David: Who knows? But the whole Bargentine campaign depends on a system not shown on the F&E maps having numerous fighter bases. A number of other SFB scenarios depict systems with defenses in excess of a defined PDU but still no F&E representation.

With that in place, I don't need relatively abstracted F&E maps. I prefer a more detailed regional map so I can figure out which planet has Mongolian colonists so the PCs have a place to sell their cargo of fermented milk. That is the essence of a free trader campaign: taking cargo no one wants to places no one goes and making money in the process.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 03:38 pm: Edit

One would also assume that PDUs on "printed planets" are part of the overall concept of national defense while PDUs on "misc unprinted colony planets" are ONLY interested in defending their own specific planet.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 03:44 pm: Edit

I think Richard has the proper grip on the situation and that including some regional maps could be quite exciting. One could even imagine a resource manual of a "typical" F&E hex. Would give you all the data needed for a campaign.

Based on an off-hand comment in GURPS Klingons, a given "hex" (the Klingon empire has 126? of them, the Feds probably have twice that many) was a barony divided into four mandates, each of which has 12-15 planets with populations ranging from a few million to a few thousand.

Call it 50 occupied planets per hex, and any number of airless moons and asteroids and junk planets. Probably thousands of stars in any hex. Regardless of how many our scientists in 2005 think have planets, we could pick any number and say "turns out once we got into space that xxx percent of stars had planets, and of those only xxx percent had a class-M planet.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 03:50 pm: Edit

I need you guys to focus for me.

Here's the deal.

GURPS FEDERATION is scheduled for August.

It will be written by a team of people. GURPS Klingons would be an imperfect template for it, but the best we have.

Assume a big planetary survey section in the middle showing about 20-30 planets, some with native race RTs and some of them just well developed colonies.

Anyway, I need you guys to focus on what should go into this, making suggestions for things we need to include.

I should also note that we'll have a "draft copy" of GURPS FEDS on the web site in a couple of weeks to help you more fully use GPD4e. This will mostly have stuff we took out of GPD4e (because GPD3e was not designed to need GURPS FEDS; this includes medals and academy templates) and the extra ads/disads needed for the minor races, and a couple of new races (e.g., Fralli). Your suggestions for what is needed for this are welcome.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 05:26 pm: Edit

SVC: Do you recall a map of local space I sent you. It is a fairly accurate real map of all the stars within 20 light years of Sol. This map could be the basis of some work done on ther systems as well.

If you've lost it I can find it and send it again. IIRC it's even done in hexes!

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 05:48 pm: Edit

Loren: You and a lot of others have sent that and similar maps. They aren't really relevant to the "one hex" map concept since the milky way is basically flat.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 06:28 pm: Edit

I'm not really sure what you mean. The map I sent was a twenty hex wide hex shaped map with each hex representing 1 LY. It did give elevation data but that can be omitted. I just thought that such a map could then be detailed with planetary info or one similar could be made using it as a ref.

It's also a real good indication as to how many stars are around in just 20 ly. And a F&E hex is 500 parsecs!

I forget, how many LY in a Parsec?

By Stacy Brian Bartley (Bartley) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 06:35 pm: Edit

Loren

parsec

n : a unit of astronomical length based on the distance from Earth at which stellar parallax is 1 second of arc; equivalent to 3.262 light years [syn: secpar]


regards
Stacy

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 07:23 pm: Edit

Loren: I was thinking of another map, but even so, it's pretty obvious how to do a map of a hex broken into smaller hexes.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 07:30 pm: Edit

each hex is ~1600 LY wide. (at least that's the figure mentioned in the F&E into that I've been useing for the warp speed calculations)

Stacy, I hope you are wrong becouse there have been a lot of things based on the 500 parsec==1600LY figure.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 08:00 pm: Edit

His figure is consistent with the statement in F&E. 500 pc * 3.262 ly/pc = 1631 ly ~ 1600 ly.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 08:07 pm: Edit

Ok, I read that as a comma, not a decimal place

just a little difference between the two

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 11:05 pm: Edit

I think my head hurts...

if the F&E hex around earth has 20 to 30 planetary systems and any number of moons & asteroids...

then would every hex have as many "places"?

If yes, that means (assuming there are some 250 F&E hexes "On Map" then the data base of "significant places" in SFB's grows to 500 to 750 star systems...

(and that does not address the off map areas)

talk about an accounting nightmare....

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 02:49 am: Edit

Traveller managed to label many more systems. The problem with SFU is the outer fringes of an empire probably have a much lower density of interesting inhabited systems PCs might visit. A uniformly scaled map might either have all the capitol hex scrunched so tightly that no one can read them or have edges that consist of blank pages interspersed with the occasional military BATS. I sometimes think that the Capitol Region would be best with a traditional hex map; the outer reaches with a very abstract map indicating approximate direction but completely not to any uniform scale.

By Donovan A Willett (Ravenhull) on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 07:47 am: Edit

SVC, I sent a few months back an article for GURPS Federation called "Federations within the Federation," which you said was being set to the side for then (it isn't like you are never busy). Do I need to resend it? I know you told me at the time that I needed to add a page header with my name and such, so I don't know if that disrupted any of your filing on it.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 10:27 am: Edit

Donovon: You don't need to resend it, but you might (in a few months) remind me to go read it.

By Donovan A Willett (Ravenhull) on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 01:18 pm: Edit

Will do... along with more short articles.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 03:10 pm: Edit

We have said before (and I'll say it again) that anybody who wants to try to design a "minor associate Fed member race" can take a shot at doing that. Gary and Matthew and others here will help with the rules text. The race should have an interesting background and abilities and not just be something you can easily tweek from one of the existing races. Some could be used in GURPS FEDS and others could be used in the magazine.

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 04:26 am: Edit

SVC: Am I correctly reading that GPD4e will not have the Star Fleet academy packages? Will it offer any other sort of career templates or will we have to get the empire books to get those?

Either way, I am expecting GPD4 to be good quality product. You guys learned some things from the first GPD and are making improvements, not just revisions.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 09:01 am: Edit

GPD4e will have some templates, the rest of the Fed templates will be in GURPS FEDS. An on-line version of GURPS FEDS will be available when GPD4e is (although it will have only about 20 pages, mostly the medals and templates removed from GPD4e).

When we did GPD3e we had intended to never do a Fed book, so GPD3e sort of WAS the fed book. Over time, we realized that GFed deserved to be done (much material to cover) and would be worth doing.

By Chris Bonaiuto (Epyon) on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 05:14 pm: Edit

How close is the SFU to the original Star Fleet Technical Manual? The TM has the Articles of Federation that list the five original foundiong members of the Federation, Earth, Vulcan, Alpha Centaurii, Andor, and Tellar. It also states in Chapter VIII, Articles 52-54 that Star Fleet was founded at the same time as the Federation, i.e., Y4. But earlier in this thread, SVC said Star Fleet was founded in Y71. My question is, was Star Fleet founded in Y4, but made-up of the national fleets of the member states, like the UN Peacekeeping Forces are today (military forces sent on UN missions), and then the UNIFIED Star Fleet is what was founded in Y71? The little timeline in Basic Set seems to imply that (at least to me). That makes sense to me. The Federation would very quickly discover the headaches associated with having a fleet made up of various national ships, personnel incompatability serving on different race's ships, many different kinds of spare parts and technical expertese needed, divided command structure, etc. Is this what happened or am I wrong? Just curious.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 05:17 pm: Edit

Star Fleet as a unified command structure didn't come into being until Y71. From Y4 to Y70, it was kind of like NATO.

By Chris Bonaiuto (Epyon) on Monday, February 14, 2005 - 05:34 pm: Edit

Thanks for the fast response. So am I wrong in thinking that the original Star Fleet command structure was something like a committe made-up of high ranking officers from the various national fleets? If so, i can imagine the arguments and infighting that could result (as an aside, if that's the case, that could make for some interesting CL or GPD stories).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 10:23 am: Edit

Chris: Your more right than wrong. The original command structure wasn't called star fleet but was a committee of senior officers from member planets. As with NATO, everybody had unity of effort but unity of command was often honored in the breach. For example, in the 91 gulf war, the French more or less said "we'll go to war, but we want THIS job and we'll do it OUR way" and the US commanders said "sure, go ahead, if you don't do something we want done we have the air force to go smack it for us."

By Chris Bonaiuto (Epyon) on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 - 02:54 pm: Edit

Ah ok. I'm only asking because I'm forming the early idea for an article about the history of Star Fleet thta might go with GFed. It'll be after I finish that BCH article (which I stated today, BTW). Would there be any place for something like that?