Creation of X-Boat Routs

[Space Hamster]

Are there any guidelines on creating X-Boat routs? I am basing a campaign in the protectorate and http://www.travellermap.com/ does not have X-Boat routs for form some of the sectors.

 

[Hyphen]

Lib data says "Selected locations along major trade routes are established as sites for express boat stations...", and I have a vague memory that even if they do not link directly to a Class-A 'porr, they pass within 4 parsecs of them.

Work out the trade routes, Class-A's, and (my suggestion) the Hi-Pop worlds, and have a crack at it. No-one's gonna tell you you're wrong - just look at the weird Marches routes (incl the j-5 from Tenalphi!). You can even throw in some odd ones and, when questioned, nod sagaciously and say "Politics..."

 

[Enoki]

Another suggestion here is that there are competing messenger services. Think of it like today's UPS versus DHL versus FedEx versus the Postal Service.

So, your X-boat routes might vary from others simply due to you having chosen to show those of one carrier versus another.......

 

[MCEvans]

That is how they were made in the first place. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

 

[Space Hamster]

I like the class of starport and population. I assume that they should be linking the clusters together. I am under the impression that J4 is supposed to be the max distance.

I wanted to make something that would be acceptable because I was thinking of submitting them to the Traveller Map site. I can import from there right into Campaign Cartographer for making my sector maps.

 

[inexorabletash]

Are there any guidelines on creating X-Boat routs? I am basing a campaign in the protectorate and http://www.travellermap.com/ does not have X-Boat routs for form some of the sectors.

When you've created some, feel free to share and I can add them to the TravellerMap site. I believe I have all routes from published sources, but they don't cover all of the Imperium, let alone non-Imperial space.

When I made up routes for Verge my rough algorithm was to take all the Class A starports, whittle the list down so they were roughly 4 parsecs apart, add some Class B starports into the mix as necessary so that most worlds were only 2 parsecs away from an X-Boat stop, then connect them so that each stop served 2 or 3 lines unless near the border.

Completely arbitrary, but then the consensus is that the published/official X-Boat routes don't really make much sense either. And communication routes outside the Imperium would differ wildly. IMHO, they're mostly on the map to look pretty and inspire the occasional adventure.

 

[inexorabletash]

I should note that an automatic X-Boat route generator is on my TODO list, now that I have decent border generation mostly "solved" - e.g. try http://travellermap.com/borders/regen.htm?sector=Verge

Given a set of target worlds it's probably a matter of computing the Delaunay triangulation, adding worlds if any spans are too long and iterating, then picking a source node and walking outwards from it with limited branching from each reached node to form a graph that looks more like a "tree" than a "web"

 

[Space Hamster]

When you've created some, feel free to share and I can add them to the TravellerMap site. I believe I have all routes from published sources, but they don't cover all of the Imperium, let alone non-Imperial space.

When I made up routes for Verge my rough algorithm was to take all the Class A starports, whittle the list down so they were roughly 4 parsecs apart, add some Class B starports into the mix as necessary so that most worlds were only 2 parsecs away from an X-Boat stop, then connect them so that each stop served 2 or 3 lines unless near the border.

Completely arbitrary, but then the consensus is that the published/official X-Boat routes don't really make much sense either. And communication routes outside the Imperium would differ wildly. IMHO, they're mostly on the map to look pretty and inspire the occasional adventure.

Thank you, I will.

My campaign will reside pretty much within the Empty Quarter. From time to time a mission will send them coreward.

 

[Space Hamster]

Edit: I have taken down the maps so the links are no good any more. I have removed them.


I have added X-Boat routs to the sectors Mendan, Amdukan, Ingukrax, and Star’s End. I have made some changes to the X-Boat routs that cross over the coreward and trailing boarders of Empty Quarter.

I am attaching those sectors and Antares maps to get some feedback. I don’t want to change Antares and Empty Quarter as they were done by somebody else and have been in place for some time. I would like feedback for the sectors I have done.

I hope to send them to Inexorbletash to be included in his Traveller Map site. This is why I would like the feedback.