On Finding and Using a Common Reference Point

While working in space has its perks and for the most part is a wonderful experience, we are in part hampered by the interface built into our ships. I firmly place any and all blame on the Jovians as part of their desire to maintain a position of aloof superiority over us by seeding small technological wonders attached to inane and sometimes incomplete user interfaces. I could probably wax eloquent over multiple examples, but would only be “preaching to the choir” as it were. None of the pilots I fly with or talk to would recommend the user interface we use on a regular basis for any purpose other than masochism.

Having written all of that, we are flying around in a multi-dimensional space with the only real point of reference being a false horizon given to us by the tactical overlay. Flying around planets, suns, moons, et cetra are all inconsistent measures of location and often difficult to describe in a place where concepts like  UP, DOWN, STARBOARD, PORT, AFT, BOW are rendered meaningless in light of both the interface and third-dimensional travel. [As an aside for those who might have flown a spaceship in a "twitch" type of environment, a barrel-roll really loses it's meaning without a horizon, but that doesn't negate it's usefulness.] So how can you organise yourself and others [especially fleet commanders] to use a common point of reference without everything going down the drain in confusion over directions and terms.

REALITY – You can’t. There will always be someone to misunderstand any given command. “Warp to 30km and hold,” will invariably be understood as, “Get to the gate and jump. Jump! JUMP!” by aforementioned schmuck. In another life, we had a fleet-mate who always turned up oriented 180˚ degrees vertical to the rest of the group. Ultimately it didn’t matter as she would at least be facing the right direction. The best we can do is develop a consistent point of reference and be insistent that people reference it for direction. Anything else will largely just be lucky, random happenstance.

Something reminded me the other day of how we were taught to find reference points in fleet operations while giving a new corp-mate the grand tour. Dazed and confused by the overwhelming flood of information coming at him upon joining our little patch of home, he queried, “How do you all know where you are going?” Admittedly he was referring to finding and keeping track of the ever shifting network of wormholes, but it was a good reminder about getting oriented and one that I had completely forgotten in moving into a wormhole. The point of this is to get everyone a common frame of reference that they can use to describe position and interpret directions.

[caption id="attachment_754" align="alignright" width="230" caption="Finding North"][/caption]

The method is fairly easy and refers to an arbitrary direction that we will call, Norbert. To find Norbert and get oriented to Norbert, you simply full up the otherwise useless system map [via the F11 key unless you've remapped it somehow]. In the lower right hand corner will be a map of your current system complete with relative planetary orbits and the star in the centre. Somewhere on this little map will be a red circle that represents your current position. extending outward from this circle is what can best be described as two overlapping, semi-transparent triangles. These indicate the current horizontal “field-of-view” of your camera drones. The direction your ship is facing is irrelevant as is your vertical declination above or below the plane of the tactical overlay horizon. Remember Norton? It is this field-of-view that we use to define Norbert. Norbert is arbitrarily defined as the top of the little system map. Everything else can now be defined relative to Norbert. You warp to a wormhole at 10 o’clock knowing that your cloaked stealth bomber buddy is 30km 6 o’clock. Stealth Edit.