(my) Star Fleet Universe Map!

[Little Soldiers]

Aha! Here's a link to the map I created for the Star Fleet Universe:

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/sfuniversemap.jpg

I sent it in to Matt and Steve Cole a little while ago, in the hope that they wouldn't mind me using it as a promotional poster on the convention circuit here in Australia. Turned out they liked it so much, it became official! I'd love to hear some feedback from fellow players, as I'm thinking of creating more maps for mini campaigns along the UFP/Klingon borders.

Just had a thought... is there an official list of identified worlds in the Star Fleet Universe?

 

[Sgt_G]

Aha! Here's a link to the map I created for the Star Fleet Universe:

I've seen that before, and if memory serves, SVC posted it himself.

Just had a thought... is there an official list of identified worlds in the Star Fleet Universe?

Yes, there is. Not sure if it's on-line, but I know it's in GURPS: Prime Directive.

 

[Rambler]

Something like this maybe Little Soldiers?

http://starfleetgames.com/Gazetteer_28_Aug_10.pdf

 

[Nerroth]

ADB posted a larger version of that Alpha Octant map over here.

For those who are wondering, the hexmap co-ordinates shown on the Alpha Gazetteer linked to above are from the east and west portions of the Federation and Empire map.

(At the risk of being awkward, I might note that while the Alpha Octant is the "home" area for the setting, there is more to the broader Star Fleet Universe beyond it.)

 

[Sgt_G]

The scale of the Federation and Empire (F&E) map is 500 parsecs per hex, and about 500 parsecs thick.

Once upon a time, I did some number cruching and came up with this: at 500 parsecs, each hex is roughly 125,000,000 cubic parsecs. (Not really because they're not cubes, but just go with it.)

Now, let's assume for simple-math's sake that there's an average of one stellar body every five parsecs, or one such per 125 cubic parsecs. That means there are roughly one million stellar bodies per F&E hex.

One can further assume that 10% of these are stars with planetary systems, and then 1% of those have planets worth visiting. That's about a thousand planets that one could "safely" put a mining base or military outpost on. Let's further estimate that 1% of these planets are Class-M and can support life without too much terraforming required. Therefore, by this math, there are approximately ten potential colony worlds in each F&E hex. (Note: Steve Cole says it's closer to 50 terra-worlds per hex, but that just seems a tad high to me.) But let's assume that only about 2% have been surveys and settled (or have native populations), there's one note-worthy known world for every five F&E hexes, give or take.

The Federation has, if I counted right, 265 hexes plus another 20 or so in the off-map survey area, with twenty money-generating planets marked (four native-population systems in the capital hex, if memory serves). The document Rambler pointed to lists about 55 worlds of note in Federation space (not counting two or more around the same star), about what we'd expect based on my calculations, but there could be well over 2500 worlds yet to be found that we can explore and exploit just in Federation space. And let's not forget the quarter-million less-desirable but still valuable rocks for mining or outposts.

 

[Nerroth]

I forgot to note this earlier, but if you're looking for campaign-specific maps, the latest issue of Captain's Log used this map to help put together the new fiction project covering Day One; the 1st of August Y171, the day the Klingons invaded the Federation, and in so doing turned the Second Four Powers War into the wider General War.

To follow up on Garth's point about inhabited worlds, it's noted in the RPG material for the Romulans that, in their space, only about 5 or 10 worlds per hex have colonies; compared to the fifty or so you might find in, say, Federation or Klingon space. For the Romulans, the issue is to do with their broader population as a whole; with no major subject species to help found and run new colonies (unlike the Klingons, who have several) there simply aren't as many Romulan citizens to go around.

This has an effect on the kind of "on-map" planets the Romulans have compared to the Klingons. For example, the major Klingon world in hex 1112 (near the Lyran border) is Dunkaria, the home planet of the Empire's most loyal subject species. Hillidaria, the minor planet in hex 1010, is also a loyal subject world. In contrast, all of the minor and major planets shown in Romulan space have wholly Romulan populations; with no-one else to help shoulder the economic burden of bothering their stellar neighbours.

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

500 Parsecs? That seems like a lot! Let's see, according to wikipedia, a parsec is roughly 3.26 Light Years long, so a F&E strategic hex is 1630 Light Years wide.

Looking up some info, I found a source showing the Original Series Warp Scale, Warp 6 (the cruising speed of most Federation ships) is 216 times the speed of light.

So it would take a cruise federation ship a bit over seven and a half years to cross a singe F&E Hex. :shock: If they push the engines to the limits of Warp 9 (The Saladin DD's "Destructive speed" is listed as Warp 8.9 on a set of plans I have), or 720 times C, it would take 2.26 years. The highest quote speed in the original series is Warp 15, 3375 times C, which would take "only" under 6 months to cross a F&E Hex.

And this is why I never try to apply real physics to sci-fi. :lol:

 

[Nerroth]

The warp speeds used in the Star Fleet Universe are shown here.

Cruising speed for a "modern" ship is warp 7; which covers six on-map hexes in as many months. ("Fast" ships, like the Romulan FastHawk, cruise at Warp 7.25, which allows them to cover seven hexes in the same time; this is one of the advantages of using fast hulls at the strategic level that surfaces in Federation and Empire.)

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

Not bad, Warp 7 in SFU is a brisk 22,000 times C almost!

Though I wouldn't be surprised if I've totally botched my math somewhere along here.

 

[Nerroth]

Part of the issue is down to the size of the Milky Way Galaxy as portrayed in the SFU; which itself is derived from the maps shown in the Star Fleet Technical Manual.

Somewhere along the line, the Milky Way ended up being much bigger in size here than the "real" one appears to be; which may or may not have a knock-on effect on how other galaxies are presented in the SFU. (To give one example, the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, which the Andromedans used as a staging post for their invasion of the Milky Way, seems to be bigger in the SFU than the real one would be. The in-universe reasoning given is that the LMC data is drawn largely from astrographic charting performed at the Royal Hydran Observatory; where it is visible with only a 10-degree angle of off-set, as opposed to the edge-on view we get from Earth.)

 

[GalagaGalaxian]

Aye, iirc the Federation's infamous border declaration was a 4750 parsec radius sphere. Which makes it about 30,970 light years wide. And in real life, its estimated the Milky Way is what, only 100k-120k Light years wide?

I think I'll just ignore all official numbers (Star Trek and Star fleet wise) and go with "fast", "really fast", "big" and "really really REALLY big". Tis simpler that way.

 

[Sgt_G]

I've yet to be able to reverse engineer that high-warp table, but I do have a theory. The famous "S= W^3 C" has other variables such as local gavitational pull from stars, so that table is a good average within our galaxy. As Warp factor increases, the exponent on these other variables also increases, so that's how you get speeds of 22,000 vs. 343 for Warp 7.

In the background info for Star Fleet Battles, any ship with at least one working Impulse engine can use "non-tactical warp" to limp home at Warp 5.5 -- which also explains how pre-warp Romulans controlled their empire.

Tactical warp was invented later (which begs the question "what did they call non-tactical warp before tactical warp came along?") but tops out just over Warp 3, or in SFB terms, 30 hexes per turn plus one from an impulse drive for a max of 31 hexes. Interesting enough, the cube-root of 31 is just a tiny bit under pi. My theory is that tactical warp uses a spherical warp bubble that expands proportionally to the warp factor, and if it goes above a certain size it "pops". That limit is Warp = pi. The extra variables found in high-warp physics are so close to "one" (or "zero") that they don't matter -- they only become significant when warp is greater than pi.

To go faster than that, into the high-warp numbers above 3.14159, the navigational deflector dish distorts the warp bubble, extending the leading edge out millions or even tens of millions of kilometers, allowing the ship further to "fall forward" in the bubble to achive much higher FTL speeds. This also pushs smaller hazards, like comets and asteroids, out of the way and bends the ship's path safely around larger objects like planets and stars. However, if it runs into another ship's warp field, the bubbles loses their shape and forces the ships to "drop out of high warp" down to tactical warp speeds (or sub-light speed). It takes time and energy to rebuild the warp bubble, and you have to be far enough away from the other ship to avoid interference, hence the reason you can be forced into a battle in wide-open space. This is how ships "pin" enemy ships in F&E.

The above is just my theory, and ADB may have a different explanation how it all works.

 

[Nerroth]

One of the other aspects of tactical vs. non-tactical warp is that, in SFB, the difference between what type of phaser a given object (such as a battle station) has is much more tactically relevant than in FC; since in SFB, the phaser ranges are much larger.

If a ship is travelling at anything higher than its "safe" tactical warp limit, even a single damage point from an enemy phaser will obliterate it; thus the ship has to slow down to tactical warp outside of the target's maximum phaser range (if approaching it) or maneuver around it (if trying to go past it). In FC, no direct-fire weapon can fire further than 25 hexes, so that is the mimimum recommended starting distance for a given encounter. In SFB, a phaser-1 goes as far as 75 hexes; while a phaser-4 taps out at 100. (The amount of damage these weapons average at maximum range is paltry, but again is still enough to kill anything going faster than safe tactical speeds.)

This was a real killer for the old-series Romulans in the days before the Treaty of Smarba; when trying to send non-tactical warp ships against their tactical warp-equipped Gorn (or Federation) enemies. A "sublight" Warbird has to literally crawl its way towards a contested planet (or base); were it not for the cloak, it would be a sitting duck. (Of course, the incorporation of the cloak and the use of modern tactical warp engines makes the likes of the War Eagle far more trouble for its wary opponents.)

 

[Little Soldiers]

Thanks all for the discussion. Not quite the feedback I was chasing, but very interesting, and very informed! Nerroth, thank you in particular for the map illustrating the opening moves of Day One; that's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for!