Fleet Management

One of the more challenging things in running an empire with more than one empire is keeping track of where every fleet is. While the odds of two individual ships (even two full survey flotillas) meeting in deep space is vanishingly small, the odds of meeting at a warp point increase substantially. Most fleets also have standing orders on maintaining picket ships, or park themselves over useful or valuable real estate in-system, making them even more likely to be noticed (though some navies do the exact opposite, making sure their fleet formations are parked out in the hinterlands of the system and outside everyone’s attention.

This still leaves the issue of how one keeps TRACK of them all at once. Keeping an even half dozen empires, some with a dozen (or more!) fleets is a challenge even at the best of times.

Enter the deWulf Sector Plotting Table, Mk1.

As you might guess, it is VERY incomplete right now. While it has all the star systems in question that it needs to have (including a few that have been added after the maps were originally made). It does however have one BIG problem. It only has two empires on it so far, and already there’s a lot of fleets there! The blue guys have 11 fleets all on their own, and there’s still another 4-5 navies that need to get added. So I have to think of a better way to track the fleets. I like the idea of using coloured pins, but having a full square note with each pin just isn’t space efficient. The idea is to be able to see fleet locations at a glance, but all the notes just obscures the view.

I’ll have to think about what I can do to simplify it…