On my latest trip out to Jaques and then beyond, I decided to try gathering some kind of data I haven't really done so before. After thinking about it, I decided to stick to class G stars only, and keep counts of valuable planet types and general system types.
Why those ones specifically? Because they are somewhat unique in the aspect that systems with G main star systems appear to be split evenly between mass codes C and D. From the ELW list, if a given ELW is in a class G main star system, it also appears to be split evenly between those two codes... and yet, from pretty much any data that tracks the total number of visits, code D systems tend to have considerably more ELWs than code C. So I was wondering what the difference might be then, and if there could be any differences system generation between the two codes. (Beyond the total mass.) Especially after a relatively recent comment from the devs, where they mentioned that system generation looks at the available mass(!) for the system first.
My method was simple: set the route planner filter to class G stars only, and take screenshots of every system's map. These ended up to be pretty large in size, so I didn't upload the pictures anywhere. (Although if there's an actual demand for it, I could resize and re-compress the screenshots.)
Also, to better illustrate how chance might skew the results, I decided to take snapshots of the tally at every 50 systems visited. (Except the first 50, as I forgot about this then. So it begins at 100 systems.)
Well then, here's the data:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xe6WwQ3BnzWWSJ1Hzv3hTjI8-N0Ht-oS0fV2AcisJL0/edit?usp=sharing
Now, a bit about the terminology I used:
- Empty system: only stars, perhaps asteroid belts, but nothing else.
- Solo body system: besides the stars, there would be only one body.
- Potato system: places where the large majority of planets (not moons!) are those little landable lumps. See an example here. Note that if there was only a single potato, and no other bodies in the system, then I didn't count those here.
For water worlds, I didn't keep track of terraforming candidates. Mostly because at times, I didn't want to fly 200-400k ls just to scan a planet that I knew was a WW. I did scan most of them though, so if anybody wants to look up their data on EGO/EDSM, let me know and I'll compile a list of the valuables too.
My route went in a nearly-straight line from near edge of the Orion-Cygnus arm to Colonia. With my 40 ly full tank jump range, going from the the bubble proper wouldn't have been feasible, as the route planner frequently failed if set to class G only then. As such, star density would increase quite steadily through most of the trip, with the narrow exception of the part where I left the Orion-Cygnus arm and crossed over to the core.
Here's how the entire route turned out looking:
The class G stars are the mostly-straight line, with one small nebula detour around the middle. Aside from this and the final dip to Jaques, I flew in the galactic plane the whole time - and haven't encountered any already-discovered system outside Eol Prou, except for one planetary nebula that had already been visited.
My observations and conclusions:
Other observations from the journey:
Finally, I thought at the start that I might go mad with all the class G systems, but as it turned out, it was actually quite fascinating and even enjoyable doing this. I'll probably do it again sometime, just elsewhere - might be interesting doing this near the edge. But I like G-s now. (Still not fond of geese though.)
Why those ones specifically? Because they are somewhat unique in the aspect that systems with G main star systems appear to be split evenly between mass codes C and D. From the ELW list, if a given ELW is in a class G main star system, it also appears to be split evenly between those two codes... and yet, from pretty much any data that tracks the total number of visits, code D systems tend to have considerably more ELWs than code C. So I was wondering what the difference might be then, and if there could be any differences system generation between the two codes. (Beyond the total mass.) Especially after a relatively recent comment from the devs, where they mentioned that system generation looks at the available mass(!) for the system first.
My method was simple: set the route planner filter to class G stars only, and take screenshots of every system's map. These ended up to be pretty large in size, so I didn't upload the pictures anywhere. (Although if there's an actual demand for it, I could resize and re-compress the screenshots.)
Also, to better illustrate how chance might skew the results, I decided to take snapshots of the tally at every 50 systems visited. (Except the first 50, as I forgot about this then. So it begins at 100 systems.)
Well then, here's the data:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xe6WwQ3BnzWWSJ1Hzv3hTjI8-N0Ht-oS0fV2AcisJL0/edit?usp=sharing
Now, a bit about the terminology I used:
- Empty system: only stars, perhaps asteroid belts, but nothing else.
- Solo body system: besides the stars, there would be only one body.
- Potato system: places where the large majority of planets (not moons!) are those little landable lumps. See an example here. Note that if there was only a single potato, and no other bodies in the system, then I didn't count those here.
For water worlds, I didn't keep track of terraforming candidates. Mostly because at times, I didn't want to fly 200-400k ls just to scan a planet that I knew was a WW. I did scan most of them though, so if anybody wants to look up their data on EGO/EDSM, let me know and I'll compile a list of the valuables too.
My route went in a nearly-straight line from near edge of the Orion-Cygnus arm to Colonia. With my 40 ly full tank jump range, going from the the bubble proper wouldn't have been feasible, as the route planner frequently failed if set to class G only then. As such, star density would increase quite steadily through most of the trip, with the narrow exception of the part where I left the Orion-Cygnus arm and crossed over to the core.
Here's how the entire route turned out looking:
The class G stars are the mostly-straight line, with one small nebula detour around the middle. Aside from this and the final dip to Jaques, I flew in the galactic plane the whole time - and haven't encountered any already-discovered system outside Eol Prou, except for one planetary nebula that had already been visited.
My observations and conclusions:
- the systems are an even split between mass codes C and D. Tended slightly towards code C at the end, oddly enough, but not significantly.
- the systems are also an even split between single and multiple primary stars. For code D systems, it tended slightly towards solo primary stars, but again, not significantly.
- code D systems were slightly more likely to be empty systems at first, but this difference gradually decreased the further I went into the core. Random chance or a trend? Can't tell.
- in contrast to this, solo-body and potato systems were split evenly.
- a given system is as likely to contain a water world in code C as code D, but...
- code D systems are more likely to contain more than one water world. For code C, only two systems contained 1+ WWs (one contained two and the other, three), while for code D, a third of them had more than one.
- as for Earth-like worlds, they were much less frequent in code C than code D. As such, the ELW list's distribution is better tied to the distribution of systems that people visited.
- ammonia worlds, on the other hand, were much less frequent in code D than code C. The ones that did exist were all in multiple-star systems, save one.
Other observations from the journey:
- flying an Imperial Clipper with an eight second refuel time (build) was a great idea, as I barely had to pay attention to scooping. Just zoom past the star while skimming it, and during the time I looked at the system map, the tank would already top up.
- the final payout was 94,462,809 Cr. Note that this includes stuff I found before I started going for class G stars exclusively, and that included one ELW. A rough estimate was that this took me 15 hours in total, so roughly 6,2 MCr / h - much better than before, but not exactly the best method of earning credits.
- still, with this much data I could have gotten allied with almost every faction in Colonia if I flew to their bases and sold enough data at each. I nearly slammed into the Canonnia planet though, and got spooked then, so I decided not to fly around everywhere.
- I broke two galactic records: "fastest spinning water world" (hooray!) and "class G star with the smallest argument of periapsis" (...hooray?).
- I might need a new keyboard, as my F10 key is getting somewhat worn out. (Seriously.)
Finally, I thought at the start that I might go mad with all the class G systems, but as it turned out, it was actually quite fascinating and even enjoyable doing this. I'll probably do it again sometime, just elsewhere - might be interesting doing this near the edge. But I like G-s now. (Still not fond of geese though.)
