Unparallel Star Clusters

[Arioch]

From a search that pulled up 256 galaxies containing 250-508 IIRC systems if it mentioned regions I didn't notice it or register their significance.

Not looked at playing it myself as I haven't finished this game yet.

I think you must have missed the regions part then

I think the game nails the look it was going for (Roger Dean album covers for Yes) and has continuously improved over the years with a plethora of new things being introduced into the game. It’s definitely not the ‘realistic’ type of game Elite aims to be but I find the space-bourne gameplay to be very reminiscent of the older Elite games - I’m currently enjoying the game (on Switch) as a trader/miner/bounty hunter with occasional mission running for the various factions.

 

[Arioch]

The number of systems in NMS is determined by the size of a 64bit digit, which is 18 quintillion, whether they use the entirety of that address space for systems I am not sure, but originally they did claim to have a vast number of systems in the quadrillion range. I have seen claims of 3.8 quadrillion systems and 18 quintillion planets, but it's effectively infinite as far as exploration is concerned. The only issue is, they aren't really "arranged" in galaxy like formations. They have galaxies worth of systems, the wiki claims 256 galaxies and 2 quadrillion planets. However I don't believe you can look up in the sky and see galaxies and star systems the way we do in ED and plot your way across the galaxy, but I will leave to there as simply an opinion since I am only going by what I have read.

Each ‘region’ could fit 4096 systems in it but they only use between 205 to 605 in the block (the “Phantom stars” I mentioned are all the unused ones which can only be reached via savegame jiggery-pokery or unfortunate bugs).

You cannot zoom out to see the whole thing like with the Elite Galaxy map but if you’re heading for the Galactic core you can see the bright centre, and you get a handy little sprite showing how far you’ve left to go (the bright star with the lens flare line towards the left of this image is the Galactic centre):

…and going into freelook mode is not too dissimilar to Elite’s map (just without the zoom in/out function). You don’t get the cool thing like in Elite where the skybox updates with each jump, and no distinct features like nebulae to head towards (coloured gas is pretty much omnipresent) but I think it does pretty well for what it aims to be.

Edit: I forgot to mention (and it’s a bit difficult to see in the screenshot) but the Galaxy map sprite also puts a small ring around your current position, so I’m currently just past the 12 o’clock position and about half way in from the rim.

 

[Fnord Velkor]

There are two "physical" aspects in NMS that really annoy me:

1: When a storm happens it is planet-wide

2: Day and night periods are annoying, sometimes just minutes long.

There are lots of other things that I am not overly happy with in NMS but I do enjoy jumping back into it every so often - certainly every major update / expedition.

It isn't a space simulator but it is a fun "space game" and like @Arioch says, it hits the mark it was aimed at.

BTW - There are of course huge PLUSES that NMS has over other "space games" - lots of free updates, ported to many platforms and no micro-transactions (or macro-transactions in the case of ARXes lol).

 

[Arioch]

BTW - There are of course huge PLUSES that NMS has over other "space games" - lots of free updates, ported to many platforms and no micro-transactions (or macro-transactions in the case of ARXes lol).

Another main plus for me is being able to pause the game and not having to bother about real-world timers
———
I discovered a new thing on NMS’s galaxy map today - moving above/below the current position adds a vertical line to the position circle though apparently not to scale. After several minutes of ‘upwards’ movement I reached the top edge of the galaxy - approximately 50k ly above me:

After a quick read of the wiki, it looks like NMS’s Euclid Galaxy is actually circular with four non-rotating wedge-shaped spirals at 45°,135°,225° and 315° respectively - I thought they were going to be ‘Borg cubes’ of stars but it looks like Hello Games actually went for something with a more proper shape (though massively bigger than our own Milky Way).

 

[Fizzatron]

Nope, it's not entirely, nor is the neutron exclusion zone and many other things like the hard edged star boxels, however changing the galaxy in the way you want is impossible without basically wiping everything out and starting from scratch, destroying a decade of accumulated knowledge and information painstakingly gathered by thousands of pilots, that would not be a popular move in the ED gaming community!

We have what we have and must accept it's a strange galaxy that's not entirely unlike our own while at the same time probably being completely wrong in millions of tiny and enormous details!

It's a long shot and probably way too complicated but I feel it's safe to assume that star positions are just points of data. And as such they are open to massaging into better positions, given the correct conditions derived from other data points.

 

[Fizzatron]

No hyperbole, the Stellar forge would need to be rerun and moving stars around changes the mass distribution in the galaxy, since the galaxy is designed to match the mass distribution of the actual galaxy moving stellar masses around will result in other stars being moved to compensate the changed mass distribution in that boxel and neighboring boxels if stars end up there, which could potentially result in every single boxel in the galaxy having to be adjusted to compensate as mass gets redistributed. The devs, you know the ones who created the game and programmed the Stellar Forge, have stated several times that even they aren't sure what would happen if they start moving mass around like that. Changes made to systems have been done in a way that keeps the mass distribution the same, so they can move planets and add or remove them to a system and change planet type as long as they don't change the total mass of the system. There's a lot of history in discussion behind desired changes to the galaxy to make it look more realistic and the end statement from the devs is they don't want to risk it due to potential disaster.

If the mass distribution was a set total value calculated per boxel, then constraining the redistributing of stars within that boxel should not affect the mass distribution of it, and therefore not affect the boxels that surround it. If that is the case, which I don't know for sure, but I'd say isn't an unreasonable assumption to make given that certain walls of stars at the edge of some boxels would seemingly affect the positions of the neighbouring stars in the adjacent boxels if the mass distribution was calculated at a finer level than galactic mass divided by x amount of boxels and then total mass assigned as a total within any given boxel space to then distribute.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If the mass distribution was a set total value calculated per boxel, then constraining the redistributing of stars within that boxel should not affect the mass distribution of it

Yes - but redistribution within a box even in the best case [1] won't fix most of the visible errors.

The blue cubes can't easily be fixed by moving stars around within the E-mass boxes since it's the large disparity between adjacent boxes that gives the problem. There might be ways to make the edges look a little less obvious.
The 2MASS and similar lines pointing out from Sol are mainly red dwarf stars at B-mass and would still retain almost all of their visible shape if the positions were shifted within their 20LY boxes.
The weird cluster out near Eagle might be fixable that way.

[1] Moving within the box that matches the system mass. If the generation order means that moving an E-mass star also changes the mass calculations for the A through D sub-boxes it was moved out of or into then the only safe moves are within the A-mass boxes and that limits how much of even the Eagle cluster could be fixed.

 

[Fizzatron]

Yes - but redistribution within a box even in the best case [1] won't fix most of the visible errors.

The blue cubes can't easily be fixed by moving stars around within the E-mass boxes since it's the large disparity between adjacent boxes that gives the problem. There might be ways to make the edges look a little less obvious.

They would be tricky but I feel like there's enough data there to apply a rule that would identify a blue box and then apply a rule/operation that also includes the adjacent boxels that would create a more natural segue from one to another without affecting the mass distribution of each individual boxel. I feel like star clusters are a natural part of the galaxy so even just taking the stars in one of those boxels and then creating a more naturally shaped clump towards the center of it would possibly work nicely too.

The 2MASS and similar lines pointing out from Sol are mainly red dwarf stars at B-mass and would still retain almost all of their visible shape if the positions were shifted within their 20LY boxes.

Maybe stick a nebula around it? In the thousand years since it's not unreasonable to conjecture that a supernova occurred there and left its mark around it. Though I'm not sure if nebulas are limited to boxels or a separate 'layer' of the forge?

The weird cluster out near Eagle might be fixable that way.

[1] Moving within the box that matches the system mass. If the generation order means that moving an E-mass star also changes the mass calculations for the A through D sub-boxes it was moved out of or into then the only safe moves are within the A-mass boxes and that limits how much of even the Eagle cluster could be fixed.

If the boxel has a sum total mass attribute then there would be no need to mess with anything other than positions. Though thinking again, I think you're referring to the brown sandwich? If so, I'm with you that there has to be weird spots like that given the size of the galaxy, so I would be unconcerned about whether that really needs fixing at all.

 

[Woolie]

While actually moving the position of stars might mess with the forge, there's still a solution to this.
Apply a noise filter to the visual location of a star on the galmap while keeping the distances and locations of the systems the same in the engine.
This would at least visually disrupt this effect enough to make it look more natural.