OBT Forum

Hey Voltampere, ISP3 is out, with huge maps of the deep dark beyond.  I look forward to your new coordinates........

Hehe...

I already merged all 4 of those maps into 1 huge one (link on my blog).

I didn't try to get them lined up perfect, was just lazy, but I figured once HBHK came out I'd update them so volt can finish up the coordinates I've long since given up on keeping maintained.  After entering in 30K of them, parsing them all, and spending months with Volt finding errors, then combined with all the various issues that kept popping up and my frustration with BT in general, I just *really* don't want to enter in the coordinates for 6 more maps.

But I will load them up in illustrator and give Volt good copies once that book comes out, which will hopefully be soon.  At that point we can *FINALLY* have complete maps of the inner sphere for all those succession wars.

The only other maps I'd like to see are 5 (or 1 with just border lines) for each of the grand survey's, so we can see when systems were discovered.  Age of war stuff may not be too bad either, but with HBHK we are at least pretty current up until 3095 (current timeline).

I also told Volt once HBHK comes out I'll update my cartographer application again, and I gotta stick to that

ugh forget what I just said about rescaling the four maps... it's impossible to get the coordinates line up with the approximate distance given by the text. I'm definitely going with the coordinates extracted using Syntax's procedure, they're scientifically more accurate than relying on a writer's approximate.

hey BN, sure, but how about we do it this way, mark on the PDF map that Syntax made what points you want an I'll give you those numbers, that way we have the exact number and coordinates of the vertices you need to make the polygon. I have the maps open on illustrator now so I can give you the coordinates within minutes if you need them.

another !@#$%^&*, according to text, Beehive Cluster is 300LY from Midden. Using two different methods (1) a ruler (yup) on my screen, comparing to the scale legend and (2) trigonometry (coordinates) there is NO way the distance is 300LY, it's more like 160-170LY.

Hey Takiro, I've asked TPTB regarding the maps and basically this is what I got:

1) the maps are political maps and not jump maps, so
(a) just because the system does not appear does not mean it's undiscovered or abandoned at that particular time (and there are no official rulings on what systems exist when except for a few that have been posted on "ask the writers", but they don't consistently answer all questions). The best bet here is if there are any in-text doc that says when a system was discovered/colonized/abandoned/destroyed/etc
(b) there are some systems (Mica, Niops, etc) that show more than one planet on maps but are actually just one system. What I did here was get the average X and Y coordinates and the result is what I used for the system coordinate (crude but it's the only process we have in the absence of official coordinates)

2) allegedly there are official coordinates but it would appear they would never see the light of day, so there might as well not be any. Since the declaration that the housebook coordinates are no longer canon, the coordinates released by Syntax and myself are to date the only "complete" attempt to map each system's position. I say "complete" because for every new map released that contains more comprehensive information it's possible that older released coordinates be rendered obsolete. This is because of:
(a) the inaccuracy in the 12-LY ruler as X-scale
(b) the absence of a true Y-scale reference
(c) limited number of reference points when plotting far systems (JarnFolk, Pentagon, etc) against the inner sphere. ISP3 is the first map that I have that allowed me to position these systems using Terra as my anchor point. If we take the Y-scale of the ISP3 maps as correct, then it turns out that the KCluster should be 16.5LY farther, the Pentagon 1LY to the Left and 14-15LY higher up, Imperio worlds 6LY to the Left and 10LY higher, Hanseatic League systems 7LY more to the left and 7.5LY higher, JarnFolk 5.3LY to the right and 5.2LY higher, etc...

3) even then, we cannot fully rely on the coordinates and scales because according to Oystein the maps are warped (non-uniformly scaled) when they try to fit them on the page during layout. I don't know how true this is but since we have no access to the raw maps/coordinates, we have to accept them at face value.

It's actually like working on quantum mechanics. The coordinates are accurate up to a certain value within the limits of the TPTB Uncertainty Principle. But that's not stopping me from making coordinates for those who wanna use em. If TPTB want me to stop then they'd better come up with a more accurate one than what Syntax and I made.

haha don't worry, I have a copy of ISP3 and used the maps there, not your frankenmap. good point, I'll use the circles instead, hopefully get a better scale off it. I tried using that on the 3130 map but it was a complete bust because the LY circles weren't even circles to begin with (hooray).

EDIT: You mean 500LY and 1000LY right? 

3) even then, we cannot fully rely on the coordinates and scales because according to Oystein the maps are warped (non-uniformly scaled) when they try to fit them on the page during layout. I don't know how true this is but since we have no access to the raw maps/coordinates, we have to accept them at face value.

It's actually like working on quantum mechanics. The coordinates are accurate up to a certain value within the limits of the TPTB Uncertainty Principle. But that's not stopping me from making coordinates for those who wanna use em. If TPTB want me to stop then they'd better come up with a more accurate one than what Syntax and I made.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Fit to Page formatting will skew the original significantly. Is it possible to reverse the format? Can't we guess at the original size based on the space shown. You could take your map as an anchor Fit to Page Format it and see if it matches up. Then overlay the two if they match. Might not give you the exact spots but pretty damn close.