For there to be "alien stations", there must first be aliens. So far, the only aliens we know of that are or will be implemented in ED are:
1. Thargoids. Thargoids are, if the lore holds true, a nomadic species - they have no "home worlds" or "colonies" that we have ever been aware of, so have so planets about which to orbit a space station. Not in this galaxy, anyway. Again referring to lore (and to the previous FFE version of the game), some Thargoid motherships are large enough to dock at, so they'd presumably be the "places to land" with respect to peaceful interactions with the Thargoids. The Thargoid aesthetic is historically based on octagons, not pentagons, so the old Dodec stations are unlikely to be revived in this guise.
2. The as-yet-unnamed aliens who are responsible for the Unknown Artifacts and Meta-alloy Barnacles. Again, it is unknown if these aliens actually own planets about which they'd place an alien station. Their aesthetic, the only one actually implemented in-game so far, is "cyber-organic" in appearance.
3. The unknown ancient alien race that left relics behind in the Soontill system. Soontill is an uninhabited system with no solid worlds except ice moons; their only manifestation is in the rare goods "Soontill relics", sold in the Ngurii system. Their aesthetic is unknown, except for the rare goods description that the artifacts are "covered in pictographs of an unknown origin".
It is not yet even known whether these three are actually separate races or whether one race might be responsible for more than one phenomenon.
That being said, the vast swathes of space that have been permit-locked and thus inaccessible are presumably like this for a reason, and alien planets (presumably with alien stations) are a probable reason.
I'm hedging my bets and going to suggest that 2.4 is the first encounter between us and another sentient entity.
What better way to meet another race than in the patch after we have first created ourselves?
I also then want 3.0 to be the ability to walk around my ship and EVA, so I can scoot out on RCS thrust and punch an alien in the mouth(s).
Fun fact "bug-ger" is censored on this forum? I'm American, is this word offensive in Europe? Was going to make a reference to bugs from Ender's game.
<REDACTED>
"vast swathes" of space. I thought you only needed a permit for a half dozen systems - Sol, Founder's World, Sirius(?),... . Where else do you need permits for?That being said, the vast swathes of space that have been permit-locked and thus inaccessible are presumably like this for a reason, and alien planets (presumably with alien stations) are a probable reason.
"vast swathes" of space. I thought you only needed a permit for a half dozen systems - Sol, Founder's World, Sirius(?),... . Where else do you need permits for?
"vast swathes" of space. I thought you only needed a permit for a half dozen systems - Sol, Founder's World, Sirius(?),... . Where else do you need permits for?
There was, if not still present, a vast number of systems/whole sectors (far) outside bubble with 'requires permit' stamped on them.
There's a lot more than that. There are 16 entire galactic sectors, each larger than the entire bubble of human space, that are permit-locked.
The thread maintained by Swift Arrow, listing the various systems and sectors for which a permit restriction is known to exist, the benefits or otherwise of obtaining those permits, and the things we need to do to obtain those permits (if known), can be found here.
Thank you both for the replies. I haven't been outside the bubble yet.