Any rhyme or reason to Porcedural naming?

TruffleSnout

T
Any rhyme or reason to Procedural naming?

Is there any? Reason I'm asking is I'm entertaining the idea of biting off a sector for myself and doing a 100% scan of every body in it (as an example: COL 285 SECTOR XY-Z - not even sure that's a real sector).

The only way to really know that I've actually completed the task is to proceed numerically/alphabetically.

Or would it be easier to just pick a system and make a list of everything that is +/- 2 jumps and do it that way?

edit: fixed my thread title
 
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Zenith

Zenith
Each sector name encompasses a volume of 1280ly x 1280ly x 1280ly, subdivided up into 8x8x8 grid (512) of 160ly x 160ly x 160ly sections.
You'll spot the sections as the different "cubes" of star density when you pan across the map.
You would have more luck picking a single 160ly^3 section and trying to scan every system in it than trying it for a whole sector.
Closer to the core, you'll be totally overwhelmed with the number of systems in a single section. You simply won't be able to visit and scan all of them.
 

TruffleSnout

T
Zenith said:
You would have more luck picking a single 160ly^3 section and trying to scan every system in it than trying it for a whole sector.
Click to expand...

That's fine - It's not the size of the scanning volume that I'm really concerned about. So suppose I pick one of these cubes - would they be named consistently in there? Building on my last example, COL 285 SECTOR XY-Z Ann-n, where the "nn-n" part is sequential?

I played around a bit in the Galaxy Map last night and randomly picked a system that was near me. The last part of the system name was B40-0 (don't specifically recall what the rest of the name was off hand). There was no B40-1, but there was a B41-0, so I guess I'm just trying to get a handle on how these names work, if that makes sense? Is the "B40" portion the 160ly cube identifier, and the -0 the system sequential number in that cube, and I was just unlucky enough to find a cube with a single system? Or am I way off?
 

Allitnil

Allitnil
I expect there is rhyme & reason to the naming although it's going to depend on a number of factors and not really predictable unless you knew all of them, which we don't.

Not all sectors are as large as Zenith suggests and many are not strict cubes. For instance, I have scanned every body in the NGC 6326 sector and that only covers two or three hundred LY and certainly wasn't a cube. I've also done a circumnavigation of the restricted Bovomit sector and that had curved borders.

You'll often find that systems with just the last digit being different are close but there's no guarantee. eg SECTOR NAME XY-Z A1-0 is likely to be close to SECTOR NAME XY-Z A1-1 but they could be 100s of LY apart.

What I did when I scanned the NGC 6326 sector was to enter "NGC 6326 SECTOR A" into the search box and hit the right arrow until I had gone through all of them, making a note of each name. Then "NGC 6326 SECTOR B" and so on. Then ticking them off the list as I scanned them.
 

Zenith

Zenith
My apologies, *in general* sectors are cubic. Special areas can be smaller or spherical such as particular NGC sectors, or Regor sector.

They're an exception rather than the rule. ;)
 

CMDR AKIRA MASAKARI

CMDR AKIRA MASAKARI
NGC sectors or nebula sectors are smaller because they represent the area around a nebula or another object of interest, and these generally exist for real. Examples can be Seagull Sector or Rosette Sector. These sectors have few hundreds systems, and scanning them all is possible and a remarkable task.

weird named sector like WREGOE or PHAE AESCS are cubes of Galaxy as described as ZENITH, I don't think they have real counterparts. The stars in them are procedurally generated when they have the sector name (WREGOE AA-A H0), and in the middle there can be some real star that have a different name (HIP, HD, HR, etc.)

thses cubes of galaxy contain a different number of stars that can vary depending on region density, but even in the best case scenario they have several millions of stars. Completly scanning one of these sectors for a single explorer would require a period of continuos playtime bigger than human life span (namely centuries of continuous playtime)
 
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Allitnil

Allitnil
I must admit that I hadn't really appreciated that the procedurally generated were on quite such a grid system. I'm still not totally convinced and I'm sure I've encountered examples which would contradict it but from a quick test I have to say that it fits the evidence rather well. I guess this is my day for being wrong...

The AA-A systems are an artefact of the procedural generation. If you just enter the sector name into the navigation panel then it will default to starting with systems starting with <sector name> AA-A H and these are usually non-main sequence star systems. What I haven't got my head around yet is that a lot of these are just places in space and not systems at all.
 

Whiterose

Whiterose
i did think the sector names lacked imagination, then I realised the numbers involved, so I am quite happy they are randomly generated. I have been at the edge of at least two boxes, as the sector name constantly changes depending on my height.
 
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