Lets talk maps

When I designed the 3345 maps I decided to take an unconventional approach to how I was to make the setting, I made the map first, and built many of the setting events around it. First I broke out my trusty MS Paint program.

I made a sketch, from memory of the maps, and after considerable comparison to images I downloaded from the Internet I ended up with this.



And then I revised for about a week off and on, deciding what would work and what wouldn't. This is the result of the revisions. As you'll note some big changes are the red lines representing the attack vectors of the home world clan revenge fleets, and my re-allocation of the remains of the Capellan Confederation



I then decided to make a proper version using Inkscape, which is a program close to my heart as it does what I need, and the cost was perfect. From the image overlay you can see only a couple of changes from my final product to my initial attempts. The biggest change would be my movement of Niopps from way out into the prephary to where it really is according to the proper scale.



My next trick after getting an initial map into Inkscape, using around 20 different layers so that I could have each state on a different layer. My biggest hurdle was getting the images to scale properly, to do this I knew where Earth should be, and I just finessed the image size, with a locked scale, until I was happy with the locations of the nations capitals. The first image I used was one of the Darkages Era that I found using google image search. And as you can see much of the expansion of the houses came at the expense of prephary states, there was some heavy colonizing during some of the golden eras, especially once the interstellar shipping improved enough to allow for proper migrations.



My final stage was to place worlds, and for this I went and got my hands on a map that appears to be from 3062, again google image search payed out. I used the same techniques to align the maps as before except I had an extra layer with the Darkages map to help me out. I then did a little bit of tweaking, as there were a number of worlds that I knew I needed to survive and then I took note of some of the worlds that I killed off and decided when they were actually wiped out. I also moved Niopps from my guess to its real position making it simultaneously surrounded by the FWL but important enough to remain independent.



I then went through and built some labels, a BT style compass, and LY scale bar and then placed many of the key worlds, on a separate layer to get my final images.



As you can see it was a long process but it got the job done. My favourite picture have to be the comparison between the 3345 map and the 3062 map because it demonstrates quite clearly how much has been destroyed in the past 300 years and how much has changed.