I like this one...it takes the third dimension into account. It extends 50 ly from Sol both ways on each axis, so it easily covers the 27-sector Federation Core that I mentioned earlier, plus parts of another layer of sectors all around that, for a spherical volume with a 100 ly diameter http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/50lys.html
That is an AWESOME site- I've had it bookmarked for a while, and I have individual images of all those maps saved to my hard drive. In fact, I used one of them as a reference when I was writing The Long Sleep. Funny thing was, a couple days prior I was searching (in vain) for a starchart depicting which way to the center of the galaxy along with presenting a star map of local space. Then I came upon this site from a reference over at big blue, and voila! There it was.
Yeah...I like it because it has both the geocentric coordinates (α,δ) and the galactic coordinates (l,b). I used the former to calculate sectors way back when, but in hindsight the latter might be the better tool.
interesting how the federation is the largest of the alpha/beta powers... bugs me a little how each powers space is continuous, given the combaintion of spatial volumes, habitible systems and politics you'd expect it to be a lot more messy - with patrolled 'corridors' connecting spheres of influence rather than strictly defined expanding regions.
There is distance, time of travel and each major races development from crap-good to take into account. And the reaction to finding another more powerful races border and adjusting accordingly
Well they aren't necessarily. Some site (might be that stdimension one that someone linked to above) suggests that there is a Federation core about a couple hundred ly across surrounded by the other powers, and then three exclaves of the UFP near Deneb, Antares, and Rigel beyond the other empires.
What bugs me is that the homeworlds for the Cardassian Union, Romulan Star Empire, and Klingon Empire are all so close to their border with the UFP. Federation territory also kinda surrounds the RSE further "north". Those Federation folks are dicks.
This is (a variation of) the map that I was talking about before, where the topic of discussion was how the Borg could have destroyed Federation and Romulan outposts along the Neutral Zone without being detected to a greater extent, as well as been been a problem for the Romulans elsewhere in the Empire.
even so, that would be something 'unrealistic' from a defensive POV, as every light-year across translates into a roughly cubic light year of space to defend. based on a 100ly radius for a roughly spherical federation core, and chugging that into (4/3)*pi*r*r*r gives you a volume of around 4.2 million cubic light years - you'd need a whole of space ships to defend that baby! for more sensible to adopt a 'defense zone' up to a systems oort cloud, or less, with patrolled 'tunnels' connecting systems and starbases and agreed buffer zones (similar to the neutral zone) with neighbouring powers. that provides a more reasonable volume of space to defend.
Surely most of the major planetary systems have extensive stationery defense systems in place to supplement their security. Like the one around Earth that the Borg picked off in BOBW and the one that the Dominion defeated around Betazed in ITPM
Plus I'm sure the Federation isn't just limited to the 80 or so ships we've seen on-screen. I'm sure they have thousands. Not to mention any ships used by member worlds.
Well, if NCC really does stand for 'Naval Construction Contract', and there isn't any mathematical skullduggery going on, then the original Enterprise was Starfleet's 1701st ship. (Although whole generations of ships would have come and gone by then.) And in TNG, all the regularly registered ships were in the tens of thousands.
The registry of the USS Voyager was NCC-74656. The registry of the USS Sao Paulo (later renamed the Defiant and given an NX registry) was NCC-75633. Over 75,000 ships. Not to mention all the NX-prototypes.
I never noticed that...that is a nice bit of continuity. That about 1000 ships were built between mid 2371 and late 2375.
500 years later, the registry of the USS Relativity is 474439. 400,000 ships in the span of 500 years. That's about 800 ships a year, not to mention all the ships that are constantly being pulled out of spacedock and revamped for whatever reason.
Which, when you think about the volume of space the Federation is dealing with, that's not even a whole lot of ships. I don't think they could train all those crews in the bay area on Earth, though. I like the idea of Starfleet Academy having other campuses on other worlds of the Federation, and drawing heavily on its enlisted personnel eventually promoting up to the officer ranks without having attended the academy, but by earning equivalent credit through their time in service.
Well, I kinda tend to assume that the first, say, two digits generally reflect the class of the starship. So one would expect the other Constitution-class ships to have 17xx numbers, etc. Rather unwieldy for classes they'd need gobs of, like tugs or cargo carriers, but you can always appropriate new ranges as you need them. But that also means that there may not have been any ships in the, let's say, 1750-1799 range.
Not even in the TOS era does that hold true. The USS Potemkim (a Constitution class vessel) had the registry NCC-1657. Another Constitution class ship, the USS Constellation, was NCC-1017. It certainly didn't hold true in the TNG to NEM era. There were literally dozens of different classes of ships, all spanning tens of thousands of registries.
