Ha, I am fine with a search function :)
A, search functions are the best thing since… Google!
:)
A way to deal with the problem of having too many labels is… seems like a good system to me. Problems?
No problems. I think this is great, and the label can even include other rudimentary information such as the system that the planet is in (as a subtitle). This is because system names will likely be determined by developers. For visual learners, it will be easy to sort planets by system names, and to always have each planet's name associated with the system that it is in.
Concerning Rings:
I think that system is great, just not for the situation you describe. Just because of the fact that multiple nations and "alliances" will be inhabiting the same systems, and possibly great numbers of them, a simple colored ring won't be able to easily show that information. The only way I see it working is if we did what I said before, which is only show rings around systems when a player identifies a handful of nations he wants to examine. Each color on each ring could then represent a nation's percentage of control over that system, or perhaps a blending of the colors could show that (systems shared by a blue nation and a yellow nation will look greenish), and this way players can easily compare two territories.
Eh… I have to disagree here, but what you have said makes perfect sense.
…
Look, your ring-system, and Tristan's ring-system both work out perfectly.
Of course, it is either one system, or the other, unless we work out of solution.
Here we go: I cannot find any screenshots, but there is a game called "Stars!" which allows the user to change their GUI based on planetary readouts.
This actually makes sense: Hospitable planets show as green circles, inhospitable planets show as red circles. The more hospitable (beneficial to population growth), or inhospitable (harmful to population) the planet is, the larger the circle! This was all done on a 2D interface.
Planets with starbases had a white ring. Planets could also be shown as circles. The more population, the larger the circle. Planets could also be shown by surface-mineral values :)
And of course, unexplored planets showed as dots.
Now, we could do a GUI like this.
The user selects the view that he or she wants,
and we supply the graphical readouts.
So, three-dimensional rings could easily be modified to show control, political affiliation, resource-richness, planet production/population, alliance, or any combination of these variables.
If we could show any number of variables using planetary rings, what variables would we need?
Think of all the clicking this would save users :)
