There are a few outposts of humanity in the deep reaches of space

Lightspeed

Lightspeed
In yesterday's Q&A Live Stream with Dav Stott, which contained a lot of technical answers about background sim, net communication, servers etc., came this surprising non-technical little nugett for explorers:

"In response to this question from a Commander [sounded like Dave Skillsgaming ?]: "Can I explain why one system out by Barnard's Loop is Independent and a Medium Security Level?"

I don't know which system you are talking about, but I'm going to take a bit of a wild stab in the dark and suspect that there is a planet base in that system and that means there will be a population and a faction will have a presence there.

So, yes, not all of the population is centered upon Sol or upon Colonia. There are a few ... few outposts of humanity in the deep reaches of space. Some of them, I don't think people have discovered them yet." (Wide eyes response from Ed :eek:).



Have we discovered any of them yet? What do you think is yet to be found? This may, or may not be to do with Guardians or the Missing. Should we be keeping a more alert eye open for these higher security locations as we jump, now that we have the tools to know what lies in the system ahead ?

Edit - Youtube is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGqndJFKOfA
Starts at 26:50
 
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Edelgard von Rhein

E
I was watching the livestream last night and it reminded me of how Jaques was discovered: by someone looking in the Galaxy Map with the settings to show a populated system and then flying out there to check. Using the same method I do not see any populated systems within the Barnard's Loop area but I could easily have missed something or just not looked in exactly the right place. Or something has been done to stop us finding settlements that way and we have to actually select the correct system and look at the population stat... . I know there are many systems in the long cluster of stars running through the Orion Nebula that are named after astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and astronauts, so perhaps something will be found there in due course...
 

thundernuns

thundernuns
The way he says 'Not all of the population is centred upon Sol or upon Colonia' makes it sound like there are little clumps of inhabited space, or 'mini-bubbles' if you wish. BUT then he says 'There are a few outposts', suggesting single occupied systems....I wonder which it is [???]
 

Lightspeed

Lightspeed
Edelgard von Rhein said:
I was watching the livestream last night and it reminded me of how Jaques was discovered: by someone looking in the Galaxy Map with the settings to show a populated system and then flying out there to check. Using the same method I do not see any populated systems within the Barnard's Loop area but I could easily have missed something or just not looked in exactly the right place. Or something has been done to stop us finding settlements that way and we have to actually select the correct system and look at the population stat... . I know there are many systems in the long cluster of stars running through the Orion Nebula that are named after astronomers, physicists, mathematicians and astronauts, so perhaps something will be found there in due course...
Click to expand...

They would probably have 'fixed' that method of (not) finding them .... after Jaques was discovered so unexpectedly by that method !

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thundernuns said:
The way he says 'Not all of the population is centred upon Sol or upon Colonia' makes it sound like there are little clumps of inhabited space, or 'mini-bubbles' if you wish. BUT then he says 'There are a few outposts', suggesting single occupied systems....I wonder which it is [???]
Click to expand...

"outposts of humanity", so sounds like a very tiny system, rather than a bubble .... but will be interesting to discover these .... if and when we do :)
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Lightspeed said:
In yesterday's Q&A Live Stream with Dav Stott, which contained a lot of technical answers about background sim, net communication, servers etc., came this surprising non-technical little nugett for explorers:

"In response to this question from a Commander [sounded like Dave Skillsgaming ?]: "Can I explain why one system out by Barnard's Loop is Independent and a Medium Security Level?"

I don't know which system you are talking about, but I'm going to take a bit of a wild stab in the dark and suspect that there is a planet base in that system and that means there will be a population and a faction will have a presence there.

So, yes, not all of the population is centered upon Sol or upon Colonia. There are a few ... few outposts of humanity in the deep reaches of space. Some of them, I don't think people have discovered them yet." (Wide eyes response from Ed :eek:).



Have we discovered any of them yet? What do you think is yet to be found? This may, or may not be to do with Guardians or the Missing. Should we be keeping a more alert eye open for these higher security locations as we jump, now that we have the tools to know what lies in the system ahead ?

Edit - Youtube is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGqndJFKOfA
Starts at 26:50
Click to expand...

LOL, Ed's reaction.

"Dnt... buh..."
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
There have been numerous "beyond the bubble" systems found; I call them "outback planets". But they're all within what might be called the "greater Bubble", 500 LYs from Sol. Until Jaques and related stations were founded, plus the one in the California Nebula, I have not read of anyone finding any inhabited waystations way, way out in the deep dark.

Logically, this mysterious planet in the Barnards Loop region could be found by selecting "security" as the map filter and deselecting the default "low" setting, then scooting the map around until you see a blip. I just tried for half an hour and didn't find anything.
 

marx

marx
Jaques Station being visible on the galaxy map before it was found was a bug, and the game now does hide inhabited systems you haven't visited. For a good example, check the deep space Colonia planetary bases. (Like Gagarin Gate, Polo Harbour and so on.) If you haven't been to the system yet, it'll show up as uninhabited.

While it's good to know that there are as-yet-unfound inhabited places out there somewhere, without any hints to their locations, the chances of them being found are astronomically low. Here's a thought experiment: let's assume there's another region of inhabited space that's the same size of the Power-controlled regions. (Easier to visualise in-game than the entire extent of the old bubble.) Now, take a look at the systems visited on EDSM, and compare the size of the power bubble with the sizes of not yet visited areas. You could fit plenty of undiscovered bubbles into even often-visited regions, and that's saying nothing about ones that only have a handful of trails going through them.

Plus let's not forget that planetary bases only show up as unexplored parts of planets on the Contacts tab, and not the system map. It's entirely possible that somebody has visited such a system before but missed it. Edit: my bad, I was wrong on this one. Well, except the second sentence.

So basically, even if they are there, we currently don't have the tools to discover them unless we are extremely lucky.
 
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Lightspeed

Lightspeed
marx said:
Jaques Station being visible on the galaxy map before it was found was a bug, and the game now does hide inhabited systems you haven't visited. For a good example, check the deep space Colonia planetary bases. (Like Gagarin Gate, Polo Harbour and so on.) If you haven't been to the system yet, it'll show up as uninhabited.

While it's good to know that there are as-yet-unfound inhabited places out there somewhere, without any hints to their locations, the chances of them being found are astronomically low. Here's a thought experiment: let's assume there's another region of inhabited space that's the same size of the Power-controlled regions. (Easier to visualise in-game than the entire extent of the old bubble.) Now, take a look at the systems visited on EDSM, and compare the size of the power bubble with the sizes of not yet visited areas. You could fit plenty of undiscovered bubbles into even often-visited regions, and that's saying nothing about ones that only have a handful of trails going through them.

Plus let's not forget that planetary bases only show up as unexplored parts of planets on the Contacts tab, and not the system map. It's entirely possible that somebody has visited such a system before but missed it.

So basically, even if they are there, we currently don't have the tools to discover them unless we are extremely lucky.
Click to expand...

You make some good points.

I wonder if they could eventually be tracked down by the USS's they spawn? I came across USS's unexpectedly frequently about 6000 lyrs from the bubble heading back from Jaques along a different path from the direct route. Of course, I don't know how far USS's spread out from even small habitations, including the new ones placed for the route to Colonia, and I may have picked up some as a result of one of these stations.

I will have to investigate further when I am next travelling that way. But I suspect if we pool knowledge of USS's out in deep space, we might pin these habitations down eventually.

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Agony_Aunt said:
LOL, Ed's reaction.

"Dnt... buh..."
Click to expand...

LOL @ avatar !

Have you thought of preparing an "ED surprised look" avatar? Yes, of course you have [yesnod]
 

Edelgard von Rhein

E
A landable body with a surface base will show as having vertical lines above the blue curve that shows it is a landable (or red, if it is landable but permit-locked). That appears even without a DSS scan, so the system view should be enough to pick up a surface base. There is also a POI tab on the system map that will show bases but these only appear as 'unexplored' until the body they are on has been scanned - although if a landable body with no moon has a base this can be a giveaway.
.
It might be time for me to re-check some of the systems I've visited out by the Orion and Cone Nebulae, although the latter is completely inaccessible right now due to being surrounded by a permit-locked region too wide to traverse even with a high-range ship and J3 boosts (and I have not found any neutron stars close enough to get in and there are none inside to get back).
 

Allitnil

Allitnil
marx said:
Jaques Station being visible on the galaxy map before it was found was a bug, and the game now does hide inhabited systems you haven't visited. For a good example, check the deep space Colonia planetary bases. (Like Gagarin Gate, Polo Harbour and so on.) If you haven't been to the system yet, it'll show up as uninhabited.
Click to expand...
I've not been to either of those and the galmap says they have population 10,000.
 

marx

marx
Edelgard von Rhein said:
A landable body with a surface base will show as having vertical lines above the blue curve that shows it is a landable (or red, if it is landable but permit-locked). That appears even without a DSS scan, so the system view should be enough to pick up a surface base. There is also a POI tab on the system map that will show bases but these only appear as 'unexplored' until the body they are on has been scanned - although if a landable body with no moon has a base this can be a giveaway.
.
It might be time for me to re-check some of the systems I've visited out by the Orion and Cone Nebulae, although the latter is completely inaccessible right now due to being surrounded by a permit-locked region too wide to traverse even with a high-range ship and J3 boosts (and I have not found any neutron stars close enough to get in and there are none inside to get back).
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, you are right, my bad on this, I misremembered. The only way that an unexplored body that has a surface base will not show up on the system map with the surface base icon as such is if it's also permit-locked. I'd be very much surprised if Frontier would have locked these mysterious settlements behind permits.

Allitnil said:
I've not been to either of those and the galmap says they have population 10,000.
Click to expand...
Hm, interesting. I distinctly remember having them not show up for me as inhabited nor populated before I visited them, as I wanted to look them up in-game without getting the systems from outside. Time for a bug report then? Although they are not undiscovered per se.
 
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Edelgard von Rhein

E
Also remembered now that when I was out at Colonia around Christmas, I visited the systems with newly-built bases and they all showed up on the Galaxy Map (even though I had not been to them all), which I had set to show systems by economy type. Furthermore, many systems around the edge of the bubble have had surface bases added and these show up as inhabited, with populations and economies etc., even though no system data is available. That said, it would still be very easy to miss another bubble-sized civilisation scrolling around the Galaxy Map, never mind a lonely outpost.
 

Libluini

Libluini
Lightspeed said:
In yesterday's Q&A Live Stream with Dav Stott, which contained a lot of technical answers about background sim, net communication, servers etc., came this surprising non-technical little nugett for explorers:

"In response to this question from a Commander [sounded like Dave Skillsgaming ?]: "Can I explain why one system out by Barnard's Loop is Independent and a Medium Security Level?"

I don't know which system you are talking about, but I'm going to take a bit of a wild stab in the dark and suspect that there is a planet base in that system and that means there will be a population and a faction will have a presence there.

So, yes, not all of the population is centered upon Sol or upon Colonia. There are a few ... few outposts of humanity in the deep reaches of space. Some of them, I don't think people have discovered them yet." (Wide eyes response from Ed :eek:).



Have we discovered any of them yet? What do you think is yet to be found? This may, or may not be to do with Guardians or the Missing. Should we be keeping a more alert eye open for these higher security locations as we jump, now that we have the tools to know what lies in the system ahead ?

Edit - Youtube is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGqndJFKOfA
Starts at 26:50
Click to expand...

I found some of those close to the border of the bubble last year. Was kind of a neat surprise! One system only had a little relay-station with a antenna and some small and medium pads as sign of habitation. I parked my ship there for a while, right next to the gigantic antenna. (It was called a hyperspace-relay, I think.)

Anyway, I remember the Frontier-guys saying that the BGS will slowly spread human populations to empty systems given enough time and the right triggers, so that could explain stuff like the Barnard's Loop colony: Remember there are new colonies in the Eagle Nebula, at Maia and I remember reading something about a initiative for Barnard's Loop, too. And as soon as Frontier puts down something somewhere, the BGS will very slowly start populating systems around it.

At least that's what I remember being told, so feel free to correct me!
 
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Mengy

Mengy
I know there are the “distant” colonies, like Sothis and Ceos, Maia, and Pratchett’s Disc and the like, and then there are the very distant ones like the bases along the way to Colonia, and then Colonia itself, but during the Livestream it truly did sound like there are even MORE settled systems out there in the deep. I have to wonder though, just how FAR out into the deep?

Maybe they are talking about the Generation ships, possibly some of them succeeded and settled on worlds, maybe even creating little bubbles of settlements like Colonia is? Makes me want to search and explore the galaxy map for hours on end, lol!
 

GreyAreaUK

GreyAreaUK
I'm going to have to start looking at the blue crescents a wee bit closer from now on, even though I'm way outside the bubble.
 
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