Another notable find for my records
I found a system with 7 stars!
- Thread starter HevKenzieHarris
- Start date
Another notable find for my records
If including proto-stars, like you are including, you can get a lot more. Still, cool find.
I think there are systems with a lot more stars, but they often aren't displayed in that leftmost column in the system map, instead being shown as if they were planets orbiting around one of the stars on the left column (often the primary one). Most often those stars-that-are-displayed-as-if-they-were-planets are of the dim sort (usually brown dwarfs or T Tauri), much more rarely of the brighter sort.
I'm not exactly sure how the game decides whether to show a star on the left column or as if it were a planet. I assume that if a star has enough (significantly) smaller stars orbiting it, it shows them as "planets".
So yes, it's quite rare to see 7 stars on the left column. I'm assuming that means that most of them are of a quite significant mass.
I'm not exactly sure how the game decides whether to show a star on the left column or as if it were a planet. I assume that if a star has enough (significantly) smaller stars orbiting it, it shows them as "planets".
So yes, it's quite rare to see 7 stars on the left column. I'm assuming that means that most of them are of a quite significant mass.
It's my understanding that the Stellar Forge has different generation rules for "stars" and "planets". But sometimes, a "planet" can become so big it turns into a star.
A star system can have up to eight "stars" in it - that's the stars that line up vertically, and are numbered A, B, C etc. These are essentially generated at the galaxy-map stage.
When it's asked to drill down to the star system itself, the Stellar Forge then generates planets around those stars. When the primary stars are massive enough, some of those planets might be generated with enough mass that the Stellar Forge "ignites" them, turning them into stars. However, since they were generated as planets, the game considers them to be planets, not stars - these "planetary stars" aren't given stellar-letter-designations, they're given planetary numbers. They're also placed in fully planetary orbits - so their mass of those stars does not affect the orbits of the primary stars around each other (unlike the stars in the vertical column, which must all affect each other's orbits around each other), because in simplified Stellar Forge gravity, "planets" don't affect "stars", they just orbit them.
So in the case of Asayanami's 16-star system shown above, those two blue stars on the left in the vertical column will be HD 152314 A and B, but those four orange/red stars orbiting A will will not be HD 152314 C, D, E and F, but rather be identified as HD 152314 A6, A9, A12 and A13.
TLDR: there's a maximum of eight stars placed in the vertical column, but there's no theoretical upper limit to the number of stars in a star system that stretch out horizontally, orbiting those initial eight stars. I believe the current record-holder for maximum number of stars in a system is still the 4 Cygni system, with 25 stars.