2300AD finding galactic co-ordinates on the Near Star List

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

I hope that some more experienced hands at 2300AD can help me with this.

Have just attempting to plot some stutterwarp drive journeys, which require the distance in light years between the start point and the end point to be calculated. Where the journey is between a world with a colony, that is easy enough as the system data is next to the world data (unless you happen to be Crater, anyway). However, if you need to stop at another star system to discharge the drive, the ideas seems to be use the Near Star List to obtain the co-ordinates. Fair enough, but the NSL is organised in the sequence of what appears to be a randomly assigned numbers, and to find a specific star the player has to read through all 900+ entries, many of which have very similar names, and are not in any kind of name order.

So, as I assume this problem has occurred before, has anyone done a list of the NSL in order of name of each star? Very easy to do if the data is on a spread sheet somewhere.

Or perhaps I should just handwave the jumps?

Thanks

Egil

 

[Reynard]

The systems in the NSL have the x y z coordinates with Sol system as base 0, 0, 0.
Use Distance = SQR[(x1-x2)^2+(y1-x2)^2+(z1-z2)^2]. Should work, right?

BTW, years ago I did make a spreadsheet showing the distance between each system. A lot of pages!

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

PDF search of the document for the particulars? That's if you have the PDF, that is.

 

[Matt Wilson]

I'm not sure what the logic is in the 2300ad pdf in terms of how they ordered the information. In the original I think the list was alphabetized.

This link might get you what you need: http://www.caco.demon.co.uk/2300ad/NearStar.html

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

The systems in the NSL have the x y z coordinates with Sol system as base 0, 0, 0.
Use Distance = SQR[(x1-x2)^2+(y1-x2)^2+(z1-z2)^2]. Should work, right?

BTW, years ago I did make a spreadsheet showing the distance between each system. A lot of pages!

Not so useful if I want to find the co-ordinates of, e.g Broward and Wolf 629, as either of these could be anywhere in the NSL.

Must have been an impressive spreadsheet! Someone must have calculated the routes to construct the star charts, shame they didn't add the light year distances to each line as the same time

Thanks

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

PDF search of the document for the particulars? That's if you have the PDF, that is.

Unfortunately, I bought a dead tree copy.

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

I'm not sure what the logic is in the 2300ad pdf in terms of how they ordered the information. In the original I think the list was alphabetized.

This link might get you what you need: http://www.caco.demon.co.uk/2300ad/NearStar.html

I guess that not alphabetizing the NSL in the current 2300AD rules was a mistake.

However, many thanks for the link. I can only open it in text, so it looks ghastly, however, it is useable, now have co-ordinates for Broward (confusingly, in the NSL in the book just called "DM -12 4523 A", so I would never have fond it by scanning through the list anyway).

Cheers

Egil

 

[Reynard]

"Must have been an impressive spreadsheet! Someone must have calculated the routes to construct the star charts, shame they didn't add the light year distances to each line as the same time"

Hand typed in from the list then let the spreadsheet calculate distances between each system and then, because I was using the NSL for Traveller, it color coded each entry for Jump 1, 2, 3 and other.

Thanks for pointing out Broward by its true designation. I'm wondering if the list was cleaned up to use real names with the fictional names in the adjacent column. Still doesn't explain why Broward wasn't included. Found Wolf 629 easy enough from a scan so it's not that difficult to find the info. I'm wondering if the list was compiled from the order on actual star lists. There's a LOT of stars there and rearranging could have been a colossal undertaking.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

"Must have been an impressive spreadsheet! Someone must have calculated the routes to construct the star charts, shame they didn't add the light year distances to each line as the same time"

Hand typed in from the list then let the spreadsheet calculate distances between each system and then, because I was using the NSL for Traveller, it color coded each entry for Jump 1, 2, 3 and other.

Thanks for pointing out Broward by its true designation. I'm wondering if the list was cleaned up to use real names with the fictional names in the adjacent column. Still doesn't explain why Broward wasn't included. Found Wolf 629 easy enough from a scan so it's not that difficult to find the info. I'm wondering if the list was compiled from the order on actual star lists. There's a LOT of stars there and rearranging could have been a colossal undertaking.

The hand typing is very impressive commitment to the game, 20 years ago I might have been tempted to do the same, now I just don't have the time.

Yes, some of them do spring out on a quick scan through, but most of the star names are just variations on "DM+39 2376B", which is tedious to scan through when the book orders them by an apparently arbitrary numbering system. However, thanks to Matt Wilson, I can now view a list where the stars are in alphabetical and numerical order. Cheers Matt!

Egil