Why are the Badlands?

[Archgeek]

Explorers here probably already know what I speak of -- a wide, narrow, almost ubiquitous expanse of unscoopable stars not far below the galactic plane, posing a minor hazard to the unwary. That's old news.

What I wonder is why do the badlands exist? Why even is there a huge, thin, pancake of dead and failed stars across most of the galaxy just below the median plane? Is this an actual known structure, perhaps left over from early the Milky Way's history before stars started forming further off the plane? Is it something the devs intentionally added, to add some hazard and mystery to the galaxy? Or is it just an artefact of discrete math leaving obvious signs of artiface in the work of the stellar forge?

The game's been out a while now, so I sense my question's come up before, but the search facility on these forums is a bit lacking for such a task so I wasn't able to dig up much. Any known explanations, links to previous discussions, or rogue conjecture?

 

[Brimstone]

Well the universe is pretty old, so there is going to be a lot of dead stars. This doesn't really answer your question though.

 

[GunnerBill]

I was going to suggest wiki - which is very good for astrophysics, astronomy etc. I've spent a lot of time there.
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Problem is trying to determine the reason for the lack of scoopable stars in an area of the Milky Way is not something that's often considered in the 21st century!
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You could do a search by type of star, I might give it a go!

 

[grae3107]

Considering how big the galaxy is I would expect there to be many areas where stars would be non scoopable types.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

The spiral arms in the Milky way are actually the distribution of dust, stars are distributed a bit more uniformly.

Where the arms are you'd expect more new star formation, in the gaps you'd expect a higher proportion of old unscoopable dwarfs. I'm not sure the game galaxy looks quite like that but areas of unscoopable stars are realistic.

 

[Archgeek]

Hmm, perhaps I need to characterize what I speak of more precisely. I'm referring to the vast, thin band of L, T, and Y-type dwarf stars that spans roughly -22LY to -47LY off the galactic plane, is everywhere in the galaxy unless you go so far out in the rim that stars in general become rare (you can find it again along the furthest nearby spiral arm, though) and is thin enough that an Asp can jump over it without noticing it (save for in the core, where it gets a lot thicker and is shot through with other star types, but is clearly part of the same structure).
There are a number of places where plenty of scoopable stars intrude, lessening its efficacy as a "badlands", but the structure remains, even in human-occupied bubble. Just filter out all but 'L's, 'T's, and 'Y's, zoom out a bit, go slightly below the galactic plane, and you'll see a dense hockey puck of red. I find it weird that the same structure is all over on the x and y axes, but so constrained and offset on the z-axis.

 

[Riverside]

Hmm, perhaps I need to characterize what I speak of more precisely. I'm referring to the vast, thin band of L, T, and Y-type dwarf stars that spans roughly -22LY to -47LY off the galactic plane, is everywhere in the galaxy unless you go so far out in the rim that stars in general become rare (you can find it again along the furthest nearby spiral arm, though) and is thin enough that an Asp can jump over it without noticing it (save for in the core, where it gets a lot thicker and is shot through with other star types, but is clearly part of the same structure).
There are a number of places where plenty of scoopable stars intrude, lessening its efficacy as a "badlands", but the structure remains, even in human-occupied bubble. Just filter out all but 'L's, 'T's, and 'Y's, zoom out a bit, go slightly below the galactic plane, and you'll see a dense hockey puck of red. I find it weird that the same structure is all over on the x and y axes, but so constrained and offset on the z-axis.

You went through all that & didn't manage to answer your own question?

Obviously it's a 'bug' in the stellar forge in just the same way that the boxes of stars close to the core are. But now that we're in the galaxy & actively using it it's essentially a fixed quirk of the game.

The Stellar Forge has created an immensely impressive model of a realistic galaxy, but errors will always creep in. Make it your goal to search them out & maybe the next galaxy FD create will be even better, but I think we're stuck with this one, warts & all