October Entry - Sector Trade Lanes

[Jeff_Wilson63]

I have no idea if it suits your concept, but if you're going to add space stations, you might want to consider adding clusters in the trojan positions of your gas giant. Jupiter's trojans have about the same amount of matter as the asteroid belt, and packed in to a smaller area. Being just outside the stellar snow line they also tend to be good places to get oxygen/water and nitrogen/ammonia.

[nolgroth]

I have no idea if it suits your concept, but if you're going to add space stations, you might want to consider adding clusters in the trojan positions of your gas giant. Jupiter's trojans have about the same amount of matter as the asteroid belt, and packed in to a smaller area. Being just outside the stellar snow line they also tend to be good places to get oxygen/water and nitrogen/ammonia.

Probably a good idea. First time I've done a sector map like this so I am experimenting with everything. For the moment I have solidified a couple of things.

UPDATE:
- Tightened up the label boxes and changed the border colors to correspond to the solar "zone" that the planet dwells in. Purple represents the Black zone.
- Added in, then subsequently removed some actual trade route designators. They resembled the borders of the Green and Blue zone planets' labels.


NEXT STEPS:
- Legend
- Revised Trade Lanes
- Rename to indicate this map shows only the inner planets.
- Possible additional remote stations that are not orbiting a planet(oid).
- Possible additional reference for planets beyond the inner systems.

[nolgroth]

Update:
- Fixed Planetary Zones.
- Added outer planets.
- Added AU distances for the planets.
- Changed title a bit.

Not sure where to go from here. Trade routes in such a changing environment are equally as volatile so I decided not to place specific trade routes from planet to planet.

A legend would be nice, but there is little information that is not explained directly on the map.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Jeff_Wilson63]

A couple of ideas occurred to me, but the only one that seems tenable is the placement of a few "trade ship orbits." If your design has relatively slow orbital travel (or fast travel is expensive), setting up a moderately-large asteroid to cut across the various planetary orbits and carry trade goods can work. If you decide to use this idea, you might want to shrink the sun.

[nolgroth]

Well I appreciate the feedback, but I think that I have the map finished now. There are probably a few things I might have done differently, but I had fun building this map. If I ever get lots of time to play with the concept, I might try building another sector map in Flash. One that actually has the planets orbiting at their proper speeds around the sun and that sort of thing.

Final Update:
- Added a "stat block" for the system.
- Moved some elements around to balance the map out as best as I could.