jimhsu wrote:"If it doesn't work, change your frame of reference".
Natural structures don't "look" orderly like the 1st picture; the orbits in our solar system are actually quite out of the ecliptic (which you can appreciate by looking at the orbits for pluto and neptune, much less the extremely wild, eccentric orbits of planetoids like Sedna.) It's just that 2D projections of these orbits have been deliberately fudged to looked orderly on a plane, for human convenience.
That's part of the reason why I expect most human structures (stations, shipyards, trade docks) to be on one ecliptic plane, while natural structures (as well as bases who want to remain hidden - military bases, pirate bases, hideouts, etc) may be far off the ecliptic. Both Freelancer and X do this by manual fudging by the designers, but I could expect some sort of proximity seeking/avoidance algorithm to procedurally generate this as well.
I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that your statement isn't entirely true.
There is in fact a plane in which all major planets orbit the sun, the plane in which most planets' orbits are is called the
Invariable Plane (this is the plane where the maximum inclination of planets is the lowest, we can also define a plane based on the sun's equator and the ecliptic, but even by using those planes the maximum inclination isn't higher than 8°), It is worth to notice that the highest inclination by a planet with this plane is not more than 6,34° (done by the planet Mercurius), since this is a relatively small inclination it is safe to assume that the Major planets are more or less positioned in this plane.
The same is true for the majority of the astroids found in the
astroid belt.
It is worth to notice however that there are indeed exceptions, one example is the
Haley's Comet which has an inclination of 162.3° with the ecliptic.
Another exception are the the objects that can be found in the
Kuiper belt (which includes pluto, and other dwarf planets), however the mean position of objects located in the kuiper belt still has an inclination of 1.86° with the ecliptic.
The reason for this can be found in the solar-system's origins, our solar system formed out of a cloud of gas and dust, at some point an external influence caused the cloud to start to contract and rotate, by contracting, the nebulae started to rotate faster, this caused the nebulae to flatten, creating a structure called a 'protoplanetary disc', out of this disc of rotating dust our planets were formed, this is thus the reason why the major planets are more or less in a plane.
I would also like to argue that human structures are certainly not aligned on an ecliptic plane, humans tend to pick to positions that are useful, best fitting for their purpose, or simply the most easiest/ cheap.
Based on this, you would expect cylindrical like alignment of structures around trade-lanes and Spherical structures to arise (because this would be the most efficient way to minimize the average distance to each building).
(I refuse to use the jumping monkey but I'm sure you got the message).
That's part of the reason why I expect most human structures (stations, shipyards, trade docks) to be on one ecliptic plane, while natural structures (as well as bases who want to remain hidden - military bases, pirate bases, hideouts, etc) may be far off the ecliptic. Both Freelancer and X do this by manual fudging by the designers, but I could expect some sort of proximity seeking/avoidance algorithm to procedurally generate this as well.
