Newcomer / Intro Are all the start locations contained in a certain sphere of space?

[LeRoo]

I've been playing a while now, so I'm not exactly a newcomer - but I think the question is relevant. Since the game is finally released I wanted to start exploring a bit more. I want to get away from the starting systems as quickly as possible, to that end, does anyone know the approximate centre and radius of the sphere that contains the starting systems? Or are the locations just completely random (i.e., there's no discernible sphere of starting systems to move away from)?

During Gamma I didn't stray too far from my start position, I'm now hovering around "Ross 210". Maybe I should just point my ship in a random direction, close my eyes and fire up the FSD!

Any helpful comments or instructions welcome

 

[Jorlin]

I've been playing a while now, so I'm not exactly a newcomer - but I think the question is relevant. Since the game is finally released I wanted to start exploring a bit more. I want to get away from the starting systems as quickly as possible, to that end, does anyone know the approximate centre and radius of the sphere that contains the starting systems? Or are the locations just completely random (i.e., there's no discernible sphere of starting systems to move away from)?

During Gamma I didn't stray too far from my start position, I'm now hovering around "Ross 210". Maybe I should just point my ship in a random direction, close my eyes and fire up the FSD!

Any helpful comments or instructions welcome

Switch the map mode to showing the allegiances, scroll out.
Then head to where the coloured spots end

 

[LeRoo]

Switch the map mode to showing the allegiances, scroll out.
Then head to where the coloured spots end

Cheers Jorlin - the simple solutions are always the best

Does this mean that any system with an allegiance could be a start system? Or is this just a quick method of finding the edge of the 'more likely' start systems?

 

[InfiniteGremlins]

My impression from the gamma was that the start locations were scattered all around Federation space, with a lot of players reported starting in particular systems. So my guess is, for gamma at least, that the starting locations were pre-selected to a certain extent, so not completely random. But definitely all over Fed territory. For release, who knows?

You can still get a exploration data for a lot of the systems in the sphere of human space, so it's not an absolute requirement that you get away from all of the players. The payout is at least partially based on what's in your ship's database, so you can pick up some cash with exploration even fairly close to Sol. (I think the explanation is a combination of the cartographers having to continually update their data with accurate readouts of the moving positions of the stars and planets; and that space is really, really big and some systems are just underexplored.)

If you really want to push the edge of exploration, of course, there's only a few tens of thousands of settled systems, so pick a direction and start heading in a straight line until the map stops showing colored spots!

 

[LeRoo]

Thanks for the info. IG