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[orost]

Not in the number of systems, but in physical distance and the effort required to traverse it. With a little bit of luck, it's entirely possible to mount a successful expedition to the very edge of the playable area with your starting kit and skills. That first time is challenging and feels very good, but when you get some money and skill points behind you it becomes a bit of a groceries trip, and, well, there isn't anywhere any further to go.

[Gothars]

Try playing in iron mode, suddenly things will seem much scarier and vaster   Over half of my expeditions ended in some kind of disaster, with parts of my fleet destroyed. Going to the very edge of the sector is still quite the challenge.

[orost]

I do play in iron mode. There are plenty of dangers, true, but almost all of them are easily given a wide berth. You can choose to not interact with dangerous derelicts, remnant system have warning beacons. Random hostile fleets can still jump you, but they can do that in the core systems too, and they're less common out in the wilderness.

This is especially true after you get Transverse Jump, which is an incredibly powerful panic button that makes you immune to in-system danger because you can just jump out at any moment.

[Dri]

Where you gonna draw that line between "feels good" and "just plain frustrating" to get around?

It already takes hundreds of units of fuel to get out to the fringes + lots of supplies that get eaten up from plowing through random hyperspace storms on those really long trips. If you make it even harder then you risk making the whole exploration mechanic unviable.

[PCCL]

FWIW, I take it upon myself to not sustained burn (feels unfair if AI can't use it and I can). So that makes getting around a bit harder, if you're into that stuff

[orost]

Where you gonna draw that line between "feels good" and "just plain frustrating" to get around?

It already takes hundreds of units of fuel to get out to the fringes + lots of supplies that get eaten up from plowing through random hyperspace storms on those really long trips. If you make it even harder then you risk making the whole exploration mechanic unviable.

If you make it too hard, it will be too hard, that I agree with, but it's also easily avoided by not making it too hard. There's a lot of wiggle room between the current state of "it's possible to go anywhere right away" and "exploration is nonviable".

Progression still works well, because while you can get anywhere, there are many things you cannot do there until you have more skills and more ships. It's just that... exploration doesn't feel quite right without mysterious distant lands to yearn for, does it?

Perhaps instead of just cutting off, the Sector could end with an exponentially reducing star system density. That would allow for difficult to reach targets without inflating the solar system count too much... I assume that just hyperspace isn't a noticeable performance burden. And those systems would be a great place to put cool stuff.

[Alex]

I assume that just hyperspace isn't a noticeable performance burden. And those systems would be a great place to put cool stuff.

It's actually a pretty big deal; it's all tiles.

[DeltaV_11.2]

Yes, it does. ATM the sector's bounding radius is something like 50 ly, so you probably never need more than 80ly of fuel in order to get anywhere in the sector from the closest fueling point. Most civil ships have 40ly of fuel already, and warships typically have 20-30, with a couple of more exploration or long-range ships having 40-50(all phase ships have 50, for instance). Tankers having 300ly of fuel means that it's very trivial in terms of fleet composition to get enough fuel to visit anywhere in the sector, or even to do tours of it. Let's say your ships have an average fuel capacity of 30ly, which is a bit conservative. For a fleet of 6 consumption 2 destroyers, that means you need only 2 destroyer tankers in order to get 97.5 ly of fuel across your whole fleet. Even for really terrible 15ly range ships like Condors can be brought all the way out by 2:1 matching with tankers.

Basically for a fairly minimal investment in tankers(and an arguably less minimal investment in fuel), you can get the range to bring any ship anywhere in the sector. I'd probably say that tankers should be chopped down to 200ly-150ly of fuel range, and some military ships should have their fuel consumption and capacity raised so that they're harder to support with tanker fleets. Tankers should also cost a similar amount of supplies in maintenance as military ships- there's really very little cost in having more tankers(they're cheap, cost little supplies, and as long as you're careful will never see combat).

For a concrete example, I'd compare Starsector ATM a lot with the Escape Velocity series. And if you were looking at Starsector's map and trying to hide something from the player with distance(and there are quite a few secrets in EV:N that are hidden purely by how far from inhabited space they are), how would you do it? There's nowhere that the player can't basically go right off the bat.

[Megas]

It is fine that tankers carry lots of fuel.  It is not fun bringing too many civilians to clog fleet slots just because we need their stats to function.  In 0.72, player was at a disadvantage against endgame fleets because player should reserve plenty of fleet slots for civilians or new ships, and the enemy can just combine fleets with 40+ ships to try to murder your fleet.  (Then your one battleship may solo a hundred or more ships.)

[DatonKallandor]

Increasing fuel consumption and making tankers worse sounds horrible.

[Todriam]

I agree it feels small.  But not in size of map.  It feel small as in it's lacking factions. Then again I'm used to playing with 10+ faction mods plus vanilla factions.

[Megas]

Not in the number of systems, but in physical distance and the effort required to traverse it.

It feels much bigger than 0.72, at least more than going from Corvus, to Magec, to Eos Exodus or other core system.  Sustained Burn is very nice, and even then, a 20+ LY trip from the edge of Core Worlds to some random hole in the middle of nowhere feels like it takes ages (compared to Core Worlds only travel).

[DeltaV_11.2]

It is fine that tankers carry lots of fuel.  It is not fun bringing too many civilians to clog fleet slots just because we need their stats to function.  In 0.72, player was at a disadvantage against endgame fleets because player should reserve plenty of fleet slots for civilians or new ships, and the enemy can just combine fleets with 40+ ships to try to murder your fleet.  (Then your one battleship may solo a hundred or more ships.)

Decreasing tanker fuel quantity hurts mostly the ability to go really far, it doesn't cut that much into more moderate trips.

For a 30ly fuel ship, here's the relative number of tankers you need to travel(equation is proportion=(distance - ship range)/(tanker range - distance))
50ly-0.08
80ly-0.227
100ly-0.35

With 200ly tankers
50ly-0.133
80ly-0.41
100ly-0.7

With 150ly tankers
50ly-0.2
80ly-0.71
100ly-1.4

If you're worried about lategame fleet slots just give the big capital tanker higher efficiency or make it have higher fuel capacity and higher costs, so that a smaller number of them can do the same thing. The point anyways is to try and make range progress over the game(there should probably be fuel efficiency hullmods), so it makes sense to give ships that are gated behind costs more efficiency.

[PerturbedPug]

Is the current size of the sector more or less final? Are there any performance or simulation problems with increasing it further?

[Hypilein]

I assume it can be modded? Someone is probably going to test those performance limits pretty soon.