Koronus Expanse chart: The Cauldron, system pins, Visit

About this game

Developer: Owlcat Games · Publisher: Owlcat Games · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Realistic 3D · Screen type: Campaign / World Map

More Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader screens in the Gallery

What to study

Rogue Trader's strategic layer is a sea chart, and the metaphor does real work: the Koronus Expanse is drawn the way an Age-of-Sail captain's ocean was drawn, parchment, engraved nebulae, named hazards, and brass compass stars for the ports you know. Travel is reduced to its narrative essence (pick a star, read the one-word 'Visit', or turn the wheel to 'Chart New Routes'), while the empire-management numbers the game does track are exiled to a single winged bar along the top, all zeros in this early-campaign frame. The lesson is register: a game about a warrant-holding merchant prince makes its map feel like a physical instrument of that office, so moving a starship reads as an act of command rather than a menu selection. Frame at about 0:11 in the Release trailer (Steam; scene-change survivor v0_0002).

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

map-icons location-label top-bar

Components

Parts on screen.

Banner Chart Journal Compass Marker Gauge

Screen inventory

• the whole Expanse is one mauve parchment chart, inked like an antique star atlas: a banner at upper left names the region 'The Cauldron', nebula swirls and asteroid sketches are drawn as engraving hatching, and a huge compass-rose watermark sits under the centre of the sheet
• every known system is the same brass compass-star pin with a green core, System Sureulo, Trinnitos, Omicron, Cradle of Khepri, Sotto's Tomb lettered in pale script beside theirs, and the selected pin gets a targeting ring, a yellow warp-route line snaking away from it, and a single green 'Visit' button: the entire travel verb set is one word
• the dynasty's ledger runs along the top in a winged gothic bar, a row of resource icons, every one reading 0 except a final 10, and the bottom centre is a brass ship's-wheel dial whose only command is 'CHART NEW ROUTES' in glowing green capitals
• a vertical icon rail is riveted to the right edge (party, ship, journal and colony glyphs) and small cog buttons cap the corners, the chart is framed as an instrument bolted to the bridge, not a screen the game opens

Top 3 colors

#37222f 22%#8b6c6b 20%#a98581 16%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Owlcat Games, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader screenshot: Steam trailers (Release trailer / 1st release trailer), Owlcat Games, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Owlcat Games.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-26. verified 2026-10-26: scene-change survivor candidates/v0_0002.png @ 10.63s in the Release trailer, MD5 717d981d700f935d5a598b5c59df76ab, from the stock Steam download (44,833,997 B, MD5 bd5b14990a47dfa949de4926b3569b03; full decode to null with -xerror exit 0, zero error lines, decode-evidence/decode-v0-full.err; both trailers were decode-verified repeatedly, all runs exit 0 with empty error logs, so no curl shim was needed despite NAL warnings printed during the parallel pipeline run), inspected visually at full resolution (1920x1080 native); The Cauldron banner, the named system pins, the Visit button, the Chart New Routes dial and the top resource bar all legible; no trailer text or marketing overlay in frame

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-26); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.