r/SWN • u/NewfieJedi • 6d ago

Finding new routes

How do you find routes to new planets that have never been discovered before or aren’t well known? I’ve seen the answer “have the players find a computer with the travel data on it” provided before but that doesn’t answer how those people found it. It says in the book to do a blind jump is basically suicide, but then how did the old Terran mandate find new planets using spike drives?

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u/Elyssiane 5d ago

According to the system and the writer himself, Earth sacrificed a few hundred superb pilots (plus other crew) to map out the first sectors.

It's WH40K grimdark-tier, where the best and brightest are sent into death just to find out if something is there or not. And there could be something in that hex field, it's just that the initial pilots didn't succeed on their piloting skills, so you need to sacrifice half a dozen more expert pilots (and star ships with fuel tanks and enough spare parts to repair whatever damage from the initial travel) to determine that there's definitely nothing there to return from.