Author Topic: Thickness of Inner Sphere  (Read 1858 times)

Lone-Wolf

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Thickness of Inner Sphere
« on: 10 November 2017, 16:01:02 »
How thick is the Inner Sphere?

You see, our Milkyway galaxy has a diameter of 100.000 lightyears and a thickness of between 1.000 and 3.000 lightyears.
If I take the House Kurita Housebook as a measure the distance from Terra to the farthest star is about 600 lightyears.
But space is not 2D, it is 3D.
So, if I take the lowest and the highest star how much distance is between them?

And does that not mean that a star could be inside the IS if you look at it from 2D (topdown, like the maps in the books) but if you look at it from 3D (from the side) then the star is not in the IS but it is periphery.

cray

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Re: Thickness of Inner Sphere
« Reply #1 on: 11 November 2017, 14:48:40 »
Unfortunately, BattleTech has ignored the 3D aspect of interstellar travel until it's too late to fix it. (The chance to fix it passed in about 1986.) Entire tracts of history in the House Sourcebooks and Handbooks, and the Clan sourcebooks, have been written as if centuries of conflict were crawling across 2D interstellar maps. Clan and House territories are profoundly, utterly intertwined with 2D maps. There's no way to wave a wand and say, "the Inner Sphere is X light-years thick" or "there's Y light-years between the highest and lowest stars in the Inner Sphere," because then all those 2D conflicts need rewriting.

That means the canon, rules- and fluff-backed answer to your question is, "...hey, look, it's Elvis behind you!"

[runs away before the question can be asked again] ;)

If you'd like to involve the third dimension into your home game's interstellar travels, I'd give the Inner Sphere the same Z dimensions as its X and Y dimensions. It's called a sphere, so it should be as deep as it is wide and long: about 500 light-years radius. But that's a personal opinion, not anything backed with canon.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

**"A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything." --Wash, Firefly.
**"Well, the first class name [for pocket WarShips]: 'Ship with delusions of grandeur that is going to evaporate 3.1 seconds after coming into NPPC range' tended to cause morale problems...." --Korzon77
**"Describe the Clans." "Imagine an entire civilization built out of 80’s Ric Flairs, Hulk Hogans, & Macho Man Randy Savages ruling over an entire labor force with Einstein Level Intelligence." --Jake Mikolaitis


Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.

 

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