Intergalactic Cartographers Unite

[Azuth]

About the only thing I'm incline to believe is that the most a system can have is 8 warp points. Kinda like a tic-tac-toe grid with the system being the center.

 

At one point I thought the WP were X.Y.Z coordinates (ex: WP 112385 is X=11, Y=23 and Z=85) but that doesn't make much sense since the X part never seems to go beyond 15 (at least for me )

 

Some systems have spiralled back while I have at least 1 dead end system (eg; from system A it goes to B and then back to A).

 

If anything, this is an interesting (if not frustrating) puzzle to figure out.

 

Good luck to those trying to unlock the secrets of the universe (and how it works).

 

Oh well, back to work.....<...now if I connect this line here with that system and wrap it around this other system..... >

[hobknob]

Sorry to burst your bubble but I have seen systems with more than 8 warp points.

 

I have also seen many dead end systems. I would say that you are most likely to find dead ends off of systems with lot of warp points to explore. I think every system I have found with 6 or more WP's has had a dead end off of it. These I really appreciate since it makes the mapping a bit easier.

 

[Guest Zy'lar'isa]

Sorry to burst your bubble but I have seen systems with more than 8 warp points.

There are systems with more than 8 warp points (first hand knowledge). There are MANY dead ends. There are several routes in my area where I can go down one arm and return up another to my HW. My map is starting to look like some Italian dish.

 

Zy'lar'isa

 

[Dr.0]

Extra credit point for whatever brain-in-a-jar huuuman out there who can completely identify the system used to create the galactic warp map.

Knowing a little about Pete, I will guess the galactic map is a toroid (possibly only a solenoid) with the high end warp points creating short-cuts between coils.

[EternusIV]

The Admiral Helianthos' Legendary Explorer, Werfii Loiqq, effortlessy floated into the Imperial Hydrogarden. Tiny jets of bubbles revealed the several thousand spawn seedlings close behind him.

 

Werfii's bright yellow petals swelled until a dazzling array of colors appeared on the edges; a salute of the highest magnitude in Spawn culture.

 

"Admiral, I have seen."

 

The Admiral tied four of his massive vines into a helix and the soft blue glow of the Imperial chamber intensified. A hologrpahic panel descended from the transparent dome overhead. The profile of the Admiral appeared on the screen and spoke to his likeness in the chamber.

 

"Speak. My twin Spawn is in the room with you. I am on a diplomatic mission. I regret not being with you personally, Werfii."

 

Werfii glanced at the organic likeness of the Admiral before him, comparing to the unmistakeable transmission of the Admiral on the screen.

 

"Impressive, sir."

 

"Werfii, I haven't much time. I'm told you know the shape?"

 

Werfii ascended near the peak of the dome to face the screen more squarely.

 

"Admiral, I have never seen such strange things before."

 

"Get to the point."

 

"Admiral, a plasma ejection is modulated by a Coriolis effect....in a spiral shape. Spirals upon lesser spirals upon even lesser spirals."

 

"You are ranting."

 

"I'm sorry, Admiral. It is my sincere belief that we live in a spheroid fractal universe.....without a central body of mass that we can actually get to."

 

"Proof? What are you saying?"

 

"Traversable space involves travelling along pathways that, if revealed in three-dimensions, would appear similar to a spheroid. This speheroid could be generated by spinning a 12-sided...maybe 8-sided....shapes...into a fractal pattern. My proof is spiritiual in nature."

 

"What?!"

 

"I was travlling alone in the Silicon System and hailing the ship of our neighbor. Suddenly, the space around me began to spin violently. I seemed to land in a lush swamp on my tendrils, looking up into the heavens. The stars spun even faster and turned a deep blue and then suddenly, red. At last I was floating freely, and safely, in a part of space I could never imagine. I was in the middle of what many call the SNROTE universe."

 

Werfii inhaled and bowed his petals, almost in shame, " I saw no visible mass in the center...perhaps the SNROTE universe is the result of a massive Supernova explosion and we exist in a massive nebula where star formations occur rapidly...but in equal spaces. In my mind I saw a massive grid. The closest stars to me were slowly bleeding into thin streams of light that stopped at the center....a black hole?"

 

"Werfii...."

 

"Admiral, I'm sorry."

 

"I will excuse your behaviour. No doubt the HBOB merchants found your vessel that evening." The Admiral sighed, "tell me of this grid, Werfii and I'll excuse you."

 

"Yes, Admiral. Sorry, Admiral. Several bright pinpoints appeared before me. A voice of a goddess spoke to me! She said: 'here is life' More pinpoints appeared and I could finally recognize our home system nestled among a vast web of three-dimensional formations. There is a pattern to the grid! But we need to travel a few hundred more consecutive systems to see it perfectly."

 

"What of the distance between these...pinpoints?"

 

"Four, perhaps five....and then eight, perhaps ten...I could see the intensity of each warp point. The difficulty to get to the nearest pinpoint is nearly uniform."

 

"Fascinating."

 

"You understood what I said?"

 

The Admiral's petal flared into a menacing black. "The sage from cycles past was correct. We are more proximate than we ever imagined. Werfii, how do you recommend we continue mapping the SNROTE universe."

 

"Well, Im sick of drawing these damn systems, Admiral. I found an on-line 3-D mapping program, if you're interested, and I am requesting Imperial funds to purchase it. I need about $39.95"

 

"Proceed. Thank you Werfii. In time, we may either prove your theory correct....or you will be forever assigned to deep exploration vessels into hostile territory."

[SargonKingOfSlith]

Has anyone ever worked with finite element analysis of traffic flow patterns? That's my guess. I dabbled in finite element modeling to analyze stress and strain in structures made of bars and beams during my college years. I heard rumors that the technology could also be used to analyze traffic flow patterns on city streets.

 

Compare traffic flow on city streets to warp point difficulty class and size.

 

Also:

If each star has a x,y,z location on Cartesian coordinates, then warp difficulty and size may be factors of the distance between the systems. (Not that this is an astounding conclusion.)

 

Intervening obstacles may increase difficulty. If the strait-line path between 2 systems linked by a warp tunnel has another system blocking that strait-line path, then the warp tunnel would have to roll around the intervening system, thereby increasing the difficulty class.

[EternusIV]

Thats pretty cool.

 

I'm not claiming I solved it. Its just my little view for now. I had fun spending a few days on it and I'm happy to move on until I get more data another year form now :lol:

 

I agree with you - its not astounding to presume that the difficulty between empires is somewhat uniform - and that warp size is related to distance.

[WKE235]

Sorry to burst your bubble but I have seen systems with more than 8 warp points.

There are systems with more than 8 warp points (first hand knowledge). There are MANY dead ends. There are several routes in my area where I can go down one arm and return up another to my HW. My map is starting to look like some Italian dish.

 

Zy'lar'isa

 

The Concordium is actively working to scan through two star systems with 10 WP, one with 9 WP, and 2 with 8 WP. All being discovered about 4-5 warps from the home system. It's almost like we got to a certain point in the universe and the WP's exploded.

 

My own thought -- these large WP stars are seeming to act like central clearing stations. I can trace several paths to the various stars (I'm not good enough to say they spiral or are fractals). And then as I explore out, the number of paths / WP's have dropped back down. To support this, note that I've encountered two differing empires at one particular star, as star which happens to be very close to the NSI as well.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

In fact, with the Oracle's revelation that systems do have x,y,z coordinates, I wonder if we could persuade the Powers That Be to release such information, but in a sensible way?

 

I only ask this as a nice to have, it would affect the game not a jot (unless I'm missing something???)

 

If either we could have it appended to the Warp Point Survey page, or as the result of a simple order that printed out all SS'd systems, but where they coordinates given were all in relation to our HW as 0,0,0....it should be fairly easy to program.

 

I know I for one would love to be able to use one of these available 3-D mapping tools just to get a sense of where in the universe I was.

 

Unless I'm missing something, it's still the WP links that matter and this is just game reality fluff. It is, however, perfectly logical that empires would 'know' where they were once a system had been 'mapped'......

 

FWIW

 

Mx

[Krelnett_of_Kraan]

I like this. May be impossible to code in each empire being 0,0,0, though, depending on how he's got it programmed. We certainly wouldn't want "true" coordinates on a galactic scale.

 

Edit: We also shouldn't be able to get coordinates just from the jump survey. We should have to go there and do an SS. Maybe even create a Galactic Scan order that must be done when you get to a new system (if you want the info, you have to pay to get it)

[RTGPete]

Printing the real xyz coordinates would certainly make it easy to map things out...a bit too easy. If you need them to use some mapping utility that you might have, just make up your own xyz's and plug them in. You could then fiddle and tinker with those coordinates to get the map looking the way you like.

[T'Aleen Empire]

With my head spinning after following all this line of thoughts, I try to keep in mind that I am just playing a GAME!!!

 

I really need to start mapping my own star charts / paths out better, I have a great system for collecting the orbits data within a system that works nicely.

 

[EternusIV]

The X,Y,Z thing would be cool.

 

BUT

 

As a person who calculates the distances to real stars with a side job/class through the university, I'm amazed we can't at least get the actual distances to each star (this is pretty easy to do IRL but somehow my races with NTWD can't even figure out the parallax method? :lol: )....I don't care about direction. Distances would be nice. It gets old approximating distance using a combination of warp class and warp size.

[Gary Carpenter]

X Y Z for the warp point number will not work, becasue, that would mean every warp point going into a system would have the same number and that is not the case

[Gary Carpenter]

Warp point size, IE A B C. can not relate to distance, as there are E's going to a star and B's coming back on my map