Sure there is no Milky Way Map?

[SacremPyrobolum]

I heard that all maps were randomly generated based on the player's preference, but during the Angry Joe video I noticed that the human race they were playing as started in the Sol system with all our planets and arrows pointing to Alpha Centari and Bernard's Star.

Does the game generate the starting system and those immediately surrounding it based off of predefined variables so that humans always start in Sol surrounded by Bernard's and Alpha or is this just a special developer's map?

I hope they will release a specialized Milky Way map. Random generation is nice but it loses out to hand-crafted maps every time.

 

[jaredstanko]

you have the option of starting in sol, it gives you a scripted neighborhood, but i dont believe they have a realistic representation of enough of our space to make a map. would be fun if they did though

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

I would start making a map by putting in all the cosmic bodies we know about already and then generating the rest along scientifically accurate lines (I'm not sure whether a suns proximity to the galaxy's core influences them, but if it does it should be taken into account).

I would then hand-place things like ring worlds, anomalies, fallen empires, and species starting positions (pure humans start in Sol, demi-humans start near Sol on planets hospitable to them, fungi start on planets that could support them ect).

Its a big effort, but I feel that if they ever do release an official Milky Way map it should be DLC sized in scope and be the gold standard for which other maps of this nature are judged.

 

[vipic]

I would start making a map by putting in all the cosmic bodies we know about already and then generating the rest along scientifically accurate lines (I'm not sure whether a suns proximity to the galaxy's core influences them, but if it does it should be taken into account).

I would then hand-place things like ring worlds, anomalies, fallen empires, and species starting positions (pure humans start in Sol, demi-humans start near Sol on planets hospitable to them, fungi start on planets that could support them ect).

Its a big effort, but I feel that if they ever do release an official Milky Way map it should be DLC sized in scope and be the gold standard for which other maps of this nature are judged.

You do realize we don't have a full map of the milky way right? At best your going to get whats around us in our arm of the galaxy and chunks of the next arm over.

You'll have a very small portion of the whole thing, the rest would still have to be randomly generated.

Edit: From the scale were talking about in our games, it would be like being able to have a scripted area the size of blorg space.

Keep in mind stars are nowhere near as concentrated in the game map for a galaxy as they are in real life. We can generate a 1000 star galaxy in game, there are 100 billion stars in the milky way. The problem becomes scale, on that scale all we know would constitute approximately sol.

 

[jaredstanko]

You do realize we don't have a full map of the milky way right? At best your going to get whats around us in our arm of the galaxy and chunks of the next arm over.

You'll have a very small portion of the whole thing, the rest would still have to be randomly generated.

i could live with a thousand star quadrant of our space to the best of our knowledge.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

You do realize we don't have a full map of the milky way right? At best your going to get whats around us in our arm of the galaxy and chunks of the next arm over.

You'll have a very small portion of the whole thing, the rest would still have to be randomly generated.

Edit: From the scale were talking about in our games, it would be like being able to have a scripted area the size of blorg space.

Keep in mind stars are nowhere near as concentrated in the game map for a galaxy as they are in real life. We can generate a 1000 star galaxy in game, there are 100 billion stars in the milky way. The problem becomes scale, on that scale all we know would constitute approximately sol.

I've seen maps that, while not having the the billions of stars in our galaxy, have a great number of them, enough to make it look legit. It was a map for Worlds Stars.

 

[mrinku]

Elite Dangerous is as good an attempt to produce a map of the galaxy as you're likely to see anytime soon. If you've played it, you'll have a good idea as to why a realistic map of even the local neighbourhood isn't going to be very practical in Stellaris. For a start it would need to be a cube or sphere, and Stellaris maps are 2D. If you flatten it out, it stops being remotely similar to reality.

 

[vipic]

I've seen maps that, while not having the the billions of stars in our galaxy, have a great number of them, enough to make it look legit. It was a map for Distant Stars.

Here take a look at this http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/

At first glance it would seem like your looking at a whole galaxy of stars, but now zoom out. You will see that the section of space we actually know the stars of is a VERY VERY VERY small fraction of the milky way, the rest is just random filler to make it look interesting.

Someone can make a map of our very very small region, but nowhere near a whole galaxy.

Part of the problem is you have radiation clouds, nebula's, bright stars and other things that block your view.

I mean they dont even know how many stars are in the milky way, some put it at around 100 billion some up to as much as 400 billion.

 

[Druesling]

How many stars do we see from earth? 7000? 8000? And the biggest generated map has 1000 stars? Seems like a fools errand to build known space in stellaris. No computer will run it.

For the prescripted sol-neighborhood: I hope the game puts that in an outer spiral arm at least, like it's in reality.

DISCLAIMER: If I made mistakes, I'm sorry, I am not an astrologer.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3656168
Here is the mod I was referring to. The second post gives and explanation of how he created the map and the third pot shows the map. As you can see, it isn't super realistic considering it is a 2d plane but it does an adequate job of giving the feeling of authenticity.

 

[vipic]

Elite Dangerous is as good an attempt to produce a map of the galaxy as you're likely to see anytime soon. If you've played it, you'll have a good idea as to why a realistic map of even the local neighbourhood isn't going to be very practical in Stellaris. For a start it would need to be a cube or sphere, and Stellaris maps are 2D. If you flatten it out, it stops being remotely similar to reality.

The map in elite dangerous was randomly generated. They only included most of the stars around us, than built the rest just assuming what things would be like based on interpreted data.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3656168
Here is the mod I was referring to. The second post gives and explanation of how he created the map and the third pot shows the map. As you can see, it isn't super realistic considering it is a 2d plane but it does an adequate job of giving the feeling of authenticity.

Ya in looking at what he did he says he made up most of the stars, and just made sure the ones around us were accurate in scale.

Edit: Once again take a look at my link above, you can see any attempt to make the whole galaxy is going to be 99% making things up if you want it even close to being a realistic scale. The section of space we actually know about is a VERY small part of the milky way, not even 1%.

 

[mrinku]

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3656168
Here is the mod I was referring to. The second post gives and explanation of how he created the map and the third pot shows the map. As you can see, it isn't super realistic considering it is a 2d plane but it does an adequate job of giving the feeling of authenticity.

Yeah, that guy's approach will work for the purpose of getting a "local flavour" map, as will simply using a list of bright star names (regardless of actual distance or their relations to each other.

You could also get out your old copy of Traveller and adapt the Solomani Rim sector.

 

[mrinku]

The map in elite dangerous was randomly generated. They only included most of the stars around us, than built the rest just assuming what things would be like based on interpreted data.

Actually, they manually placed *every* star we have hard data on, around 75,000 objects, and filled the gaps in with procedural generation. The star catalog is far smaller than most people realise.

Edit: I originally said 12,000 objects but when I checked it was 75,000

 

[vipic]

Actually, they manually placed *every* star we have hard data on, around 12,000 objects, and filled the gaps in with procedural generation. The star catalog is far smaller than most people realise.

Ya my post sounded demeaning, I didn't mean it to. They did a crap-ton of work to make that section of space as accurate as they could. But most of the stars were just random generations.

My point is more since we don't even know one percent of the galaxy and your trying to make a map on a 2d plane. Just making the sol system than randomly generating everything else IS about as close as you are going to get to a realistic map in stellaris which still maintains scale.

 

[mrinku]

Well, I agree there. But there's nothing wrong with doing a "galaxy" that's meant to be a much smaller scale, as some people are talking about here.

For the record, the estimated stellar density for the neighbourhood is 0.004 stars per cubic light year; on average you'd fit 1000 stars into a cube that was a mere 63 light years per side.

 

[Brian Bóroimhe]

I mean they dont even know how many stars are in the milky way, some put it at around 100 billion some up to as much as 400 billion.

A number my astrophysics lecturers always mentioned was 700 billion. I think it's been slowly creeping up over the years. I don't have a primary source handy to link for that though.

DISCLAIMER: If I made mistakes, I'm sorry, I am not an astrologer.

That's OK, being an astrologer wouldn't help at all.

 

[mrinku]

For the unenlightened, it has to be an estimate since we can only directly observe a very small portion of the galaxy. Highly unlikely the estimate will ever be much better than "hundreds of billions of stars".

 

[Brian Bóroimhe]

For the unenlightened, it has to be an estimate since we can only directly observe a very small portion of the galaxy. Highly unlikely the estimate will ever be much better than "hundreds of billions of stars".

Of course it has to be an estimate, anything short of counting each and every single individual star is by necessity an estimate.
There is however, a difference between a guess and an estimate, and estimates can become increasingly more accurate as the estimates for the data they're based on become more accurate. Most of astrophysics is based on (often quite rough) estimates after all.

That said, "Hundreds of billions of stars" as you say really about as certain as it gets.

 

[vipic]

For the unenlightened, it has to be an estimate since we can only directly observe a very small portion of the galaxy. Highly unlikely the estimate will ever be much better than "hundreds of billions of stars".

The awesomely mind boggling part is that our galaxy is relatively small, its like 100,000 light years across. We have seen a galaxy (IC 1101) that is 6 million light years across (Its also a little over a billion light years away). By estimates it would have Trillions of stars in it.

Edit: Hey I was just thinking about this, almost all galaxies have a super massive black hole at the center, does the Stellaris galaxy have a super massive blackhole at the center? Can you go there for cool stuff? Like, you can go back in time than push books off a shelf to tell your former self not to attack the lizard aliens cause they will enslave you.

 

[Brian Bóroimhe]

The awesomely mind boggling part is that our galaxy is relatively small, its like 100,000 light years across. We have seen a galaxy (IC 1101) that is 6 million light years across (Its also a little over a billion light years away). By estimates it would have Trillions of stars in it.

Edit: Hey I was just thinking about this, almost all galaxies have a super massive black hole at the center, does the Stellaris galaxy have a super massive blackhole at the center? Can you go there for cool stuff? Like, you can go back in time than push books off a shelf to tell your former self not to attack the lizard aliens cause they will enslave you.

That's some fuckin monster of a galaxy all right!

I think the galactic core is inaccessible for now. From screens and footage it doesn't look like there are systems there that you can select for traveling to.