Like landable planets, rings (and indeed any other points of interest) need to have a coordinate system. I've seen a few suggestions for this here, but they all appear to suffer from the same problem: lack of a fixed reference point.
My suggestion for this differs in that I believe that a hotspot should be used as a reference point, and the coordinates should be metres from the reference point, measuring the distances planetwards (or toward the PoI's primary), spinwards and upwards (upwards using the right-hand rule: hold your right hand with thumb upwards and index finger forwards,and bend your middle finger 90° to point left: index represents spin direction, middle points toward the planet, thumb is up).
This means that there would have to be just one small change: Each hotspot of a particular type would need a planet-specific unique numeric postfix, e.g. "Tritium Hotspot (1)"
Now, the second request, once the coordinates are visible, we need to have journal logging of prospecting, so that whenever we prospect an asteroid, an entry appears in our journal with:
My suggestion for this differs in that I believe that a hotspot should be used as a reference point, and the coordinates should be metres from the reference point, measuring the distances planetwards (or toward the PoI's primary), spinwards and upwards (upwards using the right-hand rule: hold your right hand with thumb upwards and index finger forwards,and bend your middle finger 90° to point left: index represents spin direction, middle points toward the planet, thumb is up).
This means that there would have to be just one small change: Each hotspot of a particular type would need a planet-specific unique numeric postfix, e.g. "Tritium Hotspot (1)"
Now, the second request, once the coordinates are visible, we need to have journal logging of prospecting, so that whenever we prospect an asteroid, an entry appears in our journal with:
- The system, planet and coordinates relative to the nearest or selected hotspot
- The laser-minable mineral content
- The quantity of each type of surface deposit
- The quantity of each type of subsurface deposit
- The presence and type of any core deposit.