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[K-64]

With the name change and people talking about how it sorta makes sense since you are travelling in a sector, it got me thinking about something. What is a sector in lore-terms of the game? Because the homepage has some potentially conflicting info between gameplay and lore

The story of Starsector concerns a sector mostly untouched by the calamity that spelled doom for the Domain. For over 200 cycles, humanity has been losing its grip on civilization, and struggling desperately to hang on to what is left.

Explore hundreds of star systems to find habitable worlds, rich resource deposits, and lost technology

So, the question is, is a sector in Starsector terms less a cubic area of space and more akin to a country boundary? Because what I have always considered a sector has been a large-ish cubic area in space that may have 5-10 systems in it as opposed to having hundreds. If it is the "Huge area of hundreds of systems" type, then does this mean there may be expansions and such for opening up other sectors in the far future?

[Alex]

What is a sector? Perhaps an arc + range from some long-forgotten Domain nav reference point. Perhaps a group of systems designated to be colonized in a single effort. Perhaps it's based on something else entirely.

(Yes, the Star Trek sector is about 5-10 systems. It's not like that.)

[K-64]

So it's closer to something in the spoilered pic than a truly uniform block of space?

Spoiler

[close]

[Gothars]

Much smaller than in your pic K, those areas would span many billion stars. A Sector is more in the 1000 stars range.

When defining an area it is often a good idea to look at the borders. What could be a border between groups of stars? Distance is the first thing that comes to mind. So a sector could be a cluster of stars in close proximity. That is a pretty limiting concept though, many stars are not particularly clustered. Certainly not enough to go from a comfy trip in the days or weeks league between stars inside the Sector to a more than a lifetime trip to anything outside it.

So maybe it has something to do with the way hyperspace travel works. From what I gathered it is in some way related to the p-space. What if the p-space would vary in "density". Certain star groups are inside a dense p-space bubble that allows very fast travel. Between such bubbles the p-density is to low for (fast) hyperspace travel, except if it is artificially condensed by a gate network. So those gates are the only possibility for fast travel between dense p-space areas, also known as Sectors in the Domain.

[K-64]

Well, the pic I used was for a more extreme version of demonstration, but was mainly used for the non-uniform shape of the sectors. From the sounds of it, the "country" analogy works quite well if it's defined by the ease/efficiency of hyperspace travel. So sectors would be landmasses and low p-density areas of space are oceans, if putting things in terrestrial analogues?

[Gothars]

Yeah, something like that. If the oceans were really damn big and we somehow managed to build bridges across them (which later collapsed). This is all speculation, though.  Or maybe inspiration?

[Dratai]

Well, I can draw a paralell between the star trek one.
In the game "Freelancer", everything happens inside a single "sector" of space. The sirius sector. (I imagine it has something to do with the starsystem(s) of the same name..)
Even though there are four "countries", so to speak. There's also a lot of independent or empty star systems within the sector.

Sector itself just means 'area'.

But I think it's more of a specific cluster of stars, when it comes to sci-fi/space stuff like this.
Which can be any size.
Just like, say, a valley. A country.
A mountain range.

You get the idea.

It's like how an industry can also be split into sectors. I think it's mostly a thing for convenience's sake.
In the case of this game, though, perhaps when mankind was still at it's prime, they designated various sectors of things that were similar or maybe political density or some such. Could also just be like how they split the US into states. "Let's put a box here and a box there of similar sizes"

The possibilities are endless


edit: I generally imagine it to be a handful of stars. Tops 24-48. (dozens?)
But what  do I know? xD

[sdmike1]

So maybe it has something to do with the way hyperspace travel works. From what I gathered it is in some way related to the p-space. What if the p-space would vary in "density". Certain star groups are inside a dense p-space bubble that allows very fast travel. Between such bubbles the p-density is to low for (fast) hyperspace travel, except if it is artificially condensed by a gate network. So those gates are the only possibility for fast travel between dense p-space areas, also known as Sectors in the Domain.

Seams legit...

It could also be similar to how a stargate works that is creating a form of wormhole but slower... and the more powerful the ships engines the faster it can travel through the wormhole

[Pelly]

So maybe it has something to do with the way hyperspace travel works. From what I gathered it is in some way related to the p-space. What if the p-space would vary in "density". Certain star groups are inside a dense p-space bubble that allows very fast travel. Between such bubbles the p-density is to low for (fast) hyperspace travel, except if it is artificially condensed by a gate network. So those gates are the only possibility for fast travel between dense p-space areas, also known as Sectors in the Domain.

Seams legit...

It could also be similar to how a stargate works that is creating a form of wormhole but slower... and the more powerful the ships engines the faster it can travel through the wormhole

Hum, Farscape like you could say.