ELW Distribution?

[Major Klutz]

Are ELW's more common in some regions than others?
I know they are more likely to be orbiting certain star types, but afaik, the distribution of those star types is fairly uniform right?
Has anyone plotted ELWs on a heatmap yet?

I recently took a quick sightseeing trip out to Eta Carinae. ~7,500Ly out and back over 5 days.
I didn't find any ELWs on the way out, but on the way back I found four.
On the trip out, I took my time. I was looking for ELWs or anything else of interest. Scanning a lot of planets and looking for surface features.
The trip back was much quicker, about a day and a half. I was jump-honking with quick checks of the system map, so I would have expected to find less on the way back.

It was probably just random chance, but I've never been lucky enough to find four ELW's before within 7,500Ly. I started wondering if the Stellar Forge generates ELWs evenly everywhere, or if the distribution is uneven with more or fewer in different regions of the galaxy.

Granted my course back wasn't very far from my outbound course so it was probably just luck.
The Course Taken:

Spoiler

Outbound is the upper line, return is the lower line. Stopped to check out a few B type clusters on the way.

ELW's found (fyi)

Spoiler

Sifeae RI-K d8-15 (A 4)
Col 240 Sector TD-B d16 (AB 2)
Blo Thae AA-A d13 (5)
Blo Thae RM-W d1-18 (A 5)

 

[CMDR EfilOne]

This should help answer your questions : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...ATsoqNPGwP_ACdbMegeX84J9fY/edit#gid=936787155

This is the result of the combination of Jackie Silver, myself and Marx's work, it merges the ELW list with the galactic sector map and counts every ELWs based on the sector name

 

[marx]

This should help answer your questions : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...ATsoqNPGwP_ACdbMegeX84J9fY/edit#gid=936787155

This is the result of the combination of Jackie Silver, myself and Marx's work, it merges the ELW list with the galactic sector map and counts every ELWs based on the sector name

Yep, although do bear in mind that first and foremost it shows where people have frequently explored. So it's not that there are more Earth-likes close to the bubble and on the lines to Sag. A*, Colonia and Beagle Point, but simply that those are the most frequented routes. Compare the maps (there's also a char on the ELW list, in the Maps sheet) with the visited systems on EDSM, you'll see they are quite similar.

Oh, if you do look at sector counts, you'll probably notice that the Eol Prou, the Zunou and the Clooku sectors contain much more ELW-s than surrounding stuff. The reason for this is simple: Eol Prou contains Jaques, and the other two are being systematically surveyed for Earth-likes by some Commanders.

As for the overarching question: we don't really know yet. What data we have so far seems to indicate that it's more or less the same everywhere, but there isn't enough data to be conclusive, so it might be wrong. However, like EfilOne's maps show, the distribution of star types(!) isn't the same everywhere, and we do know that the chances of finding ELWs in a system is dependent on that. So while you might have the same chances of finding an ELW around a class F star in the core and near the edge, the chances of you coming across a class F star are higher in the more dense regions than the sparse ones farther out.
It might or might not be that some regions have higher chances of containing ELW-s than other regions do, but we don't know yet.

Also, as for finding no Earth-likes for 7,500 ly: that's simply the luck of the draw. My worst record so far was none over around 20,000 ly, then something like seven on the way back.

 

[CMDR EfilOne]

Can't rep you more Marx, but yeah, like you said at the end of the day the data produced comes from the players, and the results will naturally show the trends and regions of focus in the first place

 

[CMDR CHIGGY VONRICTOFEN]

Are ELW's more common in some regions than others?

Definitely more common in some areas than others. It's just figuring out where those areas are that's the problem *grins*

Given my experience in the subject, I would say the overall chance of finding an ELW, searching just the prime candidates, in any given area, is about 1 in 50 or 2%.

I have seen this increased to as much as 1 in 10 in two adjacent sub-sectors on the border of two different sectors (5 in 55 and 6 in 60) for my best single day ever of hunting. (too bad the density was so low)

It was such an extreme case, I later went back to the area, and searched it with a fine tooth comb, finding another sub-sector with 4 in 48 fairly close by to the first two. After the search was finished, I found like 45-50 total

within a 200ly x 200ly area...and absolutely none that I could find in the surrounding 200ly all around the area. It's an extreme case, and one I haven't seen repeated, but there are definitely what I call "hot-spots". If I ever find 2 or more

ELW's back to back while traveling, I will stop and comb the area.

 

[osser]

Lets say, there's 400 billion systems in the galaxy.
Even @ 1 ELW in every 400 systems ='s 1 billion ELW's

 

[marx]

Definitely more common in some areas than others. It's just figuring out where those areas are that's the problem *grins*

Given my experience in the subject, I would say the overall chance of finding an ELW, searching just the prime candidates, in any given area, is about 1 in 50 or 2%.

I have seen this increased to as much as 1 in 10 in two adjacent sub-sectors on the border of two different sectors (5 in 55 and 6 in 60) for my best single day ever of hunting. (too bad the density was so low)

It was such an extreme case, I later went back to the area, and searched it with a fine tooth comb, finding another sub-sector with 4 in 48 fairly close by to the first two. After the search was finished, I found like 45-50 total

within a 200ly x 200ly area...and absolutely none that I could find in the surrounding 200ly all around the area. It's an extreme case, and one I haven't seen repeated, but there are definitely what I call "hot-spots". If I ever find 2 or more

ELW's back to back while traveling, I will stop and comb the area.

Well, that is just one example, so it's not conclusive. If I'm reading it right, there were five and six ELW-s in close proximity then? If that's the case, then it could simply be an example of very good luck, or statistical clumping.
Some time ago, I did try to survey subsectors (outside the core, of course) where ELW-s were already found to see if there are more. A few times, there were, but more often there weren't. On those times that there were, the systems themselves were often quite similar to each other in terms of bodies. This is just a theory without any evidence yet, but if the Stellar Forge sometimes spits out systems with similar initial parameters close enough to each other, then if there's at least one with favourable conditions for Earth-likes, odds are better that there'll be others too.
But then, people are pretty good at spotting patterns even where none exist, so I might be wrong with this.

Plus the Stellar Forge can often work in mysterious and counter-intuitive ways. For example, you'd expect to have the best chance of finding Earth-like planets around the most Sol-like stars, which was why a long time ago, people recommended focusing on class G stars. As it turned out, they aren't all that hot.

Hm, but you know, we could get data from EDDB on not just about which systems have Earth-likes, but also how many other explored systems around them don't have any. That might be worth looking into. I might do that later if nobody else does, but unfortunately, I don't really have enough time for such a task these days.

 

[Qohen Leth]

For example, you'd expect to have the best chance of finding Earth-like planets around the most Sol-like stars

Typical anthropocentrism?

 

[marx]

Hehe, yeah, pretty much.
I must repent by creating a List of Ammonia Worlds. Too bad I'm a day late for that now. Well, maybe next year!

 

[CMDR CHIGGY VONRICTOFEN]

Hm, but you know, we could get data from EDDB on not just about which systems have Earth-likes, but also how many other explored systems around them don't have any. That might be worth looking into. I might do that later if nobody else does, but unfortunately, I don't really have enough time for such a task these days.

I'll be finished with my survey in ZUNOU within the hour...every, single, last D masscode in the sub-sector..all 13,202 of them, showing just that, and I will post the results shortly!

 

[Qohen Leth]

Hehe, yeah, pretty much.
I must repent by creating a List of Ammonia Worlds. Too bad I'm a day late for that now. Well, maybe next year!

Was sort of contemplating the possibility of opening a list of Wolf-Rayets and a list of Supergiants & bigger, but... lazy.

 

[TinyPwny]

Typical anthropocentrism?

The whole meaning of "earthlike world" is by definition anthropocentric, so yeah.

 

[Qohen Leth]

The whole meaning of "earthlike world" is by definition anthropocentric, so yeah.

By definition, it means "similar to Earth" and merely deals with environmental and other parameters. Nothing to do with humans, except the fact that it suits our constitution. So, no.

But then, what I called anthropocentrism as a tease was not anthropocentrism.

 

[TinyPwny]

By definition, it means "similar to Earth" and merely deals with environmental and other parameters. Nothing to do with humans, except the fact that it suits our constitution. So, no.

But then, what I called anthropocentrism as a tease was not anthropocentrism.

Unless I'm mistaken, if you look at the description of earthlike worlds in game, it's all about human breathable conditions. Also, humans decide how earthlike a planet is, the planet doesn't care.