The answer is not 42 (worlds)

Varala Drift, First Draft. Travellermap.com

Republic Space, First Draft (Upside Down from Standard)

I wanted several worlds for the setting, for The Adventures of Nisa Jax. Some YEARS ago, I proceeded:

I knew that the setting of the entire series would be:

"The Varala Drift" (Pictured to the Left, Above)
Near the "Taranga Nebula Sector"
Near the "Obai Gulf Subsector".

A frontier area of Space called "The Aurin Cluster (Sector)"
At the edge of "The Orion Republic."
Many thousands of years in the future.

The entire setting would span 200 light years both Spinward, and Rimward (Rim-Spinward? Spin-Rimward?) from Earth. 


Earth was long ago forgotten, "somewhere in the Naka Corridor Sector."

Explorers from Earth must have traveled From Earth, along the Naka Corridor, through the Dorai Crossing, and through parts of both Sector Six, or the Behaj Core worlds, to get to the Aurin Cluster,  an active frontier, and the focus of all the stories of the Frontier.

I made the initial Republic Space map, detailing the sector placement.

But Sectors are not stories, and I needed worlds for adventures. I wanted many worlds that were not like Earth.

I have been a gamer for 43 years, so I started out with 28 worlds for the Varala Drift, using a Subsector size of 8 X 10 parsecs.

Scattered Density would be 33% X 80 = 26 worlds.
Standard Density would be 50% X 80 = 40 worlds.

I did not want a lot of worlds to start, because I was in a hurry to get to the writing.  I did not understand this would take me years of false starts, consideration, and despair.

But, initially, for these worlds, I generated those randomly, using Alex Shroeder's Traveller Subsector Generator:  https://campaignwiki.org/traveller/uwp/296437995 (Not that specific Subsector).

I changed them a lot, changed them again. I did a lot of adjustments.  Added worlds, subtracted some, changed worlds to change trade codes.

<Minor detour>
Then, along the way, I realized, Trade codes were Dynamic.

A Low population settlement, not even a real colony, most likely a private installation, or mining site would have limited trade. Over time, this world would move up to Moderate population.

Later, a decent world, going to an industrial workforce, would become polluted.

Without factories and pollution, you'd have a Rich world, Green Economy, that was not destroying its own environment.

I thought about Earth, in the Far Future.

 It seems like that would not be the case, that global warming wins out, and with High Technology, and Starships, eventually, the Terrans would leave the polluted Earth behind. 

Much as I had left the Rustbelt of Pittsburgh when formerly lucrative factory and steel mill jobs dried up because American steel was no longer produced as efficiently as Japanese, and German steel and cars. 

I left the Smoky City to join the military, travel, and get out of town.
</Minor detour>


For the subsector, I kept most of the names, but I confess I changed some names, making them shorter because they did not print well against the "Eye Candy" Background of https://travellermap.com/

My initial map was the one above, using Travellermap, with some Photoshop brushwork, to add in the trade routes and jump routes.

After I had painstakingly used Trade Codes to map trade routes, I started figuring out how it all worked,


I calculated, then plotted Trade and Agricultural Routes, Main Liner, and Freighter Routes. 

The idea was to set up the routes of TransStellar, LLC, to set the long-ago background of Nisa's father, Kars Vandor.

I still did not understand why their last names were different, nor the significance of that to the stories that came later.

As I had already decided, I centered on the world of New Asia, as the focus, but with the old Fluid World of Pre-Collapse UGAU (TIAAA) [Which was some nebulous Terran Interstellar and Astrographics Agency] sort of Old Terran Rule, Ancient base that used to support the old Tauspace Drives.  All of that was very fuzzy in my mind.

Time passed.  I thought more about a lot of things.

I thought about how the phrase:" Kars Vandor controls the trade of half a hundred worlds" kept re-appearing in my mind.  And here we have 28 worlds, and it was not at all certain TransStellar's Shipping Division controlled most of that.

I thought a lot about "How did the initial scouts get here, to the Aurin Cluster?"

What worlds were around this "Varala Drift" subsector?

How many Subsectors did TransStellar have a presence in?

I imagined the main Cargo Fleet of TransStellar was around 50 ships, huge bulk Freighters.

I meditated on this a lot, Gigantic holes in the backstory plot. Things that bothered me. How does he go from a Garbage Scow Captain to a Multi-Billionaire during one lifetime?

He did not inherit. He was a shrewd Trader, and wheeler-Dealer, who took huge calculated risks, hired the best people, and led from the front, from a Bulk Freighter Command ship.

In my mind, I knew:
Kars Vandor had gone to school at the Edge of the Orion Republic in a major system, at a small but decent University.

Gradually, (like the 'Traveller' he was) motivated by decent deals on the Rim, drifted toward the Aurin Cluster, as one of the first Merchants to do Exploratory Trade there...

Hold on- Ideas.

My mind opens. I imagine:

Where many alien worlds, as yet undiscovered, lay in wait for Human Contact.  Prior to this, there had been wars... long, drawn-out conflicts that slowed the Human Wave of Expansion and Colonization. That had, in places, cut off Terra. 

The Aurin Cluster was so remote from Earth, Earth was little more than Myth.  Just one of many worlds with humans living there.

So I decided it.

There were many worlds of the Aurin Cluster that were mainly Non-Human.  Billions of beings that were not human.  Artifacts, Technology that had gone in different ways. Worth a lot in Trade. But how to imagine that, without DETAILING IT?

I saw that I needed not just 28 worlds, but more. I settled on 42 for the Subsector, for the Stories of the Varala Drift, the center of the action for the Series... But I needed to KNOW, ICE COLD, what was going on, what had come before.

I was not content to fill the story later.  I knew I would have a problem down the road, making the backstory fit the narrative I wanted.

I knew I wanted to detail that backstory, in chronological order.

I needed a vastly larger number of worlds, more than just 42, more than "just the Varala Drift".

I needed a step-by-step super-detailed, gritty systematic process that flew in the face of my prior experience at creating a setting.

(Now some ancient thought processes revealed. Welcome to my mind.):

I was angry with Star Trek, and Star Wars creators for decades for not having maps of space.

Once Geoffrey Mandel made Star Trek Star Charts, I was excited.  I thought, "finally."

But upon purchase, perusing it, I thought, "Oh hell! I could do this, and better. And will, for my license."

The old School Enterprise of the 60s era Characters went from one planet to another in spaces of time that did not fit the narratives of time, speed, and distance that were supposedly canon.

I had told myself for years: "when I do this, I will have maps, they will make sense with the Setting."

I want it to be true that fans can track exactly what is going on, where, and when. Documentation is the key.

In the 80s, and 90s, FASA, Inc. (A rather important American game company in the 80's and 90s) did this with their maps for Battletech, for specific scenario books, for novels.

You could read about Planet Skye, and find that world on a map, what was near it, and orient yourself, and figure out the strategic situation.

For Star Trek, I know the idea for those settings was "to not confine the writers, not to corral them into some limited thing that hampered their creativity."

Star Trek: The Original Series was loose with Canon. They developed a lot as they went. They were breaking unfamiliar ground with every episode. Lots of good science fiction in the early days, written by "name-level" writers.

But Paramount was always "Hand-waving" problems away:

"Space is compressed."
"We did Transporters to save screen time for a shuttle shot."
"The rocks glitter, because it decorates the soundstage."
"We use 'Class M' planets as the focus for the Enterprise missions because we do not want to have to create a new alien world every week."

The thought was.. fans do not care that stories used genuine star names that were hundreds of light-years apart when Kirk went to the next world, at Warp 4, in a few days.

Stardates were complete bullshit at first.  Later on, they were complicated bullshit, but there was a system to it, by the time of the 'Next Generation.'

But licensed RPG books chronology did not fit the films, did not fit other licensed RPG tie in books, which did not fit the novels. Which did not fit the mirror Universe. 

Maddening to me. I like certainty.

Really, I  know, in my mind at least, no one wanted to track all these damn minutiae.

Pardon me, I love that shit. It is one of my strengths. It served me well on working on torpedoes. "Attention to Details."

As a World Builder who wants consistency, I care.

I want to see maps.
I want to know that a ship went from world A to world B in about a week, and what its captain's options were for destinations.
How and where it refueled.
What potential cargoes it could have carried.. or not.

I vowed I would map this series, and be able to show the fans my math, for consistency of setting, for the organization.

As a courtesy, for readers, and fans living in a real-world full of confusion and anxiety, I wanted to convey action, an adventure story, consistency, reliability.

Even the Star Trek and Star Wars TIMELINES are not consistent.

"That makes me crazy."  Yeah, I said it.

I am doing this mapping and documentation (The same way I write computer code).

 Painstakingly carefully, so that one day, decades from now, some literary researcher of the backstory, perhaps a fan, perhaps a writer, can pull up a map, and say, Yes, in X Year, this planet was thus and so, in the Nisa Jax Universe, at this location, in this subsector, spelled this way.

Canon, Defined.

I could go on, but it's break time, for now.