Is there a way to determine what is "up" or "down" (Or North/South) ?
I realize that as far as gameplay is concerned, this has almost no meaning, but
(for example) when the stations were designed, I'm sure that the designer had
"top" or "bottom" in mind. If that was the case, when the stations were placed in their respective systems, were they aligned with the North/South axis of that
sector? Just curious....

Well, you could before determine your orientation to the zxy axes with the /displayshippos command, but now it's gone (I think), so no.

I don't think stations really have a top or bottom. You'll notice that the docks are arranged all over the place sometimes. But the way I usually think of it in my mind is to give each face (cubical) of the station its own orientation. And I usually regard "up" in each face with the way some of the Waylonics is arranged or how the textures are placed in the docks.

I agree with Arolte... Arrange yourself with the Waylonics/GTS and you'll be all set.

What the heck is "up" and "down"?? Is that some kind of station-lubber talk? Never heard the terms before. The only thing you gotta remember is to not fly your Vult into a dock with the wings in opposition to the wide sides of the dock! :-D

"down is towards the enemy gate."
Ender Wiggin.


Seriously tho, I usually consider "up" to be a direction that is perpendicular to the face of the station nearest me, so I fly "Down" into the dock. Obviously this means that as i fly around a station "up" changes.

knew someone was gonna quote Ender on this one... lol, almost did myself but passed on it :D

Down is whichever way the aggregate of all gravitational forces are pulling you.

Oh wait, the game doesn't have gravity.

<_<
>_>

who knows, maybe the game will have gravity someday.

(some people start playing vendetta with a set up-down orientation. I think they base it off "how the station was orientated when I warped in"... and the sun is usually orientated as "up" too.
strange. I don't recall ever warping into a sector with the sun under the tummy of my ship)

That's an interesting point about the orientation after warping in. I'll have to play with that.

What about when you leave a station? However you leave the exit docks, that's the "up" on that side of the station.

=b

Quoth Waylon:
"When you warp in, your position in the sector is determined by the sector you came from. (So if you went to the middle of the system from the top-left corner, you'll be in the top-left corner of the system.)

Quoth me:
"So there are about 250 spawn locations in any given sector, plus or minus a few depending on the number and size of stars in the system?"

Quoth Waylon again:
"Quite a few less, actually, though I'm not going to do the math. Every sector to the right of your destination will produce the same incoming trajectory, as will every sector above, to the left of, and below. Any sectors that lie on the same diagonal will also give the same trajectory (that's where you'd have to use discrete mathematics, or spend 10 minutes counting, to figure out how many sectors exactly align to the same diagonal.)"

Each solar system sort of has an up and a down... when you're looking at the nav screen, "up" is towards you, coming out of the monitor, and "down" is away from you, going into the screen. (Does that make sense?)

So if you really want to, you should be able to figure out which directions are up and down by comparing the positions of planets in the background against their positions on the map.

The stations are generally designed with an up and down in mind, though their orientation to the rest of the sector is completely arbitrary.

"Up" is towards me and "down" away from me while looking at the Nav Screen.
Yes. It DOES make sense. And yes, I can determine up, down etc by observing the
"landmarks" from within a sector. As I mentioned in my original post, I KNOW it
does not matter for gameplay, but my curiosity really got to me.... Thanx!!!

I'll end this thread by saying it again...You all have been playing RL too long! Up, down...ridiculous!

Remember... the enemy's gate is *down* (heh heh)

I guess Vlad's point about "up" being out of the monitor and "down" being into the monitor makes sense, since all sectors within a system seem to lie along the plane of the ecliptic.

The enemy gate is always Down.



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Dive!

Actually, Into the screen is Z, X is on the right-left and you can't really see Y cause its always above you. ;)

/me sees up/down in a sector as perpendicular to the plane that most objects lie on in a sector.

good to see you reading Ender's Game, Spider =D

Yes, great series of books...

"Down" is the direction the bottom of my feet are facing at any given moment.