When I think more about the lore, or often, the lack of it, for certain regions of space, I wish we had things to fill in. There are some nice descriptions of many core systems, but sadly most systems have no description at all. One of the things I would like to know is when systems were first settled.
This can have many definitions, but I think we can agree upon a general concept of a system being settled when humans either take up residence on a planet or build a major industrial operation. There seems to be a dearth of information on when systems were settled. A ton of extra information might show up in the Elite RPG, and I'm sure some of the novels have dates thrown around, but that does little to help.
However, we can attempt to quant stuff.
There is a handful of data on when certain systems were settled. Using information from the Frontier: Elite II - Gazetteer info and in game stellar descriptions as catalogued by players on this forum thread
Some of the data only provides dates when the system's first planet was terraformed, rather than a date for being settled. To try to normalize this data I estimated the system was settled roughly a century before terraforming completed. This is roughly on par with the reported rate of Mar's terraforming so as a first approximation it works out.
This is what you get:
You can see there is an apparently straight line with Achenar way outside the trend and some systems below the trend. The first one is explainable from the lore because the Duvals intentionally selected a system far away from other governments. The other systems you can presume to be consolidation, with a lot of habitable systems inside the bubble getting ignored for one reason or another.
If you take out the Achenor data point and the later period consolidations, you get a very tight linear line. If you take the inverse of this trend line you get a first approximation equation
Date Settled = Distance from Sol * 6.5357 + 2062
This seems to be a decent fit considering the data we're working with, the y intercept is 40 years away from the discovery of hyperspace. As an extra way to tweak our data, let's look at the very edge of the bubble, the system Sothis, an astounding 494.5 light years from Sol. There is not a date settled for this system but let's just assume as the furthest out system it was settled in 3301. We see the previous linear response breaks down and an exponential trend line fits far better.
Now we have this equation:
Distance from Sol = 0.35*e^(0.0029 * Date Settled)
This is not unexpected. An exponential expansion makes sense given an expanding sphere and population models, and it uses a natural log, which is always a plus. All in all this is likely a slightly better model over the long term. The major weakness with both of these models is the 'back tracking' nature of the bubble. As those two data points I conveniently got rid of note...a lot of systems plenty close to sol get settled much later along. The reasons for this could be cultural, political, but most likely are about natural resources. You can take this line as being mostly designed for high value systems with lesser systems being settled later than their distance would suggest.
A better model would need to create correction factors based on how good mineral reserves are, whether the system has an already inhabitable planet like Achenar, how many terraformable worlds there are and how much effort is needed to terraform them (at best I could suggest looking at nearby planets for comparison of what these planets might used to have been like) and other fudge factors could work.
There are far more accurate and complex models that could be used that take into account population growth and migration demand...something like bacteria spreading to various nutrient sources might be a starting point.
So this is not a definitive guide but the start of a conversation. A conversation of one most likely as I think I may have put more thought into this than most have.
Data I used for the charts:
This can have many definitions, but I think we can agree upon a general concept of a system being settled when humans either take up residence on a planet or build a major industrial operation. There seems to be a dearth of information on when systems were settled. A ton of extra information might show up in the Elite RPG, and I'm sure some of the novels have dates thrown around, but that does little to help.
However, we can attempt to quant stuff.
There is a handful of data on when certain systems were settled. Using information from the Frontier: Elite II - Gazetteer info and in game stellar descriptions as catalogued by players on this forum thread
Some of the data only provides dates when the system's first planet was terraformed, rather than a date for being settled. To try to normalize this data I estimated the system was settled roughly a century before terraforming completed. This is roughly on par with the reported rate of Mar's terraforming so as a first approximation it works out.
This is what you get:
You can see there is an apparently straight line with Achenar way outside the trend and some systems below the trend. The first one is explainable from the lore because the Duvals intentionally selected a system far away from other governments. The other systems you can presume to be consolidation, with a lot of habitable systems inside the bubble getting ignored for one reason or another.
If you take out the Achenor data point and the later period consolidations, you get a very tight linear line. If you take the inverse of this trend line you get a first approximation equation
Date Settled = Distance from Sol * 6.5357 + 2062
This seems to be a decent fit considering the data we're working with, the y intercept is 40 years away from the discovery of hyperspace. As an extra way to tweak our data, let's look at the very edge of the bubble, the system Sothis, an astounding 494.5 light years from Sol. There is not a date settled for this system but let's just assume as the furthest out system it was settled in 3301. We see the previous linear response breaks down and an exponential trend line fits far better.
Now we have this equation:
Distance from Sol = 0.35*e^(0.0029 * Date Settled)
This is not unexpected. An exponential expansion makes sense given an expanding sphere and population models, and it uses a natural log, which is always a plus. All in all this is likely a slightly better model over the long term. The major weakness with both of these models is the 'back tracking' nature of the bubble. As those two data points I conveniently got rid of note...a lot of systems plenty close to sol get settled much later along. The reasons for this could be cultural, political, but most likely are about natural resources. You can take this line as being mostly designed for high value systems with lesser systems being settled later than their distance would suggest.
A better model would need to create correction factors based on how good mineral reserves are, whether the system has an already inhabitable planet like Achenar, how many terraformable worlds there are and how much effort is needed to terraform them (at best I could suggest looking at nearby planets for comparison of what these planets might used to have been like) and other fudge factors could work.
There are far more accurate and complex models that could be used that take into account population growth and migration demand...something like bacteria spreading to various nutrient sources might be a starting point.
So this is not a definitive guide but the start of a conversation. A conversation of one most likely as I think I may have put more thought into this than most have.
Data I used for the charts:
| System | Distance from Sol | Date Settled |
| Achenar | 139.45 | 2350 |
| Arcturus | 36.71 | 2304 |
| Howard | 80.01 | 3250 |
| Miola | 79.71 | 3195 |
| Aymifa | 127.9 | 2900 |
| Tau Ceti | 11.94 | 2150 |
| Delta Pavonis | 19.93 | 2180 |
| Beta Hydri | 24.31 | 2195 |
| Altair | 16.74 | 2195 |
| Sothis | 494.49 | 3301 |
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