Why is the game universe *so* large?

boringnick

B
I am not talking about the galaxy, that's fine. I am talking about the over-abundance of inhabited star systems. Way too many! In Frontier and FFE, there were no human settlements past 50ly from Sol/Achernar. ED has way too much settlements (the size of the galaxy is not a problem!) this thins the user base out, which is thinned out enough due the unrestriced solo/open switching, P2P system, grouping, banlists etc.

It's as if the design goal is to have as few player contacts as possible.
 

Gorodd

Gorodd
Hasn't the timeline moved significantly since FFE though? This would allow explanation for the expansion...
 

Loskene

L
No, if they wanted to minimize player interaction we'd all spawn in a random system at the galactic rim, like no man's sky.
Human space in ED isn't too big. It doesn't take long to travel large swaths of it, and like any population of humans there are regions of high and low traffic. This lets you scale the level of player interaction to what you want. If you want it to be jam packed you can go to Lave or one of many other busy starports, there's certainly no shortage with the amount of groups trying to flip systems out there. If you want a more isolated experience without switching to solo you don't have to go all the way out into uncharted space either. For a thousand years of human spaceflight I'd like to see a lot of colonies to show for it, and frontier haven't disappointed.
 

N-Zed

N-Zed
how do you know which systems are mostly inhabited by players and NPCs? Is there some where to tell on the galaxy map?
 

deMangler

deMangler
It just gives players an excellent backdrop for their personal game, also it provides choice.
People who want to congregate can do so. People who don't can find space. Not like every other MMO where you just can't move for people jumping up and down and standing on each other's heads.
 

Fen Harel

Fen Harel
CMDRJollyMan said:
how do you know which systems are mostly inhabited by players and NPCs? Is there some where to tell on the galaxy map?
Click to expand...

You can sort of, kind of, not in any exact sort of way, get an idea by docking and checking the traffic report on the station's bulletin board.
 

Loskene

L
CMDRJollyMan said:
how do you know which systems are mostly inhabited by players and NPCs? Is there some where to tell on the galaxy map?
Click to expand...
NPCs spawn around you in fairly steady numbers wherever you are in explored space. So far the only way to find player densities is just fly around or see which systems get named most often in the forums. You can predict it somewhat too. I mostly work between Achenar and the Federation border and regularly see players on every random trip, because that'll be a main travel route for people heading between the superpowers' capitals. Big looking systems on routes like these usually have high tier equipment docks and the players that they attract. I also find any system that gets a story about it in the GalNed feed gets a traffic spike for a few days. When I went to offer my services as a merc in the onionhead wars there were consistently dozens of players around Panem every time I dropped by.
 

xondk

X
Well don't know how much time that has passed since the other games.

However, if I'm pretty sure if you give humans faster then light travelling you would see an enormous boom in people leaving the planet, first corporations would go mining e.t.c. bring materials back, causing over time cheaper prices for the faster then light to be produced, companies would spread out, then be followed by others.

I can easily see humans spreading out like this within quite short time.
 

Quineloe

Quineloe
to be fair, the FE2 region goes considerably further than the 50 LY you claim from SOL. Going west, I can find systems 68 LY away from sol which actually list space stations (Waedphi in -8 -1) and up to 130 LY away you can find "small prospecting and mining operations"

Going North, TIandan at 1 9 is 74 LY away and has a starport :p
 

Mikey2305

Mikey2305
I get the impression that the popular rare run routes ie lave, aegaeon, 39 tauri etc etc are a bit like the M25 at commuter time...
 

boringnick

B
The lore-reasons don't cut it. Just 50 years passed between FFE and ED. In the 50 years between Frontier and FFE the colony count didn't change much (and according the lore, humans have interstellar travel for 1000 years by FFE).

It's apparently a design decision to split the players apart by any means possible.
 

JeffRyan

JeffRyan
boringnick said:
The lore-reasons don't cut it. Just 50 years passed between FFE and ED. In the 50 years between Frontier and FFE the colony count didn't change much (and according the lore, humans have interstellar travel for 1000 years by FFE).

It's apparently a design decision to split the players apart by any means possible.
Click to expand...

Yeah but our frameshift drive technology is new. And better, much better. A journey that would take days or weeks ship-clock time now takes minutes or hours.
 

nicomak

nicomak
Link in my sig if you want to refresh your memory ;) It was more like starting to be rare after ~80LY but you could find colonies up to 130LY away From Sol.

And Hyperspace drive have gotten rid of the relative time effect. You no longer loose a week for every single jump, not to mention time compression in-system. So it's much more atractive to travel today ^^, you're no longer weeks and days away, but minutes to at most one hour away.

Also the distances between Sol and Achenar were much shorter than they should, if you pull them away from each other so as to place them at their correct positions in the galaxy, both the empire and federation would have to be bigger. Because they're supposed to share a border. Not to mention the Alliance.
And it was a flat galaxy, so it would have at least gained some volume.

It's FE2 and FFE which had misplaced star systems, not ED, approximations aside.
 
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