Size context for new players and others too

[OrientalHero]

OK, we all know there are 400 Billion star systems modeled in Elite Dangerous...
But we're not playing in all of those.
We're most likely to hit the Federation and Empire and Alliance controlled ones.
So it's a bit silly telling players they've got 400 billion stars to play in.
How many star systems are Federation/Empire or Independent?
If there's no official word, what are ppl's estimates?

Perhaps this is kept clandestine so you get a real wow factor when you zoom out of the Galactic Map and see all those Blue/Red/Green dots and think
"O M G ! !"

But it would at least allow us to re-assure players that the playground is so big everyone can have their own slide!

 

[Hawkmoon]

OK, we all know there are 400 Billion star systems modeled in Elite Dangerous...
But we're not playing in all of those.
We're most likely to hit the Federation and Empire and Alliance controlled ones.
So it's a bit silly telling players they've got 400 billion stars to play in.
How many star systems are Federation/Empire or Independent?
If there's no official word, what are ppl's estimates?

Perhaps this is kept clandestine so you get a real wow factor when you zoom out of the Galactic Map and see all those Blue/Red/Green dots and think
"O M G ! !"

But it would at least allow us to re-assure players that the playground is so big everyone can have their own slide!

I can't find the quote but I am fairly sure that we are in the big playground now, people have already reached the galactic core and so I think apart from a few areas that are being kept for later events (thargoids maybe) we have 400 billion.

 

[Tinman]

So it's a bit silly telling players they've got 400 billion stars to play in.

Why?

If you are an explorer you DO have that many star systems to potentially play in.

What are they going to say?

"We have 400 Billion, but you can only play in X of them...unless you choose to fly out into the void...then you can play in all of them...so actually you can play in all of them............uhmmmm.............this isn't really a consistent and clear message is it?"

 

[Singularity]

I have a question in a similar vein. I hope the answer will not shatter my illusions ...

... When I'm flying around and can see all those twinkling stars - are they all accurately mapped in the correct places?

Also, if I picked one in the distance and, for the purposes of this question, had infinite time and fuel, would the game let me reach it if I set my throttle to full and pointed my ships nose at it?

 

[Britannkic]

Also, if I picked one in the distance and, for the purposes of this question, had infinite time and fuel, would the game let me reach it if I set my throttle to full and pointed my ships nose at it?

Why not find out?

Max speed I took cobra to was 700+c

Some adjacent systems are really close, circa 1LY, so at 1c would take a real year to reach, at 365c would take 1 real day and 700+c would take circa half a real day.

Worth a test don't you think?

 

[Midnight_Sun323]

Its been done. Doesn't work, the hyper jump is how the game loads the star system you're traveling to

 

[Tinman]

I have a question in a similar vein. I hope the answer will not shatter my illusions ...

... When I'm flying around and can see all those twinkling stars - are they all accurately mapped in the correct places?

Yes.

Also, if I picked one in the distance and, for the purposes of this question, had infinite time and fuel, would I reach it if I set my throttle to full and pointed my ships nose at it?

No, not currently at least. The system/sky is updated when you are making a hyperspace jump between systems. Technically it's not at all impossible to accomplish since if you can load in a new system/sky during a jump that takes a couple of seconds you can most certainly load it in when slowboating between the systems which would take many hours/days. Michael have said that they might make it possible in the future at some point, but it's very long down on a very big list. Especially, since this would add almost nothing in terms of actual gameplay.

 

[Panzerbeard]

I have a question in a similar vein. I hope the answer will not shatter my illusions ...

... When I'm flying around and can see all those twinkling stars - are they all accurately mapped in the correct places?

Also, if I picked one in the distance and, for the purposes of this question, had infinite time and fuel, would the game let me reach it if I set my throttle to full and pointed my ships nose at it?

All the "real" stars (the ones that are taken from real star catalogs instead of of just being procedurally created by the game) should be in roughly the right place, I think. Certainly some constellations are recognizable if you fly around Sol- I remember seeing Pleiades and Orion in one of Scott Manley's videos. But bear in mind that for the most part the sky is going to look entirely unfamiliar if you're not close to Sol; you're seeing the galaxy from a different position. But yeah, to my knowledge the game is astronomically correct where it can be.

As for the second question, I don't think it'd be possibe; I imagine each system is instanced and you need to hyperjump to load in.

 

[Dash]

There was just shy of 20,000 systems with economies in the spreadsheet of gamma 1 systems that was posted here by Frontier. Obviously we know that they're separated by empty systems, but still, even if there are lots of interesting systems around without economies we're still looking at less than 0.000025% of their generated galaxy being any point going to.

 

[Whiterose]

Only one way to find out....point and click