Why not larger stations/ports?

[ScarecrowES]

I've loved playing Elite Dangerous over the last 6 months or so, but objectively I know I'm still a noob and am largely ignorant to the development path and decision-making rationale that went into the game before I got here. So I apologize if I'm a bit late to the party in asking this, but...

Why aren't there larger stations/starports in the more wealthy and higher-populated systems?

I ask because, objectively, the stations in Elite Dangerous are fairly small for permanently-settled spaces. If wikis are to be believed, a Coriolis spaceport is about 2km in radius, with a large portion of the station interior taken up by the docking bay. Accounting for ship storage and hangars - of which there are relatively few considering the traffic such ports are likely to receive - and essential systems and resources that provide fuel, power, air, water, etc... not to mention storage for cargo and suppies, etc... the amount of living space is minimal. Enough for a few thousand people at the most (if anyone can provide a specific reference to an official amount, I'd be grateful). So the total number of permanent residents would be tiny, really, given the importance of most starports to their systems.

A station the size of a Coriolis would likely be sufficient as a base of operations in lightly-inhabited and traveled systems - places off the beaten path or with lower inherent value. Outposts in non-terraformed systems, or ones without major industrial or commercial centers. But for many systems stations this size seem grossly inadequate, or there simply aren't enough ports to support their expected usage. Personally I'd expect fewer massive ports rather than many smaller ones, but we have neither situation in Elite Dangerous.

Thinking about it logically, a starport orbiting a highly-populated terraformed planet would have to be MUCH larger. Not only would such a station have to handle many times the traffic that we see in Elite Dangerous amongst just strictly space-faring people, but would also have to support a huge amount of traffic traveling to and from the planet itself. Such a port would have to house a massive permanent personnel force, as well as accomodations for large numbers of travelers, massive cargo docks, storage, government and corporate offices, etc. We're talking something more like the Citadel from the Mass Effect series (in concept, if not in actual size) than a small Coriolis spaceport.

In Sol, for example, I'd expect to see at least 2 of such ports - one orbiting Earth and the other around Mars. You'd expect the demands around these planets to support station populations in the hundreds of thousands, if not more - given their galactic importance.

For systems that support major industry... where ships and spaceports are built, for instance, or any system really where large permanent populations must be supported... you'd expect more massive stations there too. And I think you'd expect these installations to be fairly unique to their systems. At Earth, you'd expect a commercial and tourism hub, with the usual expected residences and cargo handling capabilities. At Mars, a significant government presense. You'd also expect massive "dry docks" out there. Huge space-born factories for ships and stations. Planet-level mining operations. Stations of the sort that mega-ships themselves would dock at. Installations that would act as hubs for capital-sized ships. Not just massive stations, but a large variety of massive stations.

Logically, these stations should exist. Most of the really important systems should have something of the sort. But there doesn't seem to be anything like this in the game. So I ask, "why not?" Have the developers just not go around to it? Have the never intended to? Would the game be unable to support larger stations? Would the architecture be too significant for the game engine to handle? I'm just really wondering why such small ports are the only ones in the game.

 

[Shanaeri]

It's an interesting question. I know that someone worked out that the internal area of a corilois was about the same as los santos in GTa5 so they are not that small. There are also stations larger than a corilois, but different in design.

Also these stations come in sort of ready to build state(like flat pack), and some like the orbits can move under their own power to where they need to go so I suspect that limits the size too.

I've also heard the devs say that a cap ship can just about fit inside the docking space of a Coriolis(if they made the doors wide enough) so that gives you an idea of the scale for the rest of it.

 

[FoxTwo]

Ok I'm just guessing, but I'd say part of the reason is "lore".

There's no artificial gravity so stations need to spin. Maybe the bigger the station the more energy it needs to spin, and the faster it needs to spin at to maintain a 1G gravity. Orbis stations are just about the limit of that "technology" without the struts and other structural components breaking off due to the stress placed on it by the spinning. In space things may not have weight but they still have mass.

Giant-sized stations in other sci-fi media (films, games etc) all have artificial gravity if I am not mistaken.

 

[Hellfire85]

look at the little windows on the buildings inside and outside.

Now imagine it's the size of a regular window in RL.

I think it's already damn huge.

 

[askavir]

The system population is not related to stations only. It includes population on planets.

 

[evoelise]

The stations are different sizes - it's just the docking areas/module that are always the same. I guess they are all built from standardised prefabricated parts.

But I take the point it would be nice if rich planets with huge populations had larger docking areas with say 100s of pads. And conversely some smaller ones.

That said it would be a cosmetic change really and probably most would like FD to concentrate on game are before this.

 

[varonica]

Ok I'm just guessing, but I'd say part of the reason is "lore".

There's no artificial gravity so stations need to spin. Maybe the bigger the station the more energy it needs to spin, and the faster it needs to spin at to maintain a 1G gravity. Orbis stations are just about the limit of that "technology" without the struts and other structural components breaking off due to the stress placed on it by the spinning. In space things may not have weight but they still have mass.

Giant-sized stations in other sci-fi media (films, games etc) all have artificial gravity if I am not mistaken.

You could be right in a way, but not the way you think! The smaller the station the faster it needs to spin to maintain 1G at the outer edge. So a very large station could spin quite slowly to maintain 1G, but the rotational speed of the outer edge of a large stations is much higher than in a small station, resulting in greater stresses on the station, this is why the noob hammers are quite small. The size limit of a station is dependent on the structural strength of the material it is made from basically.

There is actually quite a lot of detailed information available online regarding artificial space habitats, from what I can find the size limit for a spinning space station constructed from steel is about 4kms due to tensile strength, other materials, lighter and stronger, will of course give different results. Oh yes the number of revolutions per minute that would be suitable for humans is estimated at between one and three rpm.

I found this online;

5.1 Maximum Radius of Space Colonies
The maximum radius of such an O'Neill style colony is limited by the hoop stress of the spinning structure, and the tensile strength to density ratio of the material. The formula is

R = HoopStress/gG

Where R is the radius, g is the acceleration of pseudo-gravity at the rim, and G is the density. MNT offers a 5 x 1010 Pa tensile strength. Using the design rule of 50% safety factors for O'Neill style colonies [12], a 3.3 x 1010 Pa design tensile strength is reasonable. The associated material density is 3.51 103 kg/m3. One goal of the architecture is for g to equal 9.8 m/s2 [10],[12]. This all gives a possible space station radius of 9.6 x 105 m, or nearly 1000 km. For comparison, the corresponding feasible radius for titanium is 14 km, and even at its ultimate tensile strength with no safety factor, the titanium limit would be 23 km.

At the 9.6 x 105 m radius, the entire available strength (at the safety factor) of the MNT-based material is being used to prevent the rotating structure from bursting, and there is no strength left over to hold the space station's contents, including an atmosphere. To do so, a lower radius must be set.

From here:

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/nano4/mckendreePaper.html#RTFToC18

 

[CMDR Alonso]

I've loved playing Elite Dangerous over the last 6 months or so, but objectively I know I'm still a noob and am largely ignorant to the development path and decision-making rationale that went into the game before I got here. So I apologize if I'm a bit late to the party in asking this, but...

Why aren't there larger stations/starports in the more wealthy and higher-populated systems?

I ask because, objectively, the stations in Elite Dangerous are fairly small for permanently-settled spaces. If wikis are to be believed, a Coriolis spaceport is about 2km in radius, with a large portion of the station interior taken up by the docking bay. Accounting for ship storage and hangars - of which there are relatively few considering the traffic such ports are likely to receive - and essential systems and resources that provide fuel, power, air, water, etc... not to mention storage for cargo and suppies, etc... the amount of living space is minimal. Enough for a few thousand people at the most (if anyone can provide a specific reference to an official amount, I'd be grateful). So the total number of permanent residents would be tiny, really, given the importance of most starports to their systems.

A station the size of a Coriolis would likely be sufficient as a base of operations in lightly-inhabited and traveled systems - places off the beaten path or with lower inherent value. Outposts in non-terraformed systems, or ones without major industrial or commercial centers. But for many systems stations this size seem grossly inadequate, or there simply aren't enough ports to support their expected usage. Personally I'd expect fewer massive ports rather than many smaller ones, but we have neither situation in Elite Dangerous.

Thinking about it logically, a starport orbiting a highly-populated terraformed planet would have to be MUCH larger. Not only would such a station have to handle many times the traffic that we see in Elite Dangerous amongst just strictly space-faring people, but would also have to support a huge amount of traffic traveling to and from the planet itself. Such a port would have to house a massive permanent personnel force, as well as accomodations for large numbers of travelers, massive cargo docks, storage, government and corporate offices, etc. We're talking something more like the Citadel from the Mass Effect series (in concept, if not in actual size) than a small Coriolis spaceport.

In Sol, for example, I'd expect to see at least 2 of such ports - one orbiting Earth and the other around Mars. You'd expect the demands around these planets to support station populations in the hundreds of thousands, if not more - given their galactic importance.

For systems that support major industry... where ships and spaceports are built, for instance, or any system really where large permanent populations must be supported... you'd expect more massive stations there too. And I think you'd expect these installations to be fairly unique to their systems. At Earth, you'd expect a commercial and tourism hub, with the usual expected residences and cargo handling capabilities. At Mars, a significant government presense. You'd also expect massive "dry docks" out there. Huge space-born factories for ships and stations. Planet-level mining operations. Stations of the sort that mega-ships themselves would dock at. Installations that would act as hubs for capital-sized ships. Not just massive stations, but a large variety of massive stations.

Logically, these stations should exist. Most of the really important systems should have something of the sort. But there doesn't seem to be anything like this in the game. So I ask, "why not?" Have the developers just not go around to it? Have the never intended to? Would the game be unable to support larger stations? Would the architecture be too significant for the game engine to handle? I'm just really wondering why such small ports are the only ones in the game.

Elite Dangerous is set in a post-apocaliptic setting, most people in the bubble are lucky to have electricity.

 

[krylite]

The stations, particularly the orbis are pretty big compared to a lot of sci-fi. The orbis could be as big as Babylon 5, certainly larger in terms of internal structure than DS9, and almost as long as Rama from "Rendezvous with Rama".
Perhaps stations could be bigger in the future, but seeing that by ED lore it's only been 50 years since FFE where the pather clipper could only land on ground bases. Some of the airless planetoid bases in FFE were also much larger with opening concentric rooftops to a wider underground structure.

There is actually quite a lot of detailed information available online regarding artificial space habitats, from what I can find the size limit for a spinning space station constructed from steel is about 4kms due to tensile strength, other materials, lighter and stronger, will of course give different results. Oh yes the number of revolutions per minute that would be suitable for humans is estimated at between one and three rpm.

Interesting science grounded speculation there. So it seems the orbis stations fit roughly well within those guidelines along with any reasonable extra improvements in structural and materials technology in the ED universe lore. I would assume Braben had long past done some thinking and research on the characterisitcs of the ED stations.

 

[Bottom Hat]

I flew around outside one of the noob-hammer coriolis stations a while back in my python, and kept trying to 'land' on the hammer-heads - whilst a fun idea, it proved absolutely pointless and was almost impossible to keep up with the bloomin' things! IIRC my non boost speed is 323, and that is just not quite enough to keep up with the hammer heads going at full speed. I think I worked out the rough rotation speed of the station on paper, but that is long gone into the 'pile of no return' of paper on my desk!!

Anyway, not a great story, but I thought it interesting, especially when we sit and watch them turning, then find we can't keep up with the rotational speed equivalent! Must try again

 

[Schlack]

Dyson Spheres please.

 

[ilmostro]

I've posted this a few times before, worth a watch:

[video=youtube;EHKQIC5p8MU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKQIC5p8MU[/video]

 

[Whiterose]

Dyson Spheres please.

Are they those yellow balls on the bottom of vacuum cleaners?

 

[CMDR Yates]

They added new structures based on CQC assets in 2.2 (scientific bases, civilian installations, etc.). They're far less common than regular starports, but they are out there.

Most of these are a lot bigger than a standard Coriolis starport, but we can't land at them... yet.

Back when they were first introduced, FDev hinted that some of these bases would eventually permit interactions and docking activities, so I guess you will eventually get your wish. Perhaps this will be one of the "core improvements" we'll see in "Season 3" (or whatever it's called).

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I've loved playing Elite Dangerous over the last 6 months or so, but objectively I know I'm still a noob and am largely ignorant to the development path and decision-making rationale that went into the game before I got here. So I apologize if I'm a bit late to the party in asking this, but...

Why aren't there larger stations/starports in the more wealthy and higher-populated systems?

I ask because, objectively, the stations in Elite Dangerous are fairly small for permanently-settled spaces. If wikis are to be believed, a Coriolis spaceport is about 2km in radius, with a large portion of the station interior taken up by the docking bay. Accounting for ship storage and hangars - of which there are relatively few considering the traffic such ports are likely to receive - and essential systems and resources that provide fuel, power, air, water, etc... not to mention storage for cargo and suppies, etc... the amount of living space is minimal. Enough for a few thousand people at the most (if anyone can provide a specific reference to an official amount, I'd be grateful). So the total number of permanent residents would be tiny, really, given the importance of most starports to their systems.

A station the size of a Coriolis would likely be sufficient as a base of operations in lightly-inhabited and traveled systems - places off the beaten path or with lower inherent value. Outposts in non-terraformed systems, or ones without major industrial or commercial centers. But for many systems stations this size seem grossly inadequate, or there simply aren't enough ports to support their expected usage. Personally I'd expect fewer massive ports rather than many smaller ones, but we have neither situation in Elite Dangerous.

Thinking about it logically, a starport orbiting a highly-populated terraformed planet would have to be MUCH larger. Not only would such a station have to handle many times the traffic that we see in Elite Dangerous amongst just strictly space-faring people, but would also have to support a huge amount of traffic traveling to and from the planet itself. Such a port would have to house a massive permanent personnel force, as well as accomodations for large numbers of travelers, massive cargo docks, storage, government and corporate offices, etc. We're talking something more like the Citadel from the Mass Effect series (in concept, if not in actual size) than a small Coriolis spaceport.

In Sol, for example, I'd expect to see at least 2 of such ports - one orbiting Earth and the other around Mars. You'd expect the demands around these planets to support station populations in the hundreds of thousands, if not more - given their galactic importance.

For systems that support major industry... where ships and spaceports are built, for instance, or any system really where large permanent populations must be supported... you'd expect more massive stations there too. And I think you'd expect these installations to be fairly unique to their systems. At Earth, you'd expect a commercial and tourism hub, with the usual expected residences and cargo handling capabilities. At Mars, a significant government presense. You'd also expect massive "dry docks" out there. Huge space-born factories for ships and stations. Planet-level mining operations. Stations of the sort that mega-ships themselves would dock at. Installations that would act as hubs for capital-sized ships. Not just massive stations, but a large variety of massive stations.

Logically, these stations should exist. Most of the really important systems should have something of the sort. But there doesn't seem to be anything like this in the game. So I ask, "why not?" Have the developers just not go around to it? Have the never intended to? Would the game be unable to support larger stations? Would the architecture be too significant for the game engine to handle? I'm just really wondering why such small ports are the only ones in the game.

Please see GURPS Traveller: Starports, for more detail.

 

[ScarecrowES]

From a practical perspective, a 2km radius station is simply not very large. Especially once you consider just how much of the interior of the station is taken up by the hollow space of the docking bay, as well as all of the station's internal systems (water, air power, waste, etc). Has anyone done an analysis of how many square kilometers of surface area the Coriolis has? I estimate that if it were a sphere, it'd have about 50 sq-km or about 19 sq-miles of surface area. But it's not very densely packed on the exterior, with more space between "buildings" than is typical of most advanced urban development - and this would be necessary considering the structures would have to be built from the exterior-in.

I'm trying to find a comparable city that most folks world-wide might recognize for comparison, but there simply aren't nationally-recognizable cities nearly that small. The island of Manhattan, in New York, is about 23 square miles, and has 1.6 million people. But that's clearly more densely developed than the Coriolis could ever hope to be. Buildings are much taller and more tightly packed than they could be if the same amount of area was wrapped around a sphere. You could have perhaps 1/3 of the building capacity, and much of that would be taken up by resource systems.

Any way you slice it, a Coriolis simply couldn't support as many people as you would expect to live on a station operating in a system supporting 10's of billions of people. And the ring stations are even smaller. Those rings are full of sparsely populated rural-type development... lots of grass and open spaces. Not much room for people. And that's assuming that these stations just HOUSE people and don't form any sort of industry like the manufacturing and agricultural stations. At that point you're talking about having to contain places where people live AND where they work. Likely those stations could support a mere few 10's of thousands of people.

Moreover, you're still talking about stations that could only dock a few dozen ships at a time, and only a handful of ships large enough to be meaningful to commerce and transportation. For stations supporting planets like Earth or Mars, you should expect docking space for hundreds of ships simultaneously, right... and dozens of large cargo ships... not to mention berths for small planetary shuttles for transportation to and from the planet's surface (it's not practical for most ships to actually land on a planet to deliver cargo and passengers). An Anaconda has a max cargo tonnage of 468t. A modern 747-8 cargo freighter can carry about 1/3 of that, but is also TINY by comparison - with a gross take off weight of 488 tons in a MUCH smaller package. Of course, this goes to how messed up the scaling in Elite Dangerous is, but that's another issue. There are only a mere few large docks in the standard stations. This is nowhere near enough docking space to support the cargo traffic a planet like Earth would need. This is unlikely to even support the cargo handling needs of an actual industrial or agricultural station on it's own, let alone an entire planet.

The small pre-fab stations we see throughout the galaxy in Elite make sense for hastily set up expansion stations - footholds for systems that are just getting started. Or ones that service lightly-traveled systems - or even independenly-operating production operations. But they make no sense at all for large systems. Hell... you might even expect long-developed planets like Earth to have something more significant than even an orbital station - perhaps an orbital ring surrounding the entire planet might make more sense, and is highly represented in sci-fi.

I hear the argument that there are many things Elite Dangerous needs, and perhaps different kinds of stations aren't equal to or as beneficial as gameplay enhancements, etc. But I might disagree on that. One of my biggest gripes about Elite Dangerous is that there's little point to the galaxy we fly around in. It's mostly empty, and what little is there is entirely generic. As I travel around to run cargo or passengers or explore or whatever, all I ever experience are the same starports at the beginning and end (and the middle as the case may be) of my journey. Every system is exactly the same. There is no sense that there is anything unique or important about Earth and the Sol system (or any large and important system) as compared to some random unnamed system at the tail-end of space.

This simply isn't how the galaxy would be. There should be a sense of wonder when - after traipsing around smaller systems running cargo into Coriolis and Orbis stations - we return to Sol to land at a station so large it might take minutes to fly through it into a docking port. Or when we drop into one of the fleet headquarters systems and see a massive hub station with a dozen docked capitol ships. Or a massive station building the other stations that will be flown to the far ends of the galaxy. To me, such things would go a long way to providing a sense of weight to the galaxy, and make it feel so much less empty.

 

[CMDR Heydan Seegil]

Elite Dangerous is set in a post-apocaliptic setting, most people in the bubble are lucky to have electricity.

Great point, I didn't even think about that until you mentioned it. Although the apocalypse was more than 1000 years ago if your claiming it was WWIII or the exodus from Earth or the war between the Federation and the Empire. Now if your talking Thargoids then its been a little over 100-200 years since that ended. You'd think they'd have rebuilt in that time, but then I still fly and Eagle MKIII and that model is over 100 years old too. I think all the ships in the game are technically about 100 years old iirc.

 

[dognosh]

I flew around outside one of the noob-hammer coriolis stations a while back in my python, and kept trying to 'land' on the hammer-heads - whilst a fun idea, it proved absolutely pointless and was almost impossible to keep up with the bloomin' things! IIRC my non boost speed is 323, and that is just not quite enough to keep up with the hammer heads going at full speed. I think I worked out the rough rotation speed of the station on paper, but that is long gone into the 'pile of no return' of paper on my desk!!

Anyway, not a great story, but I thought it interesting, especially when we sit and watch them turning, then find we can't keep up with the rotational speed equivalent! Must try again

A good game was staying out of its reach,stood still in space,then watching it go by,get closer,watch it, get closer,till it practically touches you. It killed me once

 

[obliterator]

Ok I'm just guessing, but I'd say part of the reason is "lore".

There's no artificial gravity so stations need to spin. Maybe the bigger the station the more energy it needs to spin, and the faster it needs to spin at to maintain a 1G gravity. Orbis stations are just about the limit of that "technology" without the struts and other structural components breaking off due to the stress placed on it by the spinning. In space things may not have weight but they still have mass.

Giant-sized stations in other sci-fi media (films, games etc) all have artificial gravity if I am not mistaken.

There's also the fact that very few "levels" in the station are actually at 1g. The outer layers of the stations, the "surface" are where people live, as the "gravity" goes weaker and weaker the more you go towards the middle. This means larger stations would have significant diminishing returns on the amount of livable space they contain, since their surface to volume ratio would be different. In other words, the amount of low gravity space inside of a bigger space station would just be too big. A station that's ten times more massive would allow for a lot less than times more people to live in it.

It would make sense for purely industrial stations, though. Low gravity makes it easier to work with heavy stuff.

 

[Captain Thea Kreutzer]

From a practical perspective, a 2km radius station is simply not very large. Especially once you consider just how much of the interior of the station is taken up by the hollow space of the docking bay, as well as all of the station's internal systems (water, air power, waste, etc). Has anyone done an analysis of how many square kilometers of surface area the Coriolis has? I estimate that if it were a sphere, it'd have about 50 sq-km or about 19 sq-miles of surface area. But it's not very densely packed on the exterior, with more space between "buildings" than is typical of most advanced urban development - and this would be necessary considering the structures would have to be built from the exterior-in.

I'm trying to find a comparable city that most folks world-wide might recognize for comparison, but there simply aren't nationally-recognizable cities nearly that small. The island of Manhattan, in New York, is about 23 square miles, and has 1.6 million people. But that's clearly more densely developed than the Coriolis could ever hope to be. Buildings are much taller and more tightly packed than they could be if the same amount of area was wrapped around a sphere. You could have perhaps 1/3 of the building capacity, and much of that would be taken up by resource systems.

Any way you slice it, a Coriolis simply couldn't support as many people as you would expect to live on a station operating in a system supporting 10's of billions of people. And the ring stations are even smaller. Those rings are full of sparsely populated rural-type development... lots of grass and open spaces. Not much room for people. And that's assuming that these stations just HOUSE people and don't form any sort of industry like the manufacturing and agricultural stations. At that point you're talking about having to contain places where people live AND where they work. Likely those stations could support a mere few 10's of thousands of people.

Moreover, you're still talking about stations that could only dock a few dozen ships at a time, and only a handful of ships large enough to be meaningful to commerce and transportation. For stations supporting planets like Earth or Mars, you should expect docking space for hundreds of ships simultaneously, right... and dozens of large cargo ships... not to mention berths for small planetary shuttles for transportation to and from the planet's surface (it's not practical for most ships to actually land on a planet to deliver cargo and passengers). An Anaconda has a max cargo tonnage of 468t. A modern 747-8 cargo freighter can carry about 1/3 of that, but is also TINY by comparison - with a gross take off weight of 488 tons in a MUCH smaller package. Of course, this goes to how messed up the scaling in Elite Dangerous is, but that's another issue. There are only a mere few large docks in the standard stations. This is nowhere near enough docking space to support the cargo traffic a planet like Earth would need. This is unlikely to even support the cargo handling needs of an actual industrial or agricultural station on it's own, let alone an entire planet.

The small pre-fab stations we see throughout the galaxy in Elite make sense for hastily set up expansion stations - footholds for systems that are just getting started. Or ones that service lightly-traveled systems - or even independenly-operating production operations. But they make no sense at all for large systems. Hell... you might even expect long-developed planets like Earth to have something more significant than even an orbital station - perhaps an orbital ring surrounding the entire planet might make more sense, and is highly represented in sci-fi.

I hear the argument that there are many things Elite Dangerous needs, and perhaps different kinds of stations aren't equal to or as beneficial as gameplay enhancements, etc. But I might disagree on that. One of my biggest gripes about Elite Dangerous is that there's little point to the galaxy we fly around in. It's mostly empty, and what little is there is entirely generic. As I travel around to run cargo or passengers or explore or whatever, all I ever experience are the same starports at the beginning and end (and the middle as the case may be) of my journey. Every system is exactly the same. There is no sense that there is anything unique or important about Earth and the Sol system (or any large and important system) as compared to some random unnamed system at the tail-end of space.

This simply isn't how the galaxy would be. There should be a sense of wonder when - after traipsing around smaller systems running cargo into Coriolis and Orbis stations - we return to Sol to land at a station so large it might take minutes to fly through it into a docking port. Or when we drop into one of the fleet headquarters systems and see a massive hub station with a dozen docked capitol ships. Or a massive station building the other stations that will be flown to the far ends of the galaxy. To me, such things would go a long way to providing a sense of weight to the galaxy, and make it feel so much less empty.

i would love to see larger ports probably wont happen for a while though if it ever happens