Federation Commander

I was puttering about with the PD warp speed charts trying to reverse engineer the formula to add values for other warp speeds and noticed something.

Our galaxy (the SFU one) is 100,000 light years across. That's about 30,656 parsecs (at 3.262 ly / pc) or about 61 F&E hexes (each 500 pc). That would make the circumference of our galaxy to be 192.62 hexes long.

http://starfleetgames.com/galaxy_map_Color.pdf

Now, the galaxy is divided into 24 pie slice sectors. Each sector would therefore by about 8 hexes across along the circumference. However, the map of the galaxy in the PD book shows the Alpha Octant map (taken from F&E if I'm not mistaken) taking three sectors yet the map itself is 61 hexes wide. The F&E map should actually cover almost 8 sectors just by itself. Add in the Omega map (64 hexes across) and half a sector for the void and ISC, and the total size of those two maps will account for 16 sectors, almost 2/3 of the entire galaxy! That's not suprising considering the F&E map is a long as the galaxy.

Is my math wrong? I have no real problem with the F&E map taking up 1/4 of the galaxy but it is pretty easy to fix by saying each F&E hex is only 200 parsecs across and dividing all the movement rates by 2.5. I have, OTOH, seen "maps" of Star Trek that show the Federation as much smaller. This one:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads9/Star_trek_map2.jpg

while pretty, shows the entire ST world fitting inside what F&E takes for just the Federation. The Romulan Empire would fit inside two F&E hexes. The F&E map does, however, exactly match the size of the Federation in the Star Fleet Technical Manual.

On a related topic, I have an old game Web & Starship. While not a great game, it has a cool map that is an accurate representation of stars around the earth complete with adjustments for each star relative to the galactic plane.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/17808

I've tried to look for star charts but they inevitably end up showing the stars location as angles from Earth's viewpoint. Not too useful when plotting a map. Does anyone know where I can get a chart more like a map?


Aaron

HedgeHobbit,

Don't work yourself up over scale. You'll get a headache ... or go mad.

Everything in SFU has its roots in the Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Joseph. On page "TO:02:07:01", the UFP territory is defined as a sphere of 4,750 parsec radius. That's how it is on the F&E map. On the previous page, the entire Milky Way is shown with the UFP territory highlighted. Again, this is the same scale ADB used.

Best techno-babble explaination: Once we get out there to look at it, we'll find the Milky Way is much larger than what 20th centery science thinks it is.

Best real-world answer: It's a game, based off a TV show, so just don't think too hard on it.

Sgt_G wrote:Don't work yourself up over scale. You'll get a headache ... or go mad.

I'm not getting worked up. Actually, I like it better this way. If the F&E map is really 7 or 8 sectors wide you can get rid of the awkward "Octant" term. Plus, you can actually use those sectors to distinguish sections of the galaxy. Both of those feel more Treky to me. All you really need to change is the map on page 17 of the GURPS book (not sure if that galaxy map is in the other PD rulebooks).

The seven F&E scenario sectors are not related to the 24 galactic sectors.

The Alpha Sector has Romulans, ISC, and Gorns.

The Alpha Octant is the F&E map, Alpha, Beta, and Gama sectors.

The eight F&E scenario sectors are
A: Hydran-Coalition front,
B: Kzinti-Coalition front,
C: Fed-Klingon Front North,
D: Fed-Klingon Front south,
E: Fed-Romulan Front,
F: Romulan-Gorn Front
G: Tholian area