Occupied Systems..

[illogik]

New player here so hi all. o/

So I just started playing ED a few days ago and so far I'm loving it. It's so close to being the perfect game for me as I'm such a massive space freak. I can't get enough of it, be it movies, documentaries, games, books or whatever, if it's related to or set in space, I want in

I only recently found out about ED and from what I saw and heard, I knew I would love it. So I finally got the game a few days ago and dusted off my X52 pro and got ready to dive in. I've spent my time ingame since then playing in solo mode while I get the x52 all set up properly and I get myself accustomed to the gameplay and game mechanics etc. So I've been farming bounties at nav beacons and trying to save a few credits to upgrade my ship etc.

Once I am familiar with everything, my intention was to go and find myself a nice little quiet corner of the galaxy somewhere and settle there. I set out to do just that yesterday and after a while I began to notice that the systems had no stations or anything in them. So off to google I went and how dissapointed I was to discover that of the advertised "400 Billion Systems", something ridiculously small like 0.01% of them actually have anything in them other than stars/planets etc. No life, no stations, just empy systems with nothing at all to do in them other than explore. Am I missing something here? In a game advertised as being so immense, in reality its really not so big at all unless you want to aimlessly fly from system to system forever. I wanted to be able to sneak off into some undiscovered corner of space and live there but I cant do that when theres no stations or life of any kind at all. I'm not into trading or mining, I like farming npc's for bounties and some pvp when I feel confident enough with my piloting ability, but to be able to do any of that I'm limited to staying in that tiny little percentage of what available space there is..

So the question is, did I miss something? Is the game always going to be like this or will the rest of it become populated at some point?

You'll have to forgive any glaring noobness as I've been playing only a few days so feel free to enlighten me if I missed something!

 

[metatheurgist]

0.01% of 400 billion is 40 million. If you can't find somewhere to settle in 40 million worlds*...I dunno if any one can help you. Humans don't occupy the whole galaxy, that'd be boring, gotta leave some room for the Thargoids...and the sentient AI. How can a system be undiscovered if there's already a station there? Someone had to discover it to put the station there. Now, I don't know if there are in fact 40 million worlds out there, but human occupied space is certainly large enough for there to be places where very few, if any people visit. You can use the galaxy view to limit it to the human bubble and do some exploration.
.
*if 1 million people played Elite that would be 40 worlds for each player.

 

[Spog]

I understand you very well as I'd like the same thing myself.

There was vague talk about player owned inflatable bases, (yes that's right, inflatable), but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

 

[sam445]

Well you got to leave some space for the explorers, right? Beside, if human space was so huge, it would be rare to meet other players. This way they are all focused around a few hundred thousand solar systems.

Also, human colonized space is slowly expanding. There are from time to times community goal to help colonization efforts and we see more occupied systems appear.

Furthermore, you wouldn't think that in only 500 years or so that humanity would have managed to colonize the whole galaxy? I think the current human population in Elite is around 700 billions. That would make only a few thousands colonists at best for each systems.

 

[illogik]

I didnt exactly mean that I think every single system should be occupied. I kinda meant that there should be other pockets of life "somewhere" in the galaxy so every player in the game isnt stuck in that same little bubble (apart from explorers but even they still have to come back at some point). If some people wanted to branch out and go and emigrate to the other side of the galaxy it would be cool if you could actually do that without always being tied to that tiny little bubble of occupied space which is available now. Also I have no idea what the actual percentage is, 0.01% was a complete guess, its probably a whole lot less than that tbh.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

I didnt exactly mean that I think every single system should be occupied. I kinda meant that there should be other pockets of life "somewhere" in the galaxy so every player in the game isnt stuck in that same little bubble (apart from explorers but even they still have to come back at some point). If some people wanted to branch out and go and emigrate to the other side of the galaxy it would be cool if you could actually do that without always being tied to that tiny little bubble of occupied space which is available now. Also I have no idea what the actual percentage is, 0.01% was a complete guess, its probably a whole lot less than that tbh.

The lore reason is that the literal millions or billions of tons of metal and resources required to make a starport or outpost need to be moved there. That means the station has to pay for itself with trade and if its too far from other stations to visit then its not a good investment. No need to travel 20,000Ly looking for resources if you can get more than enough from the local area.
I think we will see expansion and contraction when or if the aliens from the older games come (Thargoids).

Also on a side note the only lore reason that Hutton Orbital exists is for science I think so I could maybe see an outpost or two around a black hole or neutron star but again most of these can be found relatively close to human space. I think the furthest cluster of inhabited systems out from Sol is in the Pegasi sector.

In any case answering your question for me there are more than enough outposts and stations about, add in the fact that there are many RES/Nav beacon sites and conflict zones that come and go sometimes with capital ships and such that its enough to keep you busy.
Ok I'd love to do some space combat around a black hole but that can be arranged with a player group

 

[Sire]

New player here so hi all. o/

So I just started playing ED a few days ago and so far I'm loving it. It's so close to being the perfect game for me as I'm such a massive space freak. I can't get enough of it, be it movies, documentaries, games, books or whatever, if it's related to or set in space, I want in

I only recently found out about ED and from what I saw and heard, I knew I would love it. So I finally got the game a few days ago and dusted off my X52 pro and got ready to dive in. I've spent my time ingame since then playing in solo mode while I get the x52 all set up properly and I get myself accustomed to the gameplay and game mechanics etc. So I've been farming bounties at nav beacons and trying to save a few credits to upgrade my ship etc.

Once I am familiar with everything, my intention was to go and find myself a nice little quiet corner of the galaxy somewhere and settle there. I set out to do just that yesterday and after a while I began to notice that the systems had no stations or anything in them. So off to google I went and how dissapointed I was to discover that of the advertised "400 Billion Systems", something ridiculously small like 0.01% of them actually have anything in them other than stars/planets etc. No life, no stations, just empy systems with nothing at all to do in them other than explore. Am I missing something here? In a game advertised as being so immense, in reality its really not so big at all unless you want to aimlessly fly from system to system forever. I wanted to be able to sneak off into some undiscovered corner of space and live there but I cant do that when theres no stations or life of any kind at all. I'm not into trading or mining, I like farming npc's for bounties and some pvp when I feel confident enough with my piloting ability, but to be able to do any of that I'm limited to staying in that tiny little percentage of what available space there is..

So the question is, did I miss something? Is the game always going to be like this or will the rest of it become populated at some point?

You'll have to forgive any glaring noobness as I've been playing only a few days so feel free to enlighten me if I missed something!

If human race occupied systems taking one year to build one station each it would take 400 billion year to colonize the whole galaxy. Considering that E: D is played in real time you just have to be a little bit patient. BTW, assuming that the further was preceeding the colonization the fastest would be its spreading time reaching the mean time amount of 1 system per second, it will anyway take 400 billion seconds= 12683 years, a lot of time lesser but you should still be VERY patient.

 

[dayrth]

I didnt exactly mean that I think every single system should be occupied. I kinda meant that there should be other pockets of life "somewhere" in the galaxy so every player in the game isnt stuck in that same little bubble (apart from explorers but even they still have to come back at some point). If some people wanted to branch out and go and emigrate to the other side of the galaxy it would be cool if you could actually do that without always being tied to that tiny little bubble of occupied space which is available now. Also I have no idea what the actual percentage is, 0.01% was a complete guess, its probably a whole lot less than that tbh.

It isn't a little bubble, it's a huge bubble and there are different clusters of population with sparsely populated space in between. There are even the odd occupied systems beyond the borders, where you have to cross many light-years of totally unoccupied space to get to them. All in all it is probably exactly what you are asking for. It only looks small and limited relative to the unbelievable vastness of the entire galaxy.