I know what you all mean, I agree, but I would like if asteroids only formed ONE ring around ONE object, like they do in maybe 2/100 systems...
and if the Suns were all moved 30k away from the edge of the map, like in Kappa, you get a sense of a giant sun and not being able to just fly up to it or round it, (although some systems look very pretty with there central star)
I put some thought into how a mod for Freelancer might look and function with 'realism' in mind.
The sun's would be almost backdrops to a system, so far away you would not have any reason to get to them.
Planets and features would form in orbits around these, essentially you might have a system with a sun in the bottom left and part of an asteroid ring cutting accross the map from bottom right to top left.
Then maybe a few planets, possibly a giant one way off in the distance as another form of backdrop.
but keeping the distances of bases and planets within reason.
Another Idea I had (similar to implemented in Crossfire Sol System)
was to have a 'Slingshot' style 'Trade lane' where you would dock with one end at one planet (a ring or whatever) and there would be no extra rings between that and the destination.
So you would not want to come out of the trade lane half way unless you knew there was something there, otherwise it will take some time to complete the journey without there being Trade Lane Segments floating in space.
So each planet would have an object as a Trade lane pointing toward each other Planet or large solar body, you would dock with these like Trade lanes and be fired off toward the next giant planet etc...
Instead think of being in orbit around a giant Planet taking up as much space as half a regular system, where battles and stations would sit the same relative distance apart and travelling between planets was more like travelling between systems in Discovery...
You could up the speed of cruise to compensate for larger distances, increase scanner and draw range...
You know if the game engine could handle this? Planets this big? systems this big?
