Problem report in 3B

A couple more suggestions:

Sectors numbers start with 0-0. Only computers nerds start counting with zero The sectors should start with 1-1.

I would like to have a way to move all of my ships in one pile togther. This movement would have to default to the ship with the lowest movement number in that pile. Maybe select all the ships in a pile with a shift-left click and then right click to where one wants them to go.

On the planet screen, the ship and social project selected should remain highlighted. Now the last project your mouse hovered over is highlighted.

On the graph section, when you select an icon, there is a text explaination at the top of the graph. I would like to see this type of text description when you select an icon on the sector map.

Bob

RJL,

Mathematitians also start counting from 0, especially when graphs are involved.

Also, in Star Trek, Earth's location is referenced as 0:0:1 (graph coordinates).

I like your other suggestions (although Brad has indicated that movements of fleets is a few
releases down the road).

Cheers,
Jack

Yeah, selection and movement of more ships than one seems useful. Like the standard, making a square-select to select all in the square. plus shift-select to select one ship at a time.

I remember the flagship thingey, but this could be useful anyway. Perhaps one dont want to group the ships to a flagship.

OK, being called a nerd first thing in the morning might be a good substitute for caffeine, but it's not really good for my blood pressure and the rest of the people in the lab have to co-exist with me. If you're going to be insulting, don't do it for something stupid like counting from zero.

First of all, as others have said, mathematicians and scientists commonly count from zero. Military time counts from zero. If it wasn't for "nerds" like mathematicians and scientists, we wouldn't have things like pennicillan. We wouldn't be able to build bridges or cars.

It would be stupid not to count from zero for any coordinate system. You have to have an origin, otherwise it doesn't make any sense. (1,1) is meaningless without an origin. 1 unit from what? It would probably be more accurate for us to label the system with Sol as (0, 0) no matter where on the map it was, and use negative numbers for sectors to the left and above of the Sol sector, to give more of a feeling of infinity.

Also, the small map at the top right corner of the screen is the mini-map. The sector map is the large one that you see your ships and stars on.

If you're going to be insulting, don't do it for something stupid like counting from zero.

I apologize. It was not my intention to be insulting, I thought that the would indicate this. I am a bit of a computer nerd myself.

That said, I don’t think the main target audience will be mathematicians and scientists.

Not necessarily, but there will be a lot who watch Star Trek, or at least have a background in higher math. Frankly, I don't think that most people will care that it starts from zero even if they don't have a background in higher math.

I probably overreacted a bit, and I'm not going to bother to try to justify it at this point. In my defense though, I kept my temper enough to delete several insulting remarks before I posted it.

I suppose that you managed to hit a nerve. How many times do people say something cruel and then say, "I was just joking?" Is that supposed to make everything better? Saying "I was just kidding, I didn't mean anything by it" is just slapping a band-aid on a wound. The hurt was still done, and it doesn't completely fix it.

When I was younger I used to want desperately to be witty. Now I just want to be a nicer person. Not to say that I'm particuarly witty now, but I do say things without thinking about how they will affect the other person, only thinking that it will make people laugh. I try to be a nicer person. I don't always succeed. But I try.

--Cari

I vote for the zero numbering (being a physicist I most definitely count as a nerd). I like Cari's suggestion of numbering sol as 0,0 and using positive and negative numbering from this. This would be good. Would that be hard to implement?

Paul.

Umm...it wouldn't really be hard, but it wasn't really a serious suggestion. Negative coordinates might confuse some people.

I think it's a good idea
Altho the current way works fine too..

Furthermore, if you are going to stay with the concept of having a startplanet called earth, it'd be great if you could have it in a system with 8 more planets, names and appearance like the real ones.

Since we know that our system is not the center of the galaxy, and since we often refer (via arrogant presumption) to our
quadrant as the "Alpha Quadrant", perhaps the rational that the part of the milky way involved in this game is the alpha
quadrant and is the quarter of the quadrant that bears positive numbered grids of the quadrant could be used to explain the
all positive (from 0) sectors. Some kind of a story about why the other 3 quadrants are not part of the game would need to
be invented, but I am sure someone could come up with something good.

I am not apposed to negative or mixed negative/positive segment designations IF this is used today in scientific nomenclature
of the Milky Way. It might even be an educational property of the game (something I am very much in favor of). So I would not
worry much about the confusion factor as long as it teaches a very real and current use of scientific nomenclature. If well
presented, buyers of the game will learn a valid and useful piece of information.

Cheers,
Jack

Is the term "Alpha Quadrant" something that was made up by the people at Paramount or is it actually used by the scientific community?

As for the Sol system always having 8 planets, I doubt that Brad will want to change that. The max planets for all stars in gal civ is 5. The Gal Civ universe isn't strictly identical to our universe.

I have no idea how scientists number sectors or if they even have known space divided up into sectors. I just suggested the use of negative coordinates as a logical way to number them based on an origin. It makes sense to me that a space-faring civilization would count everything in relation to their home star. When you encountered an alien race, they would have to show you where their star is on a star map before you could translate their coordinate system to yours.

There is currently no official scientific method for numbering sectors in space. This is because sectors are arbitary. In a star-trek universe a sector in 20 light years square. Once you introduce sectors you then need to use a numbering system for them. choosing earth as zero is logical as most of the sector we would be dealing with would be close to earth. Another possible points of origin are the centre of the galaxy, but this would put earth and the local at very high numbered sectors. It is not feasible to choose the corner of the alpha quadrant as an origin (in reality only) as it is a non-symmetric spiral galaxy. Oh, and the scientific community does not officially use quadrants, this is again a star-trek term (though a useful one for plot reasons).

On the sol system planets, would it be possible to hard code 5 planets? Possibly choose venus, earth, mars, Saturn and Jupiter?

Paul.

You will notice that there are always at least 3 planets in the Sol System: Earth, Mars and I think Saturn. The addition of other planets is random and they aren't named. It would be possible to force them to always have 5 planets but since Brad was the one doing that code, it's fairly safe to say it's implemented the way he wants it.