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Join Date 10/2008

Eve-Online Mod - Maps

Eve has almost 6000 solar systems and I think 3-12 planets per system (very few have none)... so let's go high and say 8 per system average.

That's 48,000 planets! Not to mention Moons, Asteroid Belts, and other points of interest.

The heirarchy from low to high is: Moon/Station/Belt --> Planet --> System --> Constellation --> Region

I have all of the Eve SQL data pulled down and will get some real counts as soon as I can run the scripts on my server.

So... how do we represent such a large universe in Sins?

As a grouping of 4-9 stars, Constellations seem to be a logical place to start. it best represents most Sins maps.

In Sins, I would best like to reprsent each of the bodies below as a 'planet' (body you can jump to) and Stargates as wormholes.

So let's just look at Jita...

Infamous and known by all Eve players. The dreaded, but necessary lag-laden trade hub of nearly all of Eve:

Jita (Star)
- Jita I (Planet)
- Jita II
  - Jita II - Asteroid Belt 1
- Jita III
  - Jita III - Moon 1
- Jita IV
  - Jita IV - Asteroid Belt 1
  - Jita IV - Asteroid Belt 2
  - Jita IV - Asteroid Belt 3
  - Jita IV - Caldari Business Tribunal Information Center (Station orbiting a planet)
  - Jita IV - Moon 1
  - Jita IV - Moon 2
  - Jita IV - Moon 3
  - Jita IV - Moon 4
  - Jita IV - Moon 4 - Caldari Business Tribunal Bureau Office (Station orbiting a moon)
  - Jita IV - Moon 4 - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant
  - Jita IV - Moon 5
  - Jita IV - Moon 5 - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant
  - Jita IV - Moon 6
  - Jita IV - Moon 6 - Hyasyoda Corporation Refinery
  - Jita IV - Moon 6 - School of Applied Knowledge
  - Jita IV - Moon 6 - Ytiri Storage
  - Jita IV - Moon 7
  - Jita IV - Moon 8
  - Jita IV - Moon 9
  - Jita IV - Moon 10
  - Jita IV - Moon 10 - Caldari Business Tribunal Law School
  - Jita IV - Moon 10 - Caldari Constructions Production Plant
  - Jita IV - Moon 11
  - Jita IV - Moon 11 - Expert Housing Production Plant
  - Jita IV - Moon 12
- Jita V
  - Jita V - Moon 1
  - Jita V - Moon 2
  - Jita V - Moon 3
  - Jita V - Moon 4
  - Jita V - Moon 5
  - Jita V - Moon 6
  - Jita V - Moon 7
  - Jita V - Moon 8
  - Jita V - Moon 9
  - Jita V - Moon 10
  - Jita V - Moon 11
  - Jita V - Moon 12
  - Jita V - Moon 13
  - Jita V - Moon 14
  - Jita V - Moon 14 - Ytiri Storage
  - Jita V - Moon 15
  - Jita V - Moon 16
  - Jita V - Moon 17
  - Jita V - Moon 17 - Caldari Constructions Production Plant
- Jita VI
  - Jita VI - Asteroid Belt 1
  - Jita VI - Hyasyoda Corporation Refinery
  - Jita VI - Ice Field 1
  - Jita VI - Moon 1
- Jita VII
  - Jita VII - Asteroid Belt 1
  - Jita VII - Ice Field 1
  - Jita VII - Ice Field 2
  - Jita VII - Moon 1
  - Jita VII - Moon 2
  - Jita VII - Moon 2 - Caldari Business Tribunal Law School
- Jita VIII
  - Jita VIII - Asteroid Belt 1
  - Jita VIII - Asteroid Belt 2
- Stargate (to Ikuchi System)
- Stargate (to Kisogo System)
- Stargate (to Maurasi System)
- Stargate (to Muvolailen System)
- Stargate (to New Caldari System)
- Stargate (to Niyabainen System)
- Stargate (to Perimeter System)
- Stargate (to Sobaseki System)

Let's do a body count on Jita:

8 Planets
33 Moons
8 Asteroid Belts
3 Ice Fields
13 Stations
8 Stargates

That's 73 bodies, not counting the star itself!

Jita's Constellation, Kimotoro, has 7 systems, it's total body count:

Planets: 8,8,12,5,8,10,8 = 59
Moons: 33,13,81,8,82,10,20 = 247
Asteroid Belts: 8,4,25,2,10,3,2 = 54
Ice Fields: 3,1,0,0,0,0,0 = 4
Stations: 13,1,2,5,12,5,3 = 41
Stargates: 8,2,2,6,4,4,5 = 31

TOTAL: 436!

436 planets on any map is going to lag most people out (got RAM?).

So how can we represent these various map entities in Sins?

Taking the moons out of the equation as individual bodies will take abig chunk out. Down to an easily manageable 189 bodies in this case.

Discussion point: Any other way to break down Eve's maps?

How then to represent the moons?

Planetary bonuses seems to be the obvious and easiest answer... been done before.

What about making moons out of some kind of permanent structures in the planet's gravity well? Much more to work with that way.

Discussion point: What are the pros and cons of Moons as structures versus Moons as 'planets'

So, Planets, Asteroid Belts, Ice Fields, Stations, and Stargates represented as individual 'planet' bodies and Moons as planetary structures...

I would love to see moons as individual bodies we can jump to, but to keep maps manageable, I think this works best.

Let's talk about Stations:

I'm debating what to do here... Eve's stations as Structures around a planet? Or as 'planet'-like bodies themselves?

Tough to say. This is where I want the most feedback.

Discussion point: What are the pros and cons of Stations as 'planets' versus Stations as structures?

I'm tapped out for now.... So what does everyone think of the above? Any changes or ideas?

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AFAIK, Sins Plus did moons best by having them implemented as planetary bonuses. And as to how they got the moons to orbit, they made the moons particle effects. Basically, there are two different Terran planet types in Sins Plus, Terran planets and Terran planets w/ moons. They are actually two separate planet types with completely different entity files. And planet types can be made to have certain bonuses no matter what. And Uzii made his w/ Moon planets always have the "Moon" planet bonus.

And I would do that for structures too. If they orbit a planet, they shouldn't be separate gravity wells, since technically they reside in the gravity well of the planet they are orbiting.

Although I would keep the ice fields and asteroid belts separate from the planets, and definitely give them certain bonuses/penalties/abilities based on what Eve does.

So ripping out moons/stations from Jita leaves it with 27 planets to fight over. That will still take a long time to conquer in Sins. Making a map the size of a constellation w/ approximately the same number of planets per system means that it will be a long, brutal game for all sides concerned.

And I would make the Stargates wormholes instead and chage the planet model to be the stargate model. Galaxy Forge 1.1 allows direct connections between interstar wormholes so that will make that a lot easier.

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I play with Sins+ all the time and like what Uzii did with moons.

I guess my goal is to make them more interactive. Moons as planetary bonuses works some variability in sure, but I would like to see them able to interact with ships/structures. Structures can do this.

I think I agree with you on Stations... they should be in-gravity well structures. I definitely at least want stations as structures and as interactive as possible.

Stargates == Wormholes of course and yes I would only allow interStar connections via these.

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SIDE NOTE:

To be honest, I have not played much MP... in SP, I love looong drawn out bloody fights on maps with hundreds of planets.

If we have a standard set of maps for the Eve mod, I see a player-run persistent world where ownership of systems is tracked... Large maps lend themselves well to long-running games/campaigns.

Sins as a persistent universe?

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Sins as a persistent universe?

Doing that would require a major re-write of the entire game and would essentially turn it into a MMORTS. NO.

To be honest, I have not played much MP... in SP, I love looong drawn out bloody fights on maps with hundreds of planets.

Trust me. Its a lot harder to resume MP games than SP games. A standard medium random map can take almost an hour before any big battles start happening. And soon after one that happens one side starts losing badly and it all turns into an entirely one-sided match that ends with the losing guys ragequitting simply because it becomes too damn hard to make any ships because he is getting steamrollered into oblivion. Not fun for anyone.

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hmmm, a relatively simple way to convert sins into an mmo style game would be to set up a central server, then hardcode wormholes(or whichever device people want) to start a new instanced game using some particular map. Then the server backend would monitor active systems and player ip's and ensure that wormhole jumpers would be hot seated into a running game instead of placed into a new game. Then it's a matter of fine tuning. like details about how many ships u can bring thru at once, how many game instances r allowed open at once on your comp, etc.... This would create a sort of multiplayer campaign mode if wormholes could only be activated after a set number of map triggers have been set off.

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easy 4 the devs that is, not 4 modders, they haven't released any network code that I am aware of.

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if they released net code plus some xtra stuff it could b conceivable that fighters spawned in sins could have human pilots using a freespace or some other flight sim game flying them around. As mainly all the games would have to have in sync/common is xyz coords, basic ship types, and structure locations, and damage info. Then sins would transfer large ship movement coords and damage info into the freespace mod to move their scenery around and generate more or less synchronous effects, and the freespace pilots would transfer their coord info and damage info into the sins engine

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Moons difinately need to go. So do station. Sations could be come starbases in entrenchment.

Making all the resorces outside of planet grav well and into uncolonisable astroid belts and ice feilds is teh way to go. Allows you to build the 3 lvl of mining barges to harvest all feilds. You need to build one barge for 1 "mine".

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