World Explorer: where things stand

The rules that place the station, the world gates and the portals in every world, campaign and arcade, and the things placed round them. Each rule has its reason and the number bin/map-check enforces (marked checked). A map that breaks one fails the check; the generator follows them, and a portal pair that cannot is left out rather than squeezed in.

What R and a ring reach

Every thing you act on has a range, taken from the code:

• Two ranges never touch: 150 m between them at least. One key must have one meaning; a gate in the docking range left R guessing. So the station and a gate stand 1055 m apart at least, a gate and a portal 376 m, two portals 292 m. Checked.
• R picks in a fixed order where ranges would meet: the arcade only docks; the campaign docks if the station is in reach, else jumps through the first gate in reach (list order, not the nearest), else sets a course to the station (interact, src/js/navigation.js). The rule above keeps that order from ever mattering.

The station

• At the map's centre, one per world. Every flight starts and ends there, so the rest is measured from it.
• Its shelter (900 m) holds no portal, gate or fight. The space round the berths is for docking traffic. Checked through the rules below.

World gates

• A gate faces the world it leads to, as the galaxy chart draws it (galaxy_bearing, src/js/charts.js). The gate to Verdant is up and right in Haven because Verdant is up and right on the chart; you find a gate without looking. Within 10°. Checked.
• 60% of the way from the station to the map's edge along that bearing. A gate is a journey, not a doorstep, and still well inside the map. At least a quarter of the map's smaller side from the station (Haven: 2.5 km in the campaign, 1.4 km in the arcade) and 1 km from every edge. Checked.
• One portal beside it at most within 1 km: the one that serves it. Two rings by a gate read as clutter and hide which one goes where. Checked.
• Where: world_gates in visual_base_generate_map, src/js/campaign.js.

Portals (jump pairs)

A pair crosses a big distance: fly into one end, leave by the other.

• The ends are far apart: 2 km, or a quarter of the map's smaller side if that is more. A jump costs a few seconds of tunnel; a shorter pair saves nothing and only crowds the map. Checked.
• Every end 1.5 km from the station's centre (1 km beyond its hull). Near enough to reach in seconds after undocking, far enough that a ship leaving its berth never flies into a ring. Checked.
• Two portals of different pairs stand 1 km apart. Neighbouring rings look like one place and swap your destination. Checked.
• 300 m inside the map's edge, so the exit point (125 m in from the ring) is always in space. Checked.
• Each end leads somewhere worth reaching:
  • three crossings for every world: corner to corner (A: 10%, 12% to 90%, 88%; B: the other diagonal) and edge to edge (C: 7% to 93% of the height);
  • in worlds 55 km wide or more, survey beacon 1 to beacon 3 (G) and a long diagonal (H);
  • the station's pairs: one end 1.5 km out toward a world gate, the other 440 m beside that gate (D, E, F); a world with two gates gives F to the first beacon that fits; Haven has only D.
• Placed in that order, and a pair that breaks a rule is left out. The arcade's map (7.2 × 5.6 km) is too small for the station's pairs to save a flight, and its gates do nothing, so it has the three crossings only.
• Where: configure_expedition_portals, src/js/expedition.js.

Race courses

A ring race's course (race_course_make, src/js/race.js): a start line and 7 to 10 rings in the campaign (5 to 12 in the Races mode, by its difficulty). A ring acts on a ship within its radius (85 to 120 m); the start line on the five places along it (298 m from its middle).

• The start line and every ring stand out of the station's shelter and 150 m beyond every range above (gate, portal, beacon), as two ranges never touch. Checked.
• None in a gravity pull, and no leg crosses one. A racer in a pull is dragged off the line, or into the core. Checked.
• A ship's width (50 m) clear of every rock and drifting piece, so a ring is never in a rock. Checked; while a race is on, a ring a rock drifts into moves off it.
• No leg crosses a portal's ring or the station. A portal on the line would jump a racer away. Checked.
• Rings and the line 150 m clear of each other, and the course turns at least 25° at every ring but the first and the last, so its line needs steering. Checked.
• Clear of structures you build too, and 600 m from the combat zone.

Round them

• Survey beacons stand 1 km from every gate; a beacon that would not takes its spot mirrored across the map's centre lines. A scan on a gate would read as one place. Checked.
• The combat zone (elite, boss and recover stages; campaign only) 1 km from every gate and portal and from the shelter's edge (1.9 km from the station), its spot or the spot mirrored. A flagship waiting on a gate blocks it. Checked.
• No gravity well pulls inside any range above (its radius plus the range). A jump or a docking must never start in a pull. Checked; placed by place_gravity_wells, src/js/gravity.js.
• Rocks and drifting debris leave a ship's width (50 m) round the station's hull, a gate's or a portal's ring and a beacon; the rocks of a field that would not are left out. A solid in a ring stops the ship short of it. Checked.
• Built structures keep the code's own distances: a defence platform 1.1 km from the station, 700 m from a gate, 300 m from a portal; an outpost on a mining field (structure_spot_ok, src/js/structures.js). Storm and flare zones keep 200 m beyond their edge from a gate (src/js/environment.js).