Maliri Rendezvous location - horizontal

Oh shit. Look at the map, Karron is near a protrusion into Kintark space. Just think about that as a land map with a piece of territory ripe for a pincer attack. Assuming it's not a slip of the mouse/pen that gives it that shape.

Smart wombat

If TFed can manage to disable and not destroy one of the newly shielded Kintark ships then the rearming with improved technology continues. Assuming of course the TFed techs can reverse engineer the shield and and it doesn't need the GOE to do it for them. I suspect the Brimorians are unaware of current TFed upgrades and might make the mistake of getting involved.

Smart wombat

He hasn't reported it yet. He didn't have anything to report at the time, other than some odd behavior. Now he can report that the Kintark cruiser they thought was shadowing them turned out to actually be a freighter. I'm still not convinced that the Kintark are going to go through Brimorian space to attack the TFed. For all we know, they can be massing deeper in Kintark space, away from Terran sensors, and will eventually push through the Dragon March again.

Jedi Khan

Some people have indicated the Kintark are about to attack the Malari but to me that is suicide.  They have one enemy to fight right now, why add another?  They would have to split their already diminished fleet. All the evidence points to them upgrading their elite fleet, moving it to the border so the border fleet can be upgraded while they cover it.  Then moving into Brimorian space to attack the Terrans where they are not expected.  The hints are all there but the captain didn't report it to his leader who is a prick.

Not quite. The map shown here is an overhead view of the region. Maliri space is above everything here, so this is what the region would look like if you were looking down from Maliri space. The Maliri Protectorate is by far the biggest empire in this region of space, sharing borders with everything pictured here. Trankaran space is below the TFed, hence why it's not shown on this map. It is possible that Kirrix space may wrap around underneath Trankaran space, but mostly it's off to one side.

Jedi Khan

Just curious does anyone know if the last guest writer will continue with his version of tsm

Oh that just made my day. 'Albali'. Ha!

I picked the star names pretty much by looking for ones that sound interesting. The only exceptions are the stars that are actually close to earth, like Alpha Centauri for the location of Olympus Shipyard. If a star's a long way away on the map above, I try to not use anything too close to earth. For example, try looking up Epsilon Aquarii, the star where Genthalas and Valaden are located, then look at its traditional name. ;-)

Tefler

Tefler, all of this talk about star empire maps has made me curious as too how much time you spent researching and how accurate your star system locations are as per the locations of your star empires in 3 dimensional reality? If you projected the distances of the star systems out from Earth on the celestial sphere, and have the correct star system locations relative to the correct empires? If I asked a question about a particular star, would you know or be able to determine what empire it is in?

William: The best way to imagine it is to think of the Terran Federation as a US football, with a bit taken out of the side for the Ashanath Collective. All Terran Space used to be part of Ashanath territory, but they've gradually given up more and more of it. Above the Terrans are the Maliri, the Trankarans are below. The Kintark surround the "left" end of Terran Space, the Kirrix surround the "right" end. The Brimorians are to one side, Drakkar warbands are to the other. This picture represents the view if you looked directly down on the Terran Federation (taking off the Maliri layer above). I haven't drawn the Trankarans on this one, because they are below the Terran territory on this map and therefore obscured.

Tefler

could 'buy' a corridor of space then expand through that and conquer what's on the other side. (for 'up' and through the brimorian enclave, kintark et cetera) multiplying seems to happen anyway in a healthy population, but conquering the kirrix seems the next option after the fight with the kintark finally settles down.

keen_FlattendHedgeHog

Looks like the Terran Federation doesn't have many options for expansion. Up til now they've been taking the Ashanath territory but I'm sure that will stop. The TF probably only have two options 1) continue expansion through war or 2) build alliances and infect the other parts of space with the human virus and eventually live in peace or outnumber them. Two is long term and most humans can't plan past their next meal so that's out.

Mark P

The ashanath were a big empire, then when the humans came around, the Terran federation expanded and took over the ashanath land. So think of the Terran federation as a wave and the ashanath collective like a shell around ashana

Seems like the kind of thing VR would make look pretty awesome.

Roethan

so is the ashanath colective a bite out of the end of the terran potato or is it a scoop out of the side? I'm trying to make a render in sketchup that could display this in "3D" but I'm having trouble with orientation. I know you have a picture in your head Tef. I just can't figure out which way the maps orient. A line towards galactic center could help. From what it seems, the malari are above and the trankaran are below. the brimoran are coreward from the fed and the ashanath are spinward, kirix are counter clockwise (east) and the kintark are clockwise on the disk (west) with the drakkar past the ashanath out spinward (south) and the unclaimed wastes spinward of the malari above the drakkar.

Thanks for the diagram! Now you just need to do this for all of John's travels! ;P

7OO Tnega Terces

Duh! just answered my previous question!

Obviously space is three dimentional so I'm sure it's hard to represent in 2D. So the Maliri Protectorate is (kind of) above the Kintark Empire and Trankaren space is (kind of) above the Kirrix?

palisade