How big is the Galaxy/Universe?

[Sixshots]

I am highly interrested to buy this since it is on sales, but before I have a few question about the Map/Galaxy/Universe?

1. Are we playing in the Galaxy or in the Universe?

2. How much is explored/civilized?

3. Are there even any unexplored systems?

4. are Stations spread all over the "whole map" or are the station distributed only in the lets say 5% of the map? like is the space mostly empty where you grind and go back to a few vendor spots? I just want to know if I would suprisingly find a station very very very far away from where "civilization" is.

[Harrison]

1) 1:1 Milky Way, something like 400 billions stars.

2) Just over 20k populated (civilized) system

3) According to the Elite Dangerous Star Map website, only 0.013491% of the galaxy has been explored.

[Elitewrecker PT]

1 - Milky Way
2 - Like 0.005%, or was it 0.05...
3 - ^^ most of it is empty, since humans only actively settled a handful of regions.

[Sixshots]

so like there is population only in the 0.013491% of the galaxy? Or is there any chance to find more station in the rest? I just would like to know if there is any chacne of like adventure

[Sixshots]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

1 - Milky Way
2 - Like 0.005%, or was it 0.05...
3 - ^^ most of it is empty, since humans only actively settled a handful of regions.

well so there are no aliens in this game?

[Elitewrecker PT]

There's population in less than that, since a lot of systems explored by players are just stars and uncolonized planets.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Originally posted by Sixshots:

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

1 - Milky Way
2 - Like 0.005%, or was it 0.05...
3 - ^^ most of it is empty, since humans only actively settled a handful of regions.

well so there are no aliens in this game?

There are alien ships that attack specific regions of inhabited space.
And other ancient alien ruins too.
But no actual like alien civilizations.

[Harrison]

Originally posted by Sixshots:

so like there is population only in the 0.013491% of the galaxy? Or is there any chance to find more station in the rest? I just would like to know if there is any chacne of like adventure

No, there's population in even less than that... 0.013491% represents the number of systems players have visited. You might find a station hidden out there, I don't know.

[dave46563]

Originally posted by Sixshots:

so like there is population only in the 0.013491% of the galaxy? Or is there any chance to find more station in the rest? I just would like to know if there is any chacne of like adventure

That's the percentage of systems that have been visited throughout the Milky Way. It only counts systems visited by CMDR's on EDSM. The actual number is a little bit higher, but still under 1% I believe.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by Sixshots:

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

1 - Milky Way
2 - Like 0.005%, or was it 0.05...
3 - ^^ most of it is empty, since humans only actively settled a handful of regions.

well so there are no aliens in this game?

There technically is at least two alien civilizations contemporary with humans in elite, but both are in "Permit Locked" or Quaratined regions of the galaxy (inaccessible, presumably for future content) that being the AI the Guardians created known simply as the "Constructs" that eventually wiped them out, and the Thargoids, who are currently believed to be originating from somewhere in the Horse Head sector, a permit locked region of space beyond the spectacular nebula known as "Bernard's Loop"

While the Thargoids can be encountered, and even some of their buildings explored, the AI that wiped out the Guardians are only mentioned in lore, and no indication that they are, or ever intended to be seen in game is made.

It might be worth mentioning that The Guardians and Thargoids are also contemporary with one another, despite the Guardians having existed (And gone extinct) around 2 million years ago. The Guardians actually won their war with the Thargoids, and certain weaponry principles they employed can be acquired by players now.

[Rdizz]

Lets put it simply, the game is massive it is a 1:1 scale of the milky way. As of now only .003% of the map has actually been explored by players.... .003% there are aliens, is there an alien world? who knows only .003% has been explored. I guess there could be?

6 years all we could come up with is .003%

Sounds like you are thinking of getting the game, while its on sale yes grab it you will get your money's worth. Your fun will quickly come to an end but still its worth the money.

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Originally posted by Sixshots:

well so there are no aliens in this game?

There technically is at least two alien civilizations contemporary with humans in elite, but both are in "Permit Locked" or Quaratined regions of the galaxy (inaccessible, presumably for future content) that being the AI the Guardians created known simply as the "Constructs" that eventually wiped them out, and the Thargoids, who are currently believed to be originating from somewhere in the Horse Head sector, a permit locked region of space beyond the spectacular nebula known as "Bernard's Loop"

While the Thargoids can be encountered, and even some of their buildings explored, the AI that wiped out the Guardians are only mentioned in lore, and no indication that they are, or ever intended to be seen in game is made.

It might be worth mentioning that The Guardians and Thargoids are also contemporary with one another, despite the Guardians having existed (And gone extinct) around 2 million years ago. The Guardians actually won their war with the Thargoids, and certain weaponry principles they employed can be acquired by players now.

In lore there are also the AI ships that left human space some centuries ago about the time AI were banned, so in a way, that could be another civilization, although not technically speaking alien.

If you go back to the days of Elite+ (IIRC, and not canon in ED) every systems had alien races.

IIRC, the Dark Wheel also references other alien races and has Oresians (Thargoids) on a station.

Apparently the humans who set up the empire also wiped out a sentient species on Capitol in Achenar.

OP - there are two main hubs of civilization. The "Bubble" where we start out and Colonia which is a group of systems 22k LY from the bubble. There are also a number of stations scattered around the galaxy.

[Jankules]

We are still looking for Raxxla.

[Bannor]

Originally posted by Sixshots:

I am highly interrested to buy this since it is on sales, but before I have a few question about the Map/Galaxy/Universe?

1. Are we playing in the Galaxy or in the Universe?

2. How much is explored/civilized?

3. Are there even any unexplored systems?

4. are Stations spread all over the "whole map" or are the station distributed only in the lets say 5% of the map? like is the space mostly empty where you grind and go back to a few vendor spots? I just want to know if I would suprisingly find a station very very very far away from where "civilization" is.

1) Our galaxy, the Milky Way. 400 BILLION stars. That's 400 000 000 000. All represented in the game.

2) A **tiny** proportion of them; orders of magnitude less than 1%.

3) Do the maths....

4) Stations are distributed only in 2 rather small areas; 'The Bubble' which includes Earth, and Colonia, which is closer to the centre of the galaxy. There are in total about 15 000 or so stations / settlements in the game. Space is mostly uninhabited; you're unlikely to find any stations not in the 2 areas mentioned, but now with fleet carriers you're unlikely to ever be very far from one, once they distribute themselves around the galaxy.

[Sapyx]

Out of the 400 billion stars in the ED galaxy, only about 20,000 of them are inhabited. The vast majority of these are int he "bubble" of Human space, roughly 200 LY radius of Sol. There are a few dozen outposts in deep space, the target of which is the Colonia region of independent colonies, 25,000 light-years away towards the Galactic Core. But most of the galaxy is uninhabited.

The ED galaxy is not like the Star Trek or Star Wars galaxies, where just about every star system seems to have an Earth-like planet in it. Rather, ED uses a quite "realistic" star system generation algorithm, which in turn means that the vast majority of star systems are rather barren and boring, with just a string of iceball planets or maybe a bunch of gas giants and moons. Only about 1 in 100 stars has an Earth-like planet in it - which makes finding them, after several days of looking at nothing but barren rocks, all the more special for an explorer.

The chances of FD just hiding something important somewhere out in the galaxy are rather low, simply because of the rather high chance that, if they relied purely on players flying around at random, there's a very good chance no-one would ever see it. It would take thousands of years for the current playerbase to fully explore the galaxy. So when FD creates new content for players to find, they usually also create "clues" to help us find it.

[Moniboi]

Originally posted by Bannor:

4) Stations are distributed only in 2 rather small areas; 'The Bubble' which includes Earth, and Colonia, which is closer to the centre of the galaxy. There are in total about 15 000 or so stations / settlements in the game. Space is mostly uninhabited; you're unlikely to find any stations not in the 2 areas mentioned, but now with fleet carriers you're unlikely to ever be very far from one, once they distribute themselves around the galaxy.

Actually they don't just exist in those 2 areas, but also in between them. With that inaccuracy corrected, they don't, to our current knowledge, exist elsewhere. However, it is theoretically possible that stations exist somewhere else even if we don't know about it yet.