Matt, Alex and I have been discussing world design quite a bit. How big is the planet? How large a space does our ‘world map’ actually represent? Yesterday I was thinking about it and if each space in the game is 240 miles wide, and there are 10 spaces to the width of a region, and 10 regions to the width of our big map, we have a map that spans 24,000 miles. Which is 901 miles short of the circumference of our Earth. I had imagined that the colonists of Kalimundar had explored a much smaller space, since they have not had a huge amount of time and not a huge population either (between 50k and 100k people). Also, Kalimundar could be a bigger planet than Earth, but I wonder how much bigger it could be before our colonists would have problems with high gravity. I need the assistance of an astronomer, a physicist and a geologist to figure some of this out.
Designing regions is turning out to go fairly quickly and be lots of fun. We now have 11 out of 70 finished. Each one only takes me about 10 minutes or so. I’m focusing on designing cool features, not worrying too much about game balance or overall location of each space. I figure we will take the maps I lay out and edit them to fit well into the big picture.
There was some concern that 70 regions might be too many. After all, a crew could undergo a whole adventure and only travel across 2 regions. Also, Matt shares my original concern that we could be trying to create so many regions that they start to look and feel the same.
But I’ve been thinking:
1) I really want the playing fields to be staggeringly massive. I want players to be shocked by how much there is to explore. This is perhaps the best way to create an epic adventure game where you don’t just wander from fight to fight; where your travels are actually about exploring and becoming familiar with the overwhelming amount of wilderness and pockets of civilization, I think it will create the sensation of an actual adventure. It isn’t simulating exploring on a little board – it is presenting a board that, were it strung together, would stretch to about 7 ft wide. Which is a big space when your ship is only half an inch long. 
2) As far as regions being to similar, I am no longer afraid of that happening. First of all, the physical shape of the regions can differ, then the features, the hazards, and the tide lines (which burn fuel) can all be in different spots or consist of differed types. Then the amount of resources available, what kind and where they are on the map. Each region uses a unique Encounter Deck which means different ships, creatures and hazards will be found (or at least different chances for encountering these things). And finally, if there is an installation of some kind in the region, it will have a unique set of services, market place and location. So after considering all these variables, I think we can easily craft up 70 regions that are all different. And even if some are similar, the world map is so large that their placement will affect the overall adventure. And mostly likely exposure to different regions, from a players perspective, will be gradual over a lot of plays.
