What's ridiculous is saying that "Deep black" only begins x ly's outside "the bubble".
The whole "deep black" thing itself is a bit silly, really. I've been ~10K out, and the lack of real planetary variety, geology, & ecosystems makes exploration quite a dull task.
400 Billion star systems is technically correct for marketing, and they were quite smart not to mention "with fascinating planets to explore!", because they aren't any.
Black is black. When you are outside the "official bubble" & your ship is fracked up or runs out of magic space go juice, you're in deep isht whether you're 50, 500, or 5000, or 10000 Ly from "the bubble". The only difference is if you can convince the FR or someone to rescue you. Even in the bubble, tbh.
Plus, you can suicide anytime, and you'll be back in the bubble instantly. That's really deep black, isn't it. Instant teleport.
It's ridiculous to have every planet in a 1000ly+ even spherical distribution around "the bubble" overpopulated with wrecks, escape pods, and mysterious installations you can't open. Then they arbitrarily stop at some point, do a little fall off, bingo, nothing, just another 400 Billion star systems of the same old thing, only missing the crashed starship conventioneers. If you're really lucky, you might get an extra special skinner box loot drop.
It doesn't matter that a 70LY ship could traverse 1000LY in 13 jumps or so, the point is the number of stars within that volume and the believability of each planet being distributed with wreckage/installations in that amount.
If it was in any way semi-realistic the distribution of human exploration would be in a limited number of radials projecting from the bubble, and it would number less than a mere few hundred, and still not involve coming across large numbers of wreckage or installations.
It's just lazy design. Not to mention, they all look and act exactly the same (more or less, all drawn from the same small pool of assets).
Once you break the suspension of disbelief, you can't go back. That's my point.
Well, obviously some people can, so good for them!
"...arbitrarily stop at some point..." not disagreeing with you on most of your points, and not disagreeing with you on this one either,
but wasn't there a PLOT reason for that?
i.e. after FSDs came about, the previous generations of drives and corresponding slow expeditions stopped,
when previously, RATES of expansion, were relatively similar?
i.e. FSDs made for such a massive multiplier in time, with a little determination, that ANYwhere in galaxy we can reach, someone can get there in a few weeks or so,
whereas in the history of the BGS/plot... you're talking MONTHS, to get to nearby systems to SOL ... years,.. to get anywhere distant?
and relatively-synchronous departures and arrivals?
i.e. if the federation and empire were competing to get somewhere... and one left 2 years before the other, but the other had engines which were only a little better, and both's trip was expected to take 35 years... the 2nd one might make it 5 years earlier, but even that, would still be near equiDISTANT?
i.e. races everywhere, but the DISTANCES, are the same?
FSDs've blown all of that out of the water / left all that behind.
So i'm guessing, the 'edge' is meant to be where the slow-crawl stopped, and a totally new WAVE of speeds of investment, colonisation, etc,
SUPPLANTED it, leaving a sort of 'dead-wake' concept behind?