the Stellar Map.

3

Would this add significant extra clutter to a galaxy map that already becomes very busy and difficult to parse visually after several dozen systems are generated?

On average each new system generates about 2 new jump points. That would imply about a +200% increase in map objects. That would make the map much busier with large numbers of systems.

4

More objects, yes, yet I think it would be lesser mess actually. Maps with great numbers of objects are great, the trick is - they have to be clustered. We percieve cluster as a singular object if it’s constant. And that is one of the points of this suggestion: makes easier to represent some object groups into stable clusters.

Consider, for example, the situation, when you got a new connection into the system, that is buried in the middle of your habitual, well-remembered Imperial Core map. It’s a mess. You have to replace some systems to make this connection just visible. Just a single additional object, yet it adds more mess then another twenty new systems would. With separate JP representations it’s much easier to just lay the connection between existing systems without moving them.