Starship Sections Maps (Part 1)

[Kihmbar]

Here are the first three maps of my Starship Sections project. My goal is to have 5-10 "section" maps which make up a larger starship. To keep the maps continuous the doors are all located in the same location on each map, so you can lay the maps side-to-side or end-to-end. They were made for Star Wars RPG, but feel free to use them in whatever universe you want. I wanted to share these for comments and critiques while I continue with the rest of the project.

Medical Bay:
Starship Section - Medical Bay 2.jpg
The medical bay has (from left to right) a bacta ward, a surgical suite, several rooms for patients, a patient monitoring room, two storage areas and physician's offices.

Barracks:
Starship Section - Barracks.jpg
The barracks has crew's quarters on the left and officer's quarters on the right. The center area is a common mess/recreation hall. Top middle is storage area and bottom middle is an armory.

Engineering:
Starship Sections - Engineering 4.jpg
The engineering section has (from left to right) tractor beam power cells and a mechanic's workshop, a control room and a droid workshop, hyperdrives and power reactors. The hyperdrives and power reactors are in a recessed area (with catwalks overhead) with a drain running to behind the control room.

Another part of the project will include overlays for these maps. I envision these overlays as replacing ~1/6 of the map in order to keep the doors in the same locations. These overlays will allow a GM to replace one area of the map with something different - allowing the GM to customize the map to their taste. [I'll try to have a few examples up in the next few days to illustrate their use.]

Since these overlays are only a few rooms in the map, I would like some advise as to what would make a good overlay and what would be silly. I have currently thought of or had recommended to me: Armory, Barracks, Control Room, Detention Block, Cargo/Storage Area, Hanger (Vehicle or Starfighter), Garbage Compactor/Incinerator, Generators/Reactors, Hyperdrive, Mess Hall/Galley, Pit, Officer's Quarters, Mechanical Workshop, Droid Workshop, Security Station, Conference Room, Medical, Weapons' Control, Weapon (Turbolaser or Laser Cannon), Cantina, Firing Range/Practice Range, Greenhouse.

I'm building for the Star Wars universe, but I don't mind making something generic. Let me know what you think.

[Hoel]

It's not the most efficient use of space there, but they sure look nice
I think you have a good list of overlays there, can't think of anything off the top of my head...

[Kihmbar]

As promised, here is an example of how I envision the overlays working. [I took the sections I have already mapped and cut them down into overlays. Future overlays will be more original.] I used the Engineering section (see above) as the base map and added the armory, the bacta ward, and crew's quarters.
Armory.jpgBacta Ward.jpgCrew Quarters.jpg
The resulting map looks like:
Starship Sections - Overlay Example.jpg

I can already see some improvements I need to make: 1) scale each overlay so that they can drop on top of the appropriate section; 2) remove the walls from the overlays so that the overlays can be arranged is any order; 3) provide each overlay with the same basic flooring pattern so that it is less obvious what is an overlay and what is part of the original map.

As usual, I am open to any comments or criticisms.

Hoel: I agree that these maps don't demonstrate an efficient use of space. What do you recommend to improve this? Should I close up the hallways more? Should I put more objects on the map? Thanks.

[Hoel]

Close up the hallways. Even if it's star wars or any other high tech sf, you would like to minimize the amount of wasted space.
I don't know how you plan to tile the maps, but if you're going with 2 exits along each lon side and 1 on each short side, it will be alot of corridors.
Have you thought about doing just the overlays and corridors separately so you can put them down as needed?
That means breaking up the main map into more overlays, so you're left with just room tiles and corridor tiles. I'd make just 9 square long corridors and 4way intersections with 1square sticking out... Or maybe do 3, 6 and 9 sq long corridors and some corner corridors for even more cusomizability

[number7]

Kihmbar, I really like your maps. I think that Hoel has a very good idea about breaking up the room tiles and the corridor tiles into seperate interlocking pieces. This is just the sort of thing I've been looking to build for my Star Wars tabletop group but haven't had the time.

[Kihmbar]

If I follow correctly, we're looking at 3/6/9 square tiles for corridors plus some turns and junctions. Then put the overlays next to them and generate a map with just overlays and corridors? This is a different line of thinking that I originally intended, but is easy enough to do. [My GM wants whole maps with overlays. But if I'm making whole maps and overlays, I might as well break them up and add some corridors.]

Is this generally what you are looking for?
Corridor (3x2).jpg
Corridor (6x2).jpg
Corridor (9x2).jpg
Corridor (12x2).jpg

[Hoel]

That's the stuff. Should be more moddable than 24x24 suqares or what you're doing... Why does your GM want big maps?

[Kihmbar]

Why does your GM want big maps?

He likes to have a fully made maps "ready to go" in case the players go somewhere he doesn't expect (which players typically do). With the larger maps, he can just pull it up and change a few things about it instead of having to generate a new map piece by piece. This keeps the flow of the game going - instead of breaking gameplay to lay out a new map.

I like the idea ya'll are proposing - generate smaller overlays/tiles and piece them together. That does seem easier to build a map. Since it isn't what my gaming group needs right now, it'll make a good side-project. Besides, by making the larger maps I now have something to cut up into smaller overlays/tiles. Also, once I get a good set of overlays/tiles collected - I can then piece them together and make the GM his bigger maps.

[Hoel]

Have I mentioned Battlestations?

[Kihmbar]

Have I mentioned Battlestations?

Yeah, I've got the basic set and a couple of the expansions. The scale is too small to use with SW minis, but I guess I could "blow them up" to the appropriate size.