Supplement Four said:
I don't think the 30 spokes and circles makes the grid too complicated.
I know what you're saying, but it doesn't work with the MgT rules as written (RaW).
First off, there were be an "unreadable" area close on your map, but that's mucho OK, because it's only 0-20,000km, which is very short range in space combat.
That's actually a problem with the MgT RaW. 20,000km covers most of the first 5 range bands. But you mention switching back to the standard range bands - which means you're effectively writing new rules - no, they aren't complicated, but it's introducing new "rules".
Second, once the grid is printed, simply place a pencil dot in the box containing the ship. The player's ship is the center of the grid, of course. But, if you want range between two other vessels, just cound boxes between the two pencil dots.
This method adds some large inaccuracies to the ranging system - to resolve or reduce them, it makes the grid much more complicated.
The problem is the size of a polar grid "square" (more properly, a segment) changes with each concentric ring. If each ring represents a distance of 10km from the center, the 12 degree segment on each ring gets wider and wider. Take the following examples:
At the third range band out or 30,000 km away from the center ship, each 12 degree segment (30 spokes) represents a width of only 3140 km. This means two enemy ships at 30k km but in adjoining segments from your central ship aren't 10k away from each other, but somewhere between 1 and 6280 km.
At the 20th range band out, or 200,000 km away from the center, each 12 degree segment represents a width of 20,933 km. Two ships in the same segment could still be over 20,000 km away from each other.
At the 30th range band out, or 300,000 km away, each 12 degree segment represents 31,400 km. Again, two ships in the same segment can be over 30k away from each other.
The problem gets worse when you take two ships that are 90 degrees apart from each other and the same range out from the central ship. If you count the roughly 9 segments between them, that would lead you to falsely beleive they were 90k away from each other. That number would not only be way off depending upon what ring they were actually in, but a straight line between the two ships actually cuts in at least 2-3 range bands.
Nope, it's not. It's also highly inaccurate - more so than the existing abstract system. You can compensate for much of it by varying the number of segments at each range band to make them as close to the width of your range circles as possible - for example, using 10km rings, the third band would have 3 segments, while the 20th band would have 60 segments and the 30th one would have 90+ segments.
Do you want to draw that? I am certainly capable of it using the same software I used for this, but it's a time consuming task and it's still no more accurate than the simple abstract system in the RaW. Might as well use plain graph or hex paper at that point - at least the squares/hexes will all be the same size.
If it's any consolation, it took one of my math whiz players to point this out to me many years ago during a MegaTraveller game when I had a similar idea.
I just got High Guard into today, once I'm through reading that I am going to try and figure out how to make a companion GM "display" - probably using a triangular grid.