What about having these two features implemented in Elite IV ?
For mining you can start out the classic blind way by landing somewhere and releasing a mining drone that will scan for minerals where it's landed and start mining them. When you can afford it, you can purchase a special scanner upgrade that can scan the surface of an entire planet and provide you with an overlay that shows where each of the different minerals are located. A different colour for each of the different minerals. Now you can overlay this data on to the system navigation map when you zoom on to the planet, moon or asteroid ( or comet ? ) you are in orbit or in the vicinity of. The other way is to provide you with a separate screen that has a map of the entire surface in 2D.
The other suggestion is that when you are in planetary flight mode, the ships computer will display the co-ordinates of where you are currently located. This should make it easier to share information with other players that want to visit the same area, say for sight seeing. It could also prove useful for mission way points where needed. Now to implement this in game, a set of GPS satellites could be bought and placed around a planet but most of the explored and colonized core worlds should already have them installed. You could skip this step though and just have the computer generate the same co-ordinate system for each planet in the same way other information in generated from a seed.
For mining you can start out the classic blind way by landing somewhere and releasing a mining drone that will scan for minerals where it's landed and start mining them. When you can afford it, you can purchase a special scanner upgrade that can scan the surface of an entire planet and provide you with an overlay that shows where each of the different minerals are located. A different colour for each of the different minerals. Now you can overlay this data on to the system navigation map when you zoom on to the planet, moon or asteroid ( or comet ? ) you are in orbit or in the vicinity of. The other way is to provide you with a separate screen that has a map of the entire surface in 2D.
The other suggestion is that when you are in planetary flight mode, the ships computer will display the co-ordinates of where you are currently located. This should make it easier to share information with other players that want to visit the same area, say for sight seeing. It could also prove useful for mission way points where needed. Now to implement this in game, a set of GPS satellites could be bought and placed around a planet but most of the explored and colonized core worlds should already have them installed. You could skip this step though and just have the computer generate the same co-ordinate system for each planet in the same way other information in generated from a seed.