Planetless Regions - are they a thing?

Hi all,

Yesterday I made my first big push out of the Bubble, going to the California Nebula by way of Bellatrix, and after a brief stopover at Mic Turner base, started pushing north in hopes of finding unmapped systems (from my reading and experience, I'm probably going to have to travel quite some distance to do so).

Well, I was passing through the Synuefai sector, trying to find a planet I could land on for the night, when I noticed something odd. I wasn't finding planets - for something like six systems in a row.

A couple of those were T Tauri multi-star systems - easy to see why they didn't have planets. But the others were either solitary or wide binary main sequence stars. I didn't understand why they were planetless.

A couple of caveats: I'm new to exploration, and to the game as a whole, so my ship isn't top-shelf equipment. I have an intermediate discovery scanner, and I'm aware of its limited range.

Second, as I said, I've noticed this in six systems - which is small enough to be a statistical fluke. At the time, I was starting to get tired - I almost crashed when I did finally find a planet (around an L class brown dwarf).

I still plan to push north and hopefully accrue enough data to spring for the advanced scanner, and then return to Synuefai to investigate further. Before I do, I wanted to check with the veteran explorers: have you, in general, encountered regions of space full of planetless stars?
 
Hi all,

Yesterday I made my first big push out of the Bubble, going to the California Nebula by way of Bellatrix, and after a brief stopover at Mic Turner base, started pushing north in hopes of finding unmapped systems (from my reading and experience, I'm probably going to have to travel quite some distance to do so).

Well, I was passing through the Synuefai sector, trying to find a planet I could land on for the night, when I noticed something odd. I wasn't finding planets - for something like six systems in a row.

A couple of those were T Tauri multi-star systems - easy to see why they didn't have planets. But the others were either solitary or wide binary main sequence stars. I didn't understand why they were planetless.

A couple of caveats: I'm new to exploration, and to the game as a whole, so my ship isn't top-shelf equipment. I have an intermediate discovery scanner, and I'm aware of its limited range.

Second, as I said, I've noticed this in six systems - which is small enough to be a statistical fluke. At the time, I was starting to get tired - I almost crashed when I did finally find a planet (around an L class brown dwarf).

I still plan to push north and hopefully accrue enough data to spring for the advanced scanner, and then return to Synuefai to investigate further. Before I do, I wanted to check with the veteran explorers: have you, in general, encountered regions of space full of planetless stars?

Yup...systems which are star(s) only, systems with just the tiny "micro-planets", Gas giant/brown dwarfs only as planets, and HMC/AW/WW/ELW only systems...the further out you go towards the edge of the galaxy, the more pronounced it gets...sometimes you will cross half a sector and never see a planet...just like Earthlikes come in groups...
 
Somewhere in my Distant Worlds notes, there is an entry saying 'most boring sector ever'. Roughly 200 jumps worth of M + 5-7 Rockies. Every. Single. One of them. But who knows what wonders lurked 10 light-years away from my route ... :)

The great stellar forge analysts might know whether stuff like that is a simple statistical fluke (not improbable in a 400 billion star galaxy) or intentional. Jackie?
 
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CMDR Space Lurker: I suppose they are, but how much of a thing? Is it a small dry spot, or are we looking at a sector-wide "planetary desert?" Either way, my curiosity is piqued.

To be fair, a planetless region doesn't rake in the credits. But it might be a puzzle worth investigating - and it might save some future explorers time and frustration if we could map the size and borders of this desert. Also, there's the question of how a region of stars becomes planetless - were they formed that way or was there some event that stripped those suns of their worlds? If, of course, it's a real phenomenon and not just a fluke.

At least, that's how I see it.
 
In my limited experience of them, they are fairly small, a few hundred LYs at most, and I believe them to be a statistical fluke of the Stellar Forge.. The ones I have seen have always been in areas with no massive stars. All red and brown dwarfs with no planets or possibly a distant ice ball or so...
 
I guess it shows how green I am to exploration; I didn't consider a region a few hundred LY across to be "small". Well, plenty of time for me to expand my thinking. :)

In the meantime, my little trek netted me my first "first discoveries" and I can finally afford an advanced discovery scanner. And there are surely more enticing puzzles out there...
 
"Small" is quite relative.. :)
When you fly an exploration ship that does 30+ LYs in a single jump, you can cover "a few hundred" LYs surprisingly quickly. Especially when there's noting to look at and scan..
 
Yeah, it happens. I don't know what the most planet-less systems in a row I've seen is, but it's definitely felt like dozens.

There is also no need
to find a planet I could land on for the night

If you're doing it for RP reasons then carry on - although taking it to the point where you're getting too tired to land safely may be a step too far. Since you said you're new to flying outside the bubble - you can log out anywhere, there's no need to land the ship, just leave it hanging in space and it'll still be there when you log back in.

I wouldn't log out sitting in a planet's rings or in a neutron system but other than that anything goes - and the other two are most likely safe as well but I'm paranoid.
 
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In my limited experience of them, they are fairly small, a few hundred LYs at most, and I believe them to be a statistical fluke of the Stellar Forge.. The ones I have seen have always been in areas with no massive stars. All red and brown dwarfs with no planets or possibly a distant ice ball or so...

I would more likely consider it to be a natural progression in the life of the galaxy. We have areas where we have a lot of new stars, stellar nurseries like the Orion nebula where new stars form, we also have areas where many stars are approaching stellar old age and death. One of the common behaviors of stars as they get older is to clear the space around them by expanding into red giants, engulfing any close planets leaving maybe just a couple of lone planets that were once the outer planets depending on the original makeup of the system. next time you are passing through a mostly planetless region check the age of the stars, I expect they will be up around the 10b to 13b+b years of age.

I expect the stellar forge is fairly accurate on average, most of what appear to be statistical anomalies I have seen are actually hand added regions of space and stars. Stars exist in clusters of roughly the same age so having a cluster of old stars several hundred light years across is not unexpected, in fact it would be unusual to not find these areas!
 
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I guess it shows how green I am to exploration; I didn't consider a region a few hundred LY across to be "small". Well, plenty of time for me to expand my thinking. :)

In the meantime, my little trek netted me my first "first discoveries" and I can finally afford an advanced discovery scanner. And there are surely more enticing puzzles out there...

A few hundred LY's is about like crossing the bubble. My stock Asp can do that in 10 jumps. Explorers do 300 ly's before the coffee (tea) gets warm.

The bubble was huge and intimidating to me so long ago. It was crazy going 120 LY's to sell those rares! {what a difference 18 months in the black makes}

One day I did a meet-up with CMDR Miepit (AKA Tom the Keelback)
I went 6700 LY'S that day.
Which is nothing to some hard core travelers.
I've heard Sol to BP can be done in under 24 hours.

But edit to add:

Yes there are many times I've yelled at my monitor in frustration at the insane lack of bodies to scan. It hurts your average getting 1 star systems.
 
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