The accuracy of these numbers, or otherwise, is for me irrelevant because the underlying metric - what it in fact means to "colonise the galaxy" to the point it becomes a problem - is flawed: going by the number of populated systems is just the wrong way to measure this.
A better approach (IMO) is distance to the nearest populated system: the lower the distance, the more "colonised" the galaxy is.
Because the system density around the galaxy center is so much higher, the proportion of systems to colonise there to achieve some given distance is way lower than the proportion of systems to colonise elsewhere for the same distance. System numbers at the core are up to 100x higher for a given volume of space than in sparser regions (I estimate based on boxel numbers)
The smaller this maximum distance gets, the more cluttered and cramped the galaxy would feel. Exactly what constitutes an unacceptably low distance is subjective, but anything less than a few thousand light years would be a tragic loss of unspoiled galactic wilderness for some.
Let's take 2000ly as an arbitrary example distance we can consider for discussion to be unacceptable. The galaxy can be approximated as a disk with diameter 100,000ly. Ignoring the existence of the Bubble, the number of colonised systems to achieve the 2000ly distance can be approximated by considering a hexagonal tiling of the galactic disk, where each hexagon is inscribed within a 2000ly radius circle and the colonised systems are at the center of each hexagon/circle.
The distance between the centers of these hexagons would be cos(30) * 2 * 2000ly or about 3464ly, hence 15 adjacent such hexagons would cover the 50,000ly radius of the galaxy, with a little to spare.
Using the centered hexagonal number formula to count the number of hexagons arranged in a concentric lattice, H( n ) = 1 + 6((n(n - 1)) / 2), and setting n = 15, gives 1 + (6 * 15 * 14 / 2) or 631 hexagons inscribed in 2kly circles to tile the galactic plane.
My maths may well be off by a factor of 2 or 3 here (corrections are welcome!), but the point would still stand.. Given a sufficiently coordinated playerbase unconstrained by a maximum colonisation distance, the galaxy could be unacceptably over colonised within a very short time (however long it takes for a couple of thousand colonised systems, say, to appear. Less than a year, certainly, probably less than a month.)
What's acceptable and unacceptable is subjective, of course, but not being able to get further than 2kly from civilisation would be a major detriment to the value of the game's galaxy for many, I suspect.
Edit: yeah, on reflection I think the maths was out - a fencepost error counting the number of hexagons from center to perimeter: I should have 16 not 15, giving 721 hexagons total.
Last edited:
