Looking at the solar system model

What's the point of 0 class planets? Given 0 class planets have no use it would be better not to render them. This would make it much easier to find the habitable planets. Also it would make the solar sytems look a lot more dynamic then 5 planets in a circle around a star. Second, why are all the planets in the same orbit? Planets need different orbits or they will eventually merge. That would be a fun planetary event. Too bad both planets would be totaled. So how to improve Gal Civ II's solar system model?

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Won't be. You can tweak the .xml to remove starting class zero's but, lets face it, most planets are class zero. And the dev's agreed not to go for too much realism, due to things like it taking half an hour to scroll from jupiter to the oort cloud, which is still in our own solar system.

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He's right, though. If you can't do anything with them at all, there is no point to having them. Getting in the old way back machine, the granddaddy of the all Stellar Conquest only told you the usable planets. They had orbit numbers with gaps that indicated the existance of other, unuable, planets. The unusable ones just didn't show up.

I'm not all that sure putting the usable ones on the map is the best solution, either. Maybe more like MOO2 would be better - just show the stars. A ship/fleet sitting "on" the star would represent being in interplanetary space and would defend against any enemy ship/fleet entering. A right-click menu would present a selected ship/fleet at a star with whatever options applied - invade, orbit, colonize, etc... - which would cascade to a menu of the planets in the system that are eligible eligible for that action. Since class 0 planets are not eligible targets for any action, they'd never show up on the cascade menu. No visual representation of the solar system would be required, yet multiple usable planets per star would still be supported. If planet visuals are really that important, they could appear on the cascade menu. The map being cleaner, it should scroll faster.

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There are in game events that can make 0 class planets into something worth while.

Tony

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