Well, I said I'd update this with more of the details that I gathered in the process of figuring it all out.
After I got back I was running around G5ing stuff prior to 3.0, then I was playing
with 3.0, and then I got a bit stuck seeing as how the galmap keeps crashing when I try to look at it but I guess it's time to get it together and add some more detail.
Firstly, I want to start by pointing out a few things which had an effect on how the map was generated, for the sake of transparency.
- Galactic Scale.
The creators of Star Trek seem to have used some fairly solid data when deciding on Voyager's story but then they also made some errors too.
The most "famous" one is that if you add up all the known distances traveled during the show, Voyager
should have been well out of the Delta Quadrant by the end of the final series.
It might
seem like the show explains some of these things with references to detours around various spacial anomalies (that term gets used a LOT!) but, in reality, the entire show only depicts a tiny fraction of Voyager's journey and there are
massive discrepancies in the distances involved.
The most logical explanation for this (without blaming it all on Harry Kim not noticing that Voyager was actually back in the Beta Quadrant) is that Voyager
must have taken a zig-zag course back to Earth.
That's fairly plausible, too, because most of the big jumps they made involved using pre-existing "shortcuts" (Malon Vortices, Borg Transwarp network & Vaaduar Subspace Corridors) where they'd have no control over where it took them.
In other cases (using the Slipstream Drive technology, Kes' telekinetic "push" and using a Graviton Catapult) it can be assumed they'd be able to plan their course and so those jumps would be headed almost directly toward Earth.
The real problem, which there's no getting around, is that the Elite: Dangerous galaxy just isn't as big as the galaxy suggested in ST.
In ST, it's possible to travel 70,000Ly along the correct bearing and still remain within the limits of the Milky Way.
In ED, that just can't be done.
As we (probably) all know, Beagle Point is 65,000Ly from Earth and, along Voyager's bearing, it's really only possible to get roughly 60,000Ly from Earth.
It IS possible to get a bit further than BYOO BRIAE CW-C C26-0 and if anybody's willing to explore the region and finds a plausible starting point further out, respect to them.
Here's a sketch to illustrate the issue.
- What we know.
Considering the effort that was apparently put into figuring out the size of the galaxy, Voyager's capabilities and the distances traveled, the show seems to have made some strange choices.
During the periods when Voyager was off-air, time passes within the ST universe.
We know this because the length of time they've been travelling is often referenced in the show
and the stardates are often quoted.
The strange thing is, it's never assumed that Voyager has actually
moved during the months of each year when the show was off-air.
Trying to figure out ST "warp factors" gives me a headache but it can be assumed Voyager
should have traveled significant distances during the time the show was off-air.
This caused me a lot of headaches while trying to decide whether to extrapolate positions based on speed and time to calculate where Voyager was at any given time.
Fortunately, I found something which meant I didn't have to worry about that.
- Source Material.
This could have been a long list of websites and forums but then I discovered "The Complete Atlas of Star Trek".
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Trek-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522792776&sr=1-1
This book is really all that's needed to replicate Voyager's journey.
It's not
entirely "canon" but it's licensed from Paramount and it's written by the guys who did the techie stuff on the show so it's probably the most accurate source of info available.
I also looked at the "Voyager Technical Manual" which was a production document provided for writers to help ensure they didn't screw up any pre-existing lore.
The main reason I looked at this was to try and work out how far Voyager might have traveled while the show was off-air but, after looking at the ST Atlas, it wasn't really required.
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/star-trek-voyager-technical-manual.php
If you want to read about Voyager's journey on the internet, there are heaps of websites where you can do so but a lot of the information provided is speculative, contradictory and flat-out wrong so I figured it was best just to stick to a couple of "almost canon" sources and go from there.
So, with all that said, over the next couple of days I'll post up various pictures, detailed maps of each leg of the journey and logs of what happened and when so people
might be able to find things in the ED galaxy which correlate with the things Voyager encountered during it's journey.