Are the night skies and stars consistent?

[Umbrus]

Title. I was wondering if the night sky and stars are the same after every night? Could we have Vintage Story Astronomy, or the in game equivalent of a North Star to help us find our way?(Even if a bit unnecessary given the mini map). Or maybe constellations to see, although those people create themselves.

Is the sky randomized every night, or determined with the seed of the world? It would be fantastic to have a unique sky to look up at every night as I stand on a  few block high pillar while on my journey to find a desert.

Are any of the things I described currently in the game, and if not, what are your opinions on implementing them?

[Maelstrom]

Astronomical navigation isn't a bad idea when you consider the no map game option.  Orienteering and astronomy play very important roles in finding one's way back home from a long overland journey.

[Thalius]

The map and mini map makes navigating the world simply too easy and not very immersive as it currently works, so we opted to turn it and coordinates off on our server.  That leaves us with very few options for navigating the game world though.

Astronomy would be fantastic- A dynamic night sky with starts, planets and constellations that changed and moved with the seasons, and perhaps another moon or two that moved in their courses as well.  Maybe even add a smaller second sun that rose and set in it's own course, but slow enough that perhaps it was not visible every day, and sometimes led to shorter, less dark nights.

One could learn to navigate by such things if there was a consistent pattern to their movement in the sky both day and night.

Would also be neat to tie temporal storms to the movement of a second sun and moons and such.  Maybe even have larger temporal events when certain things aligned.

[Umbrus]

Adding on a related idea, why not have a few consistent celestial bodies that grow larger and smaller as days pass(in a form of mock orbit) and represent/determine seasonal changes on the world to reflect the celestial cycle.

Something of a celestial, year long clock that generally tells you when a seasonal change is coming.

[Thalius]

13 hours ago, Umbrus said:

Adding on a related idea, why not have a few consistent celestial bodies that grow larger and smaller as days pass(in a form of mock orbit) and represent/determine seasonal changes on the world to reflect the celestial cycle.

Something of a celestial, year long clock that generally tells you when a seasonal change is coming.

I'd seek a mod that disabled the hud clock/calendar features if we had astronomy that worked in the ways suggested here.

[Maelstrom]

While we're on the topic of astronomy, I would like to see  unusual events occur, such as comets appearing for a week or two at time rarely or meteor showers on an annual schedule.  But those are fluff items that can be added after devs have mostly finished the major content (oceans and boats please?)

[IronOre]

The most recent update has improved the astronomy greatly.  The release notes planned to have the stars correctly rotated for latitude but unfortunately this is not working according to plan yet as far as I can tell.  Once they get that fixed you really will be able to navigate by the stars per the OP. 

It will still not tell you exactly where you are in the world since it will render the same for the repeated latitude bands and if you lose track you won't know which one you are in.  I usually set my worlds to avoid this by trying to spawn near the equator with a world size and polar distance that makes sure both poles end up on the map without too much more beyond that, but since the actual latitude of spawn is randomized I can't get it exact.  It would be nice if they added a world generation option where you could set your polar distance, world size to match in both directions, and check a box that just put the equator exactly in the middle.  Then once the star field rotation is corrected you'd have a single set of latitudes to always know where you are in the world relative to north/south with a simple measurement of the celestial pole altitude or the angle of the rising/setting stars.

I also agree that some prominent polar stars would be ideal since the stars move slowly over the night making it hard to identify the celestial poles.  I'd have a bright red star for the north celestial pole and a blue one for the south celestial pole (only visible from south of the equator).  The star field is a bit busy, so it would be nice to have some brighter stars in some sort of more easily recognizable patterns to help orient oneself relative to the skies.