 September 12, 2009 - 12:40pm | Woot just pointed me to a link with free online graph paper Ok nothing to exciting right? Well this link has polar graph paper with concentric circles and radial line faning out from the center. The cool part is you specify the number of concentric circle and radial lines even the color of the lines on the paper. There's even a button to click for it to add degrees to the graph. So What is really cool is its perfect for graphing a star system- put the star in the center and designate the concentric circles as AU and just plot the planetary orbits. You have a small system with the furthest orbit is only 4.33AU then plug in 5 for the number of concentric circles and chart the system or you have a system with stuff going out to 11 AU- set the graph paper to accomodate it then download the 1 page PDF and print. Now here's where this can get even cooler a little math will tell you how many degrees a planet in an orbit will move each game month right? so print the graph paper, mark the orbits and name the system then mount it on a piece of cork board. Next get those clothing pins with the little ball heads and stick them in each orbit you'll be able to quickly up date the system display each game month. Then if you make a ruler to match the distance between each concentric circle (essentially an AU ruler) you can put a pin to represent the PCs ship and then measure with your "AU" ruler to tell the PC's how far to their destination. Some more math and you can convert AU to km or do the math on the PC's ships drives and figure the number of days to cross one AU and compute their journey in days. even a chance a careless PC will travel to where a planet is instead of where it will be! http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/circularpolar.html I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 12, 2009 - 12:52pm | Second thoughts - load the PDF sheet into a thumb drive and run it to the office stapler store and get it blown up and printed as a poster size draw in your star system and orbits (pre mark the orbits for the monthly turns according to their degrees of the arch) laminate and you have a board for system war where Earth is one faction, the Mars colony is another, Jupitor's lunar colonies represent another and the asteroid mining consortium is a fourth. Orbital mechanics are a major component of the game. Planets are small styrofoam balls painted and mounted on a base. players move fleet counters and combat is fairly abstracted. Resource managment would be important too. or run it as a unified Sol system and the sathar or some other bug eyed monster is invading. can you manage assets to preserve the system infrastructure from the maurding alien menace. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 12, 2009 - 3:25pm | nice thinking outside the box. Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
 September 12, 2009 - 3:52pm | Second thoughts - load the PDF sheet into a thumb drive and run it to the office stapler store and get it blown up and printed as a poster size draw in your star system and orbits (pre mark the orbits for the monthly turns according to their degrees of the arch) laminate and you have a board for system war where Earth is one faction, the Mars colony is another, Jupitor's lunar colonies represent another and the asteroid mining consortium is a fourth. Orbital mechanics are a major component of the game. Planets are small styrofoam balls painted and mounted on a base. players move fleet counters and combat is fairly abstracted. Resource managment would be important too. or run it as a unified Sol system and the sathar or some other bug eyed monster is invading. can you manage assets to preserve the system infrastructure from the maurding alien menace. Wal-Mart used to sell a set of Solar System planets, which were supposed to have glowed in the dark. They'd be perfect for mounting on the graph, if you wanted to tape it to the ceiling.... Okay, maybe that wouldn't have any value from a gaming standpoint, but in terms of coolness..... "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
September 12, 2009 - 7:19pm | The only problem, I can see with gaming on this is you'd almost need a hex grid super imposed which that free site doesn't do. But if I understand the vector rules from the fan zine then I think you could use vector rules on a system display like this though the issue of scale comes into play- may have to represent full thrust for one day or something longer to get proper sense of movement that would work at with the vector rules. But again without hexes you'd have to allow for a ton of fudge factor. but if its for just handling rpg considerations and not a real full up knight hawk battle then so what, it works well enough. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 17, 2009 - 12:29am | http://zho.berka.com/goodies/hex/ That's a neat one if you want to generate a coinciding hex map for the KH boardgame, I've used it in the past. |
 September 17, 2009 - 8:22am | Sweet link SS! I'm working on some new Star System Record Sheets and will upload here Random Planet-System Generator Is there anything specific you want to see? Re-arrangements? Other? Screen shots (one has planetary data, the other does not. I have a separate planetary sheet as well.)   |
