Routes and Routs

Triplanetary/Mayday Style Newtonian Motion at Different Spatial and Temporal Scales

Meant for use with these sorts of star system maps

Travel between astronomical objects is Newtonian, in the style of Triplanetary or Mayday (1978)1: Draw vectors and, if desired, change the predicted location by a number of hexes corresponding to the acceleration rating of the ship. Movement rules are the same on each map, except that length of a turn varies by map scale. The time light takes to traverse a given hex has been given for reference: This may be of significance for detection and response in hostile systems, and is unavoidably of importance when sending and receiving messages.

If moving between scales reference the transition tables below: The first column is speed at the original scale, cross reference this with the transition being made to find speed at the new scale. When moving from a coarser scale to a fine at velocity 0 or velocity 1, the ship has a choice of what velocity to use within given ranges.

Gravity only affects ships travelling at the 100,000 Km tactical scale.

Hex Size Turn Length Light travel time
100,000 Km 1 Hour 1/3 Second
10 M Km 8 Hours 30 Seconds
100 M Km 1 Day 6 Minutes
500 M Km 2 Days 30 Minutes
10 B Km 9 Days 1 Hour


Fine --> Coarse Transitions 100k --> 10M 10M --> 100M 100M --> 500M 500M --> 10 B
1 0 0 0 0
2 0 1 1 0
3 0 1 1 1
4 0 1 2 1
5 0 2 2 1
6 0 2 2 1
7 1 2 3 2
8 1 2 3 2
9 1 3 4 2
10 1 3 4 2
11 1 3 4 2
12 1 4 5 3


Coarse --> Fine Transitions 10M --> 100k 100M --> 10M 500M --> 100M 10B --> 500M
0 0 to 6 0 to 2 0 to 1 0 to 2
1 7 to 13 3 3 4
2 25 7 5 9
3 38 10 8 13
4 50 13 10 18
5 63 17 13 22
6 75 20 15 27
7 88 23 18 31
8 100 27 20 36
9 113 30 23 40
10 125 33 25 44
11 138 37 28 49
12 150 40 30 53


  1. This is extremely easy to use with TlDraw or equivalent - draw the vector, copy the vector line, and then move it forward until the end is on the same hex as the ship.↩