Square (Sub)Sectors

[Ran Targas]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Well it has been written before now that the hex maps are meant to be jump charts rather than astronomically accurate

I once had an alien ship discovered whose jump charts were based on concentric circles rather than the hex grid.
I got the idea from the rake marks around a rock in a Zen garden
It looks a bit like ripples spreading across a flat pond - each ring being one jump number further out - and a marker for each planet on the ripple circumference.

Now this is an idea I'm going to steal! I'm thinking I might throw in an extra bump or two on one of the circles that do not correlate to known worlds and watch my players try to figure out how to get there. This should drive them nuts.

 

[RossWinn]

I would think that capital "s" Science would project Jump-6 as theoretical maximum well before it become technologically feasible. In my Traveller Terran Dominion campaign jump felds become very unstable over 12,000 tons displacement and will be similarly unstable when attemptimg jumps over J-6. This will probably be later solved by steady increases in technology, but in the Tech 12 Terran Domnion a Sector is a "mega hex" made up of six hexes on a side.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Megahexes! You haven't ever played TFT, have you?

 

[RossWinn]

uh yes, in the dark past, why do you ask?

 

[Fritz_Brown]

I've been reliving my past lately, and have decided TFT is the simplest way to introduce my son (and maybe wife) to RPGs. I had forgotten about "megahexes" until I was perusing ITL this weekend.

Good memories.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by robject:
Manage and display 3D systems? Well for now, there's always chview, right?

There is also Astrosynthesis. And it can generate systems for Fractal Terrains to generate the worlds. (Then FT can export the planets to Cosmographer and nice Traveller templates for the worlds.

Astrosynthesis generates thousands of systems, realistically and in full 3d in a hurry. (A 10 parsec by 10 Parsec by 10 parsec cube in under 10 minutes.) (Or if you assume that a Traveller Sector map is 1 parsec in the Z axis, roughly the same volume of space as a Traveller Sector.)

Coincidentally, if you run it at the installed default settings and that size, then filter it to just the inhabited systems, it works out to about the same number of inhabited systems as a Traveller Sectoras well. (Around 400.) The problem is they aren't playable because distances are too far apart. (Though if you define a jump drive as working from its rating up to .9 of the next rating you can almost get playable.) So a Jump 1 drive is usuable up to jump 1.9. Jump-2 is good up to Jump 2.9, etc.

Now how much bigger than 10 by 10 by 10 will I need?

 

[rhoneycutt]

Why use a grid at all? Plot systems on a blank sheet o'paper and measure distances ala miniatures, aka a popsickle stick with tic marks on it.
Or even get fancy and use an engineer's ruler marked in 1/10's of inches so fractional jumps can be measured too....jump3.2 when the world is 3.3 away?...awwwww, too bad

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

far-trader...

Finally came up with a 3 x 3 stack of subsectors for sectors IMTU.

The reason that I wanted to change things was...I was so excited to get Supplement 12 and start my own Terran based campaign. Not only was the supplement a disappointment, they didn't even have half the stars I knew existed! Also, being an egocentric terran, I wanted Terra right in the middle...as the capital or ground zero, I'm not sure...

I did get the 7 subsector group to neatly fit a cluster that will apeear later in one of my adventures ('...the universe is 32 parsecs in diameter...')