Sub-Sector Size?

How many planetary systems (stars) do you think a sub-sector is composed of?
How many sub-sectors are in a sector?
Sectors per Segmentum?

i'm not entirely sure about the # of planets/subsystem, but if you look at the imperium's rather unimaginative side, i see it as being more of an area of space rather than a certain # of planets. the Cadian Gate is a sub-sector and has x many planets, but somewhere on the fringe may have less due to them being more spaced out.
GW has always been a little vague on the subject matter (at least to my knowledge being a post 1998 guy). you can really make up your own #'s if you want

I feel I have to agree, they are as big as you need them to be to tell a story or as small as the engagement calls for it. My rules of thumb would be 1d12 Stars per Sub-Sector per player that is the random size of a Sub-Sector. Then if you wish to expand it a sector can be a 1d8 Sub-Sector per team of players. This should give you a large enough area to have a very long campaign.

GW produced a system for generating random sub-sectors for Battlefleet Gothic. The BFG background also contains some details on the size of a sub-sector but, as has been said above, the size varies dramatically according to what sources you read.

In other words, the size of a sub-sector equals what the plot demands. :)

An explanation for this in 40k background terms, is that the Administratum is so inefficient and hidebound that there is no standard definition for a sub-sector, etc., or that there is a standard definition but it often isn't applied accurately.

In the BFG random generation system, you rolled 3D6 or 2D6+6 for the number of strategically important systems per sub-sector (or just decided there would be 12 to save time!). There could be many more worlds in a sub-sector but these are the ones that are important in a sub-sector wide naval campaign and a similar approach would work for 40K or Epic.

The Gothic sector had eight sub-sectors and maps for these were included in the BFG rulebook.

You then randomly generated the number of stable warp routes between the systems and rolled for the type of the system based on the number of warp routes that connected it to other worlds (so a world with more warp routes was more likely to be a Civilised/standard Imperial or Hive World, while worlds with lower numbers of warp routes were more likely to be agri-worlds or even uninhabited).

The world type is that of the main planet in the system, there could be other inhabited worlds in the system of other types. And the warp routes are those stable and large enough to allow safe transit of large, valuable warships.

AFAIK, the BFG rulebook, including the background section, is still free to download from the Specialist Games section of the GW website and has a lot of background information, including a little on what a sector and sub-sector are. It includes sub-sector maps for the Gothic sector and GW has released some others for some of its campaigns - Armageddon, Eye of Terror, etc.

Dan Abnett's Ravenor books have sub-sector maps in them as well.

The sub-sector random generation system was in the Warpstorm supplement. Someone may have posted it on the net somewhere. If not, PM me and I'll see what I can do.

Hope that helps,


James

I was recently looking through a codex or rulebook for 40k or epic and they defined how there is each galactic sector then how each one is split up. It was about 40k I think as it was related too the imperial navy having patrols. In the end though the sub sectors and smaller areas are not planet bases but based on light years in size. So one area could have one planet and another(like near Tau) dozens.