Max number of Trade Lane Rings per system?

I am making a large System (NavMapScale = 0.5), with long Trade Lanes.

I’ve got seven Lanes now, and they cause a typival Trade Lane related crash: when I look at the NavMap I see a flickering, shapeshifting cyanish triangle. Seen that before, I belive it also happens when the sequence of the rings is incorrect (looped, or not linked to each other in a way the game understand). I would think this is familiar to more modders.

Yet, my Lanes are fine: if I remove one, and it doesn’t matter which one, the other six turn out well. But the seven of them together seem too much for the game. So, there is no error anywhere, but it’s too much of something.

Now I’ve had Systems with seven or more lanes (my modified NY for example) without a problem, so it must be the number of the Trade Lane Rings: 149. Probably too much.

Does anyone have experience with this? Is there a fix? I can think of workarounds so no need to mention theme (well if you must, I don’t mind but it’s not what i’m asking)

Thanks.

Chips wrote:
Giskard used to say there can be too many objects in a system for the game

Yeah I remember that this was told. And no doubt with good reason and thorough research, but usually this was told in combination with the fact that there couldn’t be added (almost) anything to New York - which in my personal experience was not true (I’ve had version of New York with at least three or four additional trade lanes). So, I never took it too literally.

Yet, it’s likely I have run into a limit now.

Chips wrote:
I have a funny feeling my method of testing was to move my tradelane to the start of the file and the system loaded… meaning if something was removed, the last object of the file was obviously not important :lol:

Hmmm… That’s bad news for me, because I had plans to move quite some more stuff. Like about at least 10 bases.

Well, it seems I’d better totally redesign the system!

StarTrader wrote:
What about removing TL rings, have fewer per trade lane?

Maybe having only one at the beginning and one at the end might work?

That would possibly work . Even probably, but -no offense- that’s kinda lame. A TLRing is the place where action could be expected, either thru an attack (trade lane assault patrol path) or Adoxa’s TL fail plugin). A Lane with just a start and end is 100% safe.

To have this System as closest to how I envisioned it, I needed to scale it down a bit. So I scaled it down to 0.75. (Rimshot’s online System calculator is priceless!! I hope this won’t stop him fro making a GUI though With an additional mirror function, though that can be done with Notepad without too much trouble) The system used a 200% mirrored Stuttgart System as a basis. So now it’s build on a 150% mirrored Stuttgart. Barely recognizable as such, imho*.

And I redid the Lanes, so there are only about 87 or so TL Rings instead of 149. (It did notice that one of my Lanes had so many rings, that I prolly set the interval way too small for that Lance. I might look into it to save the larger version, but I plan to add quite some more stuff, so redoing this Lane alone won’t be enough).

*(For my House Systems, I prefer to use existing files, otherwise the paths are way too much work, as I don’t use a system editor, and I want these Systems to remain close to the original House Systems, wen it comes to Lanes, Paths etc. For the more exotic Systems, paths aren’t necessary imho, so designing those is freestyle )

RimShot wrote:
ill be looking into the problems, thats for sure.
the online tool was made long time ago when my skills were far from now.

Your tool is great dude!!!

I think the faults people have, are more or less inherent to the scaling as such, not your tool. Like patrol_paths no longer really touching (although that strangeley enough doesn’t seem to trigger a crash. Just looks weird on the NavMap).

Only issue I can think off is an interface issue: The Z and Y do not correspond with FL’s X,Z,Y coordinates. But now I think of it, FL actually says nowhere how the axes are named… So we might as well say I am the one naming them incorrectly. I always take the West–>East axis to be X, the North–> South axis to by Y, and the Up–>Down (the middle coordinate) as Z. Must have been that way in the first tutorial I ever saw. Your tool calls the Up–>Down Y and the North–>South Z.

If you ever make a new version, a mirror function might be cool, though it will have it’s own issues modders will have to be aware off. Can be done ‘by hand’ too but automated will be much nicer.

PS I had some diagnostic medic test this afternoon, and they gave my dormicum and morphine. All went fine but I’m still a bit druggy now.

@ StarTrader: that’s all most confusing… The only axis everyone agrees on, is the X-axis, it seems…

I assume I must have based my assumption (X,Z,Y) on the fact that I must have taken the NavMap as defining item, and took it as a familiar XY grid. I never used HardCMP (although I might have opened it a few times) but maybe the UTF editor uses the same letters? And I do think someone explained it that way to me… either personally, or in a thread, or in a tutorial I found.

Anyway it wasn’t my intention to criticize Rimshot’s app! The coords itself are on their familiar place anyway: W-E, U-D, N-S.