Early Inner Sphere Maps and History

[GoGo Yubari]

I'm planning to use the 23rd and early 24th Century of Battletech as a setting for a campaign. It'd be a more Hammers Slammers style of era in some sense, and though it isn't very recognizable as Battletech, it'd have enough familiar elements that it would be fun for me and the players to play in. I tried to do some quick forum searches, but I couldn't find too many resources for this, so I'm asking if anybody here knows of any links that I should check.

I'm especially looking for maps that might show what planets are colonized/known and if any of the early states are shown. Of course, I have access to the House books, which show some of this, but only to an extent. I'm hoping some folks might have develop something on their own which I'm not familiar it. Also, some production/introduction dates for vehicles and the might also be of interest (though this information is pretty easy to pull up as lists from Sarna).

Let me know if you know where to look for this kind of stuff for the era!

[Deadborder]

The Handbook series (Lyran Commonwealth et al) has historical maps of the various states going back to their founding. That'd be a good place to start

[Sartris]

iirc Era Digest: Age of War has some maps including some info on long-lost protostates like the United Hindu Collective

[Jayof9s]

MekHQ incorporates all the various early maps available from the Handbooks (and other sources) detailing about as well as possible the growth of the IS and the various proto-factions in its Interstellar Map, which updates as you progress the timeline, even if you don't utilize any other features.

[Daryk]

And there's a really cool looped gif of the MekHQ maps around here somewhere... I'll post the link if I find it before anyone else does.

[Jayof9s]

[Daryk]

Thanks for saving me the work!  I haven't even caught up on my thread reading yet...  8)

[Jayof9s]

And since that cool graphic doesn't show it, you can zoom in and see each of the systems and their details, travel between the systems, etc. So it's far more than just a visual map.

[dgorsman]

The latest version has a couple of bugs that need addressing, so give it a couple more days before downloading.  But yes, lots of space map goodness there.

[GoGo Yubari]

Thanks for the MekHQ heads up! I've played around with MegaMek, but not that so that's going to be very useful.

[Lorcan Nagle]

iirc Era Digest: Age of War has some maps including some info on long-lost protostates like the United Hindu Collective

Following on from this, the XTRO: Primitives line of PDFs includes stats and record sheets for combat vehicles, air and spacecraft common to that era and the first generation of BattleMechs