I'm using at least some of my nebu resources as stars. The problem is, one doesn't expect a syst to be close enough to a star to be "inside" it, so the nebu never gets explored.

What's the best way to overcome this? I thought perhaps Xxxx an unused syst in the middle of the star, then set a bit to hide it again. Is there a better one?

If I create a larger nebu with no image and give it the same center, can I use its OnExplor to do the above? That is, will image-less nebus still work? I could just give the one nebu a larger black-padded image, but that seems like a needless file size boost.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 22 June 2008 - 10:20 AM

I would probably just do a nebu graphic with a star at the center and a lot of black padding around it. The file bloat from a few small extra PICTs isn't that big a deal.

Alternatively, you could Xxxx a syst at the center of the star and not hide it again. So long as you design your nebu graphic so that white text will be legible to the right of its center, you can use the EVN map's own built-in labeling to identify the star to the player. Give the star systs no hyperspace links, and maybe give it high gravity shear a/o interference for color.

If you want to pursue the two-nebu trick you suggest, though, it should work if you have a black image for the larger nebu. Actually trying to get a nebu to work with a missing graphic is something I guess I haven't tried. I'd be interested if it did work, though, since blank nebus do have a fair variety of uses....

I thought the area of the nebu for the purposes of OnExplore expressions was calculated based on the image. Wouldn't that make pict-less nebus useless?

The size of the PICT resource is determined by the Nebu resource. The ID of the pict resource specifies the zoom level it's displayed at, and the PICT can be resized by the Nebu resource. In other words, the Nebu resource is like a glorified Spin resource for the star map.