Will try and get the fleet management ui done tomorrow. Meanwhile I've made a prototype for the sensor system: http://www.trekwar.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Devblog-18022010

Interesting. I believe that Supremacy will sort-of be using a similar system for determining sensor ranges and strengths, although I haven't really spoken to Mike about it so I can't be sure.

I do have some comments about potential improvements to the system though based on what I can see.

First off, is the sensor disruption range of anomalies. Major objects like Black Holes would have effects even light years from the singularity. However, your map as it currently stands has sensor disruptions that effect only singular sectors. I would propose that where you have red squares, they should also be surrounded by a ring of pink squares to show the diminishing, but still noticeable, effects of such major anomalies. Incidentally, BOTF actually already did this - sensor ranges in a ring of sectors were effected by things like Neutron stars. The amount of disruption caused, and the exact location of the strongest areas of effect by disruptions also changed turn-to-turn (Since Neutron stars spin, so in BOTF the location of sensor disruptions moved from sector-to-sector in the ring of 8 sectors around a Neutron star). So, using your first image as an example, if area of effect sensor disruptions were included, this is what the map might look like:



Taking this idea even further, you could even look at where the area-of-effect of separate sensor disruptions overlap. In these instances, you could have greater disruptions than pink squares that might not be as bad as red anomalies. in this instance, I would suggest orange or something to indicate the sensor reductions.




My second suggestion would be to remove the display of sensor disruptions in sectors that cannot currently be scanned. As it stands, players can see the locations of anomalies in sectors that they cannot currently scan, even though they aren't scanning them! In this respect, it allows players to cheat, especially if those anomalies would damage or destroy their ships if they were sent into those sectors - experienced players would know not to send their ships there. So, using the original map again, if the display of sensor disruptions outside of scan-able range was implemented, the map would instead look like this:




Please don't take these as criticisms, I understand the system is new and a work-in-progress. I mean this purely as constructive criticism. The sensor map sounds like a great idea already and i'm looking forward to getting to play the game.

Err...i'm still getting used to the fact that Supremacy even has a client and server in the first place. Don't ask me the specifics of how it works!

You'll have to ask Mike about it sorry. Just send him a PM. He'll probably enjoy discussing it with you.

Each civilization in Supremacy has its own set of map visibility data (a class called CivilizationMapData). Internally, CivilizationMapData has only one data field, which is a ushort[,] array (two-dimensional array of 16-bit unsigned integers). Bit shifting/packing is used to store multiple values as a single ushort. One bit is used to store whether a sector has been explored (physically visited by a ship), another bit to store if a sector has been scanned (was within range of a scanner source, i.e. ship, listening post, station, etc.). Eight bits are used to store the fuel range of a sector (distance from nearest supply source, i.e. station, shipyard). The remaining six bits store the scan strength at that sector (the strength of the most powerful scanner in that sector, or possibly the range-diminished power of a scanner in a nearby sector).

The maximum fuel range is 255 sectors (no problem, as the maximum map dimension is 256 sectors). The maximum scan strength is 63, though actual values should be much lower.