A SPHERE IS A SPHERE IS A SPHERE
Despite the map being flat, the Inner Sphere is a 3D sphere, with an average radius of about 500 light years from Terra. This volume of space contains more than TWO MILLION stars. About 2000 of those stars have a major human presence, which means that about 1 in 1000 star systems are settled.
Generally speaking, the further you get from Terra, the more sparsely populated space is. So within 100-150 ly of Terra you might almost always find more than one settled planet within jump range, that’s far from the case near the nebulous edge of the Periphery.
Speaking of the Periphery: if you make the sphere bigger by including the near Periphery, there are suddenly about 5 million stars, but perhaps only 2500 settled worlds. There would be even more, but the galactic disk is only about 1000 ly thick, so the sphere is no longer a true sphere, but more like a discus.
If you want to include all of the Deep Periphery, say any region ever tenuously explored by humans, out to about 1500 ly, that’s a cool 20 million star systems. Who knows, maybe the descendants of Kerensky are out there, somewhere. Or maybe they we simply swallowed up by the endless dark ocean between the stars?
And humans had only barely begun to venture into the galaxy by the time the Star League came crashing down. Billions more stars await…
GM note: So space is 3D. No surprise there. But the map is 2D. And it stays that way. Let’s just keep the 3D aspect vague. The map doesn’t necessarily show a star’s exact spatial location, but its position relative to nearby stars within jump range. That’s what is important for us.
09/10/18 06:06:00 pm,