If I can find them, I have several pages of notes regarding this, but no, nothing published other than what's in the Compendium/X.

Noel had a timeline built somewhere that details out some of the more interesting moments in Starmadda history.

Well, actually, it was a compilation of what was in the compendium, I believe...

Taltos,

That's part of what I'm trying to figure out too.  I see some possiblities with the Expanse comming for humanity, the Dragons showing up, or even an Alliance civil war or something happening in the Commonwealth between the Imperium and the Federation.  In putting that together, I'm looking for several bits of info:

1) size of the empires, are we talking about a few star systems, or many many star systems?

2) FTL drive nature, as far as I can tell the only rules that we've seen are in the jumping out rules.  Given the Imperium/Federation war background, it has to be hard to force a decisive battle.
I think this means that the concept of jump point assaults is out.
So a jump lane system might be out too.

3) Logistics, this could help explain why the Federation was able to play their game for as long as they could.  I remember when the first Sovereign Stars demo came out and it seems really explicit what the Federation Adm. did, cut a supply depot and skyrocketed the logistics cost.

As an aside, I think VBAM is great, it's the right "here is your empire, have a nice day" rule set that feels epic, but the more complicated rules seem to go into to much detail and can be frustrating when you want the bigger picture. 

The ultimate plan, and this ties in with my other question about weapons equivilants is to create at least a thought model about how a total universe campaign would be run in the Starmada background to the end of developing a campaign arc. 

-K

That was a matter of contention between me and Noel (I don't recall if Jim had an opinion one way or the other...)

Noel seemed to think it was necessary to describe each system in detail, effectively limiting the largest empires to a dozen or so systems. I had always pictured it as a Star Wars type thing, with vast galaxy-spanning territories of indeterminite size and hundreds (thousands?) of inhabited worlds.

Not necessarily. The hyperspace engines detailed in Starmada may be of limited range, allowing ships to get away from battle but still need jump lanes/points to get across vast distances.

On a side/related note, I still plan on reintroducing SovStars, and it will be much closer to the first edition than the second edition TI supplement.

Exactly why I think there's room for a more abstracted game like SovStars...

Taking things newest to oldest:

I think that there's a way to have your cake and eat it too.  Stay with me for a few moments.  Once you get a "suffently large" map area, you're going to give up details.  Look at any strategic level WW2 game.  So you could use providences that have a level of development, economic resources, all that good stuff and then generate a set of statistics from that. 

For example you could have a lightly populated sector that'd make logistics harder while at the same time making it easier to hide fleets.  This would make stronger use of the encounter table to drive results, but would also allow for a fleet in being strategy, you find a few sectors that make detection harder and then use hit and run attacks on their infrastructure. 

However it'd abstract the "operational art" i.e. the kewl shizzel that I love in a game.  Not saying it wouldn't be interesting and might be the only way to operate a Really Big Game (TM).  If there's one thing worse than counter overload, I don't know what it is.  Then again you're talking to someone who doesn't nessarly think that 3d STRATEGIC games are impossible.

Limited range jump drive brings up the same question that Battletech never really answered for me.  If you can only jump 30 ly per jump, why not just jump into deep space, keep doing that until you get to the other guy's capital and waste it?

I'm happy that SovStars is comming back, but I think that if you're going to remove that much detail, the idea of really looking at each planet is a bit myopic.  It might be more useful to just say that there are different types of sectors that you can develop.  You can give sectors critital spots that you can fight over, or even "build" an important planet.  I think that'd work. 

However a more militant/operational game would need a harder focus.

Arcturus is only 36 ly from Sol.  It depends on how far you can jump, that might be right next door.  It'd also give a very narrow Commonwealth area if Earth is to have any depth at all for defenses.  Fleet in being strategy works when you have someplace you can be.

I agree that the idea of a lane might be a mapping convention, it might just be that I'm more of a open space kind of guy, but if we did assume that that it represented just the amount you could jump in a turn, I think that you'd need to keep cutting the jump lane every turn, otherwise it should "grow back"

Hope that's not too confusing.
-K

Okay...time for a Go0gle moment! (dodges the over ripe thrown fruits)

In regards to maximum jump distances or why limited ranges...
A couple things to keep in mind from a theoretical standpoint.

Navigation is based on knowing where you've been and where you're going.  typically knowing this is based on three fixed points in space or having navigational beacons up.  While in normal space, this isn't a problem usually because the navcomps are running a continual update on the changing star positions relative to the direction of travel.
When jumping, it takes time for the navcomp to find the cooresponding stellar indicators or receive whatever navbouy transmission there might be. Hence the establishment of jump lanes...each lane being a surveyed flight path where the stellar cartography has been logged and copied and/or navigational bouys placed with a continual reference signal going out. 
You can't depend on a fixed line of travel because hyperspace or warp may not be a fixed line...depending on the universal physics being applied for the game   Blind jumps essentially place you suddenly in an area where all of your points of reference are no longer valid, and if you don't have the proper charts uploaded...or have made a mis-jump....space...a big vasty type of thing with lots and lots of lights and nothings.  :twisted:

With all that useless trivia in mind...the maximum jump distance could be a match to the distance between navbouys or refueling points.  There could also be an element of gravity well distortion/disruption involved that would also necessitate a surveyed jump path to avoid mis-jumping or transdimensional discombobulations. (with that many syllables it can NEVER be a good thing. :shock: )

Jump lanes could be the established wormhole corridors between systems too such as in Honor Harrington, the Flight Engineer, Starfire Universe, etc..  Now FOLD space engines is a whole nuther topic...*insane laughter fading to the back of the closet...*

I dispute that, given my memory of an extended discussion of how a campaign map had to build out from the fact that the Arcturans were around Arcturus...      

And there really are a lot of stars between here and there, and several around Arcturus that make it pretty reliable for campaign fodder, depending upon how deep you want your theaters.

Talos,

A lot of stars are junk stars that arn't likely to have Earth like planets.  That's something else to think of when talking about FTL drives.  Sensor ranges are imporant too.

When I mentioned the idea of sectors it was with the idea that they'd be more like binomes than anything else.  For replayability and that good stuff, you could make them hex tiles, the nararative fluff comes during the campaign.

-K

Go0gleplex,

I guess I'm a bit more of a Mahan than you are.  I'm not say that's good or bad, just where I'm comming from.

From my POV, the FTL systems:

1) Wormholes, they limit your options, you can have a little bit of fun with it like Heavy Gear does.

2) Jumping allows you to really do the fleet in being thing, taken to an extreme it makes it impossible to have a real strategy.

3) Hyperspace, depending on the physics/sensor ranges this can be anything you want it to be, more paperwork, but still fun to play around. 

4) Fold Space, this in my view is just another name for Jumping from an applied standpoint.

5) Warp is the easiest to think about, just pull out 5th Fleet, redraw the map and a few other things and presto you have your strategic space combat game:)

You're right about wormholes making the campaign simpler choices that lead to more battles, which is fine if you want something that looks more like a grinding land campaign.

Sorry if I'm comming across as cranky/preachy, my coffee maker broke

-K

The K stands for Kranky

Talos,

Maybe the best way to think about a sector is that it's a little more unifed.  After a certain point it makes more sense to talk about California rather than a summation of LA+San Jose+San Fran+Reno+all the other freaking cities there.

So we're really not concerned about the specific details, but a larger overview.

Sensor ranges as linked to movement, how much can I know about what's going on?  If I can use a jump lane to enter into a system, but you can't detect me, then I can hide in the ort cloud and pay you a visit every now and then:)  It becomes 100% critital when looking at warp or hyperspace FTL.

As to the tiles.  I think that it can work as an offical universe map, but you can use the same idea to make a semi-random universe for people to play in too. 

-K

Awake but still no coffee.  Damn it.

Yeah, the Hiem space idea is interesting and does some nifty stuff.  It all boils down to the story you want to tell.  Unless you're the masocistic character writers like they have over at BSG.  But even then a wormhole universe wouldn't allow them to just do a jump "thatta way"

When it comes down to it if I need psycic females to pull off the strategic environment or hot tea, I will use them.  However it really depends on how you want things to work and what contraints you want.

That's the bitch of the thing when it comes to new sci-fi backgrounds, you have too many options.

points to whoever gets those references (psycic females and hot tea).

-K

Awake AND cafinated