Discovery Gaming Community

Ok, to save the bugs thread piling up with speculation and opinions on the most notable additions to Discovery 4.81, I've made this thread for everyone to discuss their thoughts. I have no doubt that there's a lot of players and modders out there in Discovery already just dying to get their ideas out there, and this is the place to do it.

Now, on topic. After looking at the overall systems map, I thought about one thing straight off- how the border-world systems are named. It makes sense to keep all the systems inside the original house system boundaries in the same theme, ie: Bretonian systems with British Isle themed names, but looking at that map there's a huge expanse out the back of Bretonia which apparently still belongs to the house. Tau is also huge according to the map. I think there should be a few newly named, different groups of systems to be found past the edge of our known galaxy.

For example, there could be a group of 5 or 6 systems west of Tau or Bretonia named Epsilon or Vega or some other Astronomy themed name. I also think it would be fitting for a single designer, or group working together to develop a group of systems like this, to keep the overall feel together.

I agree. That way the system naming is not so repetitive.

Better have something like vega 1, 3, 12, 24, or aries 34, 54, 74 instead of tau 123, 340895, 348957349578...

It gives the galaxy a richer context..

Ok, did a bit of research on the astronomy stuff since I'm not too knowledgeable in that area myself. Here's how I understand the naming convention:

The whole universe is named Sirius, after one of the closest stars to Earth not in our solar system, orbiting Sol or "The Sun". Humankind fled to Sirius at the start of the time-line of Freelancer (possibly earlier in other games of the same series, I don't know about those).

The house systems have obvious naming conventions but the borderworlds less so. Omicron, Omega, Tau, and Sigma are all letters of the Greek alphabet which in astronomy, are used to denote the stars in a particular constellation. Take the constellation Canis Major (the Greater Dog) for example, the main star of which is Sirius. In this constellation, Sirius is given the name Alpha Canis Majoris, but there is also an Omega Canis Majoris, Omicron Canis Majoris (actually two but let's not confuse things), Sigma and Tau Canis Majoris stars.

Now, in case you're not lost already, here's where the naming conventions get confusing. Some of the stars in that same constellation I didn't list are Beta, Delta, Gamma and Theta Canis Majoris. Yep, the same suffixes used on the Omicron systems in-game.

So what has this determined? That edgeworlds pretty much completely use the Greek Alphabet and that Sigma, Omega, Omicron and Tau have been used to name clusters of systems, while Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and Theta have been used as suffixes for individual systems in place of numbers, ie: Omega 5, 15, 41 etc. This also means there are Greek alphabet letters in Sirius' constellation available for new clusters of systems or system suffixes, so I'll list them here:

Epsilon
Eta
Iota
Kappa
Lambda
Nu
Pi
Xi
Zeta
(you might recognise them from NPC comms chatter in-game)

I think one of those would be a pretty good starting point for a new system cluster, keeping it all in-line with the original Freelancer, just how Discovery was intended :0)

Pi seems like a good idea.

Pie joke? Inspired. That's what I was building up to with those six paragraphs...

Didn't you have something to do with Polaris development Vo? How about some useful input instead of being a cockend?

In astronomy, Greek letters are used to name stars from most brilliant to less brilliant, being alpha the most brilliant star in the constellation, beta the second most brilliant, gamma the third and so on...

Omicron alpha = Sirius.
Canis majoris Beta = Omicron Beta
Under Alpha, the Kusari star group...

Korrd,Sep 21 2006, 09:30 AM Wrote:I agree. That way the system naming is not so repetitive.

Better have something like vega 1, 3, 12, 24, or aries 34, 54, 74 instead of tau 123, 340895, 348957349578...

It gives the galaxy a richer context..

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Perhaps this will sound odd but I think one system should be named after the late Eugene Wesley Roddenberry.... Just a thought. :$

Gene Roddenberry? You, are...... A genius. XD

Roddenberry 4, just imagine. xD

;( Sorry badger. It wasn't meant to be a joke, but in former, better times, my online screen name was Pi. I just thought that Pi would be a nice name. xD

Ah apology accepted, I was having a bad day that day so I got kinda snappy. Ok, so any idea how much work is involved in renaming the new systems? Or are we confined to using the names Igiss has given them already?