(Part 2 of a series on how to fight an interstellar war.)
As described in part 1, I had a usable map of the Emissariate of Bolusca, which included every star system so far identified in the game but had plenty of space to add more. With this, I could plot consistent travel times. I could have stopped there.
Except... it was on a square grid. And gamers like hexagonal grids for our maps. Why? I don't know, we just do. So for no reason other than "just because", I decided it was worth spending an entire day converting the map to a hex grid. This first step was easy, just trace the original map on to hex paper (you can click on any of these images to make them bigger, by the way):
To be honest, this was a bit rubbish. The main reason being the scale: 450 parsecs to a hex. On graph paper, I could use a ruler and measure down to the millimetre to get fairly exact distances. As soon as it's on hex paper, all I can easily say is, "It's in that hex," which means, "Somewhere within a 450 parsec area," which is next to useless for calculating accurate travel times. I needed a better scale. Which meant my map of known space wouldn't fit on a single sheet of paper. So I expanded just a small section of the border, and got this:
I'm at 100 parsecs per hex here, so this whole map covers an area about five hexes across on the previous one. I might need to drill down even more at some point, but this is a good working map for plotting grand strategy, and lets me map everything I need (so far) on just nine sheets of paper.
You can see I've already added several additional features to the map, because at this scale I can figure out how things will work:
- The simple line of the border has become a "neutral zone" between the empires, 100 parsecs across.
- I've added the border stations (the small x symbols on the Boluscan side of the neutral zone) that are supposed to warn of an invasion.
- Because I've previously defined how hyperspace detection works, I know how far these stations need to "see" into enemy space, so I know the detection area around them (also marked on this map) and therefore how many stations I need to get full coverage of the border.
Just having this map has allowed me to set the strategy for the Krai invasion. I know where the Krai fleets need to start, and what their destinations should be. Those border stations are immediately obvious targets. Because although Krai fleets could jump right past them in hyperspace, the stations are going to be detecting their every move and relaying it back to the Boluscan fleets. Any sensible invasion has to start with preemptive strikes on all those stations. Knock them out on Day 1 of the war, and the Emissariate is blind; they can't know where you will strike next, so they can't intercept you with their own fleets. The Krai have total control of the war.
(Yes, I've read Sun Tsu and Clausewitz, and this is totally how they would fight if they had hyperspace drives.)
As a GM running a game, knocking out the border stations gives me a secondary (and much more important to me, though irrelevant to the Krai) advantage: I don't need to tell the players how the war is going. Each game session is now starting with some variation of "Psi Girl has called in from headquarters, we still don't have a clue where the Krai are."
I'm pretty happy with the map and (so far) with the war. The only slight problem I have is that I may have made the Krai strategy too good, because at the moment I can't see how the Emissariate will survive this.
But luckily for the Emissariate, they have the Star Guard...
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