Map Distance Increase?

Wes, you already said that you don't want people to make stuff off map, until the current map is filled. And you've also said that you won't let us increase the distances. That means that anybody who wants a real frontier world is just kinda shit out of luck. Because it's a matter of a short hop out to the edges of the current map for any of the major factions, and even most of the smaller factions. Expanding inside of the current area is just flat out not feasible for a pretty good number of people, as is evidenced by the large number of people saying they think we need to change.

Either we need to start expanding the map now (which I would support, even if it doesn't fix most of the issues we've brought up), or we need to increase the distances. There isn't any way to fix it without changing anything.

The problem with expanding the map is that it's the most energy and resource intensive option on the table, and therefore the most difficult to undertake. On top of that, by expanding the current map, there is even less incentive to work on our pre-existing worlds and increase their article quality. In comparison, increasing the distances on the star map is far more feasible, and at most, would require only editing a few articles outside of just the star map itself.

It had also been mentioned before as well, but any 'security issues' are rendered moot as well - nations are safer with longer travel distances, as these prevent the sudden 'blitzkrieg' style strikes that would gut them by destroying their cores. More RP opportunity is available by simply increasing the distances too. As Aendri pointed out, our ability to have a 'frontier' style plot is also rather moot given the travel time to the nearest bit of civilization.

Ideally, we would both expand the map and increase the distances present, but the situation renders one option infeasable, and the other the most pragmatic and practical thing to do, which is increasing distances.

Wes said:

We could change the scale of the map.

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Well if I recall correctly the old map was drawn showing a region of space 240 x 240 LY in size, in an image of 3000x3000 pixels. The map i'm currently drawing -- if we keep the old distance measurements -- would show a region of space 360 x 360 LY in size, in an image 4500x4500 to 6250x6250 pixels (The .jpeg will be shrunk down in size from 9000x9000 pixels, to the smallest size that can preserve most of the maps detail). I'm leaving the grid-squares unmarked for the time being so that if it is decided that we should chance the distance scale, they can depict an area larger than 10x10 lightyears. IE, they could easily be changed to depict areas 100x100 LY in size; thus increasing the region of space the map depicts to being 3,600 by 3,600 lightyears.

Wes said:

We can add new zones. *We'd want to do something where we're not horizontally scrolling like the current map.

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As mentioned above, the map shows an area 2.25 times greater than the old map -- assuming we keep the old distance scale -- though the additional zones still require horizontal scrolling to view them as they're just extensions of the map in all directions. I'm currently planning to simply extend existing nebula that are abruptly cut-off the corners of the old map to add some detail, then put a layer with a kind of 'unexplored space' fog of war thing obscuring those regions until we create new systems and other features for those areas.

Wes said:

When I get a new map set up, It's got to have layers so it's easy to change. The current map is old school and is all on one layer.

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Layers? LAYERS!?! I got layers coming out of my wazoo. Every single nebula is a separate 4 to 5 layer-group, every system text label is its own separate layer. The vague foggy background is a layer, the tiny star background is another layer, the grid is a layer, the system markers are a layer.... so many layers. So, so many....

I'm using Adobe Photoshop CC so layers I can give you. When the maps complete, if you want I can also give you a copy of the .psd file, though at present its about 300 megabytes in size and still growing larger. The current set-up makes it easy to modify one specific thing without breaking anything else or ruining the detail, though it takes a little time to navigate through all the layers to find the one thing you want to modify.

CadetNewb said:

For distances, we could try having the coordinates of each location on a separate list for people to calculate them on their own using the formula, but alternately, we could do what a lot of maps do as well.

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That could work too; I'd like to have a list with exact spatial co-ordinates for each star system, rather than having to guestimate positions by using a 2D map. Sure, a map is a pretty good visual representation and gives ones brain a nice, rough idea how far apart systems are relative to each other. In the end though, using a co-ordinate list would be much more accurate when trying to figure out the distance between two systems and determining travel times, etc.

Fred said:

I support Khasidel continuing his work to polish up the starmap. I think he has a good track record for delivering things that help detail and improve the setting, and he's already invested. If he's agreeable with increasing distances, which he seemed to be when I last read his input, then he can just be given the greenlight. If he'd like compensation, I'm fine with paying him myself for it. It's something I was ready to do to compel Exhack to finish; and the same goes for Khasidel.

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I wouldn't ask for any compensation for this; I enjoy making this stuff, though it is time consuming . The trick is finding the time around my full-time job to actually finish it off.

As for my opinion on whether or not to keep the old distance scale or switch over to a new, longer distance scale I can see positives and negatives for both.

By keeping the old scale, it would cut down on work for everybody. However, it makes travel times between systems ridiculously short when using hyperspace and means there is no logical reason for explored space not to be much, much larger than is currently depicted by the map. I mean, with current drive technology you could circumnavigate a galaxy the size of the the milky-way in less than a year. People have gone on sea voyages shorter than that.

Going with a larger scale, it makes more sense for less space beyond what is currently 'explored' in the map to have been surveyed. It does make the nebulas somewhat unrealistically huge though . Though the old map was also unrealistically bare of stars -- a region of space 240 x 240 LY in size should have had around 2000+ stars in it, assuming it was a region roughly as dense as the area of space around our own Sol system. Although, that could have been explained by the Kikyo sector being on the outer rim of a spiral arm or something, with a lower star density in such a region.

Overall, i'd probably go with the larger scale. Probably around 5-10x the current one, if only so that travel times between systems aren't always measured in hours or minutes.

I'm not sure if you've seen the survey results, Khasidel, but the community consensus was strongly in favor of expanding the map's borders but support for rescaling the map (changing the distances between existing systems) was lacking (more people voted against it than for it). So on the new map, I want to preserve the known distances between explored/colonized star systems. For example, Nepleslia has been historically mentioned as being about 4.5 Light-years from its neighbor, Yamatai. For comparison, Earth is 4.367 light years from Alpha Centauri.

Wes said:

support for rescaling the map (changing the distances between existing systems) was lacking (more people voted against it than for it).

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That's because you effectively cheated by listing the problems for that option (And no benefits) and not any of the others - which means that anybody who wasn't involved in the debate would be badly misinformed, thereby skewing the votes in your favour.

There was no misinformation, just important details that allowed people to make better informed choices. Second, I didn't list problems, I listed the requirements to do so, because I wanted it to be clear what rescaling meant. Meanwhile, allowing the map to expand didn't have any special requirements.

Moogle, since this topic already was covered in the survey thread, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop whining all over the forum because you didn't get your way. It's not going to accomplish anything useful. Star Army's members are more than smart enough to know what they were voting on, and they voted not to change the distances. Accept it and move on.

Basically, mostly ignore the input of the people whom did jump into the conversation about it (which had overwhelming support), and make the effortless vote matter more than their involvement.

I don't have to make anymore imprecations about how impressed I am of that.

But a decision was made and is being enforced. I asked for that and I got it, so, I'll live with that now. Besides, I'm not entirely certain a rescale would have decisively resolved the travel time problem anyways. There's a lot of underlying data which is simply not well established enough to come to a solidly permanent solution anyways. Status quo, for the moment, works.

It also should've been clarified that questions could be skipped if you didn't have a feeling one way or another. Lots of people said that they didn't really know the arguments or topics, but voted anyway, and that skewed the results pretty hard.

Aendri said:

It also should've been clarified that questions could be skipped if you didn't have a feeling one way or another. Lots of people said that they didn't really know the arguments or topics, but voted anyway, and that skewed the results pretty hard.

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I kind of hoped everyone would answer everything, although not actually everyone did for every question. You can see this on the raw data in the results thread where the total responses are less than 40 and the percentages don't reach 100%. But on the question of rescaling, I think the reason nobody skipped it was because there was an "unsure/maybe" option available. 15% of respondents picked it. So there's no evidence that the vote was skewed. On the contrary, from the actual data, it looks like the people who didn't have an opinion simply said so by choosing "unsure/maybe option." In future surveys I'll try to remember to clarify the option to not answer where appropriate.

And how many people marked no because they didn't know what was going on, and would rather just stick with what we have because they don't follow the discussion? It's not always as simple as marking unsure if you don't know.

Moral of the story is just make your own map clusters for your own projects so you can ignore main map politics, solves a lot of the problems brought up in this thread though those stuck on the main map are more or less stuck in the quagmire of it.

As much as I believe a resizing would have helped the setting, I agree with Fred that the current status-quo is something we might as well go with. What we currently have is not the best, but it's not the worst either, and is workable enough that GMs can still try and find ways around the barriers to roleplay that it puts up.

At the same time, I have to agree with both Mog and Aendri as well. That the results of the survey were skewed is a clear fact. Aendri pointed out that many players simply did not know about the topic and felt compelled to vote for one or the other. At the same time, it's also clear that Mog is right in his argument too - though it is true that the survey listed the requirements for both changes, it's also true that the information listed on the survey was not unbiased to the two options. The pros and cons of both choices were not laid out as they were here in this thread.

Which brings me to something else entirely; I originally started this thread, and I feel partly responsible for what happens here. I ask that no name calling is done. It's bad enough if we do it amongst ourselves, but what would new players think if they saw it? It makes the site look toxic, and is something many people would rather not have a thing to do with. Site included. No matter how strongly anyone disagrees with someone's opinion, please don't.

Just uploading another sample image for the map; finished off the grid for it, so it will be easier to gauge distances between systems. Also I've removed most of the superfluous information other than the systems names in order to make it appear less cluttered. I'll probably make some change, either to the name text or to the markers for empire capitals in order to differentiate them from ordinary solar systems.

This upload is also a full 6250x6250 version of the entire map as it is as present, so you can see just how much space the final version of the map will have.

Also, as you can see i've made up some names for un-named existing nebula. I'll probably make up more names for other nebula and map features myself that are unnamed, unless you guys want to offer suggestions

Also, I did some looking around for methods of making a 3D version of the map for the site. I know there was a java-based program called chView that could mostly accomplish the task -- it wouldn't have been able to display nebula though -- unfortunately the program is kind of old, and is currently incompatible with the latest operating systems and web browsers. I do believe a more up-to-date version of that is being worked on, though I don't think its really ready yet.

Other than that, i've been playing around with Astrosynthesis, which has some really awesome features like a travel time calculator, solar system generator and exporters that will convert its 3D solar system and galaxy star charts into 2D diagrams and maps. Unfortunately, while it has a pretty good ability to display a area of space in 3D, its ability to display nebula is limited and it costs money to use beyond the 2 week trial period.









To have a 3D map for everyone to view and use, we'd probably need to find some kind of flash map thingy like this, if we wanted to have a 3D map on the site that people could view and manipulate themselves. Still looking for something that might accomplish that.

Khasidel, I want to look at your pictures... but if you uploaded any of them... I don't see any actual links or pictures appearing.

I'm not seeing them either. Can you upload them to the forum, or use another image host like imgur?

tried imgur, it spazzed out. Instead managed to upload the map sample to pictureshack. Does that work for anyone?

It works, but god damn, that's huge.

The text is bold, good looking and easy to read, and they're even color coded for convenience. As pointed out earlier though, the only downside would be how anyone colorblind would have to deal with it.

It's huge, but it works. I like the look of it. In the finished version we should put axis labels on it so people can say "This system is in sector A7" to make them easier to find.

Major suggestion, the thing I was considering for making the map more detailed could also be applied here said thing being breaking this massive chunk up into smaller maps.