Trying to customize Sol

[CMDR ARGHouse]

Hey, so I've been trying to add for example, Sedna into the game. One thing in the Sol lua file stumps me though, what do the numbers mean?
For example the radius of mars is 3396.2 km or 3396.2 * 1000 in meters. Though in the file it says (21, 10000), not sure if this is a range or 21 * 10000 or 10000 \ 21?

[bszlrd]

Mars radius is given as 533 1000 in the system file. You must be looking at Phobos.
A rather convoluted way to write 0.533 solar radius. As in the 1000 means that you divide the 533 with a 1000.
Yes, our system syntax is a bit odd :D

[impaktor]

Also, please feel free to add what you think was missing from the documentation, for you to understand the files:
https://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Custom_Systems

it will help future contributors, and help grow the game content.

[impaktor]

Also, I dunno how much small stuff we want in Sol?

Will be strange with Sol being very very detailed, down to small rocks, and then the rest of the systems being more of the format of star + a few planets, some with starports, and that's it.

[FluffyFreak]

I'm happy to have more detail going into Sol, it can set a good example for us to raise everything too.

[FluffyFreak]

It's a crazy system and I can't find if anyones written down the maths so here goes:

• Earth radius in km = 6371
• Mars radius in km = 3396.2
• 3396.2 / 6371 = 0.5330717313

However our system uses a fixed-point number system to avoid differences in represenation on various platforms... basically PC/Mac/Linux/ARM/x86 or whatever all produce slightly different results of floating point operations, fixed point maths avoids that.

So you need to convert it to fixed so 0.5330717313 -> (533, 1000) which is the same as 533 / 1000 = 0.533
If you wanted more precision to include the `07` for example, then (53307, 100000) = 53307 / 100000 = 0.53307

And to convert back into it's original size you just multiply by the Earth radius in km = 6371 * 0.53307 = 3396.18897km
Which as you can see has lost a little precision but is pretty close.

[bszlrd]

@Fluffyfreak: I've added your explanation to the wiki article about the systems.

[CMDR ARGHouse]

I got it working a few days back, found one little typo that I missed. Probably just going to make this a mod for an expanded Sol system. Thus far there is:
-Sedna +(Farpoint Base, Rleyh Outpost)
-Xena, the theoretical planet 9 or 'planet X' +(Gabrielle Station)
-Eris & it's moon Dysnomia +(Barbary Landing & Barbarosa Hideout)
-Makemake & it's little moon MK2 +(Moai Landing & Ahu Tongariki)
-A base on Eros, Ceres, Pallas and Vesta
-A station in orbit around the Moon, Armstrong Station
-A station in orbit around Venus, Venusia Habitat
-Settled Mercury, a ground base by the name of Hespestos's Forge & a space station called Ikarus's Rest

This has made for some interesting, high paid though months long trade runs.

[impaktor]

I think Sol is spammed enough with stations, but I suspect Fluffy and Noz have different opinion.

Anyway, if you choose to add any new custom systems, that would be interesting to merge, I think.

[FluffyFreak]

I disagree with that, I think everywhere is under populated with stations :)

I liked the "hometowns" mod which adds loads of them to Earth alone and think we'd definitely have lots of bases throughout the solar system and on asteroids, Moons, floating in atmospheres etc.