Amendment, "like in sector space ", except more... much, much more.

Let's think about this. The map size required to support the whole solar system and make it seem realistic enough would be gigantic.

It would be larger then Millenium city in CO.

Well, they could in theory load it the way WoW loads their enviroments, but the trouble is: Why bother? The same people wanting to explore the whole system are the same people who will be upset when they realize that they could have ran a Star Trek Marathon in the time that it takes to do all of that.

They can't go wow's route. too many variations. And who wants pacman graphics?

Hence why you turn the Full Impulse button (which makes no sense anyway) into a "Warp Speed" button, allowing for rapid in-system transit. It's one of the few things Star Trek: Legacy did right.

point taken! I'm actually all for exploration in a sense, but I'd like it if say you went too far out, say you traveled to the moon, instead of saying that there was something on the scanners, the bridge officer asks you where to set the next course. Depending on that decides whether or not you go to warp or fly on impulse through the system (although, you wouldn't see most of the boring flying part, it would just be a quick load screen and you're to the planet you want to be at.)

yeah, but then you come back to the amount of space it would take up on a server issue. I like the idea, but I don't think it's feasible in this game. A short loading screen or something though, that wouldn't hurt my feelings none.

Shouldn't take up much space at all. Most of it would be empty. It would be like having a mini-sector space for a given solar system. You can fudge the distances too and nobody will be able to tell.

More importantly, the game already feels like a bunch of tiny boxes. It would be nice if at least part of the game were contiguous.

This is something I would like to see. At the Sol system location in Sector Space, you should have two options;

1) Enter Earth Orbit/Earth Space Dock (for those that want to go straight to Earth/ESD)

2)Enter Sol System.

Option 2 would take you to a map similar to sector space but on a smaller scale. You would have the Sun (Sol) in the center and all of the planets in orbit around it (probably appearing stationery so you wouldn't have to chase them down). As you approach each planet, you get a option to visit that planet's orbit (including Earth/ESD).

This would be good for exploring and visiting the other areas of Sol System, and for players who want to make that dramatic entrance through the solar system before returning to Sol.

I definitely have no problem with people selecting their entry point into the system. It would just be frustrating to have no choice but to go to Earth and then fly to say, Mars. It would be nifty if it were actually like a little solar system representation to mouse over, but just having the list would suffice.

Once you're inside the system though, it should be a matter of traveling to the planets. Since Full Impulse should always have just been maxing out your throttle, we can just swap that button with the warp speed button. The warp speed button would work just like Legacy's, wherein the ship jumps to a very high rate of speed, has a warp streak effect, and can't turn while at warp. That way people don't have to spend a half hour getting somewhere inside a system unless they really want to.

If that were still too slow, you could theoretically just add localized transwarp networks that let you hop straight to wherever.