Which Way Back to Base?

The new poll asks which game had the best nav map. Although maps are often a mundane afterthought in most games, they were a critical component in the Wing Commander series. in WC1 and WC2, the game had an incredible sense of freedom thanks to the ability to reroute a patrol around an asteroid field or head straight home after a particularly tough encounter. Academy brought customization to the next level with the ability to make entire missions in an interface that was very similar to the familiar nav console. Then Armada went and made an entire engrossing strategy game out of tiny ship icons and jump lines. WC3 and WC4 may have had the least used map, and this may have translated into some lost escorts in the next game because Prophecy and Secret Ops had a very useful feature where pilots could see which object an enemy was targeting and even lock onto it from within the map itself. In Privateer, pilots had to earn the money to buy their maps before they could explore outside the quadrant, and the 3D map in Privateer 2 made route plotting quite an ordeal. Finally, the adventures of the customizable card game played out right on top of the nav point layout you built yourself, which may have made it the most exciting map of all!