In the Strategic Decisions for Campaign Play thread we've been talking about plotting star systems as a level of war above the tactical level that we simulate in Armada (and X-Wing and Imperial Assault), but not quite the strategic (SW: Rebellion) or operational level either.

Stefan posted an interesting idea with just a simple map, and Vogons has been thinking about how to expand on that. Tirion is suggesting just using Twilight Imperium maps.

I think an online system generator would be awesome - one that plots out a system: what stars, planets, stations, asteroids, comets, etc. are in the system; where they are, based on respective orbits; and then what the distances between them are.

Some system names are known (from Wookieepedia), including rudimentary data in terms of what the planets and moons are, though this is obviously very incomplete data. However, that's all stuff that could be put in a database, and then have a random engine fill in the missing details.

Such a random engine should operate off of some astrophysical baseline rules: at what distance from the star are you more/less likely to have planets of different types? The pattern in our solar system is that the gas giants are at a certain distance from the sun (~780 million km - 4.5 billion km), with the smaller planets (Pluto notwithstanding) much closer. I'm sure there's reasons for this based in astrophysics, but I don't know what those reasons are.

So, I'm polling the hive mind of nerddom - do you know what some of those baseline rules would be, and what sorts of variables should be kept in mind? I don't think it has to be astrophysically perfect (this is a space fantasy setting, afterall), but just enough to suspend our disbelief.

Random One for Star Wars RPGS

Give you Orbits, Planet Type, Asteroid Fields, etc:

http://e2ogame.net/homepages/antti/starwars/sysgen.html




A MUCH more Complicated (and Detailed) one based on semi-real-universe. Outputs to HTML.

http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/NerdCorner/StarGen/StarGen.html

And another Random one:
https://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/system/

Of those, the complicated/detailed one in the middle *MAY* let you feed in Data manually from other sources...

I actually created a Star System generator for a Star Trek RPG I was running ages ago. Runs on Excel, uses actual orbital mechanics to determine years, planet types etc. I will edit this post with a link to the download, if I can find it...

clon this needs to happen here.... And we can be the ones to do it!

There are rules for generating Battlefleet Gothic systems in the BFG book (you can find the PDF free online). When/if I create an Armada campaign, that's going to be my go-to resource for stealing ideas inspiration. There's also some kind of fan-made Mighty Empires campaign system updated for 40K/BFG use named Planetary Empires that you can find floating around the interwebs as well.

Ignore above, sharing link in new post:

My Star System Generator

It is ropey at best in terms of user interface. In fact, that's being generous, because there is no user interface.

If you got to the "Planets" tab, you'll see a list of randomly-generated planets for different stars. Each planet has orbital and physical characteristics, as well as a type, an atmosphere, and a class - based on the Star Trek classes ("M" being Earth-like). Masses, chords and eccentricity are randomly generated, and all other characteristics are derived from those particular random variables (with some randomness of their own in some cases).

The "Stars" tab has something similar - but for stars. Luminosity is randomly determined, then other characteristics based off of that.

To use the sheet, do the following:

1. On the "Stars" tab, copy-paste the orange line into the lines below. Each time you do so, it should end up with a new designation and new characteristics.

2. Pick a star that you like, and enter it's designation into Column A on the "Planets" tab - this will give you a planet for that system.

3. Enter designations on new lines as many times as you want - each one will give you a new planet for your star system.

4. The planetary orbits are weighted - I believe I set it so that it would populate the outer reaches of a star system first, then successive planets would be more likely to end up closer to the star. More-or-less. I did this **** thing a year or two ago. Blow me.

Hopefully that makes sense to some clever clogs out there. Feel free to hit me with any questions you may have.

Those are all right, but I was looking for something that can create a look down map of the star system. We only need to use it for a battlefield. The option I can see is to use one of these and a compass to plot one of these systems on paper.

I think the problem with that is the sense of Scale. IN the fact that, if you're modelling a whole planetary orbit in a large zone, there is, to excuse the pun, a hell of a lot of space.

Which is why most trunticate to the single line in a row system. Simply for ease.

You could always drop some cash and try some screenshots from: http://universesandbox.com/

That would be awesome.

But expensive.

But Awesome

How did I miss that on Steam. Now I feel dumb.

All right, it's on my wishlist. I'm not going to spend $25 on it right now unless there's nothing else.

This is a great idea for a long, store driven campaign. I can see this complete with colored maps and coded, contested systems. Yeah. I dig this.

I think you really need to step it up from a single system, to a cluster of systems. Then, frankly, we can just leave all the stuff about orbits, and gas giants and stars and whatnot aside because in terms of the game, it doesn't really matter. I'm a huge fan of Return of the Jedi, but I couldn't tell you the name of the star that Endor orbits, or how many planets are between Endor and that star, or how many other planets are in that system.

I'll be totally honest, when they say "The forest moon of Endor" I'm still not 100% sure if they mean "The planet Endor has a forested moon, and on that moon is a shield generator" or they mean "This moon is forested, and it is named Endor."

And at the end of the day, none of that matters. What matters is that the Death Star II was there and the Rebels had to attack it.

For a campaign, I would be using an abstracted map that represented a cluster of star systems, where only the key elements in each system would be expressed on the map itself. Gas refineries, mines, political centres, trade centres, hyperspace routes and hubs, factories, barracks, shipyards, etc. Rather than fill a map with interesting but essentially pointless information about star systems, just represent the key information.

It wouldn't have to be all boring either. You could have a nice pictorial representation of the planet in question (like Bespin for example) and it could be described (either on the map or on accompanying documents) as a vital Tibanna gas production facility.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

I think you really need to step it up from a single system, to a cluster of systems. Then, frankly, we can just leave all the stuff about orbits, and gas giants and stars and whatnot aside because in terms of the game, it doesn't really matter. I'm a huge fan of Return of the Jedi, but I couldn't tell you the name of the star that Endor orbits, or how many planets are between Endor and that star, or how many other planets are in that system.

In terms of 'the game', none of it matters, if the game is about our starships.

I think it matters how simulationist your community of players wants to get. Being extremely simulationist doesn't really fit with Star Wars as presented in the movies, because the movies are about individual hero-focused action. It's meant to hit you in your feels more than in your noggin'.

But, some of us want to do the simulationist thing anyway. I've also been mostly thinking about the interstellar level - as you're suggesting - but I think that Stefan and Vogons had an interesting point that you could simulate the system level as well. So, since they're game for thinking about it, I'm game too.

We had another thread titled "strategic discussions in armada," or something like that. A lot of what your talking about was discussed there, but if we can develop rules for a single system it will then be easier to expand it to a star cluster.

This thread was about finding a star system map generator. I'd suggest you go read the other thread, I know I still check it when I'm on and would love to keep the discussion going there.