Adjust minimap UI to make it easier to differentiate between objects

[brendanjones]

Problem Description

I often find myself not being able to differentiate between objects on my minimap because they look the same or very similar.

Objects that appear the same:

• Grey: Planets you can't land on, stars, and disabled ships.
• Blue: Planets you can land on, and ships.

Related Issue Links

Can't find any.

Desired Solution

I don't have a certain solution in mind - I'm trying to open a discussion here. Some potential changes:

• Change the colour of some objects
• Change the size of objects
• Change the styling of some objects (e.g. change solid circles to outline)
• Change the shape of some objects (e.g. change some objects to a triangle instead of a circle)

Anyone got any other suggestions?

Additional Context

[Zireael07]

I think it was already reported, but I would lean towards making some objects use different shapes. A different space game I play has circles for planets, squares for space stations and triangles for ships

[xX-Dillinger-Xx]

I vote for "Change the shape of some objects (e.g. change some objects to a triangle instead of a circle)"

[brendanjones]

After thinking this through more, two solutions that are adjustments not big changes, but would go a long way to solving the issues I have with the minimap:

• Make all planets bigger than all ships.
  • I think keep gas giants the same size, but make the smallest planets at least the same size as the large ship blob. This would mean you could see the small planets have an outline, which you currently can barely see.
  • Then as planets get larger, scale up towards the gas giant size.
  • I'd say also change the colour, given a bunch of blue ships can hide a blue planet, but planets and ships share blue because that's the friendly colour so changing the colour would break the reputation colouring. So let's not do that :/
• Give stars a unique design on the minimap (not each one, just all stars). How about 1. making them yellow, and 2. Changing the sizing?
  • I'd say make the smallest stars the size of the new smallest planet size (see above), and the biggest stars maybe 50% bigger than the current largest planet size.
  • • Real-world stars are a bit funny in sizing because you've got neutron and pulsar stars that are less than 10km in radius, all the way up to WOH G64 which is 1540 times the size of our sun. I don't think we should copy that scale onto the minimap, though! But I think we can make the max minimap star size somewhat bigger to represent the massive scale of our largest in-game stars, without cluttering up the UI.
  • • It's nice to easily know where the star is because that's the center of the system, and it's where your ramscoop is most effective.

Changing the planet and star sizing (and star colouring) would also solve stars, un-landable planets, and disabled ships being confused, given they're currently all grey. It's very hard to tell the difference between a small unlandable planet and a disabled ship atm.