I've been following StarSector for a while (admittedly losing track at the name change.) Reading about the lore, the different ships, and the development process has been great fun, despite not yet purchasing the game.
Over the last few weeks, a lot of time has been poured into looking at this game in depth. Thinking about the lore, I've come to think up an idea.
What if the Domain hasn't fallen? What if the sector is either too isolated to contact or some sort of experiment (similar to ghouls in fallout?)
Well let's test the isolated theory.
In the thread "The Lore Corner," it was mentioned that the sector will have about 1000 star systems in it. I did some math based on that, which brought me to the conclusion the sector will have to be 160 light years across. This lines up with another set of statements, saying it'll take six months to cross the sector and five days to move between systems (which are ~5 light years apart.)
If we do some more math, the sector in which the game takes place is about 75,000 light years from Earth (200 years for the 14th Domain Naval Battle Group to reach the sector at ~1 light year per day.) This places it on the outer rim of the Milky Way, opposite Earth. It is entirely reasonable that, in the lore, the sector is completely isolated from the rest of the Domain. It is also reasonable that any other sector of the Domain would be very, very far away.
Keeping on with doing some math, and putting the story under scrutiny (sorry for looking to closely,) I wanted to see how long it would take for a transmission from Earth to reach the sector. Once again looking at "The Lore Corner," I saw that it takes several weeks for news to propagate in the sector. I'll take that as up to three weeks; say 20 days. If the sector is 160 light years across, then the transmissions travel at 8 light years per day. Okay. So, it would take about 25.5 years for a transmission from Earth to reach the sector. In the 206 years since the Collapse, there would have been time for a signal to reach the sector.
There has been enough time.Surely, if the Domain had collapsed so completely, someone would have said something to this group of colonies. Perhaps a maintenance worker scheduled to arrive at the star gate, or farmers indicating their food wouldn't make it to the sector. I have no doubt some signal would have been sent.
Again, looking to the lore, the Collapse happened incredibly suddenly with literally no sign. Supply ships simply stopped coming. Everyone waited in their seats for the gate to light up. The Collapse is a name given to the calamity within the sector itself, not from any outsider.
Then, shortly after this great fall, a ship filled to the brim with Domain soldiers flies in. This is a ship which would have been sent three years after the gate was built. Only three years. I understand that many of the crew were disgraced, but why not send them to a sector which was well established so they could be studied upon arrival? That being said, if this crew were truly meant to be a study on the long term effects of cryo sleep, why would there be tens of thousands, and why would the sector they were flung to have no prior knowledge to their arrival? Perhaps the logs had been destroyed, but an infrastructure would have needed to be present to properly examine them. And only a few hundred, surely, would need to be sent.
I may be reading way too far into the lore of Starsector here, but I think this all points to the Domain wanting to conduct an experiment on these poor souls. Perhaps they wish to learn what would really happen if there were a collapse, if humanity could survive. We have little indication as to the ethics of the Domain, and so cannot know if they would truly do this.
Well, these are just my thoughts, and I'd love to hear all of yours