Organising the Galactic Map

[alvin853 (OP)]

I'm still a rather new player, but my current game has advanced to the point where I have discovered close to 100 systems, and the Galactic Map is getting out of control. I started out doing a quadratic grid for the systems, but that didn't work out so I went with a hexagonal grid instead. But there are just so many connections, I can't keep the map tidy. So how do the pros organise the galactic map?

[83athom]

Some do it in hierarchical branch tree, like how some games go research trees, and I know I saw a picture of one. Others do a grid based system like you've been doing. I like to do it haphazardly to make it feel like actual star positions, and I don't worry too much about neatness, and it looks somewhat nice.

[linkxsc]

Usually I do it nice and orderly. Sol in the middle, then each system branches out in a line from that, far apart from the others whenevr possible for space constraints...

But then ill explore and end up wrapping back atound somewhere and have some confusi g jump chains... but am already used to the map as it was, and too lazy to rearrange it to something better.

[alvin853 (OP)]

Now I rearranged everything from my hexagonal grid to a tree, still need to get used to it, but it seems much easier to navigate and expand

[Steve Walmsley]

The link before is for an AAR thread. If you ignore the text and just scroll through the various pages, you can see a lot of different map layouts (as there several different races in the AAR).

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=7889.0

[MarcAFK]

That tree is pretty awesome.
Steve, considering that you're running several different galactic maps with basically the same systems, do you get lost using them?
Or perhaps you've attempted to use similar organisation for the same branches when explored by different powers? I imagine it's not that hard to do but looking at the end result it's pretty complicated.

[Steve Walmsley]

That tree is pretty awesome.
Steve, considering that you're running several different galactic maps with basically the same systems, do you get lost using them?
Or perhaps you've attempted to use similar organisation for the same branches when explored by different powers? I imagine it's not that hard to do but looking at the end result it's pretty complicated.

A lot of systems are only known to one or two races, especially in the outer reaches of the different Arms so only the core fifty systems are known to everyone. Also, because they know different systems I end up having to move things around differently for each race for organization purposes so the maps don't even look alike. For example, there are 381 systems in the game now but the race that has seen the most is Japan with 116 (followed by US 110, Russia 108, UK 107, Germany 106, Manchuria 102)

This actually makes it easier because i am familiar with the Japanese map or the Russian map, etc. so I always know by the map alone which race I am looking at.