I know this is an easy add, but it would help with orientation. If you spin the Glob around a few times you lose perspective on the globe. IF there was a North pole with maybe a blue cylinder and a south pole with a Red cylinder you could then orientate based off of other land marks (mountains, ravines, wreckage etc.)
I know, but lets say we are looking at an enemy base or unit and the globe is spun sideways and you want to pull from a nearby base without reseting the globe to normal orientation. It would help to know where you are in relation to something fixed and that doesn't share an icon with everything else. Also sometimes you have an army that gets blown up and you aren't sure where it was having a fixed relation to a target point would help me. I think having an up down marked clearly could help everyone with their spatial relations regardless of the current orientation of the globe.
yeah, besides the N hotkey i also think that some kind of visual identification of the poles should help very much! I bet they are experimenting with some idea here and there, lets ee what they come up with!
North pole relative to what? The problem with space is that such things are completely arbitrary I suppose for the sake of argument we could ASSUME that it follows a normal prograde orbit, and ASSUME that it has a normal prograde rotation. Myself, I like it without a reference point. North/South East/West are totally random depending on what you want to do. When I play I pick a feature near my base to be the center of my orientation and just find other bases and stuff based on that. For example I will go "Purple's base is in the direction of my generator cluster." BAM! Problem solved. Now no matter what orientation I am in, I can find Purple just by hopping back to my base and the scrolling in whatever direction my generator cluster is.
^True north, or perpendicular to angle of rotation, always has some meaning. (That is, the main star always rises in the east, sets in the west, On tidally locked planets, the planet's rotation is in the direction of the planet's revolution, and north can be set thus.)
I think I will have to wait and see what they do with other planets and bodies. For example if they have planets that do NOT rotate in prograde motion, I would be both happy and interested to see how people respond to that and north. For example, take Venus and Earth. Venus' true north would be our south pole. Depending on how the game mechanics work, I think that it would be more confusing to have a flip-flopping "north" pole marker than it would be to not have a marker at all. Besides which I personally think it just sounds boring to have a set north. And beyond that, we are fighting with robots. I don't think they particularly care which was is "north." Their sole purpose in life is "Land here, build, destroy other robots."
Yes, which is why North is based on planetary characteristics rather than system characteristics. Why would you ever map one planet's north to another planet's north? They are entirely separate bodies, having a non-consistent North shouldn't be a problem; the "N" key should rotate the view accordingly. That way it's consistent and meaningful, and not overly difficult to program. This is purely for user convenience; so if I'm chatting to someone I can give directions without being misunderstood. Left/right is ambiguous to the direction you are looking, east/west is set.
Already changed my post mate. Re-wrote it after thinking about it And besides which, this thread was not about the N key. This thread was about having a north marker on astral bodies, hence why I was saying the things I was. Body by body that would not be a problem I guess, but what about an interesting system like a moon around a planet and the moon rotates retrograde. That is certainly possible for a recently captured satellite. Then when you zoom out from the planet and look at the system together they have north pointing two different ways. Sorry I think that would look tacky and I would rather not have that at all
Supreme commander had a cartographic view which you could toggle, although this was mainly aesthetic (I always had it on my second screen because it looked more like a RADAR screen). Perhaps something similar could be implemented, but with latitudinal and longitudinal markers on instead of just emphasizing resources. As for the problem of orientation, it doesn't really matter where it is for each planet, just so long as you have a bearing for each planet, and moon.
See I like this idea MUCH MUCH better. Inside the code it can decide whatever it wants for 0,0 and then just lay out a simple grid of degrees. Then you just learn where someone's base is in lat long. edit: And let me clarify I am not really attacking the idea. If it was toggle-able that would be just fine for me. I was just saying my opinion on the matter.
Boring day at work; I'm haunting these boards looking for some science discussions. It could be a little tacky, as you put it, but it would also be pretty useful if you are looking to put an asteroid into orbit. Consider an asteroid specially built to rain fiery death on a planet's surface; different types of orbits are going to be tactical decisions: retrograde for shorter exposure (to the enemy base, presumably), pro-grade for longer exposure, and geosynchronous for continual pummeling of a certain area. Having a north marker would make it easier to set these up without having to watch which direction the planet rotates. Toggle-able is always best though... might even be a pretty easy client-side mod: just a little marker above the planet's pole with "N" on it... maybe candy striped, with a fat guy and some caribou around it.
I like the idea of a grid work for precise coordinates. I wasn't trying to be tacky with my un-artistic suggestion. I would be happy with anything that I could reference besides typing out the crevasse between the 2 snow capped peaks but not the crevasse with one snow capped peak and a plateau
Tiny little flags would look neat. And if ever, in the long distant future, there is native fauna, I would like penguins and polar bears at either end...
One of these days, planets will rotate on their axis in addition to revolving around the sun. Will we limit planets to only rotating perpendicular to the galactic plane? I'm not sure, but regardless of how we do that, I presume that north and south will be defined by the axis of rotation, as that's what (on Earth) determines Polar North. Obviously there is a magnetic north, but I don't see this level of detail making it into PA. Plus magnetic north isn't necessarily all that reliable. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_drift)
Would be nice if we as players could get visual aids that shows the axises and poles of a planet we are fighting on. And maybe some way to "lock" the camera if you do not feel comfy with the freeform camera. I.e lock the camera along a axis of the planet.
a toggleable grid would be awesome and tasteful markers over north and south poles would be nice, maybe markers at 0,90,180,270 degrees longitude at 0 latitude to help with orientation. I imagine little translucent overlayed arrows pointing out or something tech looking would be nice without being intrusive.
