Sectors Without Number Update: Movable Systems & Editable Everything
Hello Stars Without Number fans,
Since first releasing Sectors Without Number I’ve received a ton of great feedback and ideas on the future of the site. What I teased out were a few common threads and full customizability post-generation was by far the most requested feature.
All of the features below are live now on sectorswithoutnumber.com!
System Movement
To move a system in the sector grid, click and hold on a hex until it turns a light shade of blue. Then just drag and drop to another hex. If the hex is empty it’ll just move there as expected. If a system exists at the destination, then the systems will switch places.
As with any change you make to a sector, when you perform a system move your sector will be saved immediately.
Sector, System, and Planet Edit
A new Edit option is available in the sidebar header that will allow you to change the data associated with the sector, system, or planet you are viewing currently.
In the sector edit you are free to add a custom name to your sector. The refresh icon will re-generate a new name for you if you just don’t like the initial generated one.
In the system edit modal, a planet multi-select option is available. From here you can easily add and remove planets.
All of the planet information is fully customizable as well and formatted into dropdowns so you can easily see all the available options.
Sector Saving & Loading
You might have noticed the little green save popup that occurs in the lower left hand corner of the gifs from the previous sections. The sector save functionality is persisted to your local computer rather than a server. If ever you want to go back to your saved sector, you can access that from the main page.
Be careful to not clear your cached data for the website or you will loose your hard work.
The Future of Sectors Without Number
I have received so many neat ideas from the community on features I could add to sectors without number. I would like to share with you some of the major ones that I think could be great additions to the site.
- Signup/Login: Once a user is created, sectors can be saved on the server to be shared with anyone.
- Game Master & Player Views: Not all information in the sector should be shared with players. All content can be toggled to a hidden state that would hide it from the player specific view.
- Advanced Configuration: Don’t want the world tag ‘Beastmasters’ to be generated in your sector? There will be a way to configure the content generator to exclude or include specific content.
- Alien & Faction Generation: A major part of Stars Without Number are the aliens and factions that can exist on any given planet.
- Notes: A way to take notes on a sector, system, or planet is important to keep track of all the moving parts.
There are many more ideas but most of the rest will be way down the road. If you have any thoughts or concerns, feel free to message me on reddit at /u/mpigsley or directly at mpigsley@gmail.com.
