Matrix Games Forums

Is there a way to measure distance between two stars or planets? It would be nice to know distances in order to better design ships.

If correct I believe that I can design and build a ship then look at the Yellow dash line to see the fuel distance but that seems like a very clumsy work around.

There isn't; you can only estimate by using jump distance limits of a ship/fleet as a reference.

Sadly, I must inform the community that a measuring tool has been scrapped more or less because nothing proposed as a measuring tool satisfies the game's vision.

If we develop an idea that does, it can be implemented, but we might have to get creative. A straight-up tool of different kinds was rejected.

But it was mentioned recently as a goal.
HERE

10. Adding a Galactopedia and Galaxy map Search function and Distance measurement tool. This has been requested by many players.

In the dev outreach this last Friday, it was revealed that the attempts made for a measuring tool were rejected. They could use some ideas.

I don't have any.

AFAIK, the ideas rejected were: a point-to-point line that showed distance and a point-expanding circle with a distance radius shown.

how about when you have a ship or fleet selected, adding distance measure that appears after the move to <x>, <y> coordinates in the right-click pop-up menu? as in: "move to 2512537K, 104283K (307844K)". Adding a distance in paranthesis after the move-to coordinates shouldn't be too difficult, nor change the flavor of the game.

Players could see this and get a distance measure and if they don't want to actually send the ship/fleet there, just back off the menu selection and stay put.

I sure hope the search function wasn't dropped. It is sorely needed!
At least make any in-game reference to a location be click-able to send the view to that location.
looking for the flashing/expanding dotted circle is tedious and not always visible in a cluttered galaxy map when the cpu is struggling to render everything.

(is there a way to turn off empire territory ownership colors in the galaxy map?)

Nightskies wrote: Sun Apr 23, 2023 8:12 pm In the dev outreach this last Friday, it was revealed that the attempts made for a measuring tool were rejected. They could use some ideas.
AFAIK, the ideas rejected were: a point-to-point line that showed distance and a point-expanding circle with a distance radius shown.

I'm not familiar with ideas for measuring tools being rejected.

slicksyster wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 11:18 am I sure hope the search function wasn't dropped. It is sorely needed!

Very much still planned and in the current roadmap.

Is the jump distance shown on the map when ship is selected as the orange dashed line? Was guessing the yellow dashed line was fuel range.

Perhaps I misunderstood the dev outreach on Friday when we asked about development on the measuring tool, though it was also said we should have grabbed you, too. IIRC, those two aforementioned ideas were at least conceptually created. My bad, I suppose!

Why not when you drag a selection box, the two sides and diagonal all display their respective distances.

I take it back. I thought adding a distance measurement to the <move-to> popup menu entry would be trivial as the coordinates were already there and a quick distance calculation would be easy to compute as all the info was there. But I'm beginning to wonder if that is really true.

I discovered "partial logs recovered from ancient fleet" with "navigational coordiantes: 610476821,1906165608", but have been unable to find them in the popup <move-to> menu listed coordinates as I click all over the galaxy map. In fact, as I click over the galaxy map, they appear to bounce up and down a bit randomly. At least I've yet to figure out the pattern they follow. They certainly are not monotonically increasing up/down or left/right. I'm beginning to believe the "partial logs..." are just some random fixed string and not actual coordinates. sad...

Anyone able to figure out what scheme the popup menu <move-to> coordinates are using? (or even map coordinates at all?)

I thought about a navigation kompass with parsecs as a distance.
it is faded in with a keystroke.

see pic and/or small video

slicksyster wrote: Wed Apr 26, 2023 8:05 pm I discovered "partial logs recovered from ancient fleet" with "navigational coordiantes: 610476821,1906165608", but have been unable to find them

Normally these events with some coordinates show up with a pulsing circle on the galaxy map, and an explorer starts heading there ASAP.

Anyway, the yellow circle on ships is the fuel distance and the orange one is the hyperdrive's jump distance. This one at least helps eyeballing the distances. The fuel distance is only a maximum anyway as ships always seem to stage their trips through star systems.

yeah, I know they appear as growing dotted gray circles on the galaxy map. But I've searched over the entire galaxy, twice and have not been able to locate it. I don't know if I'm blind to this particular color or frequency of pulsing, but I've not been able to see it in all the clutter of a fairly settled galaxy. I've turned off all extraneous map details from the options on the lower right of the screen, but still no circle. I've zoomed in and made slow scans over the entire galaxy with a horizontal raster as well as a vertical raster and not been able to find one. Maybe it's not being rendered for lack of cpu cycles? Maybe it was already encountered and cleared by some other empire? I dunno. I've looked for ways to turn off the different empire territory colors, but not found the option. So maybe it's hiding behind one of those colors?

I'd given up searching the galaxy map and hoped I could use the coordinates left in the message and search via the popup move-to menu coordinates, but I suspect it's all fake and not corresponding to any real coordinate chart.

(actually, following the actual story line, it might be in an ancient coordinate system that doesn't correspond to the one my empire uses. It'd be a nice addition to the immersion if the diplomacy research topics included ancient map/database reading skills and messages that were incomprehensible became intelligible once sufficent research about that race was developed. Give a bit more incentive to research those techs. Or require a survey mission to study the object to be able to translate, Or require it be physically tranported to a research facility where it could be studied.)