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Why 20 years later?

I'm just curious why the decision to advance the timeline to 2320? I can see the advantage of starting a new edition post-Kafer War...but why that much later? Surely the war didn't continue for seventeen more years....
 
I think it's to give enough time for the dust to settle and for a bit of expansion to occur. There are a variety of threats and interesting things going on in 2320 - some old, some new.
 
There were a couple of reasons. The first was as Malenfant says, to give time for things to settle out and a new situation to emerge. I wanted some room to add my own ideas, too, rather than just rewrite 2300 for D20.

The focus of the setting on the Kafer War was too limiting. Though the war and its aftermath are still major factors in the new setting, other venues can be opened up now, where they wouldn't have been appriopriate for a setting where Humanity was fighting for survival. Exploration, colonization, troubleshooting, all pale in comparison to survival. In 2320, if you want to fight Kafers, you can, but it's not an imperative for the survival of the species. Time needed to elapse since the end of the Kafer War, and the War itself was a lengthy one, given the logistics involved.

Colin
2320AD writer and line editor
 
Originally posted by Colin:
There were a couple of reasons. The first was as Malenfant says, to give time for things to settle out and a new situation to emerge. I wanted some room to add my own ideas, too, rather than just rewrite 2300 for D20.

The focus of the setting on the Kafer War was too limiting. Though the war and its aftermath are still major factors in the new setting, other venues can be opened up now, where they wouldn't have been appriopriate for a setting where Humanity was fighting for survival. Exploration, colonization, troubleshooting, all pale in comparison to survival. In 2320, if you want to fight Kafers, you can, but it's not an imperative for the survival of the species. Time needed to elapse since the end of the Kafer War, and the War itself was a lengthy one, given the logistics involved.

Colin
2320AD writer and line editor
Ok, I can see that. Still a bit later than I'd personally prefer, but probably better from a design viewpoint.

Since you mention exploration, have the Arms been opened up further? The ferry method used in the American Arm exported to the others? Assuming the map and the 7.7ly limits are the same, of course.
 
Hi there,

I'm curious about the star map as well (one of the coolest things about 2300 AD). Has it been updated with all the new star systems discovered since the release of 2300 AD?

Cheers!
 
Originally posted by Mark A. Siefert:
That... and since it's a D20 product it's a nice play on words.
*Thud*
*Thwap*
*Bonk*

That is the sound of a cluebat hitting my incredibly dense skull. I'm ashamed to say, I never put the two together. Oy.
 
That's OK, I didn't either. ;)

The play on words is entirely coincidental and unintentional I think... I've not seen Colin say "we're doing it 20 years in the future so we can tie the name in with d20" anyway.
 
Originally posted by Malenfant:
That's OK, I didn't either. ;)

The play on words is entirely coincidental and unintentional I think... I've not seen Colin say "we're doing it 20 years in the future so we can tie the name in with d20" anyway.
Um... I have no comment.
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Colin
2320AD Writer and Line Editor
 
Originally posted by Wolfhead:
Hi there,

I'm curious about the star map as well (one of the coolest things about 2300 AD). Has it been updated with all the new star systems discovered since the release of 2300 AD?

Cheers!
There's an ongoing debate about that, but likely not. At best, it'll be updated to Gliese 3. Going to the full Hipparcos set causes too many problems, and I don't have the time to work it out. Some colonies would disappear, stutterwarp assumptions would have to change, and there are other problems that go beyond the scope of this project to deal with.

Colin Dunn
2320AD Writer and Line Editor
 
The full Hipparcos set wouldn't be complete either. A decent number of red and brown dwarves within the 2300AD Sphere are missing from Hipparcos simply because they are too dim. (I know I've added quite a few, anyway)

The NASA NSL might be better, but new stars turn up all the time within 15pc. Just a few weeks ago, I think another two were identified. It is not really a solvable problem given the FTL assumptions of 2300AD to both have stutterwarp of the canon kind _and_ the real life star list which constantly gets expanded.

(I'd personally change the stutterwarp specifics and keep a Real Life star list capable of updating, as I thought the concept of a Real Life Star List was cooler than the Arms, but I fully realize that'd not be a majority choice and it would take such a serious rewriting of the setting it would be rather different)
 
Originally posted by Colin:
There's an ongoing debate about that, but likely not. At best, it'll be updated to Gliese 3. Going to the full Hipparcos set causes too many problems, and I don't have the time to work it out. Some colonies would disappear, stutterwarp assumptions would have to change, and there are other problems that go beyond the scope of this project to deal with.
Even Gliese 3 has problems. As another poster pointed out, some of the colonies are at stars that Gliese 2 got in the wrong position.

I have a Gliese 3 NSL here:

http://www.robmyers.org/jiex/2301/avril/gliese3_nsl.html

The article also has information on name precedence and which colony systems move off the map under Gliese 3.
 
rob: Thanks for the data. Colin had pointed your data out to me and I had generated some starmaps and routes from it to compare against other stellar datasets.

I posted the comparison maps here in another thread.

My conclusion is that the differences in stellar datasets is so dramatic, that it would completely invalidate all previous canon. One of the biggest issues is that the stellar route bottlenecks present in the original NSL are not present in the newer datasets, meaning that the entire strategy of the Kafer War would not have made sense since the Kafers would have had many more routes to infiltrate Human space instead of being forced to fight their way system by system through the original Arms.

- Ted
 
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