Stellar Map Question

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Stellar Map Question

Postby Blackwill » Tue Nov 08, 2016 10:45 am

The rules indicate that the XYZ coordinate system runs as follows:
X runs from front to rear
Y runs Top to bottom
Z runs Left to right

But, the diagram ( Fig. 2, page 11) shown seems to indicate that Y runs bottom to top.

Edit: Diagram also shows Z axis running right to left, not left to right.
This would make the top, front, left hand corner of the galaxy sector AZZ, and not AAA.

Which of the two is correct?
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Re: Stellar Map Question

Postby CHARON EMPIRE » Tue Nov 08, 2016 2:19 pm

I have a printed page of the old style galactic map which may help, where would you like me to send it too?
Last edited by CHARON EMPIRE on Tue Nov 08, 2016 2:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Stellar Map Question

Postby Blackwill » Tue Nov 08, 2016 2:21 pm

Thank you.
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Re: Stellar Map Question

Postby Thom » Tue Nov 08, 2016 9:33 pm

The map was done a long time ago and is not quite right. Basically from a distance point of view the X, Y, and Z coordinates are not important. Think of the universe as a large rubic's cube 26x26x26. If you're holding it up in front of you with one side facing you and AAA is in the upper left hand corner then ZZZ is in the opposite corner. So if ZAA is in the upper right hand corner then AZZ is on the opposite corner. This is important as far as distance traveled is concerned. No matter how you look at the cube the letters have to be next to each other for the math to work when moving.

Basically you can turn the cube any way you like to make your map but the logic is that when players talk about the M plane for instance they could be talking about whether the letter is the first, middle, or last. So many times you should ask what plane are you talking about, 1st, middle, or last letter. But what holds true is that when talking about AAA, ZZZ is always in the opposite corner.
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Re: Stellar Map Question

Postby CHARON EMPIRE » Wed Nov 09, 2016 12:57 pm

ZAA is actually the upper left hand of the map, not the right.
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Re: Stellar Map Question

Postby Thom » Wed Nov 09, 2016 11:22 pm

Well again depends on how you look at your cube of the universe. Picture this. Sit down to table. Imagine a checker board standing up on the table. Maybe you're holding it up with your hands. We now have the X and Y axis. But this is only two dimensions. Across the top you have letters going from A to Z. Across the left hand side you have letters running down the left hand side from A to Z. For the moment forget about the Z axis. Identify the square where ZA would be. Upper right hand corner. Okay great. Now lets add the Z axis as 26 more checker boards standing up one behind the other. Each board is a letter, with the one you first put up as A, and each one further from you as B, C, D.....Z. ZAA is still in the upper right hand corner because the front board you're looking at is the A board. Now comes the tricky part.

Rotate the cube your holding up with the A board as the first a quarter turn to your left. The cube ZAA that was in the upper right hand corner is now in the upper left hand corner. But you're looking at a different side of the ZAA cube. Now the part of all this that makes it interesting is that everyone looks at this a little different and that's the beauty of it. It doesn't matter how you picture the cube. The relative distance between two different cubes is exactly the same no matter what makes sense to you.

Just make a map that makes sense to you and plot all your explored sectors.
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Re: Stellar Map Question

Postby Blackwill » Fri Nov 25, 2016 12:40 pm

This is what I have spent the Thanksgiving weekend on so far:

I created a spreadsheet for inputting all of my explored/owned worlds...it can be sorted in ascending or descending order, as usual, so any new info I get I can simply enter into the bottom row, sort the page, and the planet info zips right to it's proper place in the list. I can also sort by planet size, MP, MUs, Status, Owner, etc....it was a bit of a slog to input all of the data from previous turns, but now that it is done, it will be a simple matter to input each new world as they come in. Pretty typical spreadsheet, I know, but I can also track and sort by Max Cargo Available, Cargo Sale Price, Purchased Units, and Raided Cargo or Sale Price. Pretty handy for a pirate. Also, sorting worlds by POP makes it easy to pick the next target for a Slave run....and sorting by Empire Name makes it easy to pick the next target for a Cargo Raid (Charon Empire).

The next thing I did was create a page for each "plane" of the galaxy (I chose the middle letter as my top-bottom (Y) axis, so mMm is the middle of the M plane for me.) I have one sheet for each of the 26 planes, with the X and Z axes in fields (or boxes). So, if I scan sector CCT, for instance, it would be logged in the CT box on the C Plane sheet....highlighted in Green if there are SAFE or SCLD sub sectors in it, in Red if there is a SECTOR WIDE HAZARD, and Grey if there are NO STARS or simply RIFTS. I can get a visual of the 3_D galaxy, sort of, by either flipping through the pages to see where each sector "stacks", or I can print each page out for a more "hands on" examination. It makes plotting jump routes a lot easier for me, as I can now see where each sector is in relation to every other sector. Ideally, I would put the info into a program which can create a movable, zoomable 3-D graphic representation, but I am a lowly Chef, not a programmer.....

Finally, I created a spreadsheet which contains all of the sub-sector info for each scanned sector....so, if I need to jump to JJE for some reason, I can quickly see which sub sectors are either empty or safe, and which ones will flush my fleet down the toilet. Currently, I only have 86 sectors fully scanned, but it is enough to get a general feel for where the clumps of RIFTS and other bad ju-ju are located (and, they do seem to clump up a bit, at least in my experience so far...but it's a relatively small data sample, I admit)

The side-effect of doing my sub-sector sheet was the ability to calculate which un-mapped sub sectors were more likely to contain hazards if I needed to make a "blind jump" in order to reach a juicy raiding target....for example: out of 86 scanned sectors, sub sector 332 seemed to have more RIFTS, across the board. 17 of 86, in fact, contained RIFTS, while only 2 contained SAFE, and 2 contained SCLD sub sectors. This leads me to assume that a blind jump into sub sector 332 is probably a bad idea galaxy-wide. Again, it's a very small sample size, and that may not hold true given the size of the galaxy, but for now it puts up a red flag for me. Sub sector 211, on the other hand, contains only 2 RIFTS out of 86 sectors (but only 2 SCLD and 0 SAFE), so it "may" be that a blind jump into sub sector 211 has a greater chance of a safe landing. We'll let you know if we're wrong :-)

Anyway, that's what the HIGH HARVEST CHURCH has done with regard to organizing our mapping and exploration. Anyone else have any good techniques?
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Re: Stellar Map Question

Postby Knights Of Rancor » Tue Feb 21, 2017 10:27 pm

I had all those old Maps and Rule Books before the fire and now I am going by the PDF rules. The pic shows Y going from bottom to top I don't ever remember it going from top to bottom. AAA was always in the lower front left corner and ZZZ was in the upper back right corner. Like the arrows in FIG 1 represent ( start to finish A to Z ) and like the sector letters in FIG 2 show and yes there is a sector with the wrong letters in it in FIG 2 ( LPO should be LOP ) but there too it shows the Y plane going from bottom to top. Someone may have changed the wording in the rules to the left of those images but as far as I can remember those Images (FIG 1 and FIG 2) have never changed. IF you have an original Rule Book with the blue print cover please copy the page (it should be page 11) with those images (FIG1, FIG2, FIG3, FIG4, FIG5) and send me a copy at KnightsOfRancor@aol.com

The old ESTRA galactic map you could buy ($$) peeled the layers off from top to bottom looking down on the galaxy. Like the pic in the rules (FIG 2) each page (26 of them) was a Y layer, it was a very vague representation only showing sectors with circles, squares, triangles and diamonds, filled and outlined representing approximate star densities.

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