Though humans have mapped a lot of stars, we know of relatively few that have planets. Since no planetless star systems are listed, I think it's not too bad a glitch.

The other way to explain this would be, that only systems connected by star lanes are listed and there's no way to find those by telescope.

lyravega wrote:
No one is taking time into account it seems. A lot of stars that we've "mapped" could be dead a long time ago.

But couldn't you estimate this by distance- and wavelength + size-measurements? I mean star evolution is well known. And since we're speaking of billions of years of livetime and e.g. our galaxy is 100.000 light years in diameter, even with very huge measurement errors you'd be able to estimate if there still is a sun or not and what stage she's in.

The Amoeba have this ability. So they have the appropriate advancement/etc necessary to discover all the map. The other races don't.



If something is too unrealistic, you probably won't be able to get past having anything but the UE in your game... all of the alien races are more fantastic imo than not being able to map out all of the star lanes/valid stars in the galaxy.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Though humans have mapped a lot of stars, we know of relatively few that have planets. Since no planetless star systems are listed, I think it's not too bad a glitch.

The other way to explain this would be, that only systems connected by star lanes are listed and there's no way to find those by telescope.

No one is taking time into account it seems. A lot of stars that we've "mapped" could be dead a long time ago.

You could speculate that the a races history might have prevented such an activity like searching for stars, after all how did the Emperor come into power? Unlikely that it would have been a peaceful rise to power.



And where does it say that endless space is set 1000 years in the future?



AD is referring to after dust (When dust was discovered).

Eminent_Waffle wrote:
I was just wondering why, when you start a new game, you can only see the systems directly adjacent to your home system. It doesn't make sense to me, after all, humans have mapped a good portion of our galaxy and we have yet to reach most of the planets in our own system. Not to mention we've identified other galaxies. I think you ought to be able to build observatories that don't necessarily expand your influence range, but still allow you to slowly compile a map of the rest of the galaxy. Were it left to me, I'd allow you to locate other systems, and potentially the number and size of planets in orbit, but not the space routes (Whatever they're called) and wormholes. I'd make observatories an improvement available on turn one considering the fact that you can colonize other systems from the start.

Not entirely true, humans have mapped a small portion of our galaxy and from what humans know it's even possible that the galaxies are small parts of things like "bigger galaxies" nobody will ever know the comming atleast 1000 years

I'd like to think that the galaxy is filled with so many stars to begin with, that systematically detecting the tiny fraction that are of interest to the races is difficult. You can probably think up an arbitrarily large set of criteria to make the task sufficiently difficult: finding habitable planets, finding systems with an easily traversible string connection (these might not be direct, but rely on hops that are mapped by trial and error?), finding systems through background noise or stellar phenomenon. Just think of as many sets as you can and the intersection of them will end up miniscule compared to the number of stars.



Perhaps the Amoeba's advantage was developing a culture of astronomy many millennia in advance that got most of the grunt work out of the way before spaceflight.



And, naturally, game play over realism.

eltro102 wrote:
Actually, we can reliably detect exo-planets on systems outside our galaxy, and we can also sort of nearly detect what type of planet they are, and will soon be able to check if there are organically produced molecules in the atmosphere of said planets. ES is set 1000 years in the future, where we would have mapped a significant amount of other galaxies (probably not as much but quite a bit about our own too). Not only this, but a 100 parsec galaxy will be "only" ~326 light years wide, which is easily in the planet detectable range.



The only way for this to work scientifically would be that the stars connected by cosmic strings can only be seen once you have discovered string drive and also are shielded from telescopes on said cosmic lane.

Fair enough. There's is still quite a difference between detecting a exoplanet and detecting one at a specific position. (Considering that for example gravitational lensing here requires the plane of orbit to be relatively close in angle to the direction of observation.)

Astrella wrote:
I think it's alright; if you look at our current advances with regards to exoplanetary research, it really isn't easy to detect planets orbiting other starts, let alone glean information about them. And how easy it is to observe them depends on a lot of different factors. If you compare the average string length to the size of the map even the nearest systems in game are quite far on a galactic scale; they're really not the next star over.

Actually, we can reliably detect exo-planets on systems outside our galaxy, and we can also sort of nearly detect what type of planet they are, and will soon be able to check if there are organically produced molecules in the atmosphere of said planets. ES is set 1000 years in the future, where we would have mapped a significant amount of other galaxies (probably not as much but quite a bit about our own too). Not only this, but a 100 parsec galaxy will be "only" ~326 light years wide, which is easily in the planet detectable range.



The only way for this to work scientifically would be that the stars connected by cosmic strings can only be seen once you have discovered string drive and also are shielded from telescopes on said cosmic lane.

I think sensors should reveal stars. It would make warp drive more useful early on, and would allow for constellations not connected to the main network.

I was just wondering why, when you start a new game, you can only see the systems directly adjacent to your home system. It doesn't make sense to me, after all, humans have mapped a good portion of our galaxy and we have yet to reach most of the planets in our own system. Not to mention we've identified other galaxies. I think you ought to be able to build observatories that don't necessarily expand your influence range, but still allow you to slowly compile a map of the rest of the galaxy. Were it left to me, I'd allow you to locate other systems, and potentially the number and size of planets in orbit, but not the space routes (Whatever they're called) and wormholes. I'd make observatories an improvement available on turn one considering the fact that you can colonize other systems from the start.

Perhaps that would be a good idea for a technology that you can research!

Stellar mapping - shows the type and location of every star in the game, but not who owns it or what planets it contains.

I think it's alright; if you look at our current advances with regards to exoplanetary research, it really isn't easy to detect planets orbiting other starts, let alone glean information about them. And how easy it is to observe them depends on a lot of different factors. If you compare the average string length to the size of the map even the nearest systems in game are quite far on a galactic scale; they're really not the next star over.

Igncom1 wrote:
Well you can see other stars on the map, the ones you go to are the systems that connect with the strings. So all the useful ones.

I was very, very tempted to say it's all about the strings. But remember warp drive doesn't open up any systems at all.



Endless Space just takes place in a galaxy extremely unlike our own.

Eminent_Waffle wrote:
I didn't mean that we have a very large percent mapped, but we do know a bit about the nearby systems.



I understand the whole exploration argument, but even still, it seems a bit odd that we know absolutely nothing about any other systems than the ones we've visited directly.

Well you can see other stars on the map, the ones you go to are the systems that connect with the strings. So all the useful ones.

Igncom1 wrote:
No we haven't! XD Not even close!

I didn't mean that we have a very large percent mapped, but we do know a bit about the nearby systems.



I understand the whole exploration argument, but even still, it seems a bit odd that we know absolutely nothing about any other systems than the ones we've visited directly.

I know it's not logical for a starfaring civilization, but stellar cartography is usually crippled in games like this, to preserve the "eXploration" part of the 4X strategy game. It gives you a reason to send ships to map the galaxy. It also puts a lid on the initial colony rush when you don't know where the "good" systems are, so the early expansion phase isn't too predictable.



If ES supports modding of scripted campaigns and scenarios at some point, I think we'll eventually see a console command cheat or mod that reveals the map, so those scripts can be debugged.

Heh, that's true, but we can at least see it well enough. But the whole galaxy routes and planet separation is waaaay past reality anyway. So a better question is how would this improve the gameplay? Personally, I think that we should at least be able to see connected systems. For the very least it we should be able to see the area surrounding the homeworld.



The reason is not because it's good/bad, but it makes the initial decision of which way to go an interesting gameplay choice, vs now you're just risking your luck.

Eminent_Waffle wrote:
after all, humans have mapped a good portion of our galaxy

No we haven't! XD Not even close!