Interesting effect with Galaxy Forge

I was playing around with Galaxy Forge today and I thought it would be neat to have two star systems connected by an asteroid belt. The belt would be several asteroid types in a string splitting the 2 systems and could be accessed from either system via their respective outer planets through phase lines only. I wasn't even sure this would work as I imagined, as the 2 systems would be connected through phase lines making interstellar research redundant--as if you were playing with 1 star only. So I created it and tested it out.

Well not only did it work, but it created a pretty cool effect. The 2 systems were placed on their own "shelf" so to speak, and each shelf was on a different level in 3 dementional space. If I created a planet in the ring of 1 star, it would be on that star's level, no matter where it was placed on the map, or what planet it was connected to. Here's a snapshot to show what I mean:

snapshot

I think this could be used in some really creative ways. Like I could throw in a couple of unused stars just to create other "shelf levels". Then planets could really be in 3 dimentions around a single star or whatever.

Has anyone else discovered this? Or perhaps this is already known and I'm just wasting space...

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Can't you edit the corridinate system?

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You mean the x,y axis? Yea, but that doesn't give the control to place a planet on a z axis. Unless I'm missing something?

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GoaFan77

Join Date 10/2008

+629

The position of the Z axis in sins in completely random. However, to prevent potential overlap, solar sytems have their own "shelf" he called it, that all of the planets fit on. In turn the planets vary their position on the Z axis in this "shelf" at random. If you play this map enough times, you"ll probably notice the distance of the phase lanes connecting the two galaxies will vary, and maybe even switch positions. You can see this effect on any map with multiple starts even if there are no phase lanes connecting them, but it's easier to see when there are phase lines (and extremely obvious when their is several).

Also, the stars still serve a purpose. Jumping from star A to star B is alot faster then going through all of those planets if you want to get from one side of that map to another. Make the stars unconnected to planets if you want the stars to have no real effect on gameplay.

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For this map, I did want the possibility of jumping between stars, but that would obviously have to wait until the tech was researched.

I see that the "shelf levels" are random. I just whipped up a quick map with 4 stars. 1 Star held the planets, which were made from the three other stars. After editing and reloading the map the z axis positions were quite different. The whole effect is really neat though. You can't just navigate the map from a top-down perspective. From top-down, it looks like a mess of crossed phase lines, overlapping planets, etc. You have to really utilize diferent camera angles to get a look at how the map is laid out -- where the choke points are, etc. In the end, it really feels like you're playing in 3 dimentional space.

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