Battle Among the Stars, Last Update 11/15/2008

[Charles_IV]

Juan, Bal'Shamir is a red star system (Class M) about 12.5 light years from the sun (Sol) at about 258 degrees in the Spinward quadrant. The colors of the names tell you the system class and how many mineral worlds the system has. All red (Class M) systems have three mineral worlds. The graphic on the left clearly shows the colors of each system class and the number of mineral worlds associated with them. Since some multi-star systems (binaries and tertiary systems) have more than one class of star, it is important that the system names provide color-coding to clarify the number of mineral worlds at the multi-star system.

I don't even see the "D3 & 4" to which you refer.

I don't know how much you may be into astronomy, so forgive me if I seem patronizing. Our sun is a class G2 yellow star. Class K & M stars are smaller than our sun while class F & A stars are bigger. (There are no class O & B stars in our close neighborhood, but these are bigger yet. Rigel in Orions left knee is a massive class O star I believe.) Although we can't know for certain, it is reasonable that the mass of the system primary (the star or stars) is an indicator of the number of planets and moons that may be orbiting around the primary. The planets and moons are the source of materials and resources needed to build and power starships (as well as other industries supporting the economy of the system's owner. But only a few star systems have the sophisticated technologies and work force to actually build starships. These are the eight homeworlds with shipyard facilities in the game. They have the purple circles around their star symbols. To increase the productivity of your shipyard to its maximum, you must acquire additional systems (stars and their worlds) to provide extra resources. It takes 45 mineral worlds to bring a shipyard to its maximum production of 15 starships each turn (year).

[Juan_Bottom]

The colors are too similer, and overlapping is what I'm saying. I think it's because the text is too thin to really be able to tell them apart. The text needs to be much thicker, perhaps in bold.... If I'm having trouble, then our colorblind friends are going to have an impossanble time.

D3 & 4 are in the upper left hand corner.

And were you streaching the hexagons around the galaxy? To mesh with the swirl?

[Charles_IV]

I see now Juan. I've just redesigned the map to work with mibi's concerns about it. You are right about the problems with the Galactic map. The color coding was a bit confused, and the font was too thin. You're also right about how I was warping the hexes to kind of flow with the spiral arms of the galaxy. Sorry to change so much, but I am back to something more in keeping with my original map.

I have eliminated territory borders and gone with permissable paths of travel, little smoke trails between the stars. This map displays the 84 star systems within 20 light years of the Earth. I tried to make it 3-D, but that consistently resulted in stars on top of stars and was just not functional. I went with a 2-D alternative where the systems are in the right general flat-plane direction and at the right distance. I moved the systems about where they got crowded and renamed some with dumb numerical names like BD+40 8701.

Please go to my top post to see the new map (draft 4.0) and links to the three earlier maps, including the one you commented on. I do thank you for bearing with me on this.

C4

[Charles_IV]

MrBenn, I hope you like the newer version of the map which is taken from listings of the stars within 20 light years of earth. It uses dark gray "jet trails" to identify the paths of travel instead of using territories and borders (which are not realistic in space). The paths of travel are set by maximum faster-than-light (FTL) space flight ranges which are about the same for ships of any mass, or so we may hypothesize. I'm looking forward to receiving your comments. C4

[MrBenn]

Charles, it would be helpful if you could post any updates into a new post, as well as updating the first post - it helps to track development of the map, and tie particular comments to particular updates. It also makes it easier for people who come new into a thread, as they can see how things have developed through the different updates.

[Charles_IV]

MrBenn, I will do as you suggest from here on out. Comment in the first post AND comment in a new post to create a "paper trail" of comments/modifications/etc. I will be staying with this version of the starmap from here on out. I'll modify it as needed, but no more redesigns from scratch. This is pretty much the map I was looking for, a true starmap (except for the two-dimension conversion which really is necessary to make it work). I would like to make the star names bigger for easy reading but I don't want to sacrifice the number of stars in play. There are 80 stars with mineral worlds and four others that have no resources (brown or white dwarf systems not viable even for mining outposts). There are crowded clusters of systems and systems barely accessible. There are obvious key strategic systems that control the flow of commerce from one region to another, like Sirius.

I hope that I will be able to incorporate the new features I am hoping to use, limited production at each shipyard world and variable value for each territory/system.

[brandoncfi]

looking good

[Charles_IV]

Thanks, brandoncfi. That's the briefest and most encouraging remark I've gotten.

[the.killing.44]

Today marks the first official day after the last update … should be moved to Recycling.

[Juan_Bottom]

Come on Charles....

[MrBenn]

[Moved]

It would appear that development of this map has stalled. If the mapmaker wants to continue with the map, then one of the CAs will be able to help put the thread back into the Foundry system, after an update has been made.

Mr B