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unknown sectors and travel distance


paulJam

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Morning,

 

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, I'm trying to nut out some details for my chapter's fluff. Have tried searching the forum to no avail.

 

1)  Does anyone have or know of a comprehensive (preferably visual) chart of sectors?

I've placed my Chapter's stomping ground on the far boarder of Tempestus.

There's interweb material that says sector x or planet y is 'in tempesus south'... but so are a dozen others.

There are also many somewhat conflicting maps often without place names.

1.5) Is it reasonable to name your own sector if you can't find something official?

 

2) Average 'material world' travel distance per day is 6.57 light years. sound reasonable?

given the sources: "1 month to cross a sector" where "sector is cube of 200 ly sides"

pretty simple 200 ly / (365/12) d = 6.57

I read that warp travel adds +/- the further you travel but on average you’d expect that commanders would have a rough formula for planning missions.

Again trying to assess whether my chapter's history is feasible.

 

 

thanks in advance

p

To be super brief, as my break is about over:

 

1. Comprehensive? No. There are localized star maps that include sub-sectors, but they'd barely make a pixel on a galactic map. So all we really have are general indications, or those occasional galactic maps that will point out the most known worlds.

 

1.5. Definitely.

 

2. The Warp is untrustworthy. Typically, it allows for FTL flight. A good Navigator will help those odds. But the Warp is fickle and uncaring. A travel of months can take a millennium or more. You can jump in, and jump back out during a time when Humanity is planting flags on a moon.

 

What the Warp isn't, is definable, trackable. It cannot be pinpointed to a schedule that does not accommodate potential variations in the factor of decades as a matter of course.

1)  Does anyone have or know of a comprehensive (preferably visual) chart of sectors?

I've placed my Chapter's stomping ground on the far boarder of Tempestus.

There's interweb material that says sector x or planet y is 'in tempesus south'... but so are a dozen others.

There are also many somewhat conflicting maps often without place names.

 

I don't believe there is a chart of the sectors in 40k, with most if not all maps provided are of the location of worlds in the galaxy (and the location of worlds in some sectors). The closest thing to what you are looking for that I can can recall was a map showing the comparative locations of the Scarus, Calixis and Ixaniad sectors, but damned if I can find it on the internet atm.

 

Now, saying that, there are plenty of maps (official and fan made) of the galaxy at large, often with the Segmentums clearly defined, so you could refer to those if necessary I suppose. 

 

1.5) Is it reasonable to name your own sector if you can't find something official?

 

Yes. Something suitably Gothic or Latin-ish would work fine.

 

 

2) Average 'material world' travel distance per day is 6.57 light years. sound reasonable?

given the sources: "1 month to cross a sector" where "sector is cube of 200 ly sides"

pretty simple 200 ly / (365/12) d = 6.57

I read that warp travel adds +/- the further you travel but on average you’d expect that commanders would have a rough formula for planning missions.

Again trying to assess whether my chapter's history is feasible.

 

The vagaries of the warp are strange and unpredictable, even on well-worn warp routes that seem stable. Based on what I can remember from FFG's Rogue Trader RPG, a short trip between worlds lasts a matter of days, whereas a jump to the the opposite side of the sector would take weeks. So, to me, six and a half light years a day sounds like it's in the ballpark, at least. 

 

Personally, I would expect known warp routes to have an estimated amount of time of travel based on reported journeys, rather than anything quite so precise as a formula (rough or otherwise). The warp is just a touch too unpredictable for that sort of thing. 

good news re naming.

 

of late i've mainly been referring to...

http://www.scholaprogenium.com/planets.html

http://www.scholaprogenium.com/40kmap.jpg

 

long jags take you backward and forward in time sure, but if you can't say 'there's a fight brewing in the next sector, let's jam.' and expect on average to be there in two months then why would anyone bother ?

 

part of the fun i guess. perhaps a feature of my chapter will be that they get extremely lucky with their warp travel guestimates :)

 

thanks guys, this moves things forward for me quite a bit.

Just a quick thought on the scale of Sectors (and the Imperium as a whole, I guess):

 

The galaxy is big. Really, really big. There are supposed to be around 1 million Imperial planets, sounds like a lot, yeah? Except when you compare this with what we estimate is the number of stars in this galaxy (100-400 billion). That means for each Imperial world, there are on average hundreds of thousands of star systems, all potentially with planets that the Imperium doesn't rule or doesn't even know about.

 

Plus, because the galaxy is so big, the number of Imperial worlds (and probably Sectors and Subsectors) is constantly changing as new ones are found and old ones are lost all the time, far more quickly than Imperial bureaucracy can keep up with. The 1 million worlds is a fairly loose guess at best.

 

Not to mention that all this is spread over the course of 10,000 years. Think about how many different civilisations we've seen in less than that time here on Earth.

 

Hence, as a DIYer you can create pretty much whatever Sectors/worlds you want.

 

 

 

Edit: on the warp travel thing, I guess it's predictable to an extent. Thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of ships cross the void via the warp on a daily basis. The majority get where they want to be when they expected to get there. But there are no guarantees. It's not at all likely, but you could get lost in the warp jumping from one system to the next, or equally could go from one side of the galaxy to the other with no problems at all.

long jags take you backward and forward in time sure, but if you can't say 'there's a fight brewing in the next sector, let's jam.' and expect on average to be there in two months then why would anyone bother ?

 

That's the thing, see. Sometimes the Imperium will just throw enough stuff at the wall and hope some of it will stick, other times they will send whatever can be spared. Either way, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will get there in time. They might arrive on schedule and help the war or, in extreme circumstances, arrive centuries too late because the ship was tangled in a warp eddy or something (with the crew and passengers not realising they are late, to boot). On the flipside, they might arrive years or decades too early and find that their mission is no longer viable. 

 

But the Imperium tries. Because it has no other option. Thousands of vessels are lost every year across the Imperium, for one reason or another, but what with it being monolithic and apparently uncaring it will replace the losses as best as possible and carry on.

Calculated jumps are considered safer but they can only be done up to about five light years. Anything longer needs to be piloted by a navigator with the help of the Astronomican. But either way it is still very unpredictable and dangerous.

 

This might help: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Warp_travel

the thing that was messing me up was the scale.

 

i finally got around to throwing the numbers into sketchup and probably the easiest metaphor that came to mind was putting a 5c piece (dime, 5p, your currency here) on a tennis court.

 

i have read many of the ideas mentioned here previously but when i'm trying to work out a chapter timeline with feasible timespans it helps to have something a tiny bit impirical, if possibly.

 

thanks again for the input everyone, it is appreciated

It’s hard to pin down timescale when it comes to warp-travel. It’s could be described as similar to sailing in the early days, fair-winds and strong currents and you be at your destination within a few days. However, bad-weather could blow you off course, leave you stranded for weeks or destroy you. Even with a navigator to guide you, you’re still at the mercy of the unpredictable currents of the warp. pirate.gif

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