Recently I have been working on the system processing for my wiki generator. A big part of this has been dealing with the asteroids, nebulas, and mining zones in each system. This has proven to be really difficult because of the different ways that the bodies are named. Some of this goes to vanilla, some of it is disco. A lot of these things need to be cleaned up.
My suggestion is as follows:
Every visible field should have one name. Some of them dont have any, some of them are named multiple times.
If you stack multiple zones together, name the parent zone that is linked to the [Asteroids] definition. Lootable zones in the linked config file will inherit some of the attributes from the parent zone, and this doesnt work if you use other children for visual and then name those. The wiki has a bunch of "$Commodity Field" mining areas because neither the mining zone nor the parent zone was named.
Similarly, if you stack an asteroid field on a nebula for the purpose of creating a layered body, only name the asteroid field rather than the nebula. When they are both named, they both show up in the discrete lists, which is kind of confusing. Only asteroids are mineable so naming that field provides reusability to the mining zones within it.
If you have distinct outcroppings in the same system, try to give them distinct names. I mean, give them a name, and give them a name that is different from the other distinct bodies in the system. We want to give people list of solar bodies, and when there are multiple distinct objects with the same name, it is counter to that purpose.
For example, Omega-15 has five fields named "Walker Nebula", three of them are [Nebula] definitions for the puffy formations, and two of them are overlapping [Asteroid] definitions for mining. The wiki generator will take this data and spit out one Walker Nebula, because they are all named the same, and will not mention the two asteroid fields at all. I could make it look at the field position and if its different location then print each one, but in this case we would have a list of five bodies named Walker Nebula with the same infocard description. Ideally, you would name the one cloud to the north with a Rheinlander name, and then give distinct names to the two asteroid fields but not name their discrete parent nebula. This would result in the wiki generator spitting out a single Nebula and two Asteroid Fields, with distinct names and descriptions for each of them.
If you guys want to clean some of these up, I can start posting some of the problematic fields here. I also have a bunch of bugged fields that I will post into the bug forum, but this specific thread is not really bug discussion and I want to keep it separate.
The reason that there are multiple naming points for a single nebula is that the names of the nebula in a mission sometimes, depending on context, need to change. Four seperate infocards at exact intervals regulate how nebulas are named.
Lootable subzones should not have an infocard attached to it at all. They take the infocard if the parent nebula or field. Omitting an infocard or name for a zone causes the game to check if there's a named zone below it. Also, the Walker on Omega 15, for instance, uses a generic "Walker" infocard. There are several instances where the Barrier also does this, simply because there's no reason to duplicate the same info in another infocard.
Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.
Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.
ah, didnt know about missions and nebula. That's an interesting twist.
Quote:Lootable subzones should not have an infocard attached to it at all. They take the infocard if the parent nebula or field.
That works when the parent is named correctly but there are some instances where they aren't. For example, the nebula in B4 of Tau-37 is not named, so the mining field that's attached to it doesnt have anything to inherit.
Also my script doesn't try to replicate the game universe, so I dont look at things like zones that are encompassed by another zone, I just look at the zone that referenced the current config file, and punt if its empty. I'm not making a web-based version of the game, just trying to generate reference pages
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