Newcomer / Intro space... void of human life

[enno]

Was wandering the galaxy and hadn't encountered a system with a station, outpost or basically anyone else other than me for at least some 30 jumps.
Asked around online and got the tip to look at the galaxy map sorted by population. This is what I saw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YByHdgHTjOY
In that first view, I increased the min. population filter by the tiniest amount. Otherwise it simply gives all systems.


At least I know which way I'm heading now! Back from where I came. Yes, that 1 detected systen with a population is where I came from.

Is it normal to find space only a few 100LY from the starting zone this void of human life? How is an explorer supposed to sell his maps when her goes out even further? Go 100 jumps back?
Wassup with this? Am I missing something?

 

[Galco]

Try going to Nav Beacons, Theres usually other ppl there doing bounty hunting. Good place to meet other players. Other than that I would say the majority of ppl will be near the starting point. I went to near Sol system as I'm sure many will do to see Earth and theres ppl there too

But other than that, Theres 400 billion star systems and probably only a few million players at best on at this point soooooo yeah not gonna be that dense. There should be NPC's all over the place tho and at resource mining places there are sure to be other ppl

 

[OrientalHero]

This is something that isn't clear as a quantified number as yet....
What is the number of populated star systems?
OK, so we know there are 400 billion stars we can visit.
But most of those are coreward near the centre of the Milky Way and we as players are most likely going to stay near populated star systems like Empire/Federation or Independents.
I've gotten a pictorial number zooming out of the map to see lots of red and blue and green dots in the "Western Spiral Arm" of our Milky Way.
It's like OMG, how many!!??!!
But of course that pales compared to the rest of the Milky Way!