Add improved Pollux system

[syonfox]

• New faction Syon Free Traders & Company
• New Home worlds in sector 4, 2, 5 Called Syon570
• Updated Pollux system to include its large gas giant and 2 made up but plausible moons with a refiling station between them.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071106060030/http://exoplanet.eu/star.php?st=HD+62509
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollux_(star)

2 bugs I see is Hd265866 is a duplicate of Gliese 251 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_251

and Alpha Geminorum is a duplicate of Castor. Ill try and add these to the list I also want to add https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho_Geminorum as it completes https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E6%B2%B3%E4%B8%89

But now Im getting ahead of myself. These systems will need some more work to get right as I am learning more about astronomy and how to decipher the system descriptions.

[sturnclaw]

I appreciate the effort in improving the Pollux system! However, I'm going to ask you to separate the Pollux changes from the addition of the 'Syon' faction and system if you're interested in continuing with the PR, for reasons outlined below:

Firstly, the addition of a new faction with associated homeworld is quite orthogonal to the stated goal of improving the Pollux system - the Pioneer project as a whole has a goal of trying to reduce the number of factions and make the factions that exist more fleshed-out, rather than adding new factions.

Additionally, the proposed faction name and lore are something I am not willing to merge due to conflicts with the established lore conventions of Pioneer.

To my knowledge, this would be the only faction in the game named after a contributor rather than an in-universe polity, and consequently the proposed faction is quite the "4th wall"-break - and that's without getting into the ramifications of a tiny interstellar polity controlling an ostensibly-neutral system in what is the in-universe equivalent of the Korean DMZ.

Though I understand it may be unintentional on your part, asking to "canonize" a faction and star system directly named after (multiple parts of!) your own name/handle can come across as somewhat rude.

Historically, we've reserved permanently naming even things as minor as space stations to only contributors with a very significant history with the project - Tomm's Sanctuary is named after the original sole author of the game before it was open-sourced, for example. Otherwise, contributor names are only ever used as "easter eggs" through the randomly-generated name pool.

Please feel free to keep the Syon faction and system as a mod - I'd love to see the mod tooling be used and the bugs in it found! - but for the reasons above it's not something I'm willing to sign off on directly adding to the official Pioneer universe.

If you're interested in improving or adding to Pioneer's lore (i.e. writing replacements for the existing procedurally-generated factions, adding new systems, etc.), I'd encourage you to propose changes and ask for feedback on IRC so that your efforts can align with the intended creative direction for Pioneer - we'd love to have contributors interested in working on that aspect of the game!

[bszlrd]

I agree with @sturnclaw on this. It is great that you are willing to improve the system, and thanks for that! But that faction does not fit into the lore of Pioneer (which I'm slowy writing in my spare time).

[syonfox]

Fair enough yeah I was not sure what your thoughts on the faction were I was trying to fit it into the current lore in a similar vein to the Harbor corperation or other except for some mix of sentient ai and pirate coalition. But I guess it is a little forward for the unbiased game.

[syonfox]

Ill plan to continue the syon faction as a mod you can find it over at https://github.com/syonfox/eapi-space

As of writing it is a ways away from the first release but is working with the current game (it runs ;)

[syonfox]

Ok a little back on topic for the Gliese 521 system I noticed the position is different in each database as parsed by the last guy. And I noticed the distance claimed in wikipidia is not the same as the one in pioneer.

So the question is . Given galactic coordinates and distance.

How can we compute the sector and position?

Do we have internal code for this? Is there an online tool? what is the correct math?

ie:

Gliese 251

Right ascension 06h 54m 48.95806s[1]
Declination +33° 16′ 05.4383″[1]
Distance 18.215 ± 0.003 ly

function galactic_pos_to_pioneer(right_asention, declanation, distance) {
  //??
  return {sector, pos}
}

[sturnclaw]

I do not believe we have a set of algorithms yet to convert between GCS and Pioneer's coordinate system. It's on my TODO list to implement for #4879, but definitely will not make it for this release.

[syonfox]

So in stellarium you can copy object info like ctrl+shift+c

HIP 33226 - HD 265866
Type: star
Magnitude: 9.85
Absolute Magnitude: 11.12
Color Index (B-V): 1.58
RA/Dec (J2000.0): 6h54m47.48s/+33°15'56.1"
RA/Dec (on date): 6h56m25.99s/+33°14'04.0"
HA/Dec: 14h41m16.25s/+33°14'04.0" 
Az./Alt.: +32°47'58.7"/-2°28'58.5" 
Gal. long./lat.: -177°03'47.7"/+15°07'46.8"
Supergal. long./lat.: +26°23'16.7"/-41°01'31.6"
Ecl. long./lat. (J2000.0): +101°36'44.8"/+10°22'36.6"
Ecl. long./lat. (on date): +101°57'46.2"/+10°22'47.9"
Ecliptic obliquity (on date): +23°26'18.6"
Mean Sidereal Time: 21h37m42.2s
Apparent Sidereal Time: 21h37m42.2s
Rise: 14h42m
Transit: 23h37m
Set: 8h32m
IAU Constellation: Gem
Distance: 18.20±0.01 ly
Proper motion: 830.8 mas/yr towards 241.3°
Proper motions by axes: -728.5 -399.3 (mas/yr)
Parallax: 179.160±0.063 mas
Spectral Type: M3V

Ill do some diggin and see

But it might be nice to get stars from stellarium as its a massive project with lots of people depending on it for accuracy of telescope positioning etc.

... I was able get some approx calculations working as far as my test show there is just a +-2 degree declination error fro the existing systems. It seems that pioneer is using

j2000 Ra/Dec but with an offset of -90 degrees to Ra

some results:

Equatorial Coordinates From Stellarium (RA, Dec): { ra: 103.69783333333334, dec: 33.26558333333333 }
Actual Pos (x,y,z):  [ 15.256, 3.72, 10.312 ]
{ x: 15.256, y: 3.72, z: 10.312 }
Pioneer Pos Equ:  { ra: 13.70350265941236, dec: 34.055971253129265 }
Stellar Pos Equ:  { ra: 103.69783333333334, dec: 33.26558333333333 }
[End test debug]
stellar_input_w_offset_ra (ra,dec,dist) : 13.697833333333335 33.26558333333333 18.2
stellar_pos_calculated:  { x: 15.217693397544485, y: 3.6035711973706452, z: 9.983076061932563 }
approx_pos_form_pioneer:  { x: 15.256, y: 3.72, z: 10.312 }
stellar_pioneer_output:  {
  sector: [ 1, 0, 1 ],
  pos: [ 7.217693397544485, 3.603571197370645, 1.9830760619325627 ]
}
original_pioneer_input:  { sector: [ 1, 0, 1 ], pos: [ 7.256, 3.72, 2.312 ] }
Actual Pos (x,y,z):  [ 8.08, 1.608, -2.4720000000000004 ]
{ x: 8.08, y: 1.608, z: -2.4720000000000004 }
Pioneer Pos Equ:  { ra: 11.255375473261594, dec: -17.01099836882489 }
Stellar Pos Equ:  { ra: 101.28270833333333, dec: -15.275 }
[End test debug]
stellar_input_w_offset_ra (ra,dec,dist) : 11.282708333333332 -15.275 8.6
stellar_pos_calculated:  { x: 8.296183181570512, y: 1.6231498094069947, z: -2.2656885526979544 }
approx_pos_form_pioneer:  { x: 8.08, y: 1.608, z: -2.4720000000000004 }
stellar_pioneer_output:  {
  sector: [ 1, 0, -1 ],
  pos: [ 0.2961831815705125, 1.6231498094069945, 5.734311447302046 ]
}
original_pioneer_input:  { sector: [ 1, 0, -1 ], pos: [ 0.08, 1.608, 5.528 ] }
[
  [
    'gliese 251',
    {
      deltaDec: 0.7903879197959327,
      deltaRa: -89.99433067392097,
      ra: 13.697833333333335,
      dec: 33.26558333333333,
      pos: [Object]
    }
  ],
  [
    'sirius',
    {
      deltaDec: -1.7359983688248892,
      deltaRa: -90.02733286007174,
      ra: 11.282708333333332,
      dec: -15.275,
      pos: [Object]
    }
  ]
]