Hi All,

It's been a little while since an update so I thought I should say something, I haven't had a lot of chances lately to work on the game but still been doing what I can. Recently I've be trying to work out a bit more for galaxy creation and planet distribution especially for spiral galaxy types.

Here is an example I've got working now with moderate galaxy size and moderate star and planet density, It's still looks a bit too crowded possibly because when you zoom in stars after often only 4-5 grids away and planets from each system can overlap of be on grid away.

Here's an example of a moderate size galaxy with highest star and planet density... i think it ends up with 500 planets and 300 or so stars.

I did have a look at a max size galaxy with max planets and stars with current config. That galaxy though taking quite awhile to load also seemed to cause an issue with saving too taking forever and the save size with getting up to 200MB before I just cancelled it. Then I realized that was probably just because I disabled FOW which gives player full sensor strength on all grids and it tries to save all that. As it's just a debug feature not to worried about that for now anyway... :)

Playing with a galaxy max size runs alright on my computer just need to work out the optimal density so you don't have planets all over the place then I'll set that as moderate density setting and allow players to increase or decrease from this value as is usual for new game settings. I think what I have now for moderate density is not to bad but just need to decrease the max setting so it doesn't create quite so many planets and stars as is does now.

Once your empire gets a bit larger the corporation tradings between your planets could slow turn processing down a lot if you have that many planets. I haven't got to stress testing anything like that yet though but is something I need to keep in mind.

Anyway that's mostly what I've been doing lately. Unfortunately over the next few weeks work is going to be quite hectic which might make me less motivated to spend time on this after work. Expecially if I'm getting home late and working on the weekends coming up.. but I'll see how I go!