I've recently created a Babylon 5 Galaxy map and uploaded it to the map server, hopefully it will be up in a few days. I've included a few notes and I thought I would share the information here.
//Straight from the Readme file://
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This is the BETA edition of the Babylon 5 galaxy for Sins of a Solar Empire. Each planet is named and placed according to the Galaxy map presented in the 2nd Edition Babylon 5 RPG by Mongoose Publishing.
The starting homeworlds are:
* Sol Sector of the Earth Alliance (sorry, no Mars or Transfer point at Io, consider it all grouped at Sol)
* Minbar of the Minbari Federation
* Centauri Prime of the Centauri Republic
* Homeworld of the Narn Regime
* Vorlon Homeworld of the Vorlon Empire
* N'chak'fah of the Gaim Intelligence
* Abba of the Abbai Matriarchate
* Zhabar of the Drazi Freehold
* Brakos of the Brakiri Syndicracy
* Z'ha'dum of the Shadow Dominion
There are 201 entities on the map, and a total of 197 planets to dominate. Play against 9 opponents to see which race may call itself master of the galaxy, or in true B5 style create an Interstellar Alliance and kick the grand powers out of your galaxy!
The Human, Minbari, Centauri, Vorlon, Narn and Shadow starting points should be easy enough to understand. I chose the Gaim, Abbai, Drazi and Brakiri as the other player starting points due to their role and screentime during Babylon 5. There are a lot of other League of Non-Aligned Worlds to choose from, but I picked these, and now you know why.
The central sun is just there because every map needs one star to begin with, it really serves no function on this map.
In this BETA version, every race has the same starting conditions. 3000 Money, 250 Crystal, 800 Metal and 1 planet to start with.
What to expect in future releases:
* As of yet, all hyperspace lanes are open, yet some lanes are restricted. When I've worked out all the Wormhole rules, some planets will have restriced hyperspace lanes between them, which mean they can only be used when wormhole technology has been researched.
* A seperate file included which starts every empire which his own colony worlds, which means 'Centauri' empire players start out with a whopping 23 planets under their control. Just watch out for your Narn neighbours!
* Different starting credits for each of the Homeworlds. The larger your starting empire, the less cash you
receive. And if I get the planetary wormholes to work, Z'ha'dum will be isolated behind 3-!- wormholes, which means you get added cash to research wormhole travel as soon as possible. With the single planet starting condition Z'ha'dum will still receive a cash bonus to be able to research Wormholes.
Wishes:
A full fledged Babylon 5 mod voor SoaSE, B5 deserves to be made into a mod, and look at the excellent work that's out there for games like Nexus, Freespace 2 and X3: Reunion. At least you got the map to play with now.
Babylon 5 Galaxy Map. All rights of the source material go to their respective copyright holders and / or creators. This was a work of a fan, no need to sue my poor ass off.
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//End of Readme//
Extra notes:
All starting worlds are either <Terran Home> or <Desert Home>. Major colony worlds are <Terran> or <Desert>, while all minor colony worlds are <Desert>, <Ice> or <Volcanic>. Worlds that are outside the influence of Empires (that includes Babylon 5 Empires which aren't included in the map, like Pak'ma'ra) are either Asteroids, Debris fields or Clouds. Epsilon Eridani is the exception, because it's the fictional home of the Babylon 5 station. Since it strategically placed between one or more empires, this <Desert> world might be of importance (more Defensive slots). Worlds which are considered dead in the B5 universe are represented as a <Dead Asteroid>, watch for these along the rim.
As stated in the Readme file, this is a BETA version of the map, and therefore imbalanced. Z'ha'dum (<Desert Home> starting planet players will have a hard time finding nearby colonizable planets, in the next release that will be adressed by giving that player a large sum of extra resources.
As stated, the following release will also flesh out the different empires, with each player getting the colony worlds their B5 empire counterpart has. Centauri players start out with 23 worlds, Earth Alliance with 13 and Vorlon with only 3. To balance out the empires, starting advantages will be given out, like artifacts already present or more starting resources. Shadow/Z'ha'dum players (1 planet) and Vorlon players (3 planets) will start with more resources AND (a few) Artifacts. The minor races (Abbai, Gaim, Brakiri, Drazi) will start with slightly more resources than Vorlon or Shadow empires, but no artifacts. Narn, Earth, and Minbari start with average starting resources, while the Centauri get the least amount (this to reflect their decline in dominancy).
The map will reflect the situation at the start of the Babylon 5 series -2257- and the rest is up to the player.
Any ideas can be posted here, or you can e-mail me at x-file(a/t)quicknet.nl
