Let us pick a faction color

[Edymnion]

Okay, I understand the concept behind each faction being a random color on the map, but I really don't think its working. There is an inordinate amount of pink factions in my experience, making for just large blobs of solid system color that aren't actually related for those who just go with whatever the game gives them.

Others, like myself, will simply make/disband/remake their faction until they get a color they like.

Can we please have a "Select System Color" dropdown on the "Create Faction" tab, and just default it to Random for those who don't care?

Really sucks when you're trying to play a unified design aesthetic like "Grey hulls and blue lights" and you want a blue system color on the map to go with it, but the game keeps giving you nothing but red/pink/green/everything but blue.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I sort of agree with this, but it also makes me think of the additional problem that territories all start to blend into each other very quickly as a server becomes heavily populated making the default view unmanageable regardless of color diversity. I think the alignment view should just be the default since it helps see all your points of interest apart from all the background noise of dozens of tiny/dead factions. I think if you used that as the base line and gave people the ability to add color overrides for specific factions, organization would be much easier. This way, you might by default have blue for your faction, green for allies, and red for enemies, but you might want to be able to differentiate certain factions; so, if you are only actively at war with one of your enemies, you might set them to pink so you can further distinguish their territory from the rest.

 

[Neon_42]

Would it make sense for bases to grow influence? Kinda like a civ game? A base over time would grow control over more sectors and larger bases could control larger areas. That could really reduce the mottle of colours we see because players arbitrarily claim sectors.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Would it make sense for bases to grow influence? Kinda like a civ game? A base over time would grow control over more sectors and larger bases could control larger areas. That could really reduce the mottle of colours we see because players arbitrarily claim sectors.

That would make HB turtleing more of a problem, I think doing more to encourage expansion of a vulnerable infrastructure would be better for gameplay, and have a similar effect.

 

[NTIMESc]

I think the alignment view should just be the default since it helps see all your points of interest apart from all the background noise of dozens of tiny/dead factions. I think if you used that as the base line and gave people the ability to add color overrides for specific factions, organization would be much easier

I really like this idea of everyone having their own custom color overrides. Would this be just one global override file, for self/allies/enemies/neutral, or per server files that can store each faction color separately?

 

[Edymnion]

What if we defaulted everyone to grey, highlighted the ones we were at war with in red, and then let allies show their individual colors?

 

[Neon_42]

That would make HB turtleing more of a problem, I think doing more to encourage expansion of a vulnerable infrastructure would be better for gameplay, and have a similar effect.

I'm not certain it would make HB turtling more of a problem, but it would make people build bases near resources that they need, but instead of claiming the sector the influence would bleed outwards meaning people would build bases around resources to get the mining bonus. The only exception would be if the HB could encompass all the player needs. In the game as is this would be a problem, but in the universe update I suspect resources will be more rare encouraging more exploration.

 

[Edymnion]

I'm not certain it would make HB turtling more of a problem, but it would make people build bases near resources that they need, but instead of claiming the sector the influence would bleed outwards meaning people would build bases around resources to get the mining bonus. The only exception would be if the HB could encompass all the player needs. In the game as is this would be a problem, but in the universe update I suspect resources will be more rare encouraging more exploration.

Only problem is we are going to have to have a complete revamp of crafting before that sort of thing becomes feasible. I mean, at least of the recipes.

Way things are spread now, spreading out resources wouldn't encourage exploration, it would just flat slam the door shut in most people's faces while some very lucky few hit the jackpot.

I remember the days when Rammit was bugged to the point people flew blue ships as status symbols simply because those asteroids were so damned hard to find. I don't want to go back to those days where just finding a particular kind of asteroid was awesome enough that you shouted it out in general chat and everybody congratulated you.

 

[MacThule]

Would it make sense for bases to grow influence? Kinda like a civ game? A base over time would grow control over more sectors and larger bases could control larger areas. That could really reduce the mottle of colours we see because players arbitrarily claim sectors.

It could if the influence was relatively small, had a low ceiling (thereby necessitating additional bases to control more territory, and grew based on bases actually performing some kind of measurable function... otherwise, yeah, more turtling. I think that a version of this where bases assigned to claim territory begin to expand influence at a cost in FP that increases as their sphere of influence increases.


Rgarding Original Post:

Picking colors would be amazing! Please let's see this in the new galaxy!

I've been on servers where the map assigned 65% of the players some shade of pink and it became almost impossible to see what was going on... at least with the option to change color, if all your neighbors pick the same color you can change yours again to make things easier to see.
[doublepost=1530903530,1530903124][/doublepost]

What if we defaulted everyone to grey, highlighted the ones we were at war with in red, and then let allies show their individual colors?

I think that should be a mapmode - political. Think Paradox maps (EU, EU2, EU3, CK, CK2, Stellaris). It should be a toggle button that lets you switch from seeing everyone's picked colors to seeing neutrals as grey, hostiles as yellow, enemies as red, allies and blue, and your assets as green.

There should be a mapmode specifically for resource viewing too.

And there need to be dozens of new filters added to the map, in an easier to read format.

Map just needs GUI/UX improvements for weeks... it would definitely be a welcome part of a new galaxy image.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I think that should be a mapmode - political. Think Paradox maps (EU, EU2, EU3, CK, CK2, Stellaris). It should be a toggle button that lets you switch from seeing everyone's picked colors to seeing neutrals as grey, hostiles as yellow, enemies as red, allies and blue, and your assets as green.

There is already an option that more or less does this, (red=enemy, green=allied, grey= neutral), just needs to color code fleets and perhaps add one more color to differentiate allied form own stuff.

There should be a mapmode specifically for resource viewing too.

There is also a toggle that highlights the actually sectors where asteroids are and not just the rings. Right now you don't need more than that since resource distribution is so predictable.

In the universe update, I would prefer it not be too obvious just like orbital rings was not too obvious at first. For example, I think that a brown dwarf should have a different resource distribution than a main sequence yellow star, which is different than a red giant, which all might be further modified if they are in a green nebula, but let players figure out what all that shit means via exploration. If you keep the system for resource distribution a bit vague, then exploration becomes its own specialty within the game giving newer players interested in looking around a quality reward for being organized about it, and veteran explorers a leg up in being able to just look at their star map and make an educated guess at where they need to go for what they are looking for.

 

[MacThule]

There is also a toggle that highlights the actually sectors where asteroids are and not just the rings. Right now you don't need more than that since resource distribution is so predictable.

Yeah, the sectors are shown, it would be nice if temperatures were shown too (for mineral type probability). Anyway, I was thinking more in terms of on the galactic scale, showing regions with higher concentrations of particular elements so when someone goes looking for a rare material they can at least be in the ballpark, but really that may not even be relevant I guess. We will have to see what they even do with resource distribution.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Doing a heat map of resource distribution is another one of those things that would be awesome on a 2d map but confusing as hell to look at in 3d.

 

[MacThule]

Doing a heat map of resource distribution is another one of those things that would be awesome on a 2d map but confusing as hell to look at in 3d.

Good point - even the Eve maps can be a little disorienting sometimes, and they are very sharply put together.

 

[Edymnion]

Good point - even the Eve maps can be a little disorienting sometimes, and they are very sharply put together.

Yeah. I've looked at playing Eve a couple of times now, as it looks fun.

Except that pretty much every video I've seen makes it look like the main way to play is a glorified mini-map, and that just doesn't look fun to me (neither does not being able to directly control your ships).

So it definitely comes to a point where too much info on the map becomes confusing or reduces the effect of the rest of the game.

 

[MacThule]

Yeah. I've looked at playing Eve a couple of times now, as it looks fun.

Except that pretty much every video I've seen makes it look like the main way to play is a glorified mini-map, and that just doesn't look fun to me (neither does not being able to directly control your ships).

So it definitely comes to a point where too much info on the map becomes confusing or reduces the effect of the rest of the game.

It's fun, but can be very tedious. For extended periods.

 

[Edymnion]

And it seems my system color has spontaneously changed to... pink.

Might explain why everybody on the map is pink, if it just randomly decides "Okay, you've been different long enough, time to standardize you!" at some point.

 

[StormWing0]

Yep it randomly rerolls the color sometimes for some annoying reason so having a color picker would be nice.