Changing colors on the ASTRO map

KSilvereyes

In v2, you could change the color of the star based on the political field. I have an awesome map from v2 ported into 3 that has the colors show up perfectly from a distance. However, when I try to do this from scratch on v3, I don't get the colors.

I have four main political factions that make up the starmap. Each faction has numerous stars assigned to it. When I attempt to change the color of the star (and it's label) in the properties view, it allows me to do so. However, when I close out of that and scroll WAAAAAAY back, all the stars are white. The properties window shows the change, but the map doesn't reflect the color change.

Is there something I am doing wrong to change the colors? BTW... I've gone into the Database and changed the color value in excel and then imported the table into the database. I kept the old table under a different name (bodies-old) and renamed the new imported file bodies. I'm not sure what else I need to change. I'm sure it's something simple that I've overlooked, but I would appreciate any help you can give me.

Kevin

Ed_NBOS

The star coloring was done differently in the older version. I don't think you can change them in v3. You should be able to change the label color by searching for something like this in advanced search:

Systems with, political = "MyNation"

Then tell it to Select All

And then use Actions -> Mass Edit -> Display style from the menu to change the label.

kaladorn

Another option if you want it more visible at a distance:

You can use colour coded spheres of control by faction.

What I'm doing in my current map is not that (I'm using differing size and colour of spheres of control to denote the relative importance/population of a planet), but I had contemplated using colour-by-faction for the spheres and just letting size dictate. The issue to me with that is size isn't too reliable if there is a lot of separation but colour still works.

What I am doing to single out planets in a group is I am defining Hyperlanes (routes) of varying weights and line styles (JumpGate, Hyperlanes, ?) and the line style denotes how heavily used that lane is (between higher pop planets, the line is heavier and less broken). The hyperlane colours will be by faction so visually you can see the glue that holds together a faction (political block).

Aside:

I've found my cubic sector can be a challenge to keep track of which axis I'm looking at (postiive/negative, x/y/z) so I created markers outside my sector along the axis lines and drew coloured reference routes (Axis Reference I named them) that run between these + and - markers for each axis. So when I spin my axis, there's always one protruding marker facing me and usually 4 I can see coming out the adjacent sides with reference lines, so I can easily figure out where I'm looking at that instant. I made the visibilities long-distance for the axis reference lines and put uniquely coloured spheres of control around the markers.

The only issue with this is that the markers themselves, being bodies, are included in the sector report (I can remove them later or adjust the format to give them their own section).

It'd be neat if there were easy ways to script the sector report's contents (vs. just adjusting the style sheet).