Lets say your group of players has a destination set by the mission they are on. Thing is, they can pick any number of routes and interact with a wide variety of systems in between.

Would you make your players decide their route first, perhaps at the end of a session, so you can at least familiarize yourself with the worlds they may visit,

or do you just try to wing it, perhaps having Wookieepedia open and do the best you can to improvise should they choose to stop and enjoy the locals along the way?

Welcome grumpygamer!

I like to wing it. Planning every possible stop they make could be frustrating as hell (give them a choice between Option A or B and they'll pick Option Z every time).

It's sometimes nice to have some generic "anywhere" encounters planned, however. Pirate attacks, distress signals, colourful locals who just happen to be from whatever world they've chosen to visit...

Lets say your group of players has a destination set by the mission they are on. Thing is, they can pick any number of routes and interact with a wide variety of systems in between.

Would you make your players decide their route first, perhaps at the end of a session, so you can at least familiarize yourself with the worlds they may visit,

or do you just try to wing it, perhaps having Wookieepedia open and do the best you can to improvise should they choose to stop and enjoy the locals along the way?

I like to have the Players decide on the route first. That way if the flight ends up with threat/failures/off course... they can be interpreted based on that path. It has so far served my groups pretty well.

Lets say your group of players has a destination set by the mission they are on. Thing is, they can pick any number of routes and interact with a wide variety of systems in between.

Would you make your players decide their route first, perhaps at the end of a session, so you can at least familiarize yourself with the worlds they may visit,

or do you just try to wing it, perhaps having Wookieepedia open and do the best you can to improvise should they choose to stop and enjoy the locals along the way?

I like to have pregen modular encounters ready to go for when PCs go off the rails. You keep them general and not planet specific, so you have an encounter for a desert world, not Tatooine or Jakku. You have the generic 'trouble in the cantina' encounter, or the 'pirates in orbit', or 'negotiate for parts' encounters ready.

You also pregen some throw down NPC personalities and just seed them where you need to as the PCs make decisions.

This way the game can be sand boxey but you're ready to respond to that.

My players tell the destination, I call the route the nav-computer puts out.

My players make the check, I call what happens by triumph or despair.

Then I tell what time they need, if needed they can chooses where they stop by to refuel (except on Despair then I call where they will end up... like right in front of an Interdictor... ) other whise they´ll take the shortest rout possible for them (of course if they call to avoid the main Hyperspacelanes than they will avoid them ^^)

I could be prepared for both situations, but I would convey to the players that winging it would have some consequences. There's a good reason there are established hyperroutes!

Another tactic I might use is to screen-wipe the travel time unless I felt it added to the story.

Depends on the purpose of the trip.

If the purpose is to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, then I might throw an encounter or two in there along the way — maybe they run into pirates or an Imperial Interdictor Star Destroyer, but probably not much else. Screen wipe the rest of the trip, as they do in the movies.

If the purpose is to explore the region and see what kinds of cargoes might be available to haul around and try to make some money, then we’ll have to go into a great deal more depth about the specifics of the route.

I prefer to take a formulaic approach.

I figure 1500 Pc per grid in Atlas. And 1 grid at x1 on a route is 1 day.

non-route major worlds, about 300-500 Pc/day.

non-route minor worlds, about 50-150 Pc/day

Trivial worlds, about 10-20 Pc/day

Unknown, as low as 1 Pc/day.

I'm redrawing the atlas map to be more useful for me this way. (overlapping the various detail maps to get the minor worlds on the main map...)... I figure it'll print at about 8 sheets...

That's brings up a good question. With so many maps out there, do you guys use the one in the rulebooks as your "official" map of the galaxy or, as mentioned above, do you use something else?

I use the rulebook version as my basic map but modify an electronic copy pretty regularly, adding minor worlds I come up with or perhaps a logical hyperspace route here and there when the need arises. Ive looked around at others but its gets kind of confusing when identical sectors look very very different from one copy to the next. Ive even noticed entries in the Wookieepedia that don't correlate at all with the FFG map. I guess you have to make a decision at some point or do like aramis and start drawing our own.

That's brings up a good question. With so many maps out there, do you guys use the one in the rulebooks as your "official" map of the galaxy or, as mentioned above, do you use something else?

I use the rulebook version as my basic map but modify an electronic copy pretty regularly, adding minor worlds I come up with or perhaps a logical hyperspace route here and there when the need arises. Ive looked around at others but its gets kind of confusing when identical sectors look very very different from one copy to the next. Ive even noticed entries in the Wookieepedia that don't correlate at all with the FFG map. I guess you have to make a decision at some point or do like aramis and start drawing our own.

There are a lot of good ones out there, but I'm partial to this one:

https://wrvh.home.xs4all.nl/galaxymap/

I like it because it includes locations from multiple sources (including the original Marvel comic series) and can be edited in Adobe Illustrator to include more, including custom locations. I've got a few small additions to make, then I plan to have it printed at poster size and laminated (a smallish poster print job at Office Max is $17.99). To handle additions as we go along: clear return address labels, then if/when I feel enough has been added to make it necessary, update and reprint.