OK, after playing the game for a while, I've tried several ways to judge the distance between planets when wondering whether to send my fleets to A or B. This is both by strings and, later, "as the crow flies" using the various warp drives? But I can't seem to find anything.



This isn't about trade at all, not interested in that distance, just ship navigation.



In most 4x games, there are ( occasionally obscure ) ways of snap measuring the distance btw stars, either they just tell you when you hover or they have a distance tool. but I can't find one here. the info in the help and none of the usual tricks ( right clicking on stars or strings, etc. ) seems to be it.



This is kind of important in some cases... all cases. I wasted probably three hours + wading through help and the forums, not counting just squinting at the galaxy overview... there is probably something obvious I'm missing here, like a big button that says "star distance" and is flashing different colors, but I'm not finding it. REally any help appreciated...

When you have a ship selected, you can right click to set its destination. If you right click AND HOLD, however, then it will show you how many spaces it is from you ship to its destination in small dots, each representing one movement point. If you are traveling via star-lane, simply count the number of dots, and this will give you the distance between systems. If there are 7 dots leading from you ship to the next system, you will need 7 movement points to travel to that system in one turn. Also note, there are slightly larger dots, which indicate how far the ship will be able to get in one turn. So for example, if the system is 8 spaces away, and your ship moves 7, you will see a larger dot appear right next to the destination system, which indicates your ship won't quite make it there in 1 turn.



Warps always take one turn to move through, no matter the distance or the number of movement points available, and will use all remaining ship movement.



You can also use ctrl to force move to certain systems, and shift to queue up moves. Hopefully this helps; if it doesn't answer your question, let me know and I'll be happy to try again

That helps a lot! I just assumed the dots were "decorations", I never thought they had any meaning other than that... of course, it was in front of my face the whole time. That is a really cool idea, thanks for the quick response.