Three dimensional ship direction names

[Error]

Everything is orbiting the center of a galaxy, but that orbit may be elliptical, inclined, or just wack, so...

Thus, transfer orbits.

[Saravanth]

What about stuff between galaxies?

[Error]

Possibly nor orbiting anything, and falling towards the nearest one?

[Saravanth]

And in case it's stuck in a gravitational null-point between two galaxies? What then?

WHAT THEN JOHNNY?! WHAT THEN!?!?!? DDDDD:

[Error]

Lagrangian point, between galaxies. Gravity-neutral point, so..not much.

[Tau]

I'm not sure it would be prudent to apply orbital mechanics on such a large scale in FC.

[Saravanth]

Not with current technology, no. But one day...

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

By the time Futurecraft is released, it'll be about how things were back in the good ol' days.

[Iv121]

Parabolic development huh ? Or perhaps a spiral ?

[cats]

Spoiler:

"Captain, the object is in our orbital retrograde relative to our path in the planets well."

"..."

"3.456 degrees x, 56.332 degrees y, and 42.009 degree z off of the astral disk, sir."

"..."

"It is now closing to a point that matches our galactic plane coordinates, which are 34.44442567112000 degrees, 88900.2234 lightyears from center!"

"So it's... It's getting closer and... behind us?"

"... It's three thousand kilometers off starboard, sir."

[Iv121]

Well instead of doing this stupid stuff learn how to use relative co-ordinates.

[Solar112]

another option would be a coordinate system based off the center of the ship and each whole number would be a kilometer.

so in cats' it would be (3,0,-x) relative to the ship. from what I understand, since he used 3 different methods.

to properly use the prograde, retrograde etc etc etc system you would do something like

Retrograde, 2 km
Radial out, 3 km.

That indicates that an object is 2 km behind, and 3 km to the left of a ship.

Alternatively we could do something like

Prograde, -2 km
Radial, +3 km

to indicate the same thing.

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

Or we could use front, back, up, down, left, and right, with the up and down being relative to the directional pull of the ship's artificial gravity, and the front and back being relative to the ship's direction of travel.
I know, it's way too advanced, but it's good to cover all options.

[Iv121]

It wont help you to know that your base is (or was more specifically) 7 Kilometers to your left at the point of recording, its not 7 km to your left anymore. The best relative co-ordinates grid would be the one that rotates together with the planet, that would mean that all structures and ships that orbit that planet will remain static relative to this grid assuming they all rotate with the same radial speed, making it otherwise will simply confuse the system even more without making any positive impact on gameplay, in other words meaningless and needless realism. If all those structures and stuff remain in the same position relative to this greed you can always record their co-ords and reach them ((1,2,3) for example). The fact the greed itself rotates doesn't concern you or effect your gameplay in any way, when you are outside the system the co-ords inside that system are irrelevant to you.

[Prototype]

Have the co-ordinates relative to the closest object of influence, so planet, star, assteroid etc.