Beyond the end: an unreachable cluster down the Outer Arm

[marx]

This subject was originally posted by @ORANGEORANGE here , but I figured that continuing discussing it there would be off-topic, and it's interesting enough to be posted on its own, so here we go.

There's a cluster of unexplored sectors at the end of the Outer Arm, beyond what's known as the Arm's End, Hypau Aec IO-Z d13-0. Unfortunately, they are unreachable: these sectors are cut off from the rest of the galaxy, as they are surrounded by empty sectors. The jump range required to traverse the gap would be somewhere around 1,800 - 2,000 ly.
So, they are really a curiosity, something that's good to know about.
What's in there, though?

First off, here are the rough boundaries of it on the galaxy map:


Or a sector map of the nearby area, adapted from what I use in my sector distribution analysis:

(the sectors of the cluster are coloured stronger green. Otherwise, they aren't different though.)

Then here's the list of sectors. On the plus zero plane: Gludgaei, Pha Aihm, Pha Aip, Phue Aick, Ufosty, Hypo Aip, Hypeae Aick, Phoo Aed, Scoidaea, Phue Phla, Hypixt, Hypeae Phla. On the minus zero plane: Chrudgoo, Riedeae, Riedo, Phrae Hype, Cyeadue. Note that a good number of these (especially the ones below) contain only a handful of systems, but I included them anyway.


As for the contents of the sectors: judging by the galaxy map, they all look like edge sectors tend to do. A thin layer of mostly A/F/G/K stars, only reaching around a few hundred ly of height around the center. There would still be room to explore in the cluster, of course, but it likely wouldn't take long to survey them entirely. Still, the cluster stretches out over a few thousands of lightyears, so there'd be room to roam - if a ship with a decent jump range could somehow be gotten into the cluster, then it should be able to traverse it without too much difficulty.

Also, AFAIK there are no catalogue (not procedurally generated) stars this far out (not counting the ones which are far outside the Milky Way), and I doubt they could be put inside empty sectors anyway. So, trying to hop over a chain of those in a fleet carrier is out as well.

So... anybody want to convince Frontier to make a megaship ferry here? Could be a storyline about finding the farthest place to flee to from the Thargoids, for example.

 

[Aris Tarkus]

Or, is there something in game already that has yet to be discovered (Thargoid co-operation maybe??) that would allow us to get there...
Time for those engineers to get to work. A 1 shot FSD booster would probably work if you could carry enough supplies to make it back. Probably have a ridiculous materials cost for such a booster though. Or a really High credit cost.

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Or, is there something in game already that has yet to be discovered (Thargoid co-operation maybe??) that would allow us to get there...
Time for those engineers to get to work. A 1 shot FSD booster would probably work if you could carry enough supplies to make it back. Probably have a ridiculous materials cost for such a booster though. Or a really High credit cost.

This is a bit like the old Elite intergalactic hyperdrives - one use only, no going back! Also the Distant Stars expedition, where everyone self-destructed or rammed the surface of a planet after surveying the Cancri cluster.

 

[varonica]

Many areas like this, for instance, for instance to the galactic west of the bubble there's a line of stars that rise out of the galactic plane to a point much higher than Rackham's Peak, despite much trying I was unable to get within 500ly of the lowest ones and so was unable to chase them upwards;

 

[marx]

Many areas like this

Can you name any other clusters of sectors, with procedurally generated stars, which are unreachable? If so, it would be interesting to include them on a map too. You posted a line of catalogue stars, and while those are interesting, it's not like this area, but quite different.

 

[varonica]

This is the KOI catalogue star set, it's likely the Kepler catalogue is the same, in fact the KOI catalogue is actually a subset of the Kepler catalogue being the Kepler Objects of Interest. It is indeed interesting and annoying, the closest I could get was 501ly. There are a number of catalogue sets that have member far outside the bubble but the thing is with catalogue sets they are easy to search on you can just advance through the sequence set, procedural sets aren't really as easy.

 

[marx]

Can you name any other clusters of sectors, with procedurally generated stars, which are unreachable?

This is the KOI catalogue star set,

Okay, but I was asking about sectors, and procedurally generated stars. Catalogue stars are different.

 

[varonica]

Okay, but I was asking about sectors, and procedurally generated stars. Catalogue stars are different.

Yeah, I was thinking, procedural stars would only appear far out if the boxel from the stellar forge actually had mass assigned for that boxel, following on from the tips of the galactic arms are probably the most likely place to find such boxels beyond the traversable galactic rim, so it might be worth checking the other arms for procedural stars out beyond the tip of the arm basically following the curve of the arm.

 

[marx]

An unexpected small update to this: thanks to @ORANGEORANGE 's search method tip in this thread, I found that I missed that the Pha Aihm sector has some systems as well, so I added that. (Didn't update the image yet, I'll probably get around to that sometime.) They basically form a minor cluster, with the rest being a few hundred ly away.

Unfortunately, the sectors surrounding Pha Aihm are still empty, so the cluster is still beyond our reach. But hey, at least this should cut down the required jump range by a few hundred ly-s, so if we'll ever get four digit jump ranges (yeah, I'm not holding my breath), they'll help.

 

[ORANGEORANGE]

An unexpected small update to this: thanks to @ORANGEORANGE 's search method tip in this thread, I found that I missed that the Pha Aihm sector has some systems as well, so I added that. (Didn't update the image yet, I'll probably get around to that sometime.) They basically form a minor cluster, with the rest being a few hundred ly away.

Unfortunately, the sectors surrounding Pha Aihm are still empty, so the cluster is still beyond our reach. But hey, at least this should cut down the required jump range by a few hundred ly-s, so if we'll ever get four digit jump ranges (yeah, I'm not holding my breath), they'll help.

That's neat, did not expect a smaller island in this "big" island area

 

[marx]

I did some more work on mapping this from afar, and flew to the two places where the cluster would be the closest. First off, the most important part: from both routes, the required jump distance would be around 2,900 ly: far beyond what we can accomplish.
If such jump ranges were possible though, there would be two possible routes to get into the cluster: the first one from the West, starting from Hypau Aec IO-Z d13-0, the arm's reachable end, and jumping into the main cluster at Phoo Aed OM-W d1-0.
The second one would be jumping across another galactic arm, starting from the Ouchosty sector (in Achilles' Altar), to the minor cluster at Pha Aihm. The required jump range for this would be the same as from the other way. So, if such jumps were possible, this would be the slightly better route of the two, as one wouldn't have to cross down South to Xibalba. But that wouldn't be much of a problem anyway.

Speaking of the Pha Aihm cluster, it's really just a dozen systems in a smaller area, somewhere around 1,000 ly from the main cluster. Here's how the two areas look, with a rough map of the main cluster's borders, plus the would-be crossing points:

And here's a closer map of the Pha Aihm systems:


I updated the images in the first post as well, to reflect these.
Also, I couldn't find any catalogue systems around here which would help make the crossing easier. At the end of the day, we'd still need a jump range of around 3,000 ly to get to the cluster at the arm's end. I strongly doubt we'll ever get such, nor another way here (such as Frontier manually adding a megaship ferry), but hey, who knows. It's at least good to know that there is this distant area that's likely never going to be explored.
Come to think of it, I wonder if the developers even know that it exists. After all, it could make for a good location for story stuff. (@Paul_Crowther , it might be worth passing this over to them)

Well then, I think the first post and this covers everything now. Thanks for reading!