Why arent Sprial galaxies spiral shaped?

LGM · #1 April 5th, 2003, 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
I thought it was because it was just a cross-section of a single very thin spiral arm, rather than an entire spiral galaxy. Remember these are quadrants, not entire galaxies, although you can pretend if you want to. However, real galaxies have astronomically more systems than a quadrant, and are correspondingly larger, as well. A quadrant is just a speck compared to a whole galaxy.

PvK

A quadrant is a fourth of a galaxy, not a speck.

LGM · #2 April 5th, 2003, 12:12 AM

I have hosted several games using Spiral Army galaxies. You have to generate a few times to get some nice shape to them. The main characteristic is you get a ring in the middle that you have go around the ring to cross. There is also a tendency to get spoke lines going outward and rings going around the middle. Dead-ends tend to be out on the edges.

Andr�s · #3 April 5th, 2003, 12:12 AM

255 are not enough systems for a good looking a spiral galaxy.

narf poit chez BOOM · #4 April 5th, 2003, 01:56 AM

sounds like a good idea for a custom map.

PvK · #5 April 5th, 2003, 02:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by LGM:
A quadrant is a fourth of a galaxy, not a speck.

Well the word "quadrant" means a fourth of something, usually a plane. I thought in SE4 it was more like the Star Trek use, which just seems to mean a general region of space. (e.g. "We're the only ship in the quadrant..." (The Wrath of Khan)) At any rate, when I said a quadrant was a speck, I was saying in comparison to a real-universe galaxy. But even so, that was perhaps a gross over statement of its size, since even if you hack the system number up to 256, an actual galaxy is thought to contain about 100,000,000,000 stars, so the largest SE4 quadrant would be one four-billionth of a galaxy.

PvK

geoschmo · #6 April 5th, 2003, 02:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
But even so, that was perhaps a gross over statement of its size, since even if you hack the system number up to 256, an actual galaxy is thought to contain about 100,000,000,000 stars, so the largest SE4 quadrant would be one four-billionth of a galaxy.

PvK

one four-billionth... sounds like a speck to me.

Kamog · #7 April 5th, 2003, 04:27 AM

I thought that a Star Trek quadrant was a fourth of the galaxy. The Earth and the Federation are in the Alpha quadrant. The Borg are in Delta quadrant. The wormhole at DS9 goes to Gamma quadrant. I don't know what the fourth one is (Beta quadrant?)