Three dimensional ship direction names

[Error]

Bearing and inclination relative to the ship.

So, 000 inclination 020 would be dead ahead, 20° up. Where 270, declination 045 would be port, 45° down. "North" (000, 360) is always what your ship is pointing at.

[Shadowcatbot]

Coords are way to advanced for just driving a ship around, that why we have automated Nav systems that tell us here to point the ship.

[cats]

This is still stupid. Use whatever you want, if you use coordinates or any system other than simple directions relative to the ship's direction then nobody else will know what the hell you're talking about.

[Iv121]

Good, Im sure you'll find your base 7 Km to your left

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

Static locations would of course have to use coordinates. But it's impractical to control your ship by saying "Go full speed in the direction of X 897.33678, Y 038.00889, -Z 284.78448 relative to Jerry's Space Bar and Restaurant" when you can say "Full speed forward and 20° to the right"

[cats]

There will be all of these systems, they're all necessary for navigation, but simple directions are easiest for our purposes. If you're writing from the point of view of, for example, an AI or a nav officer, then you might use the actual relative coordinates, but that amount of information and specification isn't necessary otherwise.

[Shadowcatbot]

Good, Im sure you'll find your base 7 Km to your left

We won't, it's actually 8 miles to the left.

[Solar112]

Iv... that's why you update it. you don't just say Oh my base is 7 km to the left and leave it at that. another point, A grid that rotates with the planet is useless, you'd need a grid that spins at different rates the further away from the planet you get, and that's not very easy to do. that's why I say make a grid system from the center of your ship, that way it's always relative to you.

[mattihase]

If you're still looking for names for up and down Zenith for up and Nadir for down are my suggestions.

[Luna]

Hello person...

[ACH0225]

I'm probably wrong, but are those submarine terms? Also necro post.

[Archduke Daynel, PhD]

Necro, and how the fuck did a new person find us?
Hi, welcome, and turn around while you still can.

[Vinyl]

Yes, welcome, yes. I do suppose that those are *proper* space terms, but more people know and are familiar with the animal ones and some naval.

[Error]

Zenith is (to me) a point above a star's northern pole, nadir the opposite.

So that makes sense. And sounds cool.

[Tau]

Zenith and Nadir sound nice.

Also, for inclination relative to the ship, will we say that an object below the vessel will have, say, a declination of 20 degrees, or an inclination of -20 degrees? In other words, will declination be interpreted as negative inclination?

And another thing: mattihase might be another one of the random library people. I told a couple of others about this place, one of them might have bothered to make an account.