The 'nav map' displays a two dimensional system map.

Why cant you go 'up'?

Sure would help with those stupid ion storms.

I once played a game (circa 1988) that came with a galactic map printed on a large sheet of paper. There was a complex mesh of triangles overlaid on the stars, so that even though two star systems appeared close on the map it took three or four triangle jumps to get from one to the other. The "extra" distance was because of the third dimension of movement. Neat!

Anyway, the point is you can imagine that the sector map is, in fact, three-dee. Nothing says adjacent sectors aren't at very different Z coordinates. (To a degree -- a system is more or less going to be on a plane.) And maybe the reason you can't warp to other Z coordinates is that they cannot be targeted for warp travel because of radiation or dust or whatever.

We currently have 256 sectors per system. Add the third dimension and you would have 4096 sectors to wade through!

Actually "up" is into the map if you assume your ship is "level" when it exits warp.

well, here's a scientific answer: in most solar systems, objects lie mainly along a single 2D plane, known as the plane of the ecliptic. So, the reason you can't go up is because you wouldn't find anything out there.

Here's incarnate's answer (paraphrased):

The current navmap is just a simple representation of the actual universe. It's actually three dimensional, but your computer projects it as a two dimensional grid to make navigation possible.

how did you find that answer? i tried to search thru forums but to no avail.

It was posted to some thread a while ago.

/me shows off his search-fu mastery. The magic word is: dimension.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/6900#84968
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/6514#80930

Weeee! I was right! I knew 25 years of game playing would pay off somehow.

well this was an interesting little thing to read

The actual reason you "can't go up" is because you would actually be going *down*

For those that haven't noticed yet...we are ALL upside down. :-)

How did I know from the title that this thread would eventually (d)evolve to an Ender's Game reference? Have we all become that predictable? ;^)

(And yes, I've been guilt of the same thing, from time to time.)

How did I know RelayeR was going to do that?

There's just something about her...

LOL at RelayR

You know, one day, when Guild is a big multinational, RelayR will disappear ;)