Reynard said:
A zillion years ago I plugged all the 2300 Near Star List coordinates into a database then had it calculate Traveller jump distances. First thing I discovered was a Jump 1 can't reach the Centauri systems. I had to modify the definition of a Jump distance so it's about 1 1/2 times greater essentially to the far edge of the destination hex.
I then hand drew a map for star placement and put in Jump 1 and 2 routes, the common commercial routes. Sol is very alone in in the center of a sphere. Flare stars mess up travel between usable stars. After this system creation become a study in why colonies are on certain systems based on resources, fuel access and anything the UWP stats might suggest. Makes for an interesting non Imperial, earth centric campaign.
I hope the new 2300 has the NSL and any revision to astronomical data in recent years.
According to the preview, it doesn't. More recent & accurate data eliminates a couple of systems (Kimanjano, Dunkelheim, & Vogelheim IIRC) because they are much farther away than in the Gliese 2 data on which the NSL. Plus, the whole French Arm disappears if you adhere to the 7.7 ly limit. "Evil Dr. Ganymede" did his own: http://evildrganymede.net/category/rpgs/2300ad/ and I've plotted my own with more recent data.
The only way you can sort of keep the original setting is to bump up the stutterwarp limit to 8.1 ly, and the arms get weird: the Latin finger bleeds into part of the French Arm (via a connection between Neubayern & Sirius via an intermediary star). It gets really fun with Kaefer space: for one thing, most of the stars in the original setting's Kaefer sphere are likely fictional. So the bugs only get a couple of systems (Lambda Serpentis, Gamma Serpentis, & whatever Triumphant Destiny's capital was, plus some outposts). They can easily cut off Aurure & Hochbaden, which end up sort of "off to one side" relative to the revised French Arm. Plus, the Kaefers have a pathway into the Australian sub-arm as well.
I actually agree with the decision to keep the old map, because certain recent astronomical developments (the possible presence of MANY brown dwarfs in the gulfs between the stars) would require a total re-imagining of the setting. A compromise solution might be to keep the canon locations of the main colonies, and add the recent stellar data for the other stars. I've done that too, and it does keep the arms largely intact, although you still get the weird crossovers between the Latin & French arms, as well as the Kaefer menace to the Australian colonies.
It's funny you mention creating a 2-d hex map, as that's my next project for a player aid in visualizing the universe: I'm doing similar rounding for parsecs: anything under 1.5 parsecs (around 4.9 ly) is 1 hex, and anything 4.9-7.7 is a 2-hex jump. I'm about half-way through that & it's surprising how much of the starmap you can get on there, as far as 7.7-limit systems go. So far I don't have to do too much gerrymandering to make it work (except for the systems in the cluster around Joi / Beta Canum / Crater) & a few other areas. I can even get most of the unexplored & side-route connections in, which I envision in many cases to be routes used by smugglers, pirates, & anyone else trying to avoid unwanted attention from authorities.
