help me with local hex population.

[briansommers]

OK, its the third book pages 54 and 55

if I start on 14a
I determine a black 11-66 or white 11-66 (how do I determine this? make a 1d2 roll?)
then I roll my d66 and look up where it is
then I go to 14b and that's where I'm stuck.
I just don't get chart 14b
How am I to roll a specific terrain?

any guidance would be great.

 

[Original_Carl]

Hey there, Brian!

Long time for me looking through T5, but I was pretty immersed at one point. The entire procedure is to designed to go from the Very Big (World Triangles) to the Very Small (Single Hexes) without much Referee effort. Here goes.

Keep in mind that the Local Hex you're populating is a 10km hex (not too big -- 65km sq. or about 1/2 the area of my home town of Tacoma, WA), and the Single Hexes (1km each -- even smaller) within it are entirely dependent upon the terrain type of Local Hex they inhabit. Once you have the terrain type for the World Hex, you can populate the Terrain Hex. Once the Terrain Hex's terrain type is determined, you can populate the Local Hex, and so on to the Single Hex.

This all starts with the World Triangle. Once you've populated all your World Hexes in your World Triangle by using the random determination procedure shown on Page 49, you will use that information to populated the Terrain Hexes within the World Hex, and those will in turn allow you to populate the Local Hexes and the Single Hexes that they contain.

That's how you populate a Local Hex: figure out the terrain type of its parent (Terrain and World) hexes, use the lookup table and use D66 for placement of icons as-needed.

1) Generate the World Triangle to populate World Hex terrain types (p. 49)
2) Use the World Hex terrain type to populate the Terrain Hex (p. 51)
3) Use the Terrain Hex terrain type to populate the Local Hex (p. 53)
4) Use the Local Hex terrain type to populate the Single Hex (p. 55)

Now, how do you place stuff within the non-World Hexes? Here's an example. Let's say I'm populating a Terrain Hex based on my World Hex having a City (index number 51 -- all types are listed in a dice-driven lookup table on Page 38, and by their index number on page 47 -- these are index numbers in the lookup tables and not die roll results). I look up City on the table on Page 53 and it says after noting that if this is a Hi or High Population World you should place two City icons in White Numbered Hexes (WNHs) and place Suburb icons in the WNHs adjacent to them. Determine the placement of the City icons within the Terrain Hex with a D66 roll and then draw in Suburbs in the surrounding Terrain Hexes. Terrain Hex is now done with a City (or Cities) placed in a Local Hex (or Hexes) with Suburbs surrounding it.

Extending to the Local Hex, we look up City (we already know the Local Hex is a City from the previous) and we see that City means that whatever Single Hex you're at on the Local Hex map, it's also City, while the BNHs are "other". In this case, "other" defaults to Clear, but you can do whatever you want because it's your game. Industrial waste pits are nice, for example. Perhaps some greenspaces with gardens sacred to the locals?

Good luck!

 

[GypsyComet]

The hex grid on page 54 is divided into two sets of d66 labeled hexes, Black numbers and White numbers. The results of further detail are based on which set the hex you are detailing is in, and the overall nature of the Local Hex.

Starting from the top: page 38 includes the table to randomly generate the overall nature of a World Hex. That result goes into the "Overall Terrain" spot on the figure on page 50. Say we rolled a 42, so the overall terrain is "Cropland". Looking at the table on page 51, the Cropland line of the table tells us that white numbered Terrain Hexes are going to be Cropland, and black numbered Terrain Hexes will be Clear or a Referee's option for "Other".

Pick one of those Terrain Hexes, move to pages 52-53 and repeat. Once again, we see that a Cropland overall type for the Terrain Hex means the White Local Hexes are Cropland, and the Black Local Hexes are "Other" defaulting to "Clear".

Pick a Local Hex from that, and move to pages 54 and 55, where the process repeats once more.

Seems unexciting, but those "Other/Clear" hexes are where any variation will arise. The tables allow those areas to include Rough, Woods, Marsh, or Lake at the World Hex to Terrain Hex level, and off you go into other parts of the process.

The chapter blends the random process with the tools to just pick options, making it a bit challenging to discern the supposedly random process.

 

[briansommers]

I see it, wow what a great system.
Thanks for the explanation.

and btw, do you know why they didn't provide the world map size 16,17, 19, 20?
I guess I could Google them... seems odd to me.

 

[MichaelSTee]

brian, the world gen rules allow generation of world sizes up to 15. Not sure why size 18 is in the book.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

brian, the world gen rules allow generation of world sizes up to 15. Not sure why size 18 is in the book.

Possibly for mapping gas giants. There's a section on it and it even has "terrain" markers for the different types of wind effects and stuff.

Also, maybe for those truly Big Worlds.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Also, maybe for those truly Big Worlds.

Even if they're only there by referee fiat.

 

[OjnoTheRed]

brian, the world gen rules allow generation of world sizes up to 15. Not sure why size 18 is in the book.

It's to enable mapping of Big Worlds - page 29, Big Worlds have a Size generated using 2D + 7. This takes Size up to 19.

Two other interesting things: TravellerWorlds will cope with size upto Z (33) although I've disallowed users to actually input that size; but the mapping will work (even if it's slow).

If you click on any given World Hex, it will generate a Terrain Hex map for you, using the rules as outlined in this thread. You can keep clicking all the way down to the Single Hex.

Note that because of the pattern of WNH / BNH is fixed, many of these local maps will look very similar. You can download these local maps as either PNG or SVG files.

 

[GypsyComet]

It would not be difficult to create new WNH/BNH patterns if you really needed unique mapping to occur, but if you are going that deep into the process, just throw terrain darts at a hex grid.

 

[sudnadja]

Keep in mind that the Local Hex you're populating is a 10km hex (not too big -- 65km sq. or about 1/2 the area of my home town of Tacoma, WA), and the Single Hexes (1km each -- even smaller) within it are entirely dependent upon the terrain type of Local Hex they inhabit. Once you have the terrain type for the World Hex, you can populate the Terrain Hex. Once the Terrain Hex's terrain type is determined, you can populate the Local Hex, and so on to the Single Hex.


Good luck!

I wanted to clarify something because this has been leading to some confusion (either on my part of the T5 rules part.

The Traveller 5 rules specifically state that the size of a hex is its distance from the center to the center of a neighboring hex. That means the inner radius of the hex is 1/2 the size of the hex, and the outer radius is Sqrt(3)* size. The minor diagonal of the hex is equal to its size.

Given this, a "10 km hex" should have an area of 86.6 km^2, not 65 km^2, and would contain 91 complete 1km hexes, not 75 as the rules say. Within Traveller 5, even the sample maps confuse hex sizes, with, for example, a world hex being measured by its outer radius then the containing terrian hexes by their inner radii, then on the very next page the terrian hexes are measured by their outer radii and the subordinate local hexes by their inner radii.