For charting a route, I believe an example of that endeavor is in the core RT book. However, it might be in ItS.

In another post where this was discussed, I remember various options and guidelines people came up with.

-to map the route correctly, you must travel it atleast two times, there and back.

-mapping it requires the point of entry and exit triangulations (ussually stellar), along with various POI's (points of interests) in the warp for navigation

-a POI is something that is stable (other than the Astronomican) in the warp, which allows vessels to steer with a known heading. This can be "when entrying in the vincinity of entry point 8403047x6593091y2396003z you must steer toward the center of the Rifts of Heacon at heading xyz until coming POI 2. POI 2 is a warp shoal, black hole, fiery star, and upon contact come to heading xyz until contact with POI 3. POI is a blah."

-due to Navigators perceiving the warp differently, each POI is something linked to the real world. However, this may not always me so, as with other constants like major warp anomalies (Eye of Terror, Rifts of Heacon, etc)

As for how this nets the dynasty or navigator house profit, they lease out copies of the route in which the holder pays a certain percentage of his/her shipment, a set price was already established yearly, warp route information of the holder was exchanged with the owner

How exactly do they acquire said POIs? Im assuming they can see the star from their system and say. "Well if we jump out here, we should be close to it." The navigator is essentially then creating landmarks and travels until he hits it and turns knowing if he goes this way he'll hit his next trademark then turns right and BOOM. Jackpot. Is this correct?

Not exactly. As I understand it, moving in the Warp involves sighting the Astronomicon, and then keeping its position as fixed as possible as you travel. Taking a step forward can result in you moving three steps back and to the right, so you need a real point to focus on. Thus discovering a "new" system results in you aiming your ship as close as you can and going for it. You don't know how long it will take, and you try to sense a system's gravitational well which disrupts the Warp causing you to drop out. For safety you have to do it over short distances, and even then if you miss you can end up lost in the Warp, wandering forever until you chance upon a system.

This is also why I figure there must be some horrible penalty for disengaging the Warp drive when not in a system, otherwise ships would be able to drop out and re-sight.

Not exactly. As I understand it, moving in the Warp involves sighting the Astronomicon, and then keeping its position as fixed as possible as you travel. Taking a step forward can result in you moving three steps back and to the right, so you need a real point to focus on. Thus discovering a "new" system results in you aiming your ship as close as you can and going for it. You don't know how long it will take, and you try to sense a system's gravitational well which disrupts the Warp causing you to drop out. For safety you have to do it over short distances, and even then if you miss you can end up lost in the Warp, wandering forever until you chance upon a system.

This is also why I figure there must be some horrible penalty for disengaging the Warp drive when not in a system, otherwise ships would be able to drop out and re-sight.

If something goes wrong when you're out in deep space, you're screwed and there's no one out there to find you (at least, no one you want to find), whereas if you've gone to a system, you've got at least a decent shot of a habitable planet and raw materials, along with the possibility of someone else coming along.

On the other hand, there's fluff that says that there are all kinds of things in deep space, stations, etc. But, unless it's been put there by you or someone else, there's nothing out there.

Plus, while fixing your realspace position would be relatively easy and straightforward, deep space has less in the way of notable warp features/signposts, meaning targeting a specific point in deep space is a lot more complicated and difficult.

Here's my system. It has its problems. Some people won't like it because I have the Time element as a modifier and we've been all over that in other threads.

Charting Routes
Charting new routes requires successful use of the Astrography skill.
Stable routes are +10 to your skill check
Obscured routes are -10 to your skill check
Shrouded routes are -30 to your skill check
Lightless routes cannot be charted
Imperial Date Class 0-2 +10 to skill check
Imperial Date Class 3-5 -10 to skill check
Imperial Date Class 6-8 -30 to skill check
Imperial Date Class 9 cannot be charted
Success results in starcharts of Poor Craftsmanship.
Each Degree of Success improves the quality of the starcharts by one level per DoS.

How exactly do they acquire said POIs? Im assuming they can see the star from their system and say. "Well if we jump out here, we should be close to it." The navigator is essentially then creating landmarks and travels until he hits it and turns knowing if he goes this way he'll hit his next trademark then turns right and BOOM. Jackpot. Is this correct?

It really depends on your play style. As Erathia mentioned, it can be nothing but physical charactisticts/anomalies in the real world. It could also be just warp anomalies. Or it could be both. As mentioned, it depends on your playstyle.

How exactly do they acquire said POIs? Im assuming they can see the star from their system and say. "Well if we jump out here, we should be close to it." The navigator is essentially then creating landmarks and travels until he hits it and turns knowing if he goes this way he'll hit his next trademark then turns right and BOOM. Jackpot. Is this correct?

It really depends on your play style. As Erathia mentioned, it can be nothing but physical charactisticts/anomalies in the real world. It could also be just warp anomalies. Or it could be both. As mentioned, it depends on your playstyle.

I believe the rules for it are vague, so it's as detailed as your GM/group want it to be. Anomalies in the Warp are usually systems, but are also warp storms, black holes, weird Xenos craziness... I like to keep my players guessing.

The average is a 1:12 ratio. (1 hour ship-time is 12 hours real-time).

I tend to treat that as the worst short of catastrophic case senario simply because the 1:12 ratio would rapidly thoriw the players through the 42nd millenium and make my job a pain in the ass trying to predict whatever dumb **** GW will do if and when they ever get around to it.

Well, that's why I assume that travel times listed are "realtime" transit. So the ship flies for 12 days, but the crew only experience a couple days of it. (1 in warp, 1 from dropping out and re-aligning). If your starting in the suggested 850ish you've still got 150 years to go before the End Times. That's only for in the warp anyway - once they're flying in and out of system they're under normal time-counting.

I stay with the 1:12 ratio. I don't care what GW or FFG do. It's my stage and my props. I'm just using their backdrop. I love the temporal warps that are created. Players get to play a year in game time and see a salvaged cruiser get repaired in drydock. The characters age at a much slower rate than the people planet-side. The population of a colony grows and matures while the Rogue Trader stays the same, adding to the god rumors. Characters live a few hundred years but they stick around for thousands. It's the rule of cool and I think spacers are cool when they're a thousand years older than their grandkids.

Also keep in mind that there are 1,000 days in a year in the 41st Millennium. I know that time is relative to Terra, but I'm not sure if the Terran Year has been unmodified (in which case a "day" is about 8 3/4 hours), or if the Terran Day has been held constant (in which case a 40K year is about 2 3/4 current years).

My game plays assuming the latter, and explain a general increase in medicine, probably delivered through food to extend most people's productive lifespan. Rogue Traders and their crews just get cheap rejuvenat treatments. Most lives needing to be short and violent anyway, but I've never been 100% satisfied with either interpretation.

Er, I'm not sure where you got the 1,000 days a year.

There are 1000 Administrative Time Increments per Terran year, but it's also said that pretty much only the Administorum and Astropaths use that. (And it is based on a celestial Terran year, so each increment is 8.75 hours) I've never seen it called a day though - a "day" refers to local rotational.

Er, I'm not sure where you got the 1,000 days a year.

There are 1000 Administrative Time Increments per Terran year, but it's also said that pretty much only the Administorum and Astropaths use that. (And it is based on a celestial Terran year, so each increment is 8.75 hours) I've never seen it called a day though - a "day" refers to local rotational.

See that does make sense to me, but then what exactly does a "day" refer to in 40K?

Local planetary rotational period. On a ship or deep-void station, 1 complete cycle of shifts. The second one is personal-cannon, but seems logical.

But with regards to travelling in the Warp, Navis Primer gives the time period as Days, as do most other sources. How is that meant to equate to a Warp travel? Is it one planetary rotation from the local system in which you exited? That would actually be a fairly awesome example of how the Warp is affected by the Materium, but I'm pretty sure that would have been mentioned somewhere.

A Horus Heresy book had a recently converted planet complaining about the change of days and years from their local system to the Terran standard, and most Hive Cities don't bother with things like day/night cycles because most citizens don't see the sun.

I've always assumed that was a case of "out of world" writing, and therefore refers to Terrestrial days, (ie 24 hours). As for planetary complaints usage, well, YMMV - I could see the Emperor attempting to impose such a thing during the crusade, but doubt the modern Imperium cares how local dates are written. For Hives, it depends on the hive world and the writer. Sabilus (sp?), the hive in the Dark Heresy intro game, specifically states the acolytes are there "right after the Night Cycle"

Yeah, years are separated into 1000 equal units, and the writers write about days because that's our language. I wouldn't want them using 1/1000 years to explain things. We'd all be complaining about how we had to translate that into something our players would understand.

I would think that, just for a standard, they would use a Terran day, being the most important world in the galaxy, home of the Immortal Emperor of Mankind. Otherwise, "days" measurements are a waste; even Mars doesn't have a 24+ hour day, and it's "right next door." The Emperor resides on Earth, as does His Senatorum, so I would imagine time measurements ignore a cavalcade of other places' rotations and revelations, and just follow Earth-standard. Who gives two s**ts how long a day on Scintilla is, or their year? They are Humans of His Imperium, and their days and years are His days and years.

Of course, I can't back that up, but the Imperial calendar does seem to deviate based on distance from Earth, and such, as I vaguely understand it, so if you want standardized measurements of time, you'd have to pick a place, and agree to use it. I'd say Earth makes the best choice there, and the Astronomicon might broadcast a time/date hymn that Navigators or Astropaths can detect, so that you can reset your chronometers upon exiting the Warp.

The way I see it each planet runs internally on whatever calender and shift scedule the local government wants to try to make work, but the Adeptis operates on the 1000 equal increments in a year for the sake of simplifying their records. Meanwhile the Navy at least also operates on twenty-four hour days according to fluff in Battlefleet Koronus. They're really rigid about it because it's important for tracking possible warp effects on the ship and the minds of it's crew in addition to actually coordinateing military action. However since ship time is going to vary between ships unless they've been deliberately re-synched for a particular action the individual ships probably communicate with each other in terms of the standard Adeptis 1000 increment year which they would already be doing anyway in all astropathic communications.

All of this is probably a good explaination why ever damned timepiece we see in the artwork looks like it was designed by Dr Seuss. As for how everyone keeps synced up keep in mind all these ships have telescopes on them for looking at things beyond active augery and that they can just track known stars to find the time by way of the constant rate the universe is expanding.

I think something people get wrong about the Imperium is that they think everyone running it is stupid and totally incompetant, which in my mind isn't true at all. They're mostly just horrribly mismanaged and crippled by a toxic combination nepotism and religious fundimentalism and kept from ever getting back on their feet by a never ending parade of outside threats that force them to double down on their own worst tendencies for the sake of short term survival.

I'm certain that each planet would keep track of its own local time, dependent on some near-constant, probably based on the rotation of the primary-inhabited world in the system.

As far as syncing time across the Imperium, canon has already given us the method used, and that is with astropaths. Keeping track of an ever-expanding universe (if it is ever-expanding; that is still being debated) relies on the Hubble constant, which is only theorized to be constant over the passage of 1 million years (in other words, it isn't constant). That won't be reasonably tested for another 999,969 years, give or take. Of course, the observable sky will have changed considerably by then since some objects are moving away from us at near light speed while we are moving away from them at near light speed, giving us the impression that the universe is expanding at greater than light speed.

And then there's the problem of massive gravity wells bending light far away from us and delaying the time that light needs to reach us. And then there's the problem of trying to measure all of those variables in a location you've just visited for the first time and have no idea how all those variables are affecting your new location.

Astropathic time might be a silly hand-wave, but it works for me.

The problem with astropathic time synching though is that the speed of astro-telepathic communication isn't constant even over short distances, that and the only constant signal is the Emperor himself. I never really imagined that the Astronomicon included him saying "at the the beep the time will be....." since it sort of ruins his mystique.

I didn't say there aren't problems with the notion of astropathic times. Then again, if we get into 40k science we are going to run into lots of things that just don't jive. Still, that's the system the Imperium uses, and I make it work for my universe.

The problem with astropathic time synching though is that the speed of astro-telepathic communication isn't constant even over short distances, that and the only constant signal is the Emperor himself. I never really imagined that the Astronomicon included him saying "at the the beep the time will be....." since it sort of ruins his mystique.

There really isn't a good-sounding, uniform time system, I don't think; another sign of the decaying, dystopian morass that is the Imperium. Other sci-fi methods would have hyperspace relays to boost communication, or subspace bursts, but 40k specifically ties their long-range anything to the warp, the enemy's terrain, and a place where there really aren't rules. You can estimate how much time will pass in Star Wars, Star Trek, or other such sources, as you travel through hyper/sub space, but not so in 40k, where you can arrive centuries after a distress call is sent, or maybe weeks before.

If we go by the planet you are on, your days and years won't match up with my days and years, even in the same planetary system. This is why i think they would use Earth time, as a standard, and "broadcast" the time out across the Astronomicon's range; your ship might come out anywhere, anywhen, and that makes your clocks worthless.

While astrocomm isn't necessarily dependable and consistent, either, I think some poor bastard would have the job of sorting through the thousands of time claims, average them out, and then keep measuring as from there, since time on planets isn't usually wonky, without the planet warp-journeying. It also allows them to update for lag, as it were, every so often.

Please see my earlier fluff about time coming through the astronomican via the navigators.

I think the beacon ties the Imperium together in several ways, like

locationally, temporally, spiritually, psychically, etc.

Reason #17 why everyone kisses the navigator's ring.