City display on Starmap

[Neils Iyssada]

Hey!

From what I heard the other empires cities you already discovered aren't notified on the starmap if there's no owned city close to them.
While that acts as a basic fog of war, it's a real pain. For example I wanted to get an overview of the cities in a radius of 5 systems from my colony cluster - but I couldn't because I don't have my cities spread enough to get more than a radius of 2 sectors. So I discovered some cities in some systems and couldn't see them anymore when I moved my ship away.

Why ? If it's there to have some fog of war mechanic, why not displaying the visited cities as they are already known to the player?


TL;DR
Actually to be visually notified of a foreign discovered city you have to get a city close to it.
What I propose would be that once you spot a foreign city, it's saved into the starmap and you can see the dot even if your cities are not close enough.

[Greydog]

Do you have observatories in all your systems? ..that should let you pick up their signal as long as they're advanced enough to generate one.

I have never had a city I discovered disappear from the map unless the city itself disappeared.

[Neils Iyssada]

Well yes, I have observatories and I had their FTL signal, but once I visited and scanned the system I didn't have signal anymore and the city dot isn't there.
Dean said on discord it was because you have to get a city with an airport within 13.32 pc from the foreign city.

[Deantwo]

What we are missing is the common RTS game's version of old intel in the fog of war.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_of_war#In_video_games

Currently it works in such a way that you basically forget about the presents of cities in a solar system the moment you lose detection coverage over it. This is weird and makes remembering locations of interest hard to manage.

Ideally you would remember where there last was a city. For example when you last visited a solar system there was a city, so you would assume there is still a city there until you visit again to confirm. This would make it much easier to navigate space far from home.
However this should preferably also work the other way around. There was no city the last time you were in the solar system, so you don't know that a city was founded there until you visit the solar system again.

I can see why we might not have this right now, as it requires a good amount more information to be kept about each empire's starmap. The database would either have to keep record of what was in each solar system that last time visited it. Or it would have to have a history of when each and every city was founded and destroyed so it can check what a solar system was like when you visited. Either way would work, but without knowing how the database is structured it is hard to say what would be easiest to implement, and that is without even mention the large amounts of new information it would have to contain and show to players.

The starmap has also always been missing some options to share starmap information in-game. A way for two allied empires to share survey or detected cities would help a lot. Of course a lot of players would also be worried about having to share ALL of their starmap information with another, so most of us would likely want some finer control over what is shared and what isn't.

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Do you have observatories in all your systems? ..that should let you pick up their signal as long as they're advanced enough to generate one.

Observatories have nothing to do with detection, they only announce presence of income asteroids and allows for an in-system survey. Only airports and radars detects cities in other solar systems.

Airports allow you to detect cities in explored solar systems within 17.32pc.

Radars allow you to detect warp signatures in unexplored solar systems, if your empire has warp technology.
See: https://www.hazeron.com/wiki/index.php/Warp_Signature

I have never had a city I discovered disappear from the map unless the city itself disappeared.

Then you have not explored very far from your own systems.
See: https://www.hazeron.com/wiki/index.php/Locator#Star_Map
Or: 2019-06-28 Star Map Friends, Search System Scan, Search Cache