Coordinate grid and display precedence
One of more important questions for display of navigation grid was what to draw first, what last and which things would get obscured. Eventually we arrived at the conclusion there is little need to constrain ourselves to single objects. We can draw ships over planets and if necessary have several smaller ships shown to indicate multiple visitors present on a tile.
This did not solve the design challenge completely because of a follow up question which ships to draw if there is more than four. For now we left it with implementation order: ships were drawn in order of their arrival on a tile.
Worth noting is coordinates appearing around navigation grid. This should help find one’s way around in large sectors.
Better jump gate support
Up to this point when one used jump gate with multiple destinations one was chosen randomly. Not any longer. Interface offers separate buttons for each travel location. Although they are so in the picture below, the costs of each do not have to be identical.
Pathfinding built-in
DuSTman wrote pathfinder for the game and integrated it into user interface. It neatly finds the cheaper route, making flying much more pleasant. One of most important quality of life features.
