An alternative to mini-maps

Well the developers intentions are that you can have as many views as you like. You can simply divide your monitor into different screens.

Well we still don't know how useful a transparent projection is. It directly competes with another zoomed out view of a planet. Also can you give orders on the holographic projection?

Edit:Yeah, if the holographic building is serves another purpose like a being a statue or making decoys the usefulness of the holographic projection might not be that important.

Even for that purpose additional monitors will come handy. Use your main monitor for a full screen view, and have a 3x3 or 4x4 grid of views on your both side monitors. Makes up for a total of 32 different views (I assume that your main view is always the same as one of the small ones) which should be enough for every size of game.

In case it isn't:
Consider playing coop and share attendance.

In case that still isn't enough:
Seriously? Just don't try to simulate the asteroid belt to scale and remember: Our solar system has also only 9 planets, so keep it reasonable.
Or upgrade to 2x3 monitors and play coop with 4 players per army. >300 views should be sufficient to manage even the biggest empires. When in doubt. throw in more players.

I really don't see why we need an "alternative" to a mini-map... It's a tried and true technique. It has never been a problem, it works fine, gives you the info you need at a glance and it doesn't bother anyone (except Mavor for some reason, I would very much like to know why that is).

I tried to find the place where he talked a little about this in the live streams but I couldn't find it, if anyone does please do tell. Though I don't recall him talking in detail about why he dislikes them.

Take a look at this screenshot from "populous the beginning", we could have something similar for PA

You do know that Populous: The Beginning doesn't have true 3D spherical planets, right?
It's a very neat trick, but what Planetary Annihilation is doing is Apples to Populous' Oranges

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... WWQ#t=369s