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Archive through October 18, 2025
IIRC if you go digging around in the F&E topics, there is a guy who is programming his own F&E software that people are looking forward to. Check there. He probably has a great map and likely far more knowledge than I about this issue.
Wow, 500 hex map.
Troublesome.
Too granular yet still not nearly granular enough.
So about a quarter inch hex is about as small as you can get and still have any hope of reading the hex number (which will be six digits).
That makes your overall hex size over 10 feet tall. Even if you stick to digital only image sharing the file size would be enormous.
And then we are covering a parsec with each lesser hex. That's a lot of real estate. Our solar system is only 0.00047 light years across. If we made our lesser hexes 10 feet tall, that's in the ballpark of 9/16 of an inch. So too vast for any terrain. You are still down to naming points of interest in each hex like the F&E map does to some extent.
So why not change the scale a bit, say 5 or 10 parsecs per hex still naming POIs. 100x100 or 50x50 is much more doable that ~200,000 hexes in a per parsec map. Lots of other challenges to consider like how to move from an edge hex into the appropriate edge hex of the next map. The numbers won't necessarily match up. Solvable but you would have to account for that.
Fun little puzzle/challenge. I'll doodle something up in Visio when I get some time. Definately something you would want built in a vector based software
Your mention of how big it needs to be and the file size does sound like my 500 diameter map might be asking too much. It was just my hope was all.
Changing the scaling seems like the only reasonable solution. But I was sincerely hoping to stick to the 500 Parsecs wide thing as indicated in the SFU.
Oh the greater hex would still be 500 parsecs just the lesser ones would be 10 parsecs rather than 1 parsecs. 50 hexes * 10 parsecs/hex = 500 parsecs.
1 parsec per hex doesn't seem to get you anything but complexity and headaches.
Visio makes a free viewer I've never used. If it allows shape data changes it might be all you need.
I am smack in the middle of a move so I don't have a computer or time to play with it (typing this on my phone). A couple weeks and I can be more directly helpful.
The hex size is incorrect. Each hex should be ~236.8 parsecs per hex. If you look at the circumference of the Milky Way (120,000 light years) / 24 sectors / 61 hexes per sector.
Visio is a good tool for creating the maps as you can use VBA to draw the hexes using data instead of hand creating each hex.
Ken, I'm not trying to seek realistic numbers of parsecs per F&E hex, I'm seeking to match what I've always thought was an F&E hex being 500 parsecs across. I haven't had a chance to try it but if Visio can do that I'd be a happy camper.
And if in fact my understanding of each one being 500 parsecs wide is incorrect, I'd appreciate the info.
I do worry about the file size being too big (assuming it's largely zoom-able). But I guess that is a hurdle I'll deal with when it comes across my path.
I played around with a similar idea once upon a time. I created hex-grids with 5, 7, and 10 hexes across. All depends on how many parsecs you want to divide at 500-parsec F&E hex up into.
five hexes = 100 parsecs
five x five hexes = 20 parsecs
ten hexes = 50 parsecs / ten hexes numbered
seven hexes = 71.4 parsecs / seven hexes numbered
Feel free to use whichever one you think works best.
P.S.> I'm the one who uploaded the F&E map with known planets from the Gazetteer list.
Garth L. Getgen
Got to spend a little time on this last night. Mostly looked at viability of 500 hex map. Oh boy.
In Visio, I did a VBA script so generate hexmap and number them using the traditional column&row number system but of course using a six digit numbering scheme (001001 through 500500). Visio has issues duplicating huge numbers of anything (and we are talking a quarter million plus hexes here) where each duplication takes slightly longer to perform than the last. I was able to improve on performance from basic drop duplication 100-fold but still after ~6 hours I stopped the script. I got up to 112200 (about 1/5th complete). The shear size is astounding. Using 1/4 hex size which is about as small as you can go and still read the hex numbers, the finished product for a single F&E hex divided into 500 mini-hexes across is 125"x163". I don't have a printer for that and even creating PDF that size of my partial run product gave me fits.
I just can't see how anyone could utilize that many hexes for any game anyway. The scope is just insane. If I was doing some kind of campaign for just a single F&E hex and resolved a couple mini-hexes every day, I don't have enough time left on this planet to utilize that many hexes. 500 diameter hexes are just far too vast to be useful.
That said, I did some further exploration using a 50 hex layout. I see an possible small issue with the examples in prior posts where one moves from some edge mini-hex outbound into a neighboring mini-hex in a different "F&E" greater hex. It become a little confusing which mini-hex number you end up in. Either there is an unnumbered gap hex or conflicting numbers. Fixable but needs to have a plan on how to do that. I have some good ideas.
So anyhoo, I've got some work to do getting a lot of details worked out plus building the F&E scale hex system so someone without a ton a Visio experience and create their own as well as building out the mini-hexes so one can manage whatever points of interest (planets/bases/terrain/etc are within each hex. Right up my skill-set alley.
Does anyone have a hexmap that is fifty hexes wide?
If such a map is not too large that it chokes the photo viewing/editing app and can be zoomed in enough to place icons and number the hexes, then it seems to me the best solution for making the 500 parsec wide hexmap would be to split each into two hex maps.
1. A ten hex wide map as shown in Garth's example above which would be "Area" hexes within an F&E hex. Each of these "Area" hexes is fifty parsecs wide.
2. The next level hexmap is the "Parsec" hexmap. Each of these contains fifty hexes across with each representing an individual parsec.
For larger campaign tracking, it's a matter of denoting the F&E "Sector" hex, "Area" sub-hex and individual "Parsec" hex. So the nomenclature would be denoting Sector-Area-Parsec. So (using Garth's ten numbered map), denoting the F&E parsec location of Earth would look like this: 2908-77-07649
2908------Sector
77--------Area
07689-----Parsec
(I guesstimated its location as 07649)
I don't have a grid fifty hexes across, but I do have one with one-hundred hexes.
Just how small do you want each hex to be? At five parsecs across, you're looking at 10-15 stellar systems per hex, per Copilot AI-bot. Is that the scale you're going for??
Garth L. Getgen
I'm curious as to why the "big hex" (BH) boundary cuts through every other "little hex" (LH) on each side? Wouldn't it be easier to make each BH only contain a full set of LH, and the natural boundary along the LH also be the BH boundary?
Or, perhaps more simply, if there is a unit in one of the half LH along the boundary, which BH it is in?
Apologies if this is obvious and/or was discussed before.
--Mike
Mike, I made those grids eleven years ago, but as I recall: I wanted the orientation to remain the same (flat side up), and trying to keep "big hex" to made of all full "little hexes" meant rotating the orientation (point up). Also, when you start extending the BH grid, the LH end up side-stepping. There is a way to avoid the side-step problem, but that way cuts ALL the edge LH in half.
Garth L. Getgen
Garth, I think that 100 hexes wide is a bit too granular.
As long as it's zoom-able enough so each hex can be numbered & include point of interest icons, 50 wide seems just doable without being overwhelming.
I wasn't so much going for any "Scale" persay, just wanting to get it down to 500 total hexes wide per F&E hex. Which splitting each of them into two (ten then fifty), wide hexes accomplishes. I also second your interest in keeping the hexes "Flat Side Up" for consistency with SFB.
I don't have Visio or anything else that can make hex maps but would appreciate the help in this regard if someone can assist.
Found this grid generator that is very good:
https://hamhambone.github.io/hexgrid/
Saves as a .png file.
>> I wanted the orientation to remain the same (flat side up)
Ahh, I see. That makes sense.
--Mike
Kenneth, thank you!! I needed that link. I have a work-in-progress F&E map that's 75x25 hexes and had no way to put it on a hex grid.
Garth L. Getgen
Have one 51 by 46 0001 to 5100
Had to go into town (away from home) so I wasn't able to do anything with this on Sunday. Spent some time Monday night building up the hex shapes so I could do some fancy stuff with them prior to making any maps. Tonight I worked on the 10 hex map.
Proof of concept
Used a single character column #/row # as it seems the interest was in a shortened name but it still keeps the 'colrow' we're used to as long as the map isn't more than 26 hexes wide. The perimeter shows the Area hex # you would move into in the next Sector if you leave the current Sector/Area.
By the way, thank you for establishing a common vocab for all these map scales.
To make the a 10 hex map work, I abandoned symmetry and loaded extra hexes at the bottom of the area - 'cause fat bottom hexes make the rockin' world go round and it works. The red outline hex is just to demonstrate it to be roughly hexagon shaped.
Final grayscale
So, as you may well know, if you zoom in on raster graphics they tend to look horrid but these being done in Visio (which is a vector based program) it keeps the image sharp and you can do editing/adding/etc on small size hexes and still have them nice and readable. One possible solution to look into is Libre Office which has a Visio-like program called Libre Draw. Draw can open Visio drawing files and do basic editing etc. I don't know much about it but it should allow you to put tiny text in hexes, draw images for BATS/planets/etc on your own. And it's all free.
I don't believe you can see/change Visio shape data or see/change the Visio shapesheet which will prevent you from accessing the fancy parts I worked on.
The power of Visio
Everything shown in this image was done using the Visio shape data seen on the left side of the screengrab. Idea is to make it possible to build an F&E-style map without drawing a single thing - just highlight a hex and input some info and poof, a Starbase appears, names of sites in that hex, borders, background colors, all kinds of stuff. Kind of a map builder app that requires Visio.
Zoom in clean
So... am I on the right track with the fat bottom hexes? Don't want to spend a bunch of time on 50 hex version until the little 10 hex passes muster. 
Oh and if you intend to print anything, maybe consider a 20 hex Area and 25 hex Parsec maps as 50 hexes will be too small to be very readable on 8.5x11 paper.
Hmm,
At least for my campaign needs, I don't think the fat bottomed hexes are necessary. The need to track what hex is being entered the next map over is easily done by just visually referencing which hex is being exited on the previous map and the corresponding hex on the next map. Then simply go to the next map and see what hex number it is. For that Garth's ten hex map seems to work well enough.
Also, my campaign has no real need for printing out the maps so that's not a concern. I will look further at your maps once I have a chance after work.
As to Ken's online hex generator tool, it seems like it only prints on a black colored background. I was able to get it to generate white on black but I really wanted black on white. Anyone figure out how to do that? Also, I cannot get it to generate a hexmap in which the contained hexes are aligned so the entire map is flat side up. it automatically places the flat sides on left & right. VERY annoying. I was able to get the tool to generate a large 50 hex wide map oriented the way I want it by generating a square based map that's oversized (50 tall & 75 wide). But it's going to take a crap load of work to outline the desired hexes from it and cut out all the rest. Furthermore, I really dislike the white on black for my needs. 
I am confused about how Garth's 10Hex works with the half hex addresses.
Garth's 10 hex multi
So if I am in hex A5 and go 'NorthEast' am I in B5 or 15? That's what I was trying to avoid with fat bottom hexes since they fit together.
Russ's 10 hex multi
I don't mind either way, I just need to know how to do the 50 hex the way you want it done.
Technically, one would be in both, which identifier used would depend on how granular that smaller hex is.
So unless you have some way of resolving even more fractional hexes, 50 hex map makes things worse
50 hex high map
the basic formula for symmetrical hexes is:
(Multiples of 3) + 1
so 4,7,10,13,16,19,22,25,28,31,34,37,40,43,46,49,52
49 hex high map
52 hex high map
Hi Russ,
If you can help with it, I think that a basic 50-wide hex-map is fine (flat sides up, oriented so top row is flat side up). Preferably black on white with each hex being a half inch width so it's detailed enough to zoom in and place icons for points of interest. It would need to have four digit hex numbers as in the F&E map, preferably near the top and of course the font & hex lines need to be thick enough to see on zooming in a short ways.
For me, I've found that Interview is a FANTASTIC image viewer that is well suited to opening large image files and zooming in rapidly. So even if the hexmap was 5MB in size, it's perfectly fine (through smaller file size is still better).
here ya go...
50Hex