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Author Topic: Coordinates and Faction Ownership  (Read 34009 times)

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Volt

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Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« on: January 22, 2012, 10:46:50 PM »
Hi Guys, Bad_Syntax and I have been data mining the BattleTech source books in order to get accurate coordinates for the [as of this writing] 3,009 known systems. We started on this project because we wanted to be able to generate a map that would allow us to see the BattleTech universe maps at various eras, showing all those systems. While the official maps are a wealth of information, there's just so many more things we wanted to do with a map that a PDF file would not let us. As far as we know there is no one map showing all this data [Bad_Syntax wrote a cartographer application that uses this data but so far it does not yet export the images into JPG or PDF]
At this time, we have two current projects, the first is identifying all known systems and acquiring the coordinates, then consolidating them to a master map. so far we have accomplished this, and we are now in the process of verifying if the coordinates are correct relative to the published maps.
The second project is identifying the faction that owns that particular system at a certain period. We've recorded 30 "milestone years" that we're building up that data for, with the option to add more as information becomes available.
In the next few days I'll be posting the data on this forum and at the battletech.com forums. If anyone is interested in helping out in either [or both] of the projects you guys can post here or send me a PM.
Big thanks to Blacknova for giving this project a home, and I hope our projects will help make OBT.com's maps more and more accurate and complete.

EDIT: I've uploaded the file on mediafire, the link is http://www.mediafire.com/?q47sjqbc94qti. If anyone's interested in the battletech.com thread it's at http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,9578.0.html
« Last Edit: January 24, 2012, 03:25:01 AM by Volt »
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Ice Hellion

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2012, 01:39:37 PM »
Cool.

What software are you using?
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"In turn they tested each Clan namesake
in trial against the Ice Hellion's mettle.
Each chased the Ice Hellion, hunting it down.
All failed to match the predator's speed and grace.
Khan Cage smiled and said, "And that is how we shall be."

The Remembrance (Clan Ice Hellion) Passage 5, Verse 3, Lines 1 - 5

Volt

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2012, 02:58:28 AM »
hey IC. For data mining we used Illustrator to open the PDF maps and read the coordinates. Then I took those raw coordinates and put them on an excel spreadsheet that would rescale and offset those coordinates into the "master map". For viewing the map I used Stellar Cartographer, made by Bad_Syntax.
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Ice Hellion

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #3 on: January 24, 2012, 01:22:31 PM »
IC? Funny nickname. I knew Ice, IH, Speed Freak, Froggy but IC, not.

Thanks for the explanations.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2012, 01:24:58 PM by Ice Hellion »
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"In turn they tested each Clan namesake
in trial against the Ice Hellion's mettle.
Each chased the Ice Hellion, hunting it down.
All failed to match the predator's speed and grace.
Khan Cage smiled and said, "And that is how we shall be."

The Remembrance (Clan Ice Hellion) Passage 5, Verse 3, Lines 1 - 5

Volt

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #4 on: January 24, 2012, 06:13:10 PM »
IC = Iced Clanner hehe [Couldn't decide to call you a hellion or a bear, and since the bears love the snow too, "Iced" it is...]
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Ice Hellion

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2012, 01:36:51 PM »
Iced Clanner  8)

I am an Ice Hellion and a Ghost Bear.  ;D
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"In turn they tested each Clan namesake
in trial against the Ice Hellion's mettle.
Each chased the Ice Hellion, hunting it down.
All failed to match the predator's speed and grace.
Khan Cage smiled and said, "And that is how we shall be."

The Remembrance (Clan Ice Hellion) Passage 5, Verse 3, Lines 1 - 5

Volt

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2012, 12:38:42 AM »
Hehe figured as much, which is why I opted for a more generic nickname.

back on topic, a faction ownership database (systems by era.xlsx) updated! now includes the following:

Operation Revival Periphery Action
Wave 1 to 3
Year of Peace (right after Wave 4)

Also revised the ownership of Star's End from CWF to Independent up until CHH captures the system and purges it of the pirates in the 70's.
Minor bug fix, corrected tag of Marian Hegemony systems from "HM" to "MH"

I'll probably do Operation Bulldog when I find time for it
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Volt

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2012, 11:19:14 PM »
systems database by era has been updated [again]

no new year this time, but I've changed the spelling of Wroclaw to Wrociaw as validated by Oystein, and I added a column that will allow you to see the linear distance between two systems [idea inspired by the need of the Sarna Projects Planet group]

Just select the reference system on the drop-down menu at cell E2 of the spreadsheet then it will automatically display the distances from each of the 3008 other systems to this systems.

caveat though, because of the quirky way VLOOKUP works in excel, the !Systems list HAS TO BE in alphabetical order, or it will not display the correct distances.

file is located at http://www.mediafire.com/?q47sjqbc94qti
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Volt

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #8 on: March 18, 2012, 06:14:07 AM »
new systems database with updated coordinates and list of systems!

http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,9578.msg392931.html#msg392931
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Blacknova

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #9 on: March 18, 2012, 08:49:22 AM »
Thanks, I'll start using the new data from now on.
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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #10 on: March 25, 2012, 03:38:39 AM »
Hey all, first time posting here. Volt, I tried to download the mapping package from MediaFire, but I noticed one of the files was password-protected. I was unable to download "Converted coordinates.xlsx." Is this essential to using the Cartographer? Just thought I'd mention it. Cheers!
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Volt

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #11 on: April 01, 2012, 08:46:41 PM »
Quote from: Anvilstone on March 25, 2012, 03:38:39 AM
Hey all, first time posting here. Volt, I tried to download the mapping package from MediaFire, but I noticed one of the files was password-protected. I was unable to download "Converted coordinates.xlsx." Is this essential to using the Cartographer? Just thought I'd mention it. Cheers!

Hi Anvil, first off, WELCOME!

the converted coordinates file is not really necessary to running Bad_Syntax's cartographer app, you just need the two TXT files in the folder. The password protected file is for the fact-checkers. It just contains the raw coordinates from the pdf maps and the relevant formulas for converting the raws into the scale and offset of the 3130 map and then consolidates them. Not useful for the usual user since the important data are in the other xlsx files.
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Bad_Syntax

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #12 on: July 02, 2012, 04:26:38 PM »
HBHK is due out this *year*, so maybe in 6 months we'll finally have complete maps for all the succession wars.  I'll dive back into Cartographer once that happens, though I may let Volt enter in the coordinates :)  (The first 35,000+ I did kinda burned me out)
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Volt

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #13 on: July 03, 2012, 01:03:45 AM »
Hey Syntax! Yeah, hope HBHK comes out soon, just to clear up the blanks in the faction ownerships. Guess i have to start updating my master file to accommodate the [probably] 10 or 11 previously unmapped systems. Good thing we have 2750/2765 from which to benchmark the SW. We'd be able to identify how many systems were lost from each war.
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Bad_Syntax

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Re: Coordinates and Faction Ownership
« Reply #14 on: July 03, 2012, 11:41:21 PM »
Quote from: Volt on July 03, 2012, 01:03:45 AM
Hey Syntax! Yeah, hope HBHK comes out soon, just to clear up the blanks in the faction ownerships. Guess i have to start updating my master file to accommodate the [probably] 10 or 11 previously unmapped systems. Good thing we have 2750/2765 from which to benchmark the SW. We'd be able to identify how many systems were lost from each war.

Yep, and I'm FAR more interested in all the succession wars BEFORE the Clan Invasion, than the time period after.  Not sure why they are said to be sooo boring by the official folks, seems absolutely stupid to say actually, since events in those succession wars fill TRO unit descriptions, unit descriptions, the original 6 house/SLDF books, etc, etc, etc.

I'll love seeing the maps over time on how events changed.  I've thought about how to do the next Cartographer version as well.  I'll pre-generate the map into smaller sectors, instead of all 110,000+ stars with every map refresh on a super large bitmap image.  Should speed up panning and such at the cost of a few megs of disk space, plus it'll allow you the ability to open it and make changes, draw stuff, whatever, and the application will still work the same.
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