Star System Explorer (Open Source Web App)

Since I have a bunch of Traveller features in there I can add "Traveller calendars" (if such a concept exists) as a standard preset if someone wants to point me at a resource.
The main calendar in Traveller OTU is the Imperial Calendar: https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Imperial_Calendar

Other alien races each have their own calendars, but the Imperial Calendar remains the standard for gaming purposes.
 
This is beyond fantastic! Abso-freaking-lutely marvelous! Please, keep on developing it.

I've been dreaming about a program like this for years. Now I'm able to use it to do the dirty work (transit calculations etc.) easily and with a simple interface for my grittier Traveller game with HEPlaR rockets and limited grav tech. Never felt like doing all those calculations by hand, but with this wonderful program - we have ignition!!
Me as well. Wow!
 
I used it to map a system my players will be headed to soon, and it worked very well. It will definitely allow me to show the system's astrography, which will really enhance the experience a lot in the exploratory campaign I am running.

While it is fully usable as is for my purposes, there are a some things I will mention as feedback, in case you want to fiddle with it. These might be things I just didn't figure out how to do, i.e. user incompetence, but I'll list them all anyways. It's not to imply that you have to do anything more with it: it is a great tool and I will totally be using it a lot, and I really appreciate the work that went into it.


1. The default planet icons are not all that visible against the background; maybe something could be done to make them more visible? Could put toytown on but that's not really my thing.

2. I can't make the Density slider work. It says it is calculated, so this may be intended, but I got the impression from the video it should work. Maybe I just need to keep clicking on it more? It makes sense that must interact with Mass and Radius mathmatically, but a slider implies it can be moved directly.

3. On the ships designer, it is not clear how to change the engines to get the right thrust capability. Traveller ships use M-Drives, and we don't re-calculate thrust when fuel is used, which is not realistic, but oh well. The amount of fuel the ships use is tiny anyways - though they have big fuel tanks for the jump drives. Same also for cargo space: an empty cargo hold should make your ship faster but it doesn't. So you get a fixed M-drive G rating regardless of the actual weight of the ship. Also, the artificial gravity is not from spin but from "grav plates" meaning you can go at 6Gs forever with no adverse consequences since the internal gravity is magically controlled.

I see it is possible to add engines, but the questions it asks about the engine don't seem to allow easy replication of an M-Drive's characteristics.

4. From many of the screens, the zoom in button is not visible. It is always useful to have a zoom and unzoom (instead of just moving your head closer to the object).

5. Clicking "Tidal Lock" should, I suppose, make the day equal to the year (or you could say, it makes the "day" concept irrelevant). But it doesn't do that.

6. Different screens show different images of the planets: changing the image in one doesn't seem to be reflected throughout.

7. The radiogenic heating slider seems not to work.

Just some things I ran into, keeping in mind they might be just due to me not figuring out how to work the program yet.
 
I used it to map a system my players will be headed to soon, and it worked very well. It will definitely allow me to show the system's astrography, which will really enhance the experience a lot in the exploratory campaign I am running.

While it is fully usable as is for my purposes, there are a some things I will mention as feedback, in case you want to fiddle with it. These might be things I just didn't figure out how to do, i.e. user incompetence, but I'll list them all anyways. It's not to imply that you have to do anything more with it: it is a great tool and I will totally be using it a lot, and I really appreciate the work that went into it.


1. The default planet icons are not all that visible against the background; maybe something could be done to make them more visible? Could put toytown on but that's not really my thing.

2. I can't make the Density slider work. It says it is calculated, so this may be intended, but I got the impression from the video it should work. Maybe I just need to keep clicking on it more? It makes sense that must interact with Mass and Radius mathmatically, but a slider implies it can be moved directly.

3. On the ships designer, it is not clear how to change the engines to get the right thrust capability. Traveller ships use M-Drives, and we don't re-calculate thrust when fuel is used, which is not realistic, but oh well. The amount of fuel the ships use is tiny anyways - though they have big fuel tanks for the jump drives. Same also for cargo space: an empty cargo hold should make your ship faster but it doesn't. So you get a fixed M-drive G rating regardless of the actual weight of the ship. Also, the artificial gravity is not from spin but from "grav plates" meaning you can go at 6Gs forever with no adverse consequences since the internal gravity is magically controlled.

I see it is possible to add engines, but the questions it asks about the engine don't seem to allow easy replication of an M-Drive's characteristics.

4. From many of the screens, the zoom in button is not visible. It is always useful to have a zoom and unzoom (instead of just moving your head closer to the object).

5. Clicking "Tidal Lock" should, I suppose, make the day equal to the year (or you could say, it makes the "day" concept irrelevant). But it doesn't do that.

6. Different screens show different images of the planets: changing the image in one doesn't seem to be reflected throughout.

7. The radiogenic heating slider seems not to work.

Just some things I ran into, keeping in mind they might be just due to me not figuring out how to work the program yet.
Yup. - did a MAJOR update adding time (and some UI performance improvements) and I need feedback like this to clear up bugs. These seem mostly UI bugs, so should not be hard to squash. Time brought in a lot of big UI changes and it is hard for me to follow through the impact of all of them as there are a lot of moving parts now. I rely on this type of feedback. Thanks!

Some of the others are you probably doing something "not quite intended"... But as a new user it is hard to differentiate that; if there are bugs too!

As I go through your list I let you know which ones I have squashed and which ones are "user issues"... Which I need to know as I have probably made bad UI assumptions. Eg: density is a calculated slider and is not user operable as then you get stuck in a 3 way slider battle. To change it adjust radius or mass... The UI learning there is "don't make it a slider" as user will THINK they can use it! So using it "wrong" is necessary feedback too 😛

1.9.1 will be a bug clearing exercise and will hopefully clear many of these things up.

M-drive characteristics were not part of the scope as this was not written for Traveller, it was written to add a degree of realism to Sci-Fi RPGs in general. Traveller drives are abstract concept driven by "future physics" - probably a deliberate design choice to make them practically useful for paper based RPGs. When mass is irrelevant then space travel is easy 😁

That said I have thought about just adding some Traveller drives that ignores mass and always makes 1-6G available and only allow direct burns. But you can kinda do that with a random "magic drive" now. But even if I do; it will not ENFORCE when they can be used. That is to the GM... The info is there to be used (you will have all the info with zones showing) to serve the narrative, not force sections on GMs.

Hope this all makes sense.
 
If you're taking suggestions, something which I think will make for a good addition and should not be too hard to implement is adding a "solar day" readout to planets, in addition to the sidereal day (rotation period) already listed.

(Just need to remember to add an error-catcher for 1:1 tidally locked planets, as the formula spits out an "undefined" solar day length in those cases)
 
If you're dealing with a limited thrust situation in Traveller where mass of ship and propellant actually becomes important, you can rule of thumb displacement tons as metric tonnes, and reverse engineer the rest. Loaded MegaTraveller and TNE ships tended to be around 1000kg per dTon.
 
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