1/10 from 300 000 000 000? Still freakingly too much. Closest system to this system has THREE habitable zones.

As for planets. Roll random. Small massive planets with atmosphere aren't uncommon however.

Quote:

Original post by Wavinator Here are a couple of sites I'm using for my current project: A galactic model - good for layout Uni of Illinois has alot of good info BBC has a great site Atlas of the universe has a ton of info This guy has put an AMAZING amount of work into solar system generation using RPG rules It's too bad he didn't finish. Good luck!

I find that taking the pages of the sky atlas and making a planetarium to the universe map in my computer room helps. :P

You might be interested in the Free Orion project:

Free Orion page

Look for "Daveybaby", he's already done a lot of the stellar research for his own game. Free Orion already has a galaxy shape generator in it. It's open source and you are welcome to steal it.

Alright, I've decided to fudge the z coords of the galactic model slightly. I'll post it here so that some others may benefit ;)

I've based it off of the probability function since it and the galaxy share a somewhat similar overall shape.

it's a piece wise function. Here it is:

A = 107465246.7
s = 26302.105

Y1 = A/(s (2pi)^.5 ) * e^(-(X^2)/(2s^2)) x<= 26000 LY
f(x) = (1000+Y1)/2 x>= 26000 LY

for x> 26K LY, I averaged it with 1000 since otherwise it falls off too quickly and you're left with a cough drop shape instead of the flying saucer shape you're after. I based it only on two data points: that the galactic core is 3260 LY thick and the disk is 2000 LY thick where we are (the sun :P). So if you plug in 0 and 26000 (our distance from the center) , you'll get back the appropriate values. Whether or not the function produces appropriate values for other inputs, I have no idea. But it looks kinda right, and that's good enough for me at this point :P