Dominions 3000 (name confirmed!)

[JimMorrison]

Aezeal said:
personally I'd say use circles of about equal size, sun 2x as large as planets.

Worrying about graphical scale seems silly to me. In relative terms, all of these systems would be just dots on the map, unless the image were 1,000,000,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 pixels large. So just place some planets so that they look nice, and put a colorful ball in the center. The ball can be really tiny. Like a golf ball for the star, and bowling balls for the planets. Usability of the map is much more important than graphical accuracy.


Oh and touching on Badger's last comment, I kind of like the idea of ships using hyperspace, and others having to slog through the deeps. Building on that, here's a sad alphanumerical representation of 2 neighboring systems, and how territories could be laid out-

ssssss
soooos
soppos
soppos
soooos
ssssss
soooos
soppos
soppos
soooos
ssssss

s = Deep Space
o = Outer System Space, each ring of o's represents a single "province" surrounding the system
p = Planetary Body, can be anything considered habitable/usable with sufficient technology

Warp Lanes would be reached via Outer System Space, they wouldn't lead directly from Planetary Body to Planetary Body, as you need to escape the gravity well first, and you can't just sail into all those objects, you need to slow down as you approach, and then enter the system.

Also note each s there isn't an individual Space/Sea territory, I'd imagine they would be somewhat largish, but proportions can be decided after there is a working test map drawn, that can be played with as far as movement rates go.